The Young India

Kartikey Sehgal

Sitting in a library inside a coffee house. Outside, there are fragrant flowers. I remember a conversation with my friend at this very place a long time ago – between 1948- 1950. The setting was different then. Two friends talking about a girl.

Flowers are in an alliance with the vanity of women. At once, the romantic would breathe the air of jasmine flowers and harbour notions of never-ending love. It is when we can smell the unseen fragrances that we can imagine …

Kartikey Sehgal

On the impermanence of life. And the constant passing of time.

The wind blew into the home by saying hello to the bell of God. A small silver bell hung by a nail and it twisted and danced when wind came to it. ‘Wind is saying hello to us, mother’, the girl would say or keep it in her mind to tell her mother when she returned from outdoors.

Perhaps the wind brings some message, some signal from God. In vacant moments, the …

Kartikey Sehgal

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[[true romance|Romance]] is, reflection. The time spent in coffee shops, when we thought we were important. Sharing sly smiles with friends, over the appearance of the nearby man. The pretence to read a popular book, whilst hoping for a gorgeous interruption. ‘Live in the present’: minds were manicured by self-help books.

If life is lived in the present, then …

Kartikey Sehgal

Some years back, I thought of four friends and if their close friendship will last.
It may, I thought. But don’t trust the eye that does not imagine the valley of flowers.
Many things don’t last. And the exceptions are etched in glass.

There was a boy in college. He spoke of his four friends, “this too will not last”.

Many years later and after a myriad of tribulations, he phoned one friend. “It did not last”.

He was at once a mixture …

Kartikey Sehgal

We come on earth to live and yet we prepare for a living.

We like to claim love and lust and longing while we live but what runs parallel is murder, bombs and destruction. Does the end justify the means. Is a nuclear catastrophe important so that the survivors do not make weapons again.
Japan suffered a nuclear catastrophe and is least likely to use nuclear force today. They make the best robots and cars. Is this evolution. Survival of the fittest. On …