Flame Tree Fiction

The Day My London Bus Had an Emotional Breakdown

(And Other Transport Tales)

Let me tell you a London truth: you haven’t really lived here until a bus you were on has suddenly decided it doesn’t want to be a bus anymore.

The sign lights up: ‘This bus terminates here’

No warning, no explanation. Just a very British act of quiet resignation. Like the bus had an emotional breakdown mid-route, whispered “I can’t anymore” to itself, and checked out of the system.

Cue twelve confused passengers standing in the drizzle, collectively staring at a vehicle that’s just retired early — probably to pursue watercolour painting or therapy. I look at the sky (grey, obviously), then at my phone, which optimistically suggests there is another bus ‘in 4 minutes.’ Of course, it's lying. Again.

Welcome to London’s transport system: a marvel of design, obsessed with punctuality, easily bruised by a single drop of rain.

Growing Up At 18 VS Growing Up At 18

Let me tell you about the day my son turned 18 in London and I realised I had successfully raised what my mother would diplomatically call ‘a coconut’ - brown on the outside, white on the inside, and completely alien to the concept that adulthood is a community project requiring minimum fifteen opinions from relatives you see twice a year.

When The Husband Becomes The House Husband

Let me tell you about the day I realised I had become something that would make my grandmother perform emergency prayers for my soul: a wife whose husband stays home while she brings home the bacon (Roti in my case).

Confessions of a Reformed Queue-Jumper

Let me tell you about the day I discovered I had become a monster. Not the kind that lurks under beds or haunts Victorian mansions, but something far more sinister: a person who actually enjoys queuing. Yes, you read that right. I now derive genuine satisfaction from standing in perfectly spaced lines, and frankly, I'm not sure if this is personal growth or a complete personality breakdown.

When I stepped into Flame Tree Publishing's London office as their new writer-in-residence, I couldn't help but smile at the turn life had taken. Two and a half years ago, I traded Mumbai's relentless pulse for London's literary and artistic heartbeat - a journey that has been more than geographical. It's been a migration of perspective, pace, and creative purpose.