CHERISH with HARISH

Delhi Monsoon, 2012 It was July afternoon in Delhi, and the monsoons had just started entering this part of the world. My young theatre group had begun to take shape. It had been roughly 6 months and the group had been rehearsing well. It was near the Supreme Court area, and we spoke about getting the group registered in this area. It was not a long procedure to get the name registered. The name was ‘Rang-manch’ which we wanted to go ahead with. A registration under some societies and voluntary organisation act would make it free for us to perform in any professional auditorium in the city. It would create a legal space in minds for ‘Rangmanch’. My group had majorly all young people, most of which were students. I took Sahil and Neha to roam around the courts. Sahil seemed to know some lawyer from the supreme court. Though the lawyer was a young man like me, but he had some airs about himself. Afterall, he was a young Supreme court lawyer. But thanks to Sahil’s old friendship, he d...

  Raghu was sad! Why was he sad? The reason was pretty simple. He had been fired from his job, which had given him a sense of security. "I was so secure", thought Raghu. About a week ago, he was given a notice, because of a virus he had not even heard about: CORONA! So in the last one week, Raghu was getting up, lazily, with a motive to leave the bed. But what was this security which he was cribbing about? He slowly got up and switched on the television. He saw the scary numbers, showing the number of new cases, across the world. He got irritated and changed the channel. Now he saw, the latest news about this young actor committing suicide, and his girlfriend being questioned by the investigating agencies. But what was more irritating here, was the volume of the news reporter. He was literally, shouting, "INSAAF CHAHIYE HUME!" Irritating insaaf! The volume got him more pissed. As he was thinking about the condition, Raghu changed the channel. He saw another news sto...

Moving on! Vikrant was a new employee of the Central  Public Works Department, which the world knew as the famous CPWD. He had finished his engineering from a prestigious engineering college and his family was quite happy at the fact that he had got a job in CPWD, an organization which was as old and as trustworthy  as ever. It had been three months and the feeling of this new job had not yet settled in. Vikrant had just moved to Delhi and got a house here.  It was a nice life here in Delhi, compared to his hometown in UP. The best part for him was his family was no where around. Though they would never be after him to come and sleep on time, but it is just this responsibility which Vikrant had towards them. Now, all of a sudden, he did not have any and wasn't he happy about it! Somewhere in central Delhi, Vikrant's team was doing a field survey of the number of slums in the area. They were going from one slum to another and checking and collecting documents from...

(This story is an introduction of a series of stories I have been writing, called 'Gokul's Summer Vaccation'. So read and comment. The series would be out (hopefully in print) soon. Enjoy...) It was a 2 bhk apartment which had four people staying in it. Gokul was one of them sharing the partment. Gokul Srinivas was new in Mumbai and his search for a job was on. It was just the day before, when he had turned 23. Gokul believed that it was his worst birthday ever. He got calls only from Ma and Pa . All his friends just sent him smses. He would have taken them with happiness, but not on a day when he was frustrated at the situation he was trapped in- A new city- No job- Very expensive! Gokul entered the room and closed the door behind him. There was some relief for Gokul as his roommate was not home and he had the whole room to himself. Gokul sat on the floor and felt sad at the way things were moving, or not moving at all. As he was looking around for deviations to enter h...

"...Abey cheeni chahiye yar!" Shouted Vishwajeet. It was about 11:30 at night and I was not sure whether there would be shops open. We were both working and all of a sudden we had this wild craving for chai. It was mid monsoon, and Mumbai was happy showering its pleasures on its people. I looked out, it was still raining. So we took our umbrellas and started searching in the darkness. The shops close to our house had shut down, so we had to contemplate about the next option and we continued walking. After searching for about half an hour we came to this shop, which was about to shut down. Vishwajeet saw it in time and in no time, we had got a kg of sugar. The shop shut and we walked back to our place with joy. I can cook most of the edible things but when it comes to chai, I always like someone else to do it for me. Vishwajeet's room is right next to the kitchen. He took the sugar inside the kitchen and I went and started working in my room, waiting for the ch...

