Pseudo Writer

I see you standing at the door, fidgeting with your fingers, thinking if you should knock, if you will be a bother to them. And so I open the door, pull you in with a steady hand, and show you that empty seat, seeking you in your absence. You look for discomfort in their eyes, and yet you don't find any. Something must be wrong. Is this a prank; you think. And I see the years of hurt peeping through your scepticism. But I know it kept you safe in a world you never felt a part of. But listen, if you live in a burning house, it seems the whole world is on fire. And guess what; it's not. Oh I wish you would believe me. But I know it takes more than that, so instead I make a pot of tea. Give a steaming cup in your hand, and sit with you for a while. And I know my tea is never perfect, I put a lot of milk, and very little sugar, and sometimes forget the cardamom. I mean is that even acceptab- "It's good!" I snap out of my thoughts, as you tell me how good the tea is. A...

When did you start breathing so evenly, and how do you sleep so well these days? When did your heart start feeling so light, and how did your smile become so genuine? Maybe you are through that tunnel, one that you had to travel alone. And yet you weren't alone, were you? How could you be so lucky? Those lone walks under the scorching sun, that you had convinced yourself you liked; who was waiting for you in the room hoping you would be back safely? That long night when you were ready to drown in despair as you usually did; who hugged you and reminded you that you were never alone in this? And when your world had crumbled, when you were numbingly afraid to get up; who gave you a place to get yourself together? Who saved you from yourself? All the times you thought you were alone, there was always a hand, wasn't there? You were the one scared to hold it; afraid it will suddenly pull back. And I don't blame you for the hesitation. Because after all, dear friend, in the most ...

The walk between the woods, is a lonely path, and yet, somehow, I belong. Below the canopy lives peace, which I desperately seek. Oh, how I long. A museum of all I never had, I leave my belongings, my longings I keep. Haste I close the doors, on all that gives me joy. Oh, how I weep. Longing.  And belonging. And oh, this peculiar heart. Longing. And belonging. So close, and yet so far apart. -Sushant Kumar Das 

Knowing the door will open someday, does not take away the feeling of being trapped. And that's okay I think. It's something you have to make peace with. But now that I am looking into your desperate eyes, it seems life hasn't been very kind to you. And from the dents in your wall I almost missed, I see you haven't been kind to yourself either. So I ask you this. Where did it all go wrong? Or was it ever really right? Maybe you never had a chance anyway. But before I give into your every preconception, I will ask you just one favour. Look at yourself. How long has it been? How far have you made it with no chance at all? I know things are not working out, maybe it is the worst time of all. But look at the people standing beside you, ready to pick you up when you fall. Oh. So you were expecting someone else? Well you have who you need, not who you want. And I hope you are not dumb enough to criticise what you have and yearn for what you can't. I know telling you this ...

It's 3:30 a.m. You are sitting in front of your laptop. Trying to complete some project that you cannot focus on. You are reminiscing about easier times. You realise it's getting sad, so you decide to change the vibe. You go into the kitchen, play some old party songs and start making Maggi while doing a horrible yet honest dance. You have one of the best times you have had in a while. But when the voices subside and the Maggi is over, you realise that the fan above you is way too loud. It is the only barrier between you and absolute silence.  And not for the first time do you feel that hollowness. That something is missing. That all it will take is a weak gush of wind for everything to crumble. The road outside is well lit. The streetlamps are colouring the ground yellow. Moonlight is filling up the corners that streetlamps cannot reach. This series of spotlights; so bright, yet so thirsty. Searching for someone. On an empty stage. And it seems perfect. Every bit of it. It is ...

And here I am. This blank screen with a blinking cursor. Asking myself, what will you write now? And I don't know. I can write for everything and everyone, and I can shout at anyone who thinks I can't. But here I am, playing a game of stare with the flickering cursor and losing. So how do I shout at myself? I had heard what grief gives you. It was supposed to give you more, wasn't it? More to miss someone?  More to love someone? More to think about?  More to write about? If grief was nothing but love persevering, then where is it? And where am I? If it is all I can think about, then why can't I pen it down? Why is it easier  to channel someone else's grief? Why is it that all of me is not in me, and parts of others are most of me?

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...

I woke up today, in the world of my own,  with seeds of my future, that were already sown. I stood up and lived through another set of hours,  the seeds of my past that had now become flowers. Half-heartedly, I watered them with the bottle of my time, hoping that my heart would be happy with their shine. But I couldn't understand, why they still seemed dull to me, was it my lack of effort, or was it something I couldn't see? I sat on the grass with these musings in my mind, and opened the newspaper to see a world void of kind. But between all the negativity, I finally found that column, the one that I read every week, the one I found solemn. It was written by a girl, someone I had known for a while, we shared a common dream, and yet she was further a mile.  And in this world I had lived, which was ever so steep, even centimetres of altitude was a worthy goal to seek. She narrated her journey, of her peaks and pitfalls, of the doors that opened for her, of how she faced th...

