Hammock Snapshots are short flash fiction pieces, accompanied by an original illustration that aim to capture a moment, a feeling or a fragment of something without the pressures of longform writing. The series began on Instagram and now also features on our site.

The gulmohur tree is festooned with newly minted crimson and white clouds, sun-drunk from the warm summer day. Its shadows sink softly, gently into the moss-mapped walls, napping till the sun eventually vanishes, journeying to wherever it is the stars sleep during the day. 

The monkey-top window holds itself straight, regal and poised, like the pearl-adorned, moonlit haired lady in a gossamer thin chiffon dress who once stood there every morning, wondering if she would one day find a way to return to the home she dreamed of every day. Her tears would fall upon the earth in which she had planted a garden of yearnings: she thought no one would see her weep but the soil always remembers. The new garden is now a many-armed river of memories, its tributaries merging into the atlas wall.

The gambolling yin-yang puppies know neither of the past nor the future; they know only of the present, a pocket of endless sunshine, welcoming earth, and promise of unceasing frolic. The tree will always be blooming, the window shutters ready to swing open and offer them refuge when they are too tired to play anymore. And in the quiet of the dusk, as the skies turn mauve and sapphire, the house will become a cradle, always there to rock them to sleep.