PERSPECTIVES

Tommy’s Mysterious Appearance (A Recreation of a Fictional Story by Ram Mohan) Growing up in Kalyan Sadan was like living in the heart of a shared universe, a world brimming with love, laughter, and an unspoken kinship that bound us all. It was no ordinary house but a haven, a joint family enclave where cousins of all ages collided and coexisted. My mother, one of thirteen siblings, brought with her a teeming crowd of cousins who painted our days with vibrant chaos. We shared everything—meals, stories, secrets, and the peculiar magic that comes from knowing you belong to something larger than yourself. Even amid the lively tumult of Kalyan Sadan, there were figures who stood apart. My eldest cousin, Rammohan, was one of them. He had a gift for spinning tales, and his stories would leave us wide-eyed and speechless, even long after the fireflies disappeared into the night. One of his stories, "Tommy’s Mysterious Appearance," became a legend among us—a tale that blu...

Through the Mist: A Journey Beyond Time The night was still, wrapped in a cloak of silence, as we arrived at Mettupalayam station. My brother Shank, my cousins Satyan and Hrishi, and I carried the sort of youthful resilience that makes scarcity seem like an adventure. The Nilgiri Mountain Railway train stood quietly on the tracks, a dormant steel creature awaiting dawn. We were the only souls on the platform, the echoes of our footsteps swallowed by the station's emptiness. A guard, perhaps moved by our predicament or the simplicity of our request, allowed us to sleep in the very train we were to board the next morning. As we stretched out on the wooden seats, their solidness seemed oddly comforting. The rhythmic ticking of the station clock merged with the occasional creak of the train, becoming the lullaby that carried us to sleep. Morning arrived softly, with the air cool and the first light of the sun painting the horizon. The canteen beckoned us with the aroma of c...