Published on May 14, 2026

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NYAC

At Eternity’s Gate

• Post author By tbrg
• Post date May 14, 2026

At Eternity’s Gate

I am a sick man, always have been. it’s just that now I am a sick old man in a hospital whose illness shows for once. In my time as a director, I’ve seen my fair share of gore, and it had always been my speciality for directing hospital scenes, and why not, after all a hospital patient is one you have infinite control over- put a tube through him, tie weights to his shattered leg, put him in any twisted position to create a scene of skin crawling repulse. “With an open mouth in awe and the upturned head, the man is put on a bed with grooves to support that position as they look at the white cold metallic bed frame fluttering like a pigeon with mechanical clicks and clatters, all the while choking on the tube that is the reason he still breathes.” Or some other showy attempt of visual strangulation. Being in those positions lately has changed me. Cast in stone, they would pass for modern art. In reality, they don’t hurt half as much. After all, a man drugged out of his mind can only feel so much. Those vials left me feeling like the party animal me, only with a tube shoved up my throat this time. There is no torture in being a bed model with enough morphine to knock out a horse. But you know what real torture is; those wretched ratcheted general ward beds that made the person into a mechanical toy whose back hurt every time you turn the handle up and down. And those nurses- terrible excuses of them- what they were was a bunch of giggly schoolgirls in scrubs who twirled their pastel nails with dolphin sounds every other minute. Those good for nothing incompetent bunch. But they were good at one thing if I be generous, and that would be lowering expectations because they made me worship the ICU nurses for giving the medication on time. Those nurses kept me sane, at least; one can stay lying only so long, being but a bag of potatoes who gets talked at only 5 to 6:30 except for doctor visits. God, now I get why they the old folk love you so much, even an atheist falls to you when he is alone 22 hours a day. Never had I thought of being called bed no. 12, but it’s good. Now I get the old ladies who have more or less forgot their names, alone in a family with 8 grandchildren, treating a sculpture as their child- the living faces they see rarer than a blue moon. There’s some charm you have that hooks the isolated, making them not so alone anymore. It’s all you, always were, just that I only saw you now. Never would the young Anand think he would say this. I have really changed. God, oh god, you are here; away from the crowd; in isolation. Oh, why is it 5 PM again, those fake lackies will be coming here anytime, they have no pity no well-wishing but still they won’t stop coming with that mournful face of theirs- there is no compassion when the sick is in sight even those humanitarians have their noses scrunched, even those saints lie, they are disgusted by me; they make a violated face. only the cleaning lady only she is true. She talked to me as if I was a toddler; she cleans me up while exclaiming, ” look what a mess you have made” somehow, she has nothing against me even when she criticises me there is no hate no repulsion. the way she says all that is no different than how a mother exclaims dressing her infant. I have become a child.

Published on May 7, 2026

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NYAC

One Fine Day

• Post author By tbrg
• Post date May 7, 2026

One Fine Day

It was a serene day in late July, the kind that makes you think nothing could ever change until I heard he was leaving. I tried not to think about it. But then, as usual, I failed.

I pretended to listen to the class. But all I could think of was him. His eyes, like a firefly in a gloomy sky, his smile, which I could see over a million times, his dimples, soft slopes I’d
fall into. All these are just pictures in my memories now. Or had it always been like that?

A sudden sound hit my ear and made me jump. ‘Smriti, what are you thinking?’ Maya asked. ‘Oh, nothing, Maya, I’m just listening to the class,’ I replied, trying to hide it. She would’ve found it by now.

I ran out of the classroom right after the recess bell, my heart aching to know if he’s really leaving. I asked one of my friends if what I had overheard that morning was true. She responded with a straight face, ‘Yes, Tanish is going to Mumbai. Don’t you know that?’ ‘Oh, ok, I didn’t know about that. When is he leaving?’ I asked her. ‘Tomorrow morning’, she said. T’ll talk to you later,’ I mumbled, my heart pounding, my hands shaking, hiding my anxiety.

With an anxious face, I entered the class. I tried to settle in, but my thoughts didn’t let me. ‘Maya, do you know that Tanish is going to Mumbai?’ I asked her, thinking she wouldn’t have known about it. ‘Yeah, I know about it. Were you thinking about that all this time?’ she questioned me.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?’ I roared. ‘I thought you’d be sad.’ ‘Do you believe I’m happy now?’ Maya was speechless. ‘You know that I love him, still, you didn’t think of saying it to me. Why?’
‘I..I didn’t mean to. I thought you’d be worried hearing that because you love him with your whole heart.’ Maya said softly. ‘I trusted that you’d tell me. But—’
‘Hey Smriti, don’t be serious. It’s just a small issue.’ ‘No, it isn’t. You know what, leave me alone for a while.’
My backbone hunched on the seat, my hands and legs shivering, I tried to forget everything which was never a thing that happened.

Drowning in my thoughts, I didn’t see her coming our biology teacher. She entered the class with her usual grumpy face and her purple glasses, carrying a pile of books in her hand. As she entered, she stared at m e a t my eyes-with an offended look. It was a new feeling, getting stared at by her judgmental eyes
I continued to drain into the ocean I built. Thinking of him made me cry like a baby, but that baby has a mature image in school, which she doesn’t want to ruin. So, I made sure I
blocked my ocean. But how can it be possible while he’s still in my mind?

