Sid-O-Scope

Note: This story is written for Storizen magazine. I was watching the independence day parade when a little girl waved at the old man sitting in the audience. What was the man thinking? Who was he? Her grandfather? Did he have any role in our independence? My grandfather always used to talk about how he contributed for freedom struggle. An imaginary story was formed about what happened between the power walk and that you will be reading below. Do give your feedback and comment. The independence day parade was going on in full swing in the local school. Parents did not fail to notice a four year old waving at the audience. Couple of the parents turned their head to notice an 70-80 year old man sitting at the back of the stadium waving at the girl back. Music continued playing as the toddler's sang national anthem and gave a salute to the national flag. The old man looked at the flag and smiled, 67 years of freedom, ah freedom. He took a deep breath of the fresh air and g...

It was over, truly over. Everything that was anything was gone. His life was gone. There was no hope at all. Aditya Singhal had given up on his life. As his legs walked towards the infamous suicide point, he kept murmuring to himself, 'It is over.' Aditya Singhal led a very fulfilling life. Born to the politically powerful Singhal family with a silver spoon in his mouth. The Singhals were very close to a very famous family ruling the country more than 20 years. Aditya enjoyed a very good, lazy and egoistic life. His tables turned when his powerful father died of an heart attack leaving him a butt load of wealth but very less knowledge of how to use it. The decline of Aditya Singhal was followed religiously in daily news paper. Right from his scandalous marriage to his deadly narcotics addiction. It took three years for Aditya leg to drag him to the suicide point hitting a new low in his life. "It will be over soon," Aditya reminded yourself, "Everyth...

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...