The Idea-smithy

The Corner Coffeeshop was open for business but its traffic was at a lull. It was too early in the evening for the post-work crowd, too late for the students and AC-enjoying unemployed to be hanging around.
Outside, the sun had gone down but that curious combination of atmospheric density and light’s acrobatic bending made it [...]

This is for Dee, the editor I’d like to have, who quite literally showed me the way.
~O~O~O~O~O~
Where do stories come from? she wondered. Her editor had told her that her writing had a quality of finesse in it. But, he said, the spark was missing. She wanted to protest, it had been such an effort [...]

“And this is Kunal.”
“Are you on Twitter?”
“Yes, I’m @c00nal.”
“I don’t think I FOLLOW you.”
“I don’t follow you either.”
Kunal frowns as he turns to the Hot Dog stand.
“I think I hurt his ego a bit.”
“You just met!”
“Social boo-boo, telling someone you don’t follow them on Twitter.”
“What rubbish, nobody cares about these things.”
“Some people do. Maybe he’s [...]

Vineet was an ordinary young man with one remarkable talent that came to fore only in his late teens in college. It all started with an inter-collegiate festival.
His college and the hosting campus had a long running feud and the annual festival was both, a new episode in the war as well as a chance [...]

I think all artists need an audience. This is everyone from musicians to sculptors to painters. Everyone who has ever expressed an idea in tangible form or otherwise has needed an audience. To those who disagree – if they didn’t, then they’d just keep the idea in their own heads. There is an undeniable need [...]

I’ve just discovered a kink in my sexual make-up. I have a thing for gender role switching. That’s not men dressing in lingerie (eww, gross!). It’s a woman who’s sexy because she’s wearing a guy’s long tee-shirt that comes down to mid-thigh. It’s the breath-catching oomph of a rolled-up cuff revealing a slender arm. Or [...]

I’m sitting in a stranger’s house, on someone’s white sofa, in a room filled with quirky, colourful touches of some unknown mind’s whims. I’m listening to a band jammig. The bass guitarist is a friend. I don’t know the other three boys though I’ve met the singer once.
The band pauses for a few seconds. The [...]