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Five Sentence Fiction – In the Ruins

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
It is the Five Sentence Fiction time today. Though I got the prompt some time back, I am posting this one today. One post a day every weekday. 

Go ahead and enjoy it. 



In the Ruins

The moment Yash stepped out of the tourist coach and stood in front of the massive temple complex he felt a soft rush of breeze around him, a breeze that felt familiar, a scent he felt he knew dearly.

It was his first trip to this country with his buddies but Yash felt he was here before, he felt the vast temple pulling him towards itself and unknowingly he kept walking towards the entrance with his friends left behind.

He touched the moss filled cold walls as he walked inside, his fingers brushing against the intricate figurines sculpted in the walls, he felt he had some deep connection with this place but still couldn’t figure out why he felt that way.

When he entered the central courtyard he saw her at the corner, he saw her standing with her friends, Yash rushed towards the narrow gallery where she stood in her elegant pose, she stood there in the ruins, and she still looked beautiful and calm, she was carved so magnificently in the wall.

Yash had no doubt left in his mind, she was his Yamini, his love, and this was the very courtyard where they used to offer their dance to Lord Vishnu, many many centuries back, when both of them were temple dancers at the Temple of Angkor Wat.

Image Source: National Geography. Not necessarily this is shot at Angkor Wat. 

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Word theme for the current week is RUINS.
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Lillie McFerrin Writes

Leave a comment below if you liked this short fiction and if you want me to write some more. Your words mean a lot to me.









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April A to Z Challenge – Theme Reveal

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu

Hello there, you guys already know how lazy a blogger I am, I started the blog way back in 2011 and today when I go through my blog I can see I have 

written so less, I used to take part in contests but I can see I have not done 
that in a long time. Anyways, I am taking part in the April A to Z Challenge, 
and this is my first A to Z Challenge (like really bad, first time in 4 years!!!)… Yeah yeah I know… I am really ‘slothish’…   But yes, Better Late Than Never – The golden words, I so go with these words.
But if you have noticed, I have more number of posts within 3 months this 
year than I did in an entire year in 2013!! So I am hoping to keep it up 
specially because of the fiction bug. I am like eating, drinking, living 
characters and plots in my mind! 
This is a blog fest where you post every day in the month of April except the Sundays, so you get to post 26 posts and what better than linking them to the alphabets A to Z! 
So this A to Z Challenge is going to be about Fiction. Don’t worry they will be short fictions –  not more that 200  to 250 words, I want to keep them little short so that you guys can read and not go away thinking its a long post! I heard a friend telling, your post was good, but it was long! So I’ll keep it short. 
Cool, now with the theme for the challenge. I have thought of writing fictions on Human Emotions. I am an extremely observant person and emotions, 
expressions are what you get to see everywhere. As I am doing now, at the 
departure lounge while waiting for my flight to home. 
So let me quickly tell you what all human emotion you are going to read in the coming month of April. 

Some are regular stuffs while some are wacky! How do you get an emotion 
with X?? I couldn’t think about anything else other than the one that I have
thought! 
So here are my A – Z Emotions
B – Bereavement – Why Don’t they Kill Me?
C – Cry – A day at the Park
D – Depression – He wanted to Fly
E – Ego – On a Quiet Sunday
F – Fear – Her Little Princess
G – Grief – The Busy Local Train
H – Hate – When the Time Stopped
J – Jealousy – The Promotion
k – Kind – He wanted a better Life
M- Mysterious – Who was she?

N- Negative – Thoughts create your future
O- Overwhelmed – The Bond
R- Regret – Only if she had Listened
S- Sheepish – The Look
T- Tormented – The Visions
U- Unruffled – When he gave a Smile
V- Violated – The Unidentified Female
W- Wretched – The Wretched Lady
X- Xoxo – XOXO
Y- Youthful – The Smile
Z- Zen – Restless Ella
So there you go, the entire bunch of human emotions, and I hope I write someinteresting posts, actually I better write something interesting ones, I need to see it for myself how I write fiction. 
Okay one more thing, follow my site, or follow me on networked blogger, or 
subscribe via mail so that the  posts are directly mailed to your inbox and you never miss out. 
This time I am going for a double whammy, and am participating from by cook blog as well. And that is really a challenge. Visit Twinkling Tina Cooks and 
show some love.
Linking this post to the A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal Blogfest as well hosted by Vidya Sury
Join the fest and Enjoy.
P.S. I have added the links for the posts. And hey its 2016 and I am participating again!
. 

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Random Rants for today – what genre of fiction Should I write?

