Sid-O-Scope

Thousands of years ago on the shore of the great bay of Bengal lay a small kingdom ruled by the brave King Dharmaraja. This small kingdom was blessed and prosperous in all the aspects. The subjects of the kingdom were content, no one slept hungry at night. The King Dharmaraja was called the wisest ruler that ever was born in the land. But the kingdom had a problem, no one had heard of any other stories before. No one had heard any other tale before for the King Dharmaraja had banned story telling from his kingdom. If you believed in the local gossip, King Dharmaraja had banished all the storytellers from the land many years ago. The local bartender would tell you that the King was haunted by stories all his childhood. He will also tell you about the kings Gandharva caretaker that told stories of distant lands, monsters and demons. The bartender would also tell you that bartenders should not be trusted for they are creatures of deceit and cunningness and they lie. "But what...

The other day I was talking to a bunch of men in our society (the ones who feel they are men only when they play cricket on the street) and the topic started about divorce. So the gossip was (incidentally when men gossip, it's not gossip, it's speculation) that a known person in the locality was getting a divorce. His wife has alleged that the man and his family tortured her. Now unusually in cases like these it is mandatory to have a opinion over the topic in hand. So one guy said, the divorce man is a fool, if he was in the divorce mans place he would make his wife behave.  Before he could get into details, another spoke, but maybe the wife is right. This person and his family are a bit egoistic, they must have tortured her. The first gyaani spoke again, obviously this is right thing to do. See these girls are like that only, that's why I did not marry my girlfriend. There are girls who are good to be girlfriend but not your wife. At this point I was a ...

A new adventure only for the love of stories. You have been following Sidoscope for more than 6 years now. I started this site with a simple purpose- to get quality stories in Indian context. What started out as a hobby turned into something more sinister addiction to write and rewrite many familiar stories. On June 20 Sidoscope is turning 7 years and to celebrate this seventh anniversary we bring you something very unique. Starting June 20, Sidoscope will be publishing 7 volumes of Short stories on Amazon Kindle every month. Each volume contains 5 short stories that can be read at your leisure, they can be gifted to your loved once or they can be collected. These 7 volumes are part of Sidoscope Fingerprints series will be published on Amazon and are available exclusively for Kindle. Those who have not used or do not poses Kindle can be download the Kindle app from Google play  or iTunes . What is more on the 20th of every month these books will be ava...

According to the blog in Washington post, racism in India is very prevalent. You can see the blood red colored India very prominent on the map . This story was just mentioned as a passing remark over a coffee table with a smirk, 'Yeah its India, no one cares about race, but they do care about is caste'. It is extremely true about caste system prevalent in India even after almost fifty years of Independence. People still considered other people from schedule tribes and caste as dirty or disgusting. Reservations in education, jobs and by some unconfirmed election butter promotions, has added more to this feud. The number of people who hate other people based on their caste has definitely increased ten fold in the last fifty years. Earlier it was based on some ambiguous religious text, now it is based on medical seat availability. In a normal world any political party getting riddled in scandals popping up faster than rabbits can make babies, will lose the l...

"Its all smokes and mirror," screamed an oversmart audience to the magician on stage. The magician looked at the over smart spectator and said, "You sir, will join me on stage for my next act." "As if," said the over smart spectator. "And for my next act," the magician said, "I am going to make this man disappear." "As if," the over smart spectator said. He was told to inspect the box, which seemed fine. "I am going to expose your trick," said the sceptic. "And now ladies and gentlemen for the magic," he asked the sceptic to step inside the box, "Abracadabra..." Puff, a big ball of smoke surround the box. Someone coughed. The box opened and the sceptic was not seen anywhere. Encore, claps, claps, Once more, once more, screamed the audience. Everyone was too busy to notice the sceptic walking outside the magicians tent counting money in his hands. India on an whole is a funny country. Y...

The thing about prophecies is, they tend to start a war more than prevent it. If Kansa never heard the prophecy of Krishna we would never see the battle. If Voldemort never knew about the potter boy, we would be saved seven horrible movies. But the thing about prophecies is that they exist. Over the period of time, I have come to believe that someone somewhere is jotting down prophecies about me in an language illegible by human. You know something is amiss, and bam that thing is amiss right then and there. There is not a single moment of doubt in my mind about the prophecy of railway and me. Murphy had once said, if there is a fifty-fifty chance of getting something right, there is a ninety percent guarantee you will get it wrong. During my junior college days there are people who sleep on the railway platform who used to watch me run after a train almost every day. Sometimes I even ran after it from front. This made one day, a homeless guy come towards me and said, 'You...

India is a land of spiritual getaways, people from all over the world come to India to getaway from their life, wife, boss and sometimes they just visit to create albums on Facebook. The tourist love to see the Taj Mahal, they want to visit the Himalayas. There are multiple brochures printed in colorful ink of thousand spiritual getaways in India. The tourism and spiritual brochures miss out on one big spiritual one can partake in this crazy country is riding in an auto rickshaw. One small journey in an auto rickshaw will give you the spiritual enlightenment that sages get ages to attain. The biggest philosophical discovery of modern India is how does the auto rickshaw meter changes its value for same distance depending on the country of origin of the passenger or the state of origin of the rickshaw driver. Just like the Knight Bus (from the Harry Potter) these rickshaw will come to your assistance whenever a witch or a wizard or anyone with money needs t...