short-stories 7

Kumar first saw her at the US Consulate while waiting in the queue for his visa. He had definite opinions about what his wife should look like, and she fit perfectly. “She’s not too tall,” he later told his friends. “Just about this tall,” and indicated his neck. “Quite fair. Brown eyes. Sharp nose and high cheek bones. A really cute face. No, not a bob-cut. Short hair, and she pins it up like a bun. Usually wears salwars. Today she was wearing a yellow and green. Why don’t you come to the Consulate in the afternoon? She’ll still be waiting in the queue just behind me - the poor thing!” ...

I fancied Isaac Asimov a lot, and wanted to write. When I was a kid, I wrote a few short stories. They are, unfortunately, very contextual. The jokes can only be understood by those whom the stories were written for. But still, since I’d put in several days of effort…

In November 2000, I visited Paris one weekend. Two classmates, Anand Binani and Ram Venkat were studying there, and we roamed around the city. At around 6:00pm, we went over to Montmartre. It’s up a hill, and there’s a cable car that takes you up there. We went all the way up, and got out when a lady behind us asked: “Is that yours? We’d left something behind. Went back to retrieve it. The car was almost leaving for it’s return journey. We just got out in time… ...

Full text of Jeffey Archer’s short story: The Perfect Gentleman. A nice introduction to Archer’s style, if you haven’t read him. And here’s some more from Harper Collins. PS: Here’s an introduction to backgammon.

Zen stories. Read some of these first in Douglas Hofstader’s Godel, Escher, Bach. Searched for a collection for a long time. This looks like quite a comprehensive one. If you want a flavour of these, Zen Master Gutei’s story is one of those bizarre ones.

Just read Forsyth’s The Veteran. Excellent.

From online scripts, I’m moving to online short stories. Never could resist O Henry.