<i>Women are not allowed. Women are not allowed. Women are not allowed. </i> Was it to protect the grave from the women or the women from the grave? - Arundhati Roy

Love, after all, is the ingredient that separates a sacrifice from ordinary, everyday butchery.

It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade Pillai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him wrapped and beribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was too late, and Paradise Pickles slumped softly to the floor without so much as a murmur or even the pretense of resistance, did Comrade Pillai realize that what he really needed was the process of war more than the outcome of victory. War could have been the stallion that he rode, part of, if not all, the way to the Legislative Assembly, whereas victory left him no better off than when he started out.

He broke the eggs but burned the omelette.

painted in weather-colors now. With brushes dipped in nature’s palette. Mossgreen. Earth-brown.