Discover the Writer in You

  People called me James Pinto or simply...James. I was an automobile mechanic by profession. Guys said that there was magic in my hands. And that was true. Give me any monster of a car, no matter what condition – it would soon be rolling on the road, as good as new.   I loved my machines. So, it was no wonder that I died on the wheels – albeit of a different kind.   On that fateful day, I had boarded a train at Nandyal station in Andhra Pradesh. Actually, I had taken some leave to attend my nephew’s marriage. Marriages in our family are an elaborate affair. It took around three days for all ceremonies to wind up. My elder brother had come over to see me off at the station. As the train was about to move, he reminded me about the promise he had so arduously extracted out of me. I nodded silently. I saw his diminutive figure fading away as the train picked up speed, little knowing that I had met him for the last time that evening.   ...

Year after year; some idea of a profit or gain steered my New Year resolution. Giving up smoking -Going to the gym-Adding to my qualifications. Generally, these were the options that I would set aside and forget within a week or so. But this time, I decided to drop these dry calculations.  As I looked at 2021 in retrospect, all this sounded bogus and useless. In the past year, along with every single human being on earth, I had witnessed a trail of death and destruction that was unprecedented in human history. And the scale of this devastation was so vast that it redefined almost everything we were familiar with- work culture, relationships, daily routines, our attitude towards life but most important, in a brutal and most certain manner, it destroyed the human ego. The belief that we were in control was shattered to pieces. The false sense of pride that technologically, we were the most advanced species on the planet, this mistaken stance was finally put into its right place ...