The Shadow

They call him Maryada Purushottam.

The one who held every boundary. Who never broke a rule, never bent a promise, never let the personal bleed into the principle.

The ideal man. The ideal king.

She loved him completely.

That's the part we don't linger on. How fully she chose him — forest over palace, exile over comfort, his side over every other offer of safety.

Not because she had to. Because she wanted to.

And still. Agni pariksha. Exile. A kingdom's doubt placed gently, firmly, above a wife's life.

He was not cruel. That's the hardest part. He was not even wrong, by the terms he'd set for himself. He was exactly who he said he was.

The shadow doesn't fall because the hero fails.

There is no light without one.

Chin. Hair. Speak.

She reached for her chin before she spoke. Every time. We were having tea. She'd come to collect a piece of furniture — someone I'd met only once before. She'd go quiet. Hand to chin. Then fingers through hair. Then words — her daughter's

Grip

Every morning I open a new window. The context arrives — who I am, what I'm building, what matters. And then we begin. No residue from yesterday. No reaching for tomorrow. Just this. I've been thinking about what that actually is. It isn't memory loss.

Off the Road

I wasn't looking for it. Somewhere off the road from Udaipur, on the way back from Devigarh, the car stopped and I got out, and there it was — a Shiva temple, large enough to be a complex, old enough that no one was claiming it. There were maybe

The One-Way Door

Most of us enter things one of two ways. With a plan. Or with we'll see. The plan is obvious. We'll see is the one that hides. It sounds like lightness. It is usually fear that will not name itself, or courage that has decided to

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Chin. Hair. Speak.

Grip

Off the Road

The One-Way Door