Fiction & WritingFive Sentence FIctionMicro FictionUncategorized

Five Sentence Fiction – What was their Fault?

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu

The city stood in ruins


With its annihilated buildings and destroyed roads it resembled hell.

Not a single bird, not a single street dog, not a single soul could be seen.

Deep within a ramshackle wept a grieving woman, bodies of her children lying in her arms.

Why ohh why… what was their fault… why did you let them born in this hapless city of Gaza?




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This post is for Lillie McFerrin Writes Five Sentence Fiction for the prompt GRIEF. 
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Blog Adda Game of Blogs – Team By Lines Chapter 3

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Click the links to read CHAPTER I & CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

The day had bid goodbye to the last rays of sunlight and the night had dressed up to welcome its radiant visitors with the welcoming shine of the evening star. Mumbai, the city of dreams, the city that never slept, was still abuzz with activities. The cacophony of the honking cars was nauseating and the long line of bumper-to-bumper traffic stretched for miles. People rushed towards the train stations hoping to squeeze themselves in within the already crowded compartments. Hawkers heightened their pitch hoping to gather even more customers at their tiny ‘pav bhaji’ stalls. The stench of perspiration, open drains and vehicle exhaust hung in the air.

Miles away from the hustle and bustle, the Dutta mansion in Bandra West was serene and flooded with lights. Roohi hated darkness and insisted on having lights in every room of their house. She looked adorable in her frill frock but was pre-occupied this evening. Roohi was counting frantically employing all her ten fingers while solving a mathematic problem. She had an exam scheduled for the next day. She was a bright child and mathematics seemed to be her favorite subject already at this tender age of 9. Shekhar gave her company, adjusting his thin specs and going through the Hello Magazine, whaling away his time in their living room.
Unknown to them, a man lingered in the shadows of the lone tree in their garden. His thoughts were centered on the occupants of the Dutta mansion. His mission, the one he had to accomplish without any delay, demanded secrecy, covertness and stealth. Time was ticking away and the danger was hovering closer.
If the messages he had received were true, the danger was imminent and the extent of the devastation massive. The ancient wisdom had to be revived. With the dawn of the golden age of the Aquarius in December 2012, the age of Piscean values had degraded and humankind was grappling with the emergence of the new secret sects and the age-old Illuminati. As though the ignorance that was drowning the consciousness of the human race were not enough, these sects were ignoring the constant messages that his people were trying to convey.
The scrolls of wisdom that they had passed to them were scoffed upon. They were re-writing it, modifying it according to their will, giving their own color to it and the result was miles away from the truth.
Shekhar was one among those, trying to twist the universal truth for material gain. Portraying his people as evil, while all they were trying to do was revive. Revive the knowledge that was lost. They were trying to awaken the latent powers and engage them in the impending battle. If they failed, doomsday was not far.
It was time that the opposites merged, it was time they acted upon the messages and manifested the divine.
It was time for action. He opened his clenched fist and breathed slowly into it muttering some unknown words. A swirling ball of fluorescent blue fumes emerged from his extremely fair palm and solidified into a shining ball. He pressed his lips onto the ball and closed his eyes. The moment he lifted his lips away, it hovered up, dashed away, and disappeared in the horizon leaving a blue arc for a moment.
The message was sent. He was a step closer to his goal.
***
Roohi looked up from her notebook and stared at the window. Something had caught her attention. She rushed towards the window, she felt some one was staring at her. But she couldn’t see anyone in the garden. She turned back and walked towards the sofa. She glanced back at the window. Her eyes were still searching for something.
“What are you looking at Roohi”, asked Tara as she entered the room.
“Nothing”, she said softly before settling down with her notebook.
“How was your day?”asked Shekhar
“Hectic and tiring” replied Tara raising an eyebrow and nodding her head.
Their little family time was interrupted with the loud ring of the door bell.
“I’ll get it”, called out Shekhar trying to pick himself up from the sofa.
“No wait I’ll check”, said Tara as she turned and walked towards the door.
As she opened the door a set of dark eyes, from behind big, round specs met hers, instantly pulling her towards them. She looked up at his stern looking face but for a moment couldn’t react. She felt as if she had seen this tall man somewhere but couldn’t recollect. She noticed how extremely whitish he was. Failing to understand why she found him familiar, she kept probing her mind.
“Hello, I am Cyrus”, said the curly haired guy forwarding his hand towards Tara.
Update: Read the following chapters by clicking on the links. CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V  CHAPTER VI and CHAPTER VII

“Me and my team are participating in ‘Game Of Blogs’ at BlogAdda.com. #CelebrateBlogging with us.”