My legs trembling, I started to walk out of my school and boarded the school bus, hoping I could hear his voice for one last time.

I dialled the number, my heart throbbing, my hands quivering. As I reached it to my ear, I heard it, his voice, like honey flowing, ‘Hello?’ He repeated it. I kept being silent. I didn’t listen to it again— forever.

Like all one-sided love stories, mine was unsaid too, with pain till the day that I die.

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My Fairy

• Post author By tbrg
• Post date May 7, 2026

My Fairy

I could smell the aroma of the sweet Kashmiri Kahwa tea. It was an Eid day. Greetings of hollow joy flowed in the house as I tumbled through the rooms. My mouj ‘mother’ asked me to dress up. In no time, it was the time of the Eid prayer. Ahh, I did not like to pray, like what 10-year-old does? But I had no choice but to follow my ‘Papa’ to the mosque. People usually say, You can’t hear colours and see sounds, but it is not true. On my way to the mosque, I could see the silence reflected in the closed shops and the empty lanes. In the courtyard, my neighbours greeted me, and I them, but their smiles did not speak joy.

Anyways, as it was to happen, the Imam led the prayer. In our prostration, there was a loud bang outside. It was a stone pelting. It was quite common in those days. The people present ran. My father and I hid in the bathroom, waiting for the situation to go back to normal. A tear gas shell was launched into the same room; the whole room was filled with skin-burning smoke. I remember hands pulling me. I remember coughing so hard I thought my chest would tear open. Someone was shouting my father’s name. Someone else was crying.

The mosque floor felt cold against my cheek. Then everything went dark. I never came to know how my father managed to get me home that day. At home, the smoke still clung to my lungs, and my eyes refused the words I longed to read. Silence filled the rooms, and a fairy appeared. “Kill the misery. Why are you sad?” Asked the fairy.

“ My eyes… they hurt! I can not see now,” I said.

“ Because they hurt or because you can’t see?” It asked.

“ Because I can’t read the story now. The lonely fox.. It is trapped in the cave, and then what?”“ Then imagine the fox in your mind. What does he do there? You see him?” It asks.

“ No, I can’t!”

The fairy spreads her wings around me.

“Do you see him now?” She asks.

“ Ah, it is a fox! He is still in the cave and is terrified of the fog and the stones. Poor him! He moves forward. Look, he sees a path, and now, he is not afraid. He learns the stones and can see through the fog. He finally reached the pond, and Ha, there are his cubs, and they are drinking water!”

“ He finally met his cubs! You see? That is the true beauty of your mind.” I rubbed my eyes again. The light did not return at once, but the darkness did not frighten me anymore. I could still see the fox in my mind, standing beside the pond, his cubs pressed against him.

The fog had not disappeared; I had simply learned to walk through it.

The fairy faded forever as my room was in lights.

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Indifference Is A Sin Against Life

• Post author By tbrg
• Post date May 7, 2026

Indifference Is A Sin Against Life

Today I saw another dead body.

It shouldn’t have been different from any other day, but it was. Every day is a new kind of grief when you are at war.

“War” is what they call it.

“War” on a people who have done nothing but exist in peace and try to survive despite everything the world has thrown at them. We are bombed. We are hounded. We are starved, even mocked for our pain. And still the mothers carry their young with them when they are forced to flee their homes. Still the grandmother cooks her special dish with whatever scraps she can find in a makeshift tent made of plastic. Still the children smile and play over the piles of rubble, unaware of the dead bodies buried underneath. The world tries to turn us into statistics every day, and every day they are given fresh evidence that we are not. This is not a war against my people. It is a war against humanity.

Our children have the same smiles, they shed the same tears. So why are they any different? What does a white man have in his character that they do not? I shudder to think that for all our intelligence, we come down to this vile system of awarding privileges on the basis of one’s skin tone. I’m sure you can tell I have a lot of thoughts on this matter. I am bitter. I believe I have every right to be, since you are sitting safely behind your screen reading this while I am fighting for my life. You meet your family, you hug and kiss them every day. We are not given this luxury. We must resort to praying that they will survive one more day, and meeting them is something most of us only dream of. If we do meet them, it is in heaven.

But the world will not listen. It will use the mask of ‘necessary evils’ to try and justify its complicity. It will try to drown out our voices and turn us into another desensitizing piece of history to be forgotten, as it has for the last 76 years. And yet, when I wake up tomorrow to my 2-year-old daughter crying because of the bombing outside our torn tent, I will remember. When I am struggling to find water and wheat to keep my family alive because there is no available aid in the city of rubble, I will remember. When I see the life fade from my last family member’s eyes, if I am still alive by then, I will remember.

So when I die and God asks me why I am not surprised, I will tell Him the tale of each dead body I saw.

Of every child and every soul that had the nerve, the sheer audacity to be born in the wrong part of the world. Whose only sin was to try and live. And I will tell Him of your sin too.

We will never meet. You will never see me, nor I you. But for once, when you are done reading this, do not think. Do not try to rationalize any of your guilt, anger, shame, or God forbid, empathy. Simply feel.

Both our hearts beat with the same rhythm. We love different things and different people, but we love all the same. And it is with this love that I bid you goodbye with the hopes that maybe, you’ll begin to imagine how precious life is. How indifference is a sin against life itself.