Short-Stories

I crawled through the 2 by 2 feet hole. I checked the map again. If the map is right then in about 30 ft, this passage should open into a big enough chamber for me to walk out of this aptly named Labyrinth cave. My elbows were bruised. So were my knees. And then a small stalactite scratched my forehead. That’s when time stopped for me. I decided to lie down. 100s of small thorny stones were pinching me. I was calm. I looked around. A video feed of this would have been claustrophobic for the viewers but I felt nothing. At least not till my forehead got scratched.

On my way from the Prague airport to the city of Prague, I sat on a bus next to a man wearing a suit and tie. “Here for business?”, I asked. “European Space Agency meeting”, he replied. Those were the days of Brexit, so, I had to ask, “What’s the language of ESA now?”.

While traveling in the streets of Cairo or Qahira/क़ाहिरा, I came across a group of Indians who didn’t look like tourists.

My flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco was overbooked. There was a generous voucher to take for a volunteer who was willing to take the next flight. The next flight was scheduled for the next day in the morning! I wondered why not take a bus through the California hinterlands instead. So, I volunteered. At the bus station’s waiting area, an Indian-looking man walked towards me. Before I could say something, he asked me in Hindi where I was from....

I have traveled to many countries around the world. Some accept credit cards. Some only deal in cash. Some accept US Dollars. Some only accept local currency. Nowhere, however, I have dealt with a system as weird as Argentina. There are myriad exchange rates.

An American’s experience in Luxor made me write this. The story is long and vivid, but the core theme is how she and many other foreigners were duped into buying and then selling properties losing money in the process.

While Sitting at a local restaurant in Cairo, Egypt, I deliberated between Subia and Dom Palm to drink. Two adult women, the mother (in-law?) wearing a burqa and the daughter (in-law?) wearing an abaya sat in front of me. The third member of their party was a little girl, wearing a bright pink frock. She was small enough to be placed right on the table. Dom Palm, I decided, will be the “authentic” Egyptian taste for tonight.

I had just landed in the Czech Republic. I was taking a bus from Prague airport to the city. The man sitting next to me was dressed in formal. He was here to attend a meeting of the ESA, European Space Agency. I asked, “What language is the meeting in?”. “English”, he replied, nonchalantly.

The Tijuana border (between the US and Mexico) is one of the busiest land crossings in the world.

गाँव में रहने वाला लड़का घर में “नींबू-पानी” पीता है । शहर में जाता है तो उसको “शिकंजी” बोलने लगता है । फिर फ़ाइव-स्टार होटेल में जाता है, और “लेमोनेड” ऑर्डर करता है । विदेश-यात्रा पर जाता है, तो उसी नींबू-पानी को “व़र्जिन-मोहीतो” कहना सीख जाता है । कुमार विश्वास