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...Down in Dr Diverse’s digestive system, Bertie was clinging on to Miss White for all he was worth. Foul juices churned around him, and he had to fight to stay attached to Miss White as the muscles of the digestive tract contracted round the frog to drag it further and further towards the dragon’s stomach. That wasn’t all. The smell was awful. It reminded...

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...Five year old Gabe runs away from home. While in the forest he meets Lep and Elita and climbs a rainbow. On Top of the Rainbow he must make the decision to cross over to a land of delight or go back to his family that he loves. Come and visit with Gabe, Lep and Elita as they discover the impor...

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...Story of an orphanage for girls, their miserable life under a warden. Finally the Church realize their folly and appoints a new warden, who is young and energetic. The reforms he made changed the atmosphere so drastically that the countenance of the inmates changes. The Church is happy with him, but then the new warden has his share...

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...They were playing jigsaw puzzle, and finally it was Jisy’s turn, and when she picked up the last piece, Shijo said. No Jisy, wait.’ Jisy looked at him puzzled. He said. ‘The picture is already complete now?’ ‘No.......?’ looking at the picture she said, ...

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... uncle. The story centers around the sub-tenant of one of the flats in the building, who was so friendly with the child. He is moved by the incident, and decides to go to the hospital to see the child. It is the traumatic experience of this man the story is about. ...

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...Behind him was the security guard of the morgue, and still farther behind in the dark cold room were the cold bodies wrapped up in white linen. He remembered what Hiren Mehta had said, and what Mehta’s son had said. Beyond the eyes of the evil planets, fatalist beliefs, an...

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...The story Pachhappayyine Pidikkan (To Catch a Grasshopper) won the Padmarajan Award in 1997. Padmarajan was a well-known film director and film maker. The story is about a five year old girl who goes out to catch a grasshopper on her elder sister’s wedding day. The situation in the family is so desperate that the girl thinks she should do something to have m...

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...The impatient horn of the car was heard outside. She said, ‘Raju I never expected all these.’ She took her suitcase and walked to the door. She kept the suitcase on the floor and turned to Rajasekharan. He was standing motionless. She went to him. ‘Are you sad ?’ Again the car horn was heard and he did not say anything. ‘They’re calling, ...

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...The story Koorakal is about a middle class family. A wife, husband and two children. The unwilling wife is forced to terminate her third pregnancy much to her wishes, since their financial background does not allow them to have one more child. She is in a dilemma, and finally had to give in....

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...nscience that troubles me, she thought. I now have a guilty conscience. But it has got to be done. There is no other go. These days you have to live, and live happily too, for which, at least, you have to pay a deaf ear to this beat of the wings. You will be happy tomorrow when memory of this nightmare ceases to haunt you. We should bring our children back, she thought. I...

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...Mumbai in the early 1970. Juhu-Vile Parle Scheme was the nerve center of film activities, since people related to cinema - producers, actors and actresses, other artists and technicians lived here. Walking in the morning through the streets of Juhu, you will come across light boys holding reflectors, actors and actresses in the act of shooting a take, camera, gene...

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...The leading lady Sunanda glanced once again through the photos strewn on the table. The figure of the new girl is indeed remarkable, and the snaps in bikini were excellent. Her young body is better than mine, Sunanda thought. My bosom is heavier and firmer, but the other parts of the body have grown out of proportion. Yoga and other exercises didn’t help m...

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...Story of an orphanage for girls, their miserable life under a warden. Finally the Church realize their folly and appoints a new warden, who is young and energetic. The reforms he made changed the atmosphere so drastically that the countenance of the inmates changes. The Church is happy with him, but then the new warden has his share...

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...Sir, it is Jisy’s turn tonight. I came because she’s not well.’ ‘Turn?’ She nodded. ‘Turn for what?’ ‘Today is Tuesday, and it is her turn to come to you, Sir. The old Warden Sir had made it like that. Tuesday it is Jisy, Thursday me, Saturday Deepa and if in between he wants somebody he will tell it. ‘What for?’ The moment it was blurted ou...

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...ective, of course. In this way, the solution is predetermined, as if time is made to run backwards so that all the bifurcations in the road of life, and the bifurcations of those bifurcations, and so on can only lead back to that one monadic instance in which the infinite confusion of our existence is explained. But, what if God’s universe were to be built on the indeter...

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...Description Two bank employees, one married male and the other unmarried female happened to mark affinity for self in the other. This unmarried person was the boss of the other one. In view of the mutual affinity, this boss visited the other’s residence for delivering in p...

