U. Quill

Time leaves its trace on most things, and it wears and it tears, and it rusts most things, but there is one great phenomenon, small yet grand, one phenomenon time has left unchanged, as the noble metals of gold and platinum remain. Lying within the Parbhani district of Maharashtra is an archipelago of villages that are tied too strongly together, each village an important part of the magnificent tapestry of the Indian culture and its diversity, which they mirror. And in that cluster, which calls the town of Jintur its central point, lies one peaceful sprawling clachan – unique, as it is, in that unique cluster – the clachan, which is the object of this tale. Kausadi , as this little village is called, is a hub of tranquillity in the midst of green and lush farms which spread out wide on the glorious Indian earth, where the nation’s diversity is perfectliest mirrored. Some seven hundred to thousand houses populate the clachan, each house a unique thread of Kausadi’s fabric. It was a J...

It was late evening on a May Monday, the twenty-sixth to be precise, and an Etihad aeroplane was in the skies above the Arabian Sea , intended to reach its halt on the soil of Mumbai, but at that moment, with uncertainty circling the waters of the sea. Seated on the rightmost seat of a row far back, in the middle column (of three seats, as was each column), was I, watching some movie, almost unknowing that the plane had more than once tried to land, and more than once failed, as uncertainty shrouded its future. And I was unknown to the fact that landing on water might be the only way out... And thus I sat there, ignorant—so much ignorant that my senses awoke only when, with a deafening sound and an unmeasurable speed, our flight did begin a descent—a potentially disastrous descent, of course. And then my blind eyes opened, and I breathed a prayer of protection, and felt some calm as I felt the wheels of the aircraft touch the ground, and race along the runway, in the highest of speeds...