Literatures

This is my entry for Shaastra’s Online Science Fiction Writing contest (Shaastra is my college’s annual technical festival). It was judged by Cory Doctrow, and won first place. I am estatic. In retrospect, I’ve noticed several places where I really screwed up my “flow” and lost “coherency” (quotes because I can’t exactly define either) and other where I just pushed ahead too fast, but I guess Cory liked the underlying story (hey, I’m not complaining ;-)). Either way, credit where it’s due: ...

Dedicated to Kavitha, who has kept on poking me to write a non-technical post. Perched at queer angle upon your faithful chair. Working away through the wee hours of the night. Pumped by the loud stereo music, air guitaring as you see fit. Taking the lights and sounds for granted. Blackout. You hear the faint pitter-patter of the rain. The hurr of the machine world fades away. Sounds taken for granted, the background buzz of your life. The lonely night greets you to partake in its silence. ...

I’m posting a poem I wrote last summer (before I had come to IIT). To set the story, I was majaarly pissed off by the coaching centre mentality. I had been madly in love with physics (though we’ve broken up, we still remain friends), and a year and a half later, my passion was just sapped away. With the exam over, I decided to generally start writing again, so I started with this. As you will soon see, I have abused the language in nearly every way possible, just to play with it. Most poems I have written till date have been of a melancholy tone. I wanted to try something new and that’s the explanation for the sudden shift in tone in the last few stanzas. It is pretty long, and I hope I don’t bore you with it. ...