‘Red blooded passionate male wanted by a beautiful female, for fun and loving.’

He came across that advert in the personal columns of the local newspaper, thought about it for a few days and then replied to the advert and forgot about it.

One morning he received a letter, which was sent to him via the newspaper office, from one of their box numbers. He opened it anxiously and found a short letter written in a lady’s hand.

‘Dear Passionate male

Please come to such--- an address, next Monday. It is an office where I work as a secretary and will be free after work to talk. Call after 6pm.

Passionate female.’

There was an uncle in a certain town who was forced to go abroad to look for better job to increase prospects for his family. He worked hard in spite of numerous obstacles and difficulties so as to save money in foreign land and look after his family in his native country.

“Another five minutes,” the nurse announced without looking up and with a sparsely disguised hint of derision, as if he were somehow responsible for the piles of useless paperwork mounted up on her desk. Great, just fucking great, R. thought. Another five minutes. And that was only before Mr. Diaz was unhooked from the dialysis machine. Then his weekly paperwork would have to be filled out, a two-minute task that would take the languid nurses fifteen, and his vitals taken, and his daily medicine administered. When the nurse announced “Five more minutes”, he had quickly learned, it meant at least another half an hour, stuck in the drab, suffocating waiting room, watching daytime TV hosts animatedly gesturing on the 16-inch screen with no sound.

The king was fond of gambling and the object of his desire was not money but the desire to defeat his friends in a game of dice. He seemed to have a winning streak, with a secret behind it, which he would not divulge.

Whenever he initiated the process, he started with a verse, which he recited with his eyes closed and in gesture of meditation.

With her virtue I win
By grace of a lady
Who is pure without a sin.

Now the king had his chief minister or the Vizier who was also fond of gambling and the king knew this weak point. So he invited him to a contest of dice, to which temptation the vizier easily fell.

The king took the dice and folded his right hand over it, blew on it and with eyes closed, he recited the mantra:

With her virtue I win
By grace of a lady

Gurdarshan was a stationmaster in a town in Punjab and enjoyed his work intensively. He joined Indian Railways in a junior capacity after passing his matriculation and worked his way up and got quick promotions due to diligence and reliability. The perk of his job was a free bungalow as his residence with a garden and a gardener thrown into.

When he took the post there was an older person, Ram, filling the post in an acting capacity and he thought that Ram would resent him as his senior but nothing could be different. Ram liked him and they got along with each other fairly well and soon became each other’s confidant. Ram was married and was advising him to get married too, to a nice girl as soon as possible.

There was a knock at the door and he thought some one has entered his room and was sure that it was his father; he looked up and saw a bloodless pale face, which reminded him something of a corpse.

‘ I have come to ask you something.’ The pale figure whispered

‘ But I thought you were dead.’

‘I have just died but I am still alive.’

‘How can that be? I do not understand.’

‘Could you go to the tailor and have a new silken shirt made for my last rites.’

‘Go away, you are beginning to frighten me.’

The boy began to shake and covered his face with the duvet. A chill ran through his body and he dozed off in order to avoid confronting that situation again.

A hand startled him and his mother was shaking him to get up.

She spoke to him:

After ages of boring office work, I needed a break and wanted to have a vacation somewhere nice, to restore my physical and mental balance. I reckoned that I would need at least two weeks to recuperate from the taxing strain accumulated over past months, due to boredom and routines. I visited few travel agents, collected some brochures and studied those to find a suitable place for my vacations.

From his early years, the child showed multi talents. At the age of two he copied a painting hanging in the drawing room. The child had sketched the outline of the picture on a piece of paper with just a few simple pencil strokes and which pleased his parents great deal, for that brilliant piece of artwork. He was rewarded five rupees by his father.
Encouraged he began to show a lot of interest in both literary and visual fields.

‘ How can I get out of this disaster?’ demanded Sajjan and it was simply aimed at himself.

Sajjan Singh lived in a small village about five miles from a big town and where he journeyed daily to do various carpentry jobs, as his way of earning a living. He lived in the village with his elderly wife and though the marriage had lasted over thirty years, there were no children from that union.

It was autumn and the man was going on his evening walk. The dry leaves were falling from the trees and there was a carpet of brown and red patterns on the ground and it made such a crackling noise as you walked over it.

It was an overcast sky and the wind was as cold as the sky. There was a shiver all round and the man blew on his cold hands and put them in the warmth of his inside pockets. He was trying to bear up the sight of the gray surroundings and the grayness of his heart.