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Vicarious - #ATOZCHALLENGE – V (2026)

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  Being the youngest daughter of the Beck family, Helen always believed she was the center of everyone’s world. Her family’s overindulgence reinforced that belief. It grew stronger with time, and then any moment where she went unacknowledged invited a lot of disillusionment and a strong reaction from her. One couldn’t call it being arrogant. It was just the way she was predisposed to thinking. It was her natural self. To add to that, she was striking graceful, and would make people stop and strike up a conversation. To the Becks, she was their blue-eyed child. They shielded her every move, and put her on the pedestal for even the smallest of achievements. With so much praise, she naturally began to think she would always get this reaction from the larger world outside their household. It would be as natural as night that follows day, and then the day re-emerges. It just had to be that way. And when it was not, Helen’s tantrums were primed to eke out the praise even by coercion. ...
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Unsaid Words - #ATOZCHALLENGE – U (2026)

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  Are people always honest with themselves? This was one question on Monica’s mind today as she read Daniel Kahneman’s book about fast and slow thinking. Do we sometimes need to stop and hear things we do not say? Our unsaid words. So, today Monica resolved to try to listen to unsaid words. When she noticed a behaviour, she wouldn’t judge from get go. Instead, she would try to look for a deeper reason. Maybe people were unaware of their actual motivations. Would she be able to fathom them? In any case, it wouldn’t hurt to try. With that intent, she began her day. The neighbour, Mrs. Akanksha Gupta, was at her family table. She was habitually dominating the conversation. When she spoke nobody else could speak. They went unheard and distraught. And she was obviously none the wiser. Today, she intentionally walked up to her to return her pickle jar, and then broached this topic about the fact that metro travel was convenient. “Ah yes, you like to travel by the metro. That’...
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Temperature Tales - #ATOZCHALLENGE – T (2026)

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  Raksha stared into her laptop with the kind of brain fog that was comparable to the winter fog in her city. Everything was where it should have been, yet nothing was clear. Her focus was compromised today, with a fever that refused to subside even after an over-the-counter paracetamol. Her failing health wasn’t the only reason why she opted to work from home. It was also the fog in the city that made life come to a grinding halt. Her body was wrapped in the same thin duvet she’d slept on in the summers. They were very comforting in the winter season. Living alone in a new city was a weighty affair. To top it all, she needed to write an ad copy in the next half hour. The creative had to be launched and the client was running out of patience faster than the drop in mercury. The phone kept buzzing constantly. One task wasn’t over and the next one was on its way. Her fever hadn’t allowed her to eat well and her sleep had also been riddled with restlessness. But deadlines wouldn...
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Silent Schooling - #ATOZCHALLENGE – S (2026)

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  On the third floor of Izzat building, a proud mother stood looking at her son’s engineering degree. A freshly laminated frame had just been hung upon the wall of their one-bedroom apartment. Geeta couldn’t help jerking out a tear full of pride. She remembered all of Siddharth’s struggles, his late nights, his hours of staying locked in his room, his absence from all social events and activities. All of it was a build-up to the day when he would proudly wield his degree. With good grades, he got a campus placement in a top IT firm and could even work from home on most days. Life seemed to be absolutely perfect and revolved mostly around her and her model son. She yanked out her dated Samsung phone and began searching for the recording of her son’s presentation at work. It was a well-researched, insightful articulation that everyone was lauding. To add to that, it was engaging with witty puns and jokes interspersed intelligently between a serious presentation. Everything was go...
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Rogue Rider - #ATOZCHALLENGE – R (2026)

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  Taruna sipped her warm mocktail as she typed into the laptop. A short story had to be churned in another half hour and ideas were just not cropping up. “What do I write about? When I try to pen down a few unfiltered thoughts, the only thing that comes to mind is family problems, how inappropriate people can be, how unfair life is generally and why a perfectly functional washing machine decided to break-down today.” A drive along the busy crossroads of the city’s buzzing locality wasn’t always a cake walk. Traffic converged from all directions. The intensity of the snarl made most people go rogue. Some went into lanes that were clearly no-entries. Some overtook from the wrong side. Some two-wheelers squeezed themselves into unrealistic gaps, all in the name of moving ahead. “What was the motivation for all of this?” Taruna thought. “Was it the frustration of being caught in the snarl, the sheer impatience in human nature, or was it an unsaid norm in these parts?” As her thoughts ...
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Quirks of Life - #ATOZCHALLENGE – Q (2026)

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  She walked in icily without even saying a word. Zoya was totally at a loss. How do I tell her to dust the walls properly? Will she sweep under the sofa, the bed, and even the cupboards? How do I tell her to go easy on my glass cutlery? She seems to break something or the other. While all these thoughts played in her mind, the very preoccupied Zoya was in a moral dilemma of her own. Am I being too demanding? Or am I being fair? Sahina, the house help, had successfully gaslighted her into believing she was being unreasonable. Her mind game? Just look emotionless and rigid. Let the opposite person feel it is acquired stoicism from a very fraught life. She was poor, and she obviously did not have it easy. Her excuse was perfect. Sahina’s plan worked. She managed to clean the home superficially, earphone in her ears to avoid any of Zoya’s instructions, and then dashed off to her next employer. The furniture was still dusty; the vessels had a film of grease; and the washr...
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Please Hear Me, Brother! #ATOZCHALLENGE – P (2026)

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  “Why is it so tough for me to say anything without being judged?” Karishma just said what Jay never wanted to hear.   It felt like a sudden drop from the 10-foot ceiling! A hard one. He didn’t respond. The only thing she got was a cold stare. The emotional overload began to rise for Karishma. She had had a long day, and from the moment Jay walked in, he kept noticing imperfections in things. Why is the dim light on when it isn’t even fully dark? Why are you having such chilled water? Don’t you think the centre table is too much in the way? Let’s move it to the side. Her mind wasn’t prepared to process chores at the end of her very busy day. But he wouldn’t relent. She did tell him a few times. Listen, Jay. I am not in the right frame of mind. Let’s do this whole fixing-the-situations thing some other day. “You have this whole, its-too-much-for-me phase when I try to tell you anything. When the hell are we supposed to resolve these things, Karee?” “What is...
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