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
There are some days when your hands just itch to write – and in my case itching to type. Yesterday my laptop crashed and the hard disk is not getting detected. The IT team says there is no way I can retrieve data easily unless I go for a full data recovery and no surety on that too. So all the posts that I used to save up in my draft folder or the long list of book reviews that I maintained are all gone! And so are the photos of the cooking that I had done and saved up for my cook blog. Now that’s really bad. And yes most of my work stuff also. I guess only safe place for storing data is the cloud drive, I should start using my cloud drive little more now.


So a laptop-less me spent half a day doing all random stuffs, playing candy crush, eating my colleague’s head and doing just about nothing, till I got my stand by system. I hope I get my original thinkpad soon, and get rid of this bulky one ASAP.

I was surfing this morning when I came across this playbuzz.com where you take some random prediction test for some fun. I took one interesting sounding test for “Who were you in your Past life”. I had to chose some quirky answers from some multiple choices and guess what, the result was quirky enough – I was a Greek Philosopher it seems!! A philosopher who liked reading and writing and wanted to make the world a better place to stay!!! Okay too much philosophy in that one line.

After this I did some stupid tests and killed some time, till I got into this one prediction test – what genre of fiction should you write? Now isn’t that what I would like to see? Hell yeah I wanted to see, just for fun’s sake. And can you imagine what the result was??

See it for yourself.


Pic Courtesy: http://www.playbuzz.com/
 I was in fact in splits after reading this. I chose I like my characters to have dark secrets and like action and emotion and here it is I should write Horror.. hahah…. I like horror movies, but I am sure I’ll not write an out and out horror… 

I plan to write a lot of romance, or mystery or some sort of a thriller some day. Lets see..










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Five Sentence Fiction – The Lucky Man

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Okay, the fiction bug has hit me, and it has hit me hard. I keep creating situations in my head and pick up traits from every one I meet!! Before it becomes an obsession, I want to quickly pen things down. In the coming times I am going to take up a fiction challenge and want to write only fiction for sometime! Or till I get over with the fiction bug.

My prompt for the week has come from Lillie’s Blog. And here you go. Read and Enjoy. Read my earlier Five Sentence Fiction, and 55Fictions if you like. 

The Lucky Man

Jake felt nice meeting his friends at the college re-union party after 6 years, he was doing good professionally unlike many of his classmates, and had everything – a Veyron, a pent house, girls, parties but somewhere inside he still felt empty.

As he watched his friends coming in with their partners, wives and husbands, he noticed that bright face with deep auburn hair framing it, and that infectious smile – they looked still the same, just a little more poised.

The years spent at college replayed within Jake and he knew why he still felt empty, the girl who loved him so much was sitting right across, but she was not his, not his anymore, not after what he did to her, not after all his years of lying and cheating – now she was seated with Ted, her newly wedded man.

Jake walked up to her table and looked at her, the same way he used to back in those days but her face was blank, she didn’t know how to respond, and shook Jake’s hand unwillingly.

Jake patted her husband with a pleasant smile and said softly “You are a Luckyman Ted, take care of your wife, not everyone is so fortunate”.

Image Source: http://dimitradesigns.net/

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Word theme for the current week is LUCKY.
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Lillie McFerrin Writes

Leave a comment below if you liked this short fiction and if you want me to write some more. Your words mean a lot to me.

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Five Sentence Fiction – Day at the Cafe

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu
Hello peeps, how has been your weekend? I had some crazy fun on Women’s Day with my school friends. So the weekend was nice. I am feeling all charged up this Monday morning (how not-so-me) and I am thinking about writing a Five Sentence Fiction that I have been doing for some time now.


I got the prompt few days back, but had missed writing on it. Read my earlier FSFs here.


Day at the Cafe


The café looked bright and airy with couples sitting close on the cozy couches chit chatting and giggling, while Rachel looked at them from her tiny corner table with her coffee mug.

She counted the number of mugs of cappuccino she had already consumed in the last two hours and it made Rachel feel disgusted, she knew this was not working and she had to take a step.

After some more time, Rachel could see a familiar face at the entrance, she looked closely and followed the eyes, the eyes which scanned every girl in the café, the eyes which ogled at the girls in the meanest way and a Furious Rachel knew this was it.

Rachel walked up and stopped Jim mid way holding him by his collar, “My friends had warned me, but I refused to believe you were a womanizer, now that you have not bothered to call me for a month, make me wait on our date you better find your next girl to swing with”, she blurted out and stormed out of the café. But not before slapping him hard across his face.

Image Source: baddestmotherever.com
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Word theme for the current week is FURIOUS.
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Lillie McFerrin Writes

Leave a comment below if you liked this short fiction and if you want me to write some more. Your words mean a lot to me


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Being Woman

by Tina Basu
written by Tina Basu

Photo Courtesy: http://www.magicaldaydream.com/
Painting by Mariëlle 
I started writing this post in the morning, and then was out most of the day, and probably I’m the only one posting a woman’s day post at the fag end of the day. But nonetheless, let me post it before it’s too late.