If you were to ask of me, "Narrate an interesting story from your childhood", I would probably behave all secretive and try to change the topic. Now you may think that I am doing this because I am hiding something, but the truth is I find it hard to find things from my life that are interesting to others. I could probably tell the story of how the behaviour of teachers changed after I got good marks in mathematics in ninth standard, or the story of how I disappointed my physics teacher in the JEE coaching and you would look at me with the expression of I-asked-for-interesting-bro. And I don't blame you. For the most part of my life, I have found my joys in things that weren't very common among my peers. While I loved Beyblades and Ben 10 aliens as much as the next kid, the most enjoyable times that I spent would be with my sharpeners and erasers as characters of a hero's journey with a pen as a villain, who would often get a power upgrade when a scale was attached...

This has been repeated time and time again, and it probably doesn’t matter what I am going to talk about because you already know it. But still, I am going to talk about it. Because I want to. This may be about songs. Their beauty. How much they can mean to someone, how much they can hide behind them. The depth of the lyrics, the soothing rhythms, and the anxiously calming silences that follow. All of it. But no. I will not keep it that general. This is a very specific quality that I want to discuss. The way songs hide memories inside them. So it's been about 6 months since I came back from college to home. To be honest, I was missing it a little but not really thinking about it much. But now, after listening to a 6 songs long playlist, everything is fresh in my memory. Everything. Every walk I took with these songs in my ears. Every place I visited for the first time. The people who suggested me these songs, how I met these people for the first time, the bus journeys on which I he...

All of it seems well and good, until when its not. When the dread you were avoiding, comes crawling, creating a sense of security, as it creeps upon your fate. And then you realize you weren’t ready, how could you be? You never considered it a threat, being intentionally blind. But now you can’t turn your back, it’s someone you know. There’s not a lot you can do now, except face it. With an unsteady hold on yourself, now you fight. I don’t blame you dear friend, at least not now. You just made one mistake; you believed that if it was too far, it could never happen to you. and as you closed your eyes, you were out of reach of everything; With all courage I can muster, I ask, how did that work out for you?                     -Sushant Kumar Das

This place where I have lived for twenty years of my life, trust me, it has a beautiful soul. I remember it as an old man, sitting at the corner of my street, with eyes full of warmth and wisdom, that follow my existence to this day. I very often used to complain to him, why he preferred brown and dirty soil, when the new kids were adopting grey. I shouted at him, for every time I fell on the soil and got dirty while playing. Smiling at me, he often entertained my arguments and laughed at my tantrums. But he never said what he wanted to, he would just use his calloused hands, and remove the dust from my knees. I would go home dirty, but never hurt. He left the corner of my street years ago, and some new kid lives there now. But I still find him hiding among clouds, looking at the new kid who levelled all that he had worked hard to preserve, under layers and layers of grey. He understands the world doesn’t stop, but still when it rains and the grey hides, he hopes to see those little pa...

Swings had welcomed her bright eyes, and allowed her to fly into the skies. This is before she found her wings; but people never understood, why she loved the swings. The rusty chains, the croaking tenor, was noise to many, but a melody to her. She learnt that even metal sings; but people never understood, why she loved the swings. It's an artifact, from her world very old, but she still loves it for the stories it told. Bit by bit, nostalgia it brings; but people still don't understand, why she loves the swings.                  -Sushant Kumar Das

Very vividly, I remember that day. You understand, right? The first time when you step out, in the cold and terrifying world, and then realize it might not be as nice as you pictured in your head? Yeah, I speak of that moment. The moment you step out of your home, and take a last look towards it. And the gravity of the next few steps makes you want to just stop and sit. You remember the feeling, don’t you? You want to sit and never let go, for the road ahead seems way too hard. And the underestimated comfort of home seems like a much more appealing card. But it is not all fear and anxiety. For at the same moment you remember, that there was a reason you stepped out. This comfort may all be so soothing for you, but eventually you will have to jump out. So finally it all comes to an end. You power through the moment of doubt, for there is nothing else you can do. You cannot afford to lose this internal battle, for you’ve got something important to prove. Please remember dear, that this m...

I remember like it was yesterday, he was strolling so idly in the park, with a resembling grace of sunshine, his eyes a canvas of ambitious spark. A sense of familiarity hung in the air, and I couldn’t stop my urge to ask him, “Have we ever met, oh little boy?” He answered me as if reciting a hymn. “I’m the forsaken path of your present, I’m the one you left behind, sir, I’m the boulevard of beautiful trees, that lost its place in your mind, sir.” “But then why meet me outside, boy, what is it you want to remind me? For my wisdom seems inadequate, boy, be my eyes for what I can’t see.” “I am a figment of your imagination, I appear when you doubt your mind, sir. I symbolize the happiness you could have had, if your choices were a little more kind, sir.” “But at every point in my life, dear boy, I have helped people in any way I can. My whole life has been a struggle, oh boy, to be accepted by people as a kind man.” “I am aware of who you are as a man, your boo...