Ibtida-The Prelude     Station was situated amidst paddy fields which stretched till horizon in all directions. We arrived here in the month of May. Sun baked the plains of Punjab with a ruthless malice. Sowing of paddy had begun and fields lay inundated with water the whole day. An unbearable hot-vapour seemed to rise from the ground relentlessly. Stifling heat was not the only stuff fields generated. Snakes abandoned the watery graves and took shelter in the sprawling grounds surrounding officers’ bungalows. Archana was mortally scared to move into the house we were allotted. A narrow road and a barbed-wire fence separated it from the fields. I had to resort to minor trickeries, embarrassing all the same, to claim a first-floor flat.   Civilian neighbourhood abutting the station was an urbanised village. It had two central schools; both appeared the refuge of rowdies. On my first day at hospital, a boy seemingly in late teens but studying in ninth, was brought by his mother

  This Colour of My Heart Romantic love is a fabric of many shades. It is a melange of disparate emotions: obsessive longing, peaceful contentment, perpetual unease, imperturbable calm, incurable desolation, unparalleled ecstasy, throbbing tenderness, delusional envy, abject devotion, obsessive jealousy. This love is a necessity of life. It engenders life and nourishes it. Only purpose of life on earth– there is no extant evidence of life anywhere else in universe– is self-replication. Nature has stumbled on a sophisticated mechanism to fulfil this aim in our species: the romantic love. What a convoluted process to achieve a simple, although universal goal of life! This longwinded approach of nature– not wasteful, as nature is incorrigibly parsimonious in using its resources– has painted the canvas of human experience in unbelievably vibrant colours. These have been the muse of poets and story tellers since the time man discovered such occupations of mind.   Faiz Ahmad Faiz, on