Wordplay: The Reading Spot

"What are we, if not characters, from one story or another, playing our part, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly" - Sandip Khade You know how people get 'kicks' out of doing something daring, say, over-speeding on their bikes, or breaking dress codes, purposely attempting to get away with something illegal, etc.? Well, and I don't mean to sound like that guy , I've always gotten a kick out of giving to the needy; this could manifest in the form of giving money to the traffic signal dwellers, small community charity contributions, the monthly blood drive, or buying your practically broke friend his favorite energy drink when you sense a potential 'head-butt alert!' conversation vibe in the air. I groaned when I realized it's one of those days, and walked into our PG hostel's canteen area.  Most of our guy-classmates stay at this PG, since it's pretty close, and dirt cheap for its surprisingly un-pathetic living conditions. It...

"The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." - Sun Tzu This part of the forest is Much too quiet tonight To the majestic old noctuid, though, clinging on to life, It's no new sight. It rests near a pinecone, on a tall tree branch As usual, and waits for its Instincts to drive it to Claim morsels that may fit. Below its branch,  Moonlight glinting in its eyes, A young wild rat emerges from the bushes and Out of hunger, sighs. The pinecone quickly senses  Something off, however, And truly so, because it sees, staring back, A pair of red eyes quiver. The wild rat makes its way over A carelessly thrown matchbox  In dry litter, and slowly and steadily Up the tree, to the scared pinecone it walks. He triumphantly places his grown nails on The ill fated pinecone, but just over it He sees that, quite to his pleasure A little beyond him, an old moth patiently sits. Greed manifests  As he drools onto his paws, And he decides to spare the pinecone; He gently lets it...

"A wounded animal will bite and claw." -Mimi Matthews I'm running as fast as I can. All I know about where I'm headed is that it's far from here; far away from that house. Far from those four walls of suffocating hell, far from those dreadful needles and the shimmering acids that followed... And certainly far from him. It's easy to lose track of time when you're kept in a square cell, far into the woods, cut off from the rest of the townsfolk and the diurnal village affairs. I wondered if my friend Polly was looking for me, determined to set me free. She probably was, given that I'd do the same for her. My freedom, or what minuscule tinge was left of it, never exceeded the dining hall of that house. He'd kept me locked in that room, with a bucket, a pale excuse of a mattress, a lantern and not a window in sight. It was easy to forget humans even existed, until he would occasionally break in with bland and tasteless meals. He spoke harshly and coldl...

"The trouble is that you think you have time." - Jack Kornfield It was at the age of three that Thomas Gray first said the word "happy". A few months later, he discovered what the word meant. But he was six when he first discovered what "joy" meant; the sun shining brightly in the sky, snowballs flying in his direction, a warm smile plastered across his face. He remembers vividly, to this day, how his mother taught him to make snow angels, and how his father helped him onto his feet, every time he fell into the snow. He didn't remember much else, but he knew that joy was that warm giddiness that he felt in his tummy, that stayed unfazed in spite of the cold winter winds.  He felt happy an ample amount of times after that winter, but he never really felt joy. Thomas Gray was not always a man buried under a pile of work. In his young years, he was full of dreams and aspirations, and even the sky wasn't the limit. He had a list of things he wanted to ...

S.O.S. *** Claire is seated outside the manager's room, flipping through the pages of 'The Daily Affairs'. She's already read the day's edition, but having nothing particularly better to do, she decided to give it a re-read. She's not much of a 'politics' enthusiast, nor is she into 'sports'. The national and international affairs are the only sections that catch her eye. Now, the newspaper isn't a 'happy' read, so Claire wasn't expecting it to be all rainbows or sunshine. Still, she felt the shivers caress her as she read the increasing number of med. student suicides; most of them occuring due to research failures. She has always considered herself to be among the lucky ones, since she, once upon a time, wished to enter the research field herself. Luckily, just one month into it, she'd decided it was too much, and too unbalanced, for her liking. Thus, each new 'research failure' added more fear into her mind, because...