Unsuni.com

Who are we to decide if a particular topic is good or bad? It’s a populist world after all. And let’s face it. Love him or hate him, a lot of us read Chetan Bhagat. His stories are simple to understand and more often than not, a story well told, without unnecessary fancy words or gobbledegook which most of us cannot comprehend in so called literary marvels. We all seek to hear simple stories. Why do we take everything to an intellectual level? Salman Khan, Chetan Bhagat, Sidney Sheldon...and more...all the peas of the same populist pod. They are mass entertainers and they have their appeal. We are clearly not a world filled with geniuses. Imagine if there was more than one Einstein. If it was, we’d be a world filled with pathetic, envious people trying to one-up each other. There are plenty of hard working people out there who want to discuss simple topics like Tell me a ghost story or Which was your first crush or etc etc (I'm sure u get the point) Why do...

It wasn’t like she was surprised.  She had known it all along. The messages, the discreet whispered phone calls, the unexplained late nights. It wasn't the same Shailesh that she had married.  Reema was not devastated. It was a slow, dumb, numbness coming over her. It had been like a large rock, hurtling towards her in slow motion. On her way out of the bathroom, where she had spent the last two hours in her haze, she stopped to look at herself in the mirror. Her skin, dry, pallid, devoid of any glow, she had ignored it for the longest time. For long it had been Shailesh, Shailesh and only Shailesh. His work, his food, his demands, his, his, his...it had all been about him. In doing so, she had neglected looking after herself. But now it was time to make changes. She hugged herself close. She should have done it a long time ago.   For the first time in many months, she ran her hands over her skin, her feet, dry with calluses. Her hair, whisps of grey...

Her stomach hurts like hell. Babli wants to go to the toilet really bad but she has to wait till sundown. After all, no decent girl from a decent family should be seen with her posterior uncovered...her mother had explained to her many many moons ago. The village in which she lives, it is on the outskirts of Mumbai. And her father is a farmer. From one of the many tribes that dot the country. Her mother works as a domestic help in the city close by and Babli goes to the local school in the nearby village which is a good twenty minutes walk through the forest. On occasion, when she can hold on no more, Babli and her friends form a circle and they answer nature's call. There are no sanitation facilities in the village where Babli lives. They draw water from the well to drink and wash. The forests are their toilets. Every morning, just before the sun rises, the women folk of the village make small groups and set out for the forest with tumblers and buckets of water in tow. To say...