 
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100 Word Story – Read Read and Read

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu

I loved the Saturday 100 Word Story prompt on Write Tribe. It’s 20 quotes on writing. It’s that is one thing that we all bloggers love? So I quickly thought of not wasting anytime and writing up my 100 word Story. Anyways today I have decided to write four posts because I missed blogging for 3 days. This is my second post. And I’ll also write my post for Blog Adda’s Game of Blog tonight! So you could stay tuned for that. 


Anyways, here’s my 100 word Story.

***

Lizzy found it difficult to sit idle even at this age. She always longed for a book or a magazine or even old newspapers. 
She had led a tough life throughout her youth. It was only through the books and newspapers she had discovered her latent potential. The more she read the lesser her pain was. 
At 87 today, she thought often what if she had not read about these great women? What if she had not gathered the courage to tell her story of being brutalized? 
She thanked the books… after all they only had made her an author. 
***
The quote that I chose

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.

– William Faulkner



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Blog Adda – The Game of Blogs

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Hello people I disappeared for two days and I’m already feeling bad about it. I was working for 14-15 hrs a day at work and after I got back home I simply crashed to bed. It happens sometimes and you have nothing to do in these situations. I couldn’t write anything during the day as well because of all the work I am doing. I am suddenly handling three portfolios all of which are on fire at the moment. And it even sucks when you need to get work done from people. Anyways, now to make up on the lost two days, I am going to post 4 posts today, so that by the end of the month I have 31 posts. I hope that would compensate.

I am participating in the Blog Adda Game of Blogs as a part of the #CelebrateBlogging Challenge – The Game of Blogs. You could log into Blog Adda or search with the hash tag on Twitter. This is one of a kind of blogging competition and I am very excited about it. Bloggers collaborate, network and weave a story. How cool is that? There are several teams and many bloggers that I know who are taking part.




We need to weave a story for 3 weeks in chapters. This is not what I have done before but it feels quite exciting when you collaborate.

And here are our Jury


Our team is By Lines and has some great bloggers.



We are already on the third day of the game and two of our posts and you can read the first chapter hereand the second one here.

We are all working towards the story and should come up with something nice.

So need best wishes people.

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My 7 Most Favorite Animated Movies

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
The other day I was watching Kung Fu Panda for the nth time and loved it all over again. SO today I am thinking of doing a post on my all time favorite animated movies. I have loved animation movies since I was a little kid. When I was in school Dexter, Dee Dee, Power Puff Girls, Tom & Jerry, Ghostbusters, Johny Bravo were my food and water. Now there are 100s of channels but the quality of shows – not up to the mark. Did I tell you I still watch cartoons at times when I feel bored?? Anyways, we all love cartoons. But what I am gonna write tonight is about the 3d animated movies and here goes the list.



1. Kung Fu Panda

I have watched and loved Po over and over again. Isn’t he adorable? Po and his attitude is ultimate. I absolutely adore him. My loud shout out to DreamWorks Animations for creating such an utterly butterly cutilicious character called Po. I hadn’t quite enjoyed the second part though because a peacock as the main villain didn’t work for me. The first one had amazing characters called Master Oogway, Master Shifu, Tailung and ofcourse Po along with the famous Five. If you have not already watched it (which I doubt) you should definitely catch it. HBO,WB, Movies Now keeps telecasting them often. I can personally guarantee you Po will keep you in splits.

 



2. Ice Age series

Now this is one franchise of which I can watch any movie. There are four movies in this series – Ice Age, Ice Age: Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs & Ice Age: Continental Drift. For me all of the movies are awesome. With the success of each film they have roped in amazing artistes for the voices and I find Manny, Ellie, Peaches too cute. If you are a person like me (read a lazy bum) you will love Sid the sloth. Not because he is lazy and a sloth but because of his antics. I have loved each of the movies and I am waiting for Ice Age 5 which should be coming out in 2015 or 2016.



3. Madagascar

As I am writing this post I am reliving the experiences of watching these movies. It’s bringing a smile on my face now. This is also one movie you should definitely watch. It doesn’t matter if you are a child, adult or in 70s. I am sure you’ll love Alex, Marty or Melman. My favorite out of the four is definitely Gloria, the hippo. She is super cute. And if you have watched it you cannot but love King Julien the lemur king and the penguins. Again, all the sequels have been quite nice.



4. Finding Nemo

An underwater world created so beautifully is probably possible only on National Geographic or in Finding Nemo. Wasn’t Nemo’s dad the clown fish a cutie pie. I love the part when he is travelling down the current along with the sea turtles to get to Nemo. I so wish there was a sequel.


5. Ratatouille

This is the unusual story of a rat who is an amazing chef! He helps this guy to cook great stuffs in the famous Parisian restaurant of Gustav. Concept, animation, dubbing and entertainment factor – Bingo!


