Pseudo Writer

When I say the words 'Haunted House', what comes to your mind? An iron gate, too easy to go past, and an old man asking you not to. Bats flying at the slightest whispers, and crickets chirping like they always do. The sunlight never reaching its rooms, still shadows seemingly ruling these places. An interconnected net of spider webs, existing but in the tiniest of spaces. Maybe the ghost lives in the attic, waiting to pounce on the wannabe explorers. Or maybe it's a safe-house for Deatheaters, who are trying to escape the powerful Aurors. And that makes complete sense, but hear me out once. There is this house across my street, which looks perfectly normal at first glance. But the family lost the father last year, and this fact seems to live in its nuance. I had known these people for over 18 years, and something, I feel, is just not right. The people I knew have dissolved in shadows, and the house is filled with a lot of quiet. The sons talk a lot less to each other, and t...

When I was little, my father (I call him 'Papa') often used to tell me stories from his childhood. They are, after all, his precious memories. And one of these stories that stand out for me is the one with the Television . Papa belonged to the poor strata of the society, in a remote village in Bihar. His father i.e. my Dadaji, earned just enough to make sure that no one in their family sleeps empty stomach. Anything over that, including clothes, entertainment etc, was a luxury. So when a Television set came into one of the houses in the village (yeah it's old times and a rather backwards village), it was nothing less than a miracle . This is much older times, where programs often came at fixed times.  Papa tells me that when a show or a movie would be telecasted, it was almost like a mini-festival in the village. People used to come together and watch it, with extreme focus and curiosity. They would finish their work earlier in the day, and prepare snacks etc to eventually...

Oh what a beautiful place that would be, where the whispers of time will roam free. Where 'fox and grapes', 'tortoise and hare', the 'wolf and crane' will all be. Oh the sanctuary of all human values, mysteries won't thrive in such a forest of clues. Where life will be more than a sum of questions, and answers would be more than falses and trues. Oh what a heaven this place would be, the little red riding hood sitting on a tree, the beauty and the beast dancing through the night, the bears and Goldilocks rowing through the sea. So it promises to the light that fades into the horizon, it promises it shall shine brighter than the sun, for it is the collective conscious of all we call human; Welcome to the sanctuary of tales, the FableHaven. -Sushant Kumar Das

Tell me, why are you so afraid, why do you hesitate to turn that page? What is this story you are reading, what are you afraid of, the monster or the cage? Are you afraid of drowning in its depths, of all the truths and the lies it can tell? Are you afraid of all the questions it asks, or all the answers that were forged in its hell? Do you see yourself in the shadows of that story, or do you see the silhouette of what could have been? Do you see a monster who was afraid to seek redemption, or do you see a mirror but the reflection never seen? A life, birthed and buried in the depths of these pages, yearns to be held till the end of the line. So why do you break its yearning of ages, what is this fear that creeps up your spine? It sounds like all the battles your heart is fighting, and the breaking walls of "what can't" and "what can". Go on dear comrade, turn those pages, what lies at the end is, but a changed man. -Sushant Kumar Das

I heard a fable once, one that existed but in whispers, in the motion of restless leaves, in the voices that wind captures; of a girl who was afraid of promises, of all the deceit they had brought, of all the ones she couldn't keep, and the unmade ones that she sought. And I understand it must be difficult, to always be on the same end of it, where a promise mattered a little more, to her than the person making it. For she always kept her end of the bargain, and yet gradually got left behind. So she was insecure if the problem was her, or she had expectations from the unkind. It's been a while and she has grown out of the misery that she had seen, but she became a lot more cautious, much more than she had ever been. And she tried to keep it to herself, but she couldn't really stop her sighs. The sighs that whispered her stories, to the winds that blew into the skies. And so the fable exists in whispers, to be heard by those willing to listen; for the wind wishes her n...

"If someone succumbs to pressure, does it make them weak or does it make them human?" This is one of those questions, that in their essence seem quite pointless. You know right, that kind of questions? The 'what does this mean for humanity as a whole', the 'subjectivity of rights and wrongs', the 'kindness a strength or weakness", etc kind? The questions that very few of us actually care about? Yes, this is one of those. Do you remember what it's like to be in the 9th standard? You are in your mid-teens, trying to adjust to your physical and psychological changes from the puberty hit, people around you are also going through the same, the validation from your classmates/friends/almost anyone becomes a lot more important to you etc. Yes, this is a story from that time. When I entered the 9th standard, there was a lot of buzz that accompanied the event. And if you are not aware of the Indian CBSE education system, all you need to know is 9th and 11t...