Shon Mehta

A person may live their whole life without God, without religion, without kneeling, without the joining of hands. They may trust only reason, and reason serves them faithfully for a time. Everything has its cause, every feeling can be explained by biology and circumstance. The brain arranges the world into neat compartments, supported by scientific explanation. Then comes that moment for which no rationalisation can prepare us. The moment when every certainty falls silent. You find yourself utterly alone—not just without companions, but abandoned even by the arguments that once sustained you. Your reason has not betrayed you,  it still explains everything. It can tell you why you suffer, why the universe owes you nothing, why despair is perfectly consistent with reality. It is all coherent and true. But in that terrible moment, truth is not enough. It does not sit beside you in the moment of absolute loneliness, nor does it comfort you when you have said a final goodbye to your lov...

  Before Jivavarta became a kingdom, and before there were a thousand petty comforts by which men convinced themselves they are civilized, there was only survival. Men lived, if living is the word. They woke with hunger and slept with fear, and between those two certainties they committed acts that later generations would call barbaric. But barbarism is a comfortable word invented by those who arrive much later in the story. The men of that age did not think themselves cruel. They killed not from hatred, but from the simple conviction that there was not enough life in the world for all of them. They merely wished to survive. To survive is sometimes the most violent of desires. Sarvabhu, the god of gods, watched these men from above. Or from within, the distinction mattered only to mortals, for he was in everything, all things rose from him, and in the end, all would dissolve into him. He had been watching before time began, and he would watch long after time ends. The tragedy of et...

Microfables of Jivavarta  is a collection of short moral stories and philosophical microfiction