The Butcher’s Daughter

He’d asked her to wait for him, and she did. Close your eyes and you’ll find me in your heart, he’d said. And she sat by the door every evening counting sunsets, hoping one of those will bring her father back on the last ray of hope. And she’d hope again the next day, with the first ray of the Sun. And she’d hope till the Sun rose and fell. But her father was no Sun. He wouldn’t rise again. He fell. Once. And it had been enough for him. His last words asked to keep her in the dark. The man’s last words were to be respected, even if spoken in a fit of desperate madness. He thought she couldn’t take it.

But she knew. Missy’s revenge had been taken.

The Silk Road

It was another beautiful evening. Actually, every evening had been beautiful since I’d met Dora. I am still afraid to say her Chinese name, but she doesn’t mind being called Dora. I sometimes call her “Dear” but she doesn’t seem to notice. Never mind. A rose is as beautiful, called by any other name. I met her 2 months ago, and the dull streets of Wuxi came alive. She was everything I wanted. Docile, elegant, beautiful. Could a man want more?

Until that fateful evening, when a stranger suddenly took out his knife and spoke very fast Chinese. Before my hand reached for the wallet, her hand reached for his. In the flash of the moment, I was gaping at the bleeding neck of the mugger.

‘A woman must be able to do everything from tying a diaper to hacking a head,’ she quoted another Chinese proverb for me.

More Cars than Roads

Alien noises beeped all around him and yet he was unfazed. It was a daily ordeal now. He knew he should never have left the comforts of home in this city without air to breathe. He remembered the clean roads and speedy people around him, the days of the yore.

But the new life was good too. It was a sort of peace in an exploding bubble of madness. He never understood the ways of these new men. They cursed everyone without realizing that they were a part of everyone.

I will do my duty and die, he thought. After all, that was what he was made for. It wasn’t home where he’d be cared for. Here, life was rough and he had to scramble for the little space he got, often in the Sun.