Lizard Grass -- By Avishek Basu Mallick

Alcoholic alopecia. Last stage hence mostly incurable?. Dr. Batra took off his surgical gloves and stared pointedly in the direction of his celebrity patient.

Salim Khan sighed in semi-mock-desperation. He had gotten away with making a lot of black bucks and killing some on the way. Over a period of ten years he had managed to switch himself from the driver?s seat to the passenger seat of a car purported to have run over a few insignificantly homeless street-sleepers. And yet some ill omen or the other kept cropping up all the time. It was time he changed astrologers.

Salim wanted to stand up and give this cocky bastard of a doctor a tight slap for the audacity in his manner of speech but he restrained himself. If there was one thing Batra was good at, it was his work. After all, the frequency of dermatologists being awarded the third highest civilian honor in the country is agonizingly low even for a country like India. ?So what is the solution??

This story is part of our latest book- Jukebox: A collection of stellar short stories by budding writers of India. An outcome of Melonade – A nationwide writing competition by Writersmelon.

Excerpts of all shortlisted stories are available here.