How do you spend recess if you don't want to play kickball?

There are exactly two nylon sacks. Balls in the right sack. And jump ropes in the left. This is a choice that has already been made for Kabir.

Poor Kabir. Jump though he may, he gets "roped" back into the kickball game. Does he overreact? You decide. Hear the whole story.

A bit of fiction for the new year, set to Prashanti by Ravi Shankar. I originally wrote this piece for a open mic in DC last month organized by the peerless Regie Cabico.

Labels: audio, childhood, desi, fiction

This guy narrates the death of a surfing buddy, but here's the thing. He tells the story three times, each time remembering additional important details and events. When the whole story comes into focus, we’re left wondering what other details were left out, and where this story, or any story for that matter, actually begins and ends.

We’d finally convinced him to come to the beach with us. He’d been backing out again and again but that day the sun was really bright. He said that maybe it would do him good to get a little burnt, whatever that meant. There was this crazy low tide that day, and he was obsessed with sea glass and the sand dollars and crabs so we just figured we’d start out without him and see if he’d join us. I was riding serious A-frames out there, I didn’t even really notice that he was laying still on the sand until there were people surrounding him and shouting for help.

Read the full story, along with other great fiction, in Etchings Magazine, Issue 4, from Ilura Press. Or click here for my copy.

Labels: fiction

He was doing his job: passing time watching people watch art. I wondered what that would be like, and how it made a difference that he was Sikh, that he wore a turban along with his museum guard uniform. So I wrote a fictionalized monologue from his point of view, based on the hour that I observed him.

My first day I had a difficult time putting the headset on over my turban. The metal band did not bend enough and my ear kept popping out from under the earpiece. Yes, I remember, I thought it was a huge problem. I even went and asked the curator what to do.

Read the full short online at Brink Magazine »

Labels: desi, fiction