AN OPEN LETTER TO SOCIAL MEDIA # FlashFiction #99words #Barathon

Dear Social Media,

I promise to focus more on your media part and be a little less affected by the social one.

I promise that I will never judge life, people and situations entirely based on you.

I promise that I will not expect you to bring me truth, solace, enlightenment, evolution or relationships.

I promise I will be online a lot and yet not forget LIFE is often an amazing offline thing.

I promise I will try to keep up with you and yet stay rooted in what you now romanticize as “memories” and “throwbacks”.

-An avid user

This post is part of a themed BARATHON here.

TRICKS OF THE TRADE #FlashFiction #99words #Barathon

She had spent more than a decade in Mumbai now. She remembered her village and family back in Assam in faint flashbacks and the nightmares of the flood that devastated everything. Her uncle brought her here.

Soon she was on her own, by the time she was old enough to plait her hair herself she was already learning the tricks of the trade. She was almost twenty now, had taught herself to read and loved watching travel shows.

Someday she wished to travel and be free, till then her wishful thinking needed to be supported by trading her body.

This post is part of a themed  BARATHON here.

HAPPILY EVERAFTER #FlashFiction #Barathon #99words

Their marriage was just a business alliance. Two major business families came together with their union but unfortunately even a decade later it did not evolve into anything more than that, despite the kids.

They both had the same address but separate bedrooms now. She was in Goa for a business conference; he was holidaying with his boys’ gang.

On New Year’s Eve after a mad beach party, they both emerged from adjacent shacks. He was with a Lebanese aspiring model and she was with a young DJ. They both pretended to be strangers, no one was caught red-handed.

This post is part of a themed BARATHON here.

MISSING #FlashFiction #Barathon #99words

He was a theater legend by the time he was forty. In Delhi’s theater circuit he was the renowned all-rounder, writing scripts, acting, directing plays that became legendary, that had full shows even after decades.

At home he was the loving dad, the perfect husband. Suddenly one day the nightmares started-eccentric hallucinations, loud babbling, violent episodes, loss of memory and the suicide attempts. He responded to no treatment, his condition worsened.

The stage forgot him, his children feared him and his wife despised him. Two years later he went missing. His most famous play is still staged- Fragile Lives.

This post is part of a BLOGATHON here.

SUICIDE #FlashFiction #Barathon #99words

She was always the loudest parent in PTA meetings, her attire as loud as her voice, a complete contrast to her ten years old son, who was the most reclusive child in his class. The other parents did not like her much though her models were always the best and her ideas the most innovative.

The news of her suicide was gossip material for all. No one discovered the scars from years of domestic abuse; no one knew the eclectic fashion was to cover up her bruised body and confidence. What you don’t know is often the true story.



This post is part of a themed BARATHON here.

FAN MAIL #FlashFiction #Barathon #99Words

He was a famous writer with thousands of fans. He met hundreds of them at events, book fairs and tours; of course he didn’t remember most of them later.

In her first letter to him, Anne claimed she had met him at a book event earlier that year; he had no reason to doubt it. Her handwriting was calligraphy.

After a year the monthly letters ceased arriving. A month later while travelling to Manali his car rolled down a gorge near a haunted British bungalow, the same place where the letters came from. Anne had died there in 1873.

#StrangerThanFiction


This post is part of a themed BARATHON here.