Shail's Nest

I was all sunshine and smiles at the party. The storm that had wreaked havoc just a few hours back was well hidden beneath the cheerful facade. My friends urged me on and I obliged, downing one drink after another. No one had any idea about the volcano that raged beneath the surface. I fiercely [...]

There was something about the way she looked at him. Her kohled eyes seemed to see through him and decipher his thoughts. He felt parched and longed for a drink. “Can you give me some water??” he asked her. “Did you walk all the way to my house to ask for water??” she asked a [...]

I lay awake in the darkness, unable to get back to sleep. The sudden cramp in my leg was what had awakened me. The pain had been excruciating. Rubbing my calf vigorously I sat up for some time till the pain had abated. But getting back to sleep was a different story. It was pre-dawn [...]

“I stumbled upon the net one fine day a few years back and have felt like Alice in Wonderland ever since.” – Shail Mohan. There is something about the internet that’s curiously magical and uplifting. Where else can you, at a sedate fifty, with hair beginning to gray at the temples and wrinkles making their [...]

- a small tale I put the cap back on the pen and laid it on the table slowly. Her eyes moved from me to the pen and then back to me. Hope flickered in them. The tear drops on her long lashes shone like dew drops on the morning grass. Her eyes never ever [...]

Now who would have thought being late and last would win me a trophy?? That’s just what happened. I won the  Super Fun Scrambler Golden Trophy that you see above, for being the second last person to come up with the answer to the jumbled word/sentence that Pal had posted here.  Winning the trophy comes [...]

- a short story “Vulgar!” she screeched in distaste looking at the frock I had taken out for her. That was the latest word in her vocabulary, vulgar. Anything and everything she didn’t like was vulgar. The milk was no longer yuck, it was vulgar. The vegetable she did not want to eat was vulgar. [...]

The little boy screwed his face in distaste as the acrid smell of the smoke entered his nostrils. He was glad his parents were out visiting. They were a bane when around, always interrupting him. Their words of caution were an impediment to his quest for knowledge. He despaired at their tepid reaction to his [...]

Right now what I really feel like doing is running away and hiding. Oh no no no. Don’t jump to conclusions. You always land in the most unexpected of places when you do that. Unlike what you might think, the law is not after me. Neither do I have muscular thugs after my blood for [...]

I was born in an age when it was assumed by the general majority that it was quite okay if the man hit his wife occasionally (all for her own good) or even on a regular basis for her ostensible ‘mistakes’ like putting too much salt in the curry or not serving the tea at [...]