It stunned me for a few seconds when on my random research; I stumbled upon a picture of my childhood—until now—sweets. A flash of memories struck my present and occupied my rainy nighttime. I never got enough with this sweet. Probably the whole family’s favourite, including our mother.

The sweet is milky white, chewy, and thick. A clear thin edible filament rolled around the cylinder-shaped sweet then wrapped in its recognisable logo wrapper. I reminisced, Mum used to buy them in kilos and kept them in a hidden place so we, the children wouldn’t jeopardise our tooth health. Each day, Mum only allowed us to consume five pieces, which definitely not enough, but nothing we said or did could break her decision. As more mature I became, these sweets remain one of my favourites. They held my nostalgic childhood.

As for the last time I had these sweets with my mum was the end of summer in 2018. Just she and I, we spent the afternoon watching a movie in the cinema. We bought these sweets to accompany us during a 90-minute film. And, no, Mum didn’t limit the sweets.

A flash of light and a roaring thunder awoke me and brought me back to my night. I sat at the kitchen table. In my hands was an unopened sweet and a warm tear streamed down my cheek, as an In Memoriam album opened.
​

The smoke rises from the torches that are mounted on the soot-stained walls. A heavy haze fills the room along with an abundance of rowdy and raucous men who are anxious to get started. The slaves enter timidly from the front of the room and stand behind the auction block. The auctioneer escorts a young, attractive girl to the block. He thinks that she will bring a good price and could set the tone for higher prices throughout the day. She looks over the crowd with trepidation as she steps up on the auction block with trembling in her knees and a quiver on her lips. The bidding is brisk and quickly escalates. Finally, the bidding boils down to just two bidders. One is at the back of the room. He is a Roman Prince. The other bidder sits in the front row. He is a twisted man with a disfigured face. He keeps an open ledger on his lap and occasionally looks at it. The young girl knows both of these bidders, but only by reputation. The disfigured man is an evil taskmaster. He treats his slaves harshly and severely abuses them. She knows if she ends up with him she will have a life of torture. The Roman Prince treats his slaves like his own children, with dignity and respect. She realizes her life will soon be either Heaven or Hell, nothing in between. Her hopes rise as the prince makes a bid from the back of the room. She prays that this would be the final bid. However, her hopes come crashing down as the evil taskmaster makes his bid. This continues on for what seems to her to be an eternity. Sweat flows off her aching body. Her knot-filled stomach begins to cramp as she becomes nauseous. How much longer can she last? She feels like she is teetering between life and death. At this time the prince stands up and makes a bid that far exceeds the entire net worth of the evil taskmaster. The taskmaster knows it’s all over. He slumps in his seat with his head hanging low and slams his ledger shut. He is totally stunned. The prince takes off his cloak as he walks to the front of the room. He then wraps it around her, covering her nakedness. Every eye in the room is upon them when the prince breaks the silence by announcing, “Today, I set this girl free!” The crowd goes into shock. No one has ever paid such a great amount for a slave…. and then set her free. It was unheard of. “Also,” stated the prince as he removes his royal signet ring from his finger and slides it onto hers, “I make her a joint heir of all my inheritance.” In essence, she is now part of the royal family. Unbelievable? ...No. Incredible?...Yes!
​

Blood-sucker.
That is what they call me behind my back.
And today I am after them, literally begging for their blood. For my son, who needs immediate transfusion and the blood banks have no stock of the rare blood.
Two people in the village have the required blood group -Ramu and Gopu- but Ramu can be taken off the list outright. Only last week I had asked him to vacate his home when he failed to repay my debt. That was the agreed condition when he borrowed money. To his credit, he did not protest but simply asked for a little more time, which I granted.
The people of my village have a philosophy of their own. Poverty had been their lot for generations but that had never come in the way of the few occasions of joy in their life. They celebrate with abandon, mostly with borrowed money, spending lavishly, dancing and singing, feasting and drinking.
True, I charge higher interest than the banks, insist on collaterals, and am strict about payment of interest on time. That is the only source of my livelihood as had been my father’s and forefathers’. I never cheat. Terms and conditions are explained, but they are least bothered when in need of money. They affix their thumb impression wherever required and simply grab the money and leave.
Ramu has been missing since the news about my son broke out. Even his wife and children do not know his whereabouts. Or so they say.
The man I sent after Gopu reports he has high fever but is willing to donate blood but the doctor says no. I am taken aback. A sick man readily agrees to come to the aid of an ‘exploiter and class enemy’. No bargains, no attempt to humiliate me or take advantage of my vulnerability.
Even as I lose hope, news comes from the hospital: Rahul is out of danger after Ramu donated blood.
The ‘blood-sucker’ is in shock.
I must get rid of that tag. Fast.
​

It was a foggy and chilly autumn dawn along the banks of the Danube River in Budapest (Hungary). Ms. Lena Volodya was strolling on the Pest side, separated from the Buda side by the river. The cruise ships that crisscross the river ferrying tourists to various European cities were faintly visible through the dense fog.