Sea waves had never looked so soothing and relaxing to Srinivas. The sun had risen well above the horizon and the sound of the waves hitting the stone structures was loud enough to get Srinivas out of his nap. It had been almost 3 hours and Srinivas was sitting at Nariman Point all alone, waiting for time to pass.   10:30 am was the time when the next train to Hyderabad would leave the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. He had taken the bus to Mumbai last night from Ahmedabad, where his present office was. The bus dropped him in Mumbai early morning, but to kill time, Srinivas decided to sit at his favorite spot in the city: Nariman Point!  It had been a year ago when Srinivas last went home. So here he was, just a couple of hours away from his train to Hyderabad, the train home! This place had some magic. Srinivas felt at peace looking at the unending ocean, with the fresh sun rays falling into his eyes. The breeze which hit him on his face had stories from acro...

He had no money to spend on luxuries, no thoughts to waste on the heavenly comforts, he just had thoughts to make the world a better place. One day, after walking for miles, he sat down under a tree, he had no money to buy food, so he sat there looking at it. A rich merchant brought some food and kept it in front of the brahmin. The merchant said,"I would like to help the poor!" The brahmin smiled, is it money that makes one rich or poor? The Brahmin left the food and sat down under the tree with eyes closed, to raise questions whose answers were unknown to mankind. He went deeper and deeper, with every breath he took, he got answers. After a few days, he opened his eyes, he could feel the sunlight, he could smell life in the fresh air. And then he started speaking... every word which came out was of gold, there were stories, there were poems, there were ideas, which taught living beings to live, and smiles to flourish. He had no shelter, no money, but he was rich. Much riche...

He walked across the river, into the wild. He didn’t know what was right and what was left. He didn’t know and he didn’t WANT to know either. He could have stopped at a wise man to see the exact picture of his destination. But somehow, he didn’t want to see it. He was scared that it might be different from his imagination. And if it was better than his imagination, he didn’t want to be over-confident with the sight of those visuals. It was amazing. For a long time, it was the destination which he looked forward to. But that day, out of nowhere, he realized that it was the WAY, which he was enjoying more. So, he kept walking - learning things,smiling at the trees on the way, absorbing the vibes, hugging the needy, admiring the patterns of the sun rays, drinking the sweet water at the river… he kept walking. As time passed, he got so engrossed in enjoying the way, that he thought less and less about the destination and learnt more and more from the journey. One day, he reached the destin...

“Get up boy, it’s 6:30 already!” Shouted Pa. Vivek hated this line from Pa more than he hated the alarm clock. It was a pleasant Saturday morning, the fifth day of Vivek’s summer break from school. With eyes half closed and feet trying to balance his body, Vivek reached the window. With his left hand he pushed it open. The lovely morning breeze entered Vivek’s hair. It refreshened him enough to open his eyes. The very smell of that breeze brought him back memories of his last summer vacation, when he was in class 3rd- going out for morning walks, watching ‘Disney Hour’, lying down on the floor with the cooler throwing ‘fresh’ droplets of water on his face, having those sweet yellow mangoes in the evening, playing cricket with one-tip-one-hand rules and... “Vivek, you still not up? You’ll have to complete your ‘cycling’ thing today!” Pa shouted again with a volume good enough to break those happy summer diaries of Vivek. ‘Cycling?’ Yes, that was one thing Vivek was trying to learn from ...

Rohan sat in front of Sheetal with folded hands. He wondered if it was the worst moment of his life or not. Sheetal was looking at the cup of coffee in his hands. She had tears in her eyes. She could not cry aloud, as it was the canteen and she could not be quiet as it was hurting. It had hurt her really hard inside when Rohan told her that he had started liking someone else . After being in a relationship for more than a year, it was difficult to hear such a thing from the person whom she had loved the most. There was stunned silence. They were not talking, but still everything was being communicated. It was the weirdest of communications; the communication through little gestures- of hands, frowns, eye-lids, lips and may be the vibes between them. To break that communication for a second, Rohan lifted the cup to have a sip of coffee. As he started gulping the hot sip, his eyes met Sheetal’s. They were red, with the veins crying on the white surface of the ball. T...