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...eace. …. Nidhi often happens to recall her days when she had once heard from Anirudh that Smriti’s father is a doctor in a government dispensary and has been living an ostentatious type of life. It had resulted in his daughter always complaining of the total absence of modern amenities for leading `a moderately comfortable life` at in-law’s home. … Satyam Joshi too i...

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...lirts with any handsome boy, but there ends it. However her love for the engine driver Rajan gets serious. He was transferred to far away Coimbatore, and she is crestfallen. He tries to ward off the transfer, and then a surprise awaits Nancy in the morning next day....

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...The train has already started and Nancy somehow jumped onto it. She asked a fellow passenger, which train it is. ‘Venad Express.’ He said. ‘God, this train goes to Thiruvananthapuram, just the opposite way.’ She jumped from the train. You cannot call i...

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...Charlotte, the adorable Shih Tzu, has a new grooming experience and makes new friends. They go to The Magical Garden to enjoy The Lollipop Tree, The Sea of Chocolates and The Ice Cream Igloo. A new game is also born, with Wally the Wannabe Wallaby being the inspiration for it. When ...

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...Today was different, though. What had started out as innocent playtime for the bigger dogs had quite alarmingly and even more quickly descended into a cacophonous brouhaha. It turned violent equally quickly, too. Over the obstreperous snarling and barking, we heard the distressed yelping of the victims as the stronger dogs sought tr...

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...n Wildlife Preserve, is going to show eighteen year old Shawn Mariano her Osborne Smoke Finder, all six varieties of New England ferns, a beaver dam, and something he never bargained for.  A straight-laced ex-nun must decide what to do with a stolen Sony Trinitron TV. The arrival of a Russian Jew in the apartment complex where she lives resolves the matter of the ’hot’ T...

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...ld Laurel Evers is running off to a fictional village in rural Maine in search of an idyllic existence that hasn’t existed since the era of the horse and buggy. Life was simpler, idyllic then. People meandered about in horse-drawn wagons, fished, grew their own potato crops and made throat lozenges from locally-grown spearmint boiled in metal cauldrons over the stove. Wome...

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...Gabe and Marie share a mutual disgust for the light-skinned Negro who never cleans up after her Great Dane at the Oak Knoll bird Sanctuary. For the lonely widower and lesbian thespian, their meeting is a textbook case of Jungian ...

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...Stories Varied delve into the possibilities of woman’s life in the man’s world. While Ilaa’s Ire takes one back to woman’s life and times in the Vedic age, ‘201’ Qualms depicts her predicament when torn between trust and duty. If “?” addresses woman’s marital stress in an alien land, Cupid’s Clue is about her acting on a rebound in the native place. E...

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...ism, didn’t he? Or is it Mammon who had seduced my soul to the core? But how does that mater any way. He did desert me at the first post of adversity and that’s what matters. How shameful. Is it cowardice or callousness? How am I to know? Let him go to hell and I’ll brave it out regardless. But what about our kids, won’t they be worse off, left in the lurch?” From Tent...

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...Synopsis Madhu and his mistress Mala were poisoned and Pravar, Mala’s brother, implicates Madhu’s wife Radha in the double murder. Radha seeks Dhruva’s help even as Kavya, rescued by him, takes to her kidnapper Pravar. The series of death b...

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...s to let them end its long summer reign over the Deccan skies. What with the thickening clouds thundering in triumph, Dhruva woke up from his siesta, and by the time he moved into the portico of his palatial bungalow at 9, Castle Hills, the skies had opened up to shower its sprawling lawns. It was as if the eagerness of the rainfall matched the longing of the parched soil ...

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...tory Amme Avar Nammude Akaasam Katteduthu is about women laborers, who over the past few decades were being phased out of work, mainly by automation, and then by influx of cheap labor from neighboring states. In this story the houses where women from the colony across the road works as household help, are being razed to the ground to give way to four colossal multistory bu...

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...t come any more, eh?’ ‘No,....’ She said with visible comfort. ‘I wish he does not turn up any more. What about your husband?’ ‘He came last month, and then I said I am jobless and that I need money. He went back immediately and never again turned up. I never said I got a job in the building work.' (Amme, Avar Nammude Akasam Katteduthu)...

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...‘How come you didn’t get even a single order?’ John Mathew could not get it. ‘You say you have visited 10 - 15 houses, and yet no order. You have gone to a wealthy area. Venu closed his eyes without having to utter a word. And slowly he drifted into a slumber. In sleep, he saw dark skinny children with small chests and big unhealthy belly. I...