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So here we are, celebrating International Women’s Day today with much pomp and grandeur. The morning news paper came with more advertisements and less content. So every other jeweler brand, cosmetic brand, clothing brand is offering some extra discount for the women today to make them feel special. All said and done, when you actually read the news three headlines made me think – what happens at the end of this celebration, what is the use when the story remains unchanged. I am sure when you read them (if you have already not read) you will be equally shocked


Incident #1

In Lucknow a girl gets gang raped by ‘influential’ men and is under Police protection. Sounds like you read these every other day. Then hold on. She is kidnapped from her house again and gang raped again by the same people, strangulated and left in the fields to die. And all this when two police constable were present at her house at the time of this ‘kidnapping’. It seems the constables were busy with their dinner and wearing shoes! The girl lived to tell this tale. The main accused is the husband of the village pradhan who managed to get 30,000 votes for the local MLA and that explains why he is not behind the bar, forget behind the bar, police are reluctant to lodge a FIR!! But God kept her alive and I hope the accused gets at least life imprisonment. You can read more about it here.

Incident #2

“I had been trying to reason with my parents that I wanted to study and that I am too young to get married. But they couldn’t understand. And they kept insisting I would not get a better match than this one. I was at a loss as how to deal with the situation because no one was trying to understand the trauma I was going through,” are the words of a 15 year old girl from Kolkata, whose parents were marrying her off against her wishes. [Taken from TOI and you can read the article here.]  But yes it’s a triumph for her, when she persuaded her friend to Child help line and they rescued the minor girl in time and saved her from the shackles of marriage at this tender age.

Incident #3

Organization for Economic co-operation and Development (OECD) in their recent survey has found only Indian men spend only 19 minutes a day on an average on unpaid routine works (house hold chores, cooking, taking care of house – the so called works of a housewife) where as globally men spend much more time in doing these stuffs. Hats off to the Slovenian men who contribute 114 minutes on an average! Women in India spend 298 minutes in unpaid household work – so she not only has a day job, but have to cook, mop, take care of house, child and god knows what not. Read the article here.  
So are we liberated or are we still under oppression? I cannot fathom an incident like the first can actually happen and the police constables were busy wearing shoes!!!

The theme for today’s International Women’s Day is true in its right sense. Gone are the days when we the women should sob over the curtailed dreams and broken wings. I need the inspiring change for women’s equality. We are not an object to be ogled at, or chanced upon, or taken granted for. I need inspiring change for growth of women owned business. We know how to take care of ourselves, and we definitely know how to run a business. We have grown with our home grown businesses, and a day will definitely come when the Eve will rise above the men. [In my mind they are always mightier]. I need inspiring change for financial independence of women. To me that’s very very critical. Managing your own finances so that you cannot be questioned, so that you pay for your dreams, so that no one can tell you “why you need money”, “I am giving you money so you be grateful”. But for the greater half of the population – it’s your independence, better have that for yourself and your kids than sacrificing your money over others. I feel happy to us – women – successful in every field – the corporate world, politics (well not quite the current Indian Scenario though), sports, science. We definitely are not the weaker sex – though that’s how a lot of people like to think like that.



But there’s still a long way to go, for all the progressing countries and the third world countries. When I read articles by Malala Yousufzai, or a book called Dear Zari: The Secret Lives of women in Afghanistan, I know the journey has only started and there is a long long way to go. There is a need of an inspiring change on how some societies function and some just bring tears.

Being a woman is tough. I don’t know if it was tougher in ancient days, but definitely it’s tough now in the present days. Being a woman today means a woman having to learn self defense, a woman having to carry pepper spray, a woman being ogled at, or a woman suffering silently within the boundaries of home. But this energy will explode, and the day it does, we’ll fly. There’s no stopping the women energy, the energy of creation, the energy of strength, the energy of purity. Long live women and as it’s rightly said, today it’s only the 356th day of Women’s Day because every day is a day for the women spirit. Proud to be a woman.

Photo Courtesy: 123Greetings.com

I had written a poetry on a similar theme earlier, linking that post here  .

And by the way this is how we celebrated Women’s Day today. Being absolutely Crazy with my school friends. That’s me in the purple wig!! Yes that’s exactly how colorful and lovely women are.

               
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Linking this post for Write Tribes Festival of Words. Today’s prompt is Women and Inspiring Change . I came to know about it only on Day 3 so You can find my posts from Day 3 onwards.
Also writing it as a contribution for International Women’s Day. 
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Write Tribe

Leave a comment below if you liked the post and you want me to write some more.


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