As she moved forward, she noticed multitudes of scattered worn-out shoes covered a part of the bank at a distant. Approaching further, she realized they were not real ones but part of a permanent sculpture. She took out her guide-book and opened the page mentioning this particular art. She learned that the local militiamen who were aligned with the Nazis in last World War would bring the rounded-up dissidents and members of the Jewish community to the bank. The victims would then line up facing the river, taking off their shoes. They will be chained together. Then only the two book-end ones would be shot to die instantly and falling into the water dragging along the rest, still alive but drowning eventually. The sculpture, appropriately titled “Shoes on the Danube Bank” was the brainchild of a local artist to confront this nation’s dark history.

Suddenly, the dense fog surrounding Ms. Volodya morphed into a dark cloud with flashes of burst of machine gun fires and heavy artilleries. Ms. Volodya began to drown into a deep memory of her own distant past. She was a military nurse in the Russian army in the same war. In final year, she was assigned to a front unit that was marching forward to liberate Europe from the grips of the Nazis. On arriving Hungary, they came under an intense bombing campaign. When the dust settled, her medical unit got a call to attend to a group of wounded soldiers who got trapped in a trench, just outside this city. As her nursing unit approached the location, all they saw a series of erect black military boots, as if to signal the location of the wounded. But soon the horror became apparent. Nazis were able to capture the group of Russian soldiers there. Before retreating, they machine-gunned the entire unit, severed their legs from the knees and placed inside individual boots. In harsh cold weather, each set then became like a wooden stake, standing freely and offering a macabre display of human atrocity.

As the sun began to rise, Ms. Volodya came back to her senses. She then heard a tune coming out of a passing double-decked ship. It was Late John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
​

A cool breeze swept in through the window. She observed the happy pair outside. The man made silly faces and the baby giggled with delight. She felt a familiar tightness in her chest.

The boy behind her--no, the man--continued his attempt to fix the broken chair at the kitchen table. She still thought of him as a boy sometimes. It had been so long. He often saw her as a girl instead of the grown woman she was now. She didn’t know this; he could add this to the list of things he hadn’t told her.

The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and her heart was aching. She heard him tinkering with the tools behind her. It was a familiar sound. No, it was more than that--it was a comforting sound. A few moments had passed since either had spoken.

“I wish you had,” she whispered softly and felt her chest collapse in on itself.

The clinking tools stopped for a moment. He steeled himself then looked up at her. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was still gazing out the window. She wasn’t visibly angry or upset. There was no evidence she felt the same devastation that was wreaking havoc on his insides. A little smile played on her lips as if she was envisioning what could have been. It passed over her face like a mist.

He stared at her profile silhouetted against the soft light coming through the window. He reminded himself to breathe and turned back to the chair. She walked out to the garden where her husband and baby waited for her.
​

​Harvey Franklin Jackson was enjoying his golfing holiday in Scotland away from his long-suffering wife back in Texas. In Harvey's world, women had only two functions, one of which was to look after any children that were the result of the other. In everything else they were inferior beings –in politics, in business, in the arts and in the professions, but, most of all, as drivers. Each day, Harvey sneered, swore, made obscene gestures and blared his horn at any female unfortunate to find herself in his path and being tailgated by him. But at least women drivers provided him with a series of cheap jokes to share with his friends.
 
Harvey Franklin Jackson showered, shaved and dressed, clambering into his outsized golfing gear, which today was his favourite plus-fours and tweeds: it didn't look so out of places when he wore the braces necessary to keep his trousers up somewhere near his midriff. Then he set off for breakfast in the dining room, where he demanded to see the manager because the young waitress had brought warm milk for his americano rather than cold. When the duty manager turned out to be female, he berated her further for her poor management and insisted on reporting her in turn to a male colleague. Any male colleague.
 
Thankfully, his golf today would be at an all-male golf club where women were only allowed into the clubhouse to clean the toilets. Scowling, Harvey Franklin Jackson left his hotel, climbed into his outsized four-wheel drive hire car and set off down the driveway. Turning right, the last thing he saw in life was the large family saloon coming straight towards him, and the woman driving it. Harvey had forgotten to keep to the left side of the road.
 
Mercifully, the woman emerged unhurt.