6. The Incredible

One more awesome movie is The Incredibles. A family of super heroes, how about that? When the Dad is the big guy, the mother has the power to expand and be elastic, the daughter turns invisible and the son is as fast as light. And yeah no prizes for guessing I love Dash. It’s the sixth movie of Pixar and am so glad they made it.



7. Lion King

Yeah last but not the list – Lion King series is one epic animated movie. It’s 2D animation and released long time back, maybe I was in school I guess. But I can watch Lion King even today and feel great about it.


Do you love animated movies as well??? I have an idea, why don’t I make this a tag post? You could make your own list of 7 Most Favorite Animated movie and drop your link in my comment section. We could all network and share a thought? Think about it and tag yourself freely. 
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The Hashtag Story – All you want to know about Hashtags

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu

Hello hello… recently I wrote a flash fiction on Hashtag. And then saw even more posts on FB by people writing #Happy #Onam #Friends etc etc. So I thought I should dig out some details and information on the correct usage of a hashtag. I am in no way telling you I have mastered the art or am the Hashtag professor or anything. But there’s no harm in sharing some knowledge.


What is a Hashtag?

# This symbol that you see on your key board, on your phone is the Hashtag symbol. Till some time back it was one of those silent and idle symbols which used to be present on the landline number pad on the right side of 0. And this symbol also denoted number while writing address, as in #3 so n so road. But now in the life and times of social media this tiny symbol # is quite the queen itself.


Now when you are putting # followed by a word without a space you are making that word a metadata tag. For instance, #HappyOnam. Now whenever someone is searching this metadata your tweet/post/photo appears in the search list.  It is quite helpful in group searches.

Where to use Hashtag?

Hashtagging is done across social media platforms to make your post/tweet more search friendly and more relevant. You could use it on Face Book, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram etc etc. But hold on, you gotta use it differently across these platforms.  

Uses of Hashtag

You could build your own brand/topic, you could follow a trend and see who’s thinking what on a particular topic. You could run a campaign and ask people to join in. The latest being the #RiceBucketChallenge on twitter.

Check out this infographic on the History of Hashtag
Infographic by Offerpop. Click image for full size.

Hashtag on Twitter

The easiest way to make your tweet visible to the world other than your followers is to use a hashtag. So if I were to wish Onam or New Year to everyone and not just my followers on Twitter I would tweet it as #HappyOnam or #HappyNewYear and not #Happy #Onam or #Happy #new #year. Because no one will search to see a trend with only Happy or year! Well right now #HappyNewYear can also give you the search result of the Shah Rukh Khan’s latest by the same name. hmm.. ok stop that grin.

While we were all going crazy over the World Cup Football in Brazil you would have noticed for every match FIFA gave out the Hashtag of the day #BRAvsGer or #ITAFRA or #CROMEX. Now these were the hashtags that you would use in your tweets so that they appeared in the search and people saw who is talking what about that particular match. Same is the case when Colours Tv gives out #JummeKiRaatwith Salman for the Friday Salman episodes of Big Boss. No it doesn’t mean I watch it every time!

This is how the Trending Topics of the day appear
on Face Book. Not necessarily everything you put a
 hashtag on will start trending.
Hashtag in FaceBook

Add hashtag to trending topics rather than adding to almost anything and everything you post. All hashtags will have a clickable link and your relevant post will appear in the trending topic. But as I said, go easy with your hashtags.

Even if you have Friends Only posts with Hashtags they are visible to Friends and not to the world. So you could be happy about that.

Hashtag in Google Plus

Now G+ is something I use rarely, may be only to connect with bloggers and blogging communities at times and never for connecting with friends and family. They don’t even use G+, anyways, you could use hashtags for your blog topics as well. If you are dropping your blog link add a description with a hashtag, it is more likely that your link will appear when someone searches for a niche topic. Like if I were to submit my 100 word story link in a G+ community I would write “My latest #100WordStory up on blog” followed by the link.

Hashtag on Instagram

People also go crazy and sometimes put a
hashtag before every thing under the sun
 Source
Hashtag on Instagram works in a completely different level. You may use as many hastagged words which is relevant to your picture. Because in Instagram you can search only with hashtag or by the username. So people go crazy and put #Beautiful #Moonlit #night #full #moon #Instapic #Indiapic etc etc etc. Practically, you should have a description or a caption for the photo followed by the hashtagged words so that they appear on search.

On Instagram, however, if you search and get your photo in the search list in the first few pages you are lucky!! People pour in with pictures and hashtags by seconds across the world. I find it quite difficult to figure out my photo in the search list if I have used a hashtag #selfie!!!


So you have loads of hashtag info here. So go easy with it guys and have fun. Social media after all is a place to have fun, something that I am doing right now.


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