John Sequeira's Blog

GUILT

I heard his footsteps before I saw him down the empty road. The stars were in the sky and a half moon shined. On the footpath, I had already spread out the rug. I had also scolded my wife again for the torn pillow that she hadn’t stitched during the day. She was busy, she said, because there were more rags to pick than usual. She wasn’t sleeping on any pillow, she complained. I ignored. The night had gone quiet since, before his footsteps were heard.

He was wearing leather shoes and nothing e...

THE DAY AFTER

The world looked the same. The vehicles sped by and the people walked about. Some laughed and others had blank faces. I got the usual smiles and stares. Two vendors screamed out the prices of vegetables and a dog lifted his leg and pissed at a pole. The sun was bright but the air was winter-cool. When I looked down, the red skirt I was wearing and the black flip-flops were old too. The world around me had not changed at all.

I pushed a strand of hair behind my ear and walked on. My eyes had s...

TRIUND TREK

Green and Gray

Jaspinder Singh looked up at the Triund peak and asked, “For how many months have you been planning this trek?”

“For two months”, I said. “What about you?”

“I planned this yesterday”, he said. “We were playing cricket in Ludhiana and we thought we needed a vacation.”

He was wearing a cotton t-shirt, a pair of shorts and an equivalent of bathroom slippers.

“It is freezing on top”, I said.

He paused. Having thought a while, he reached into his bag and drew out a bottle of brandy...

TRAIL OF FRAGRANCE

It was not a day for him to fall in love. It felt odd somehow, with the sun burning and the flowers gone dry. The sky was blue, he told me later as if he expected it to be something else.

I smiled. “And then?” I asked.

He sat upright and continued. His eyes were bright as if lit up by the fire in his heart. I could see his hands were trembling and his foot tapping the ground.

“Are you anxious?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No”, he said.

” What is it then?” I asked.

He looked around sharp...

MADMAN

On a busy Monday morning, the office going crowd stopped dead and watched a man running along the street, as naked as the day he was born.

An old lady sighed loudly. “I knew the world was coming to this”, she said.

I was standing next to her, leaning on my walking stick which supported my trembling knees.

I shrugged. “Seems like clothes are out of fashion these days”, I said.

As much as I tried to look elsewhere, I was tempted to see the pair of healthy buttocks bouncing as he ran. I noticed...

SWEEPER’S LOVE

In the final days of his life, the sweeper sat on the steps of our building and cried. It was a life filled with regrets, he said to me one day. Under the golden evening sun, he painted a sad picture of his life and while I sipped on my coffee, he gave me a free piece of advice.

“A man is a bull before he falls in love”, he said. “After that, he only brays.”

Surprised by these words, I inquired about the women he had loved and he, with a shrug of his shoulder, dismissed my question.

Next day,...

FOREVER

He watched her from distance as she walked with a rose in her hand. She walked with elegance, her stride purposeful and her eyes watching nothing in particular. Her gown had beautiful red flowers printed on it and he was sure she smelled so wonderful too. She looked like she would easily fit into the wedding gown that she had worn forty years back.

People offered their sympathies to her and she smiled kindly in return. She didn’t tell them how she missed his hand holding hers, steadying himse...

GRIM FACED

It was a bright morning and the light breeze carried songs of the birds with it. I stood under the tree beside the footpath enjoying its shade. People walked by in a hurry with grim faces, their laptop bags slung over their shoulders. They seemed to be lost in their own thought and the brightness of the day seemed to be hurting them.

I smiled at them. They looked at me with disapproval on their faces.

“Do you have nothing productive to do?” they asked me.

“But I am spreading smiles”, I said,...

NAMED

Celine was forty days old when her mother had carried her to the church and a priest named her.

She grew up to be a beautiful girl but she hated that name. She told her mother always that her name, Celine, was old school and she should have been named with a cool name like those famous teen stars.

I didn’t know that she had applied for a change of name.

She came to me and said that her name is now Rianne. She told me to erase that stupid, old name of hers from my memory.

But I couldn’t do it....

THE LITTLE DROP OF SUNSHINE

I was playing in the garden outside, setting up little sticks in groups of ten. The grass danced to the melody of the breeze and the sunshine rained down in little droplets of gold. I could see my parents, trying to hold my hands and telling me where to go. We are shaping your childhood, they said to me. With my back to them, I picked up the sticks and poked them to the ground. They asked me what I was doing and I said I’m building my dream. They wanted to see and tried to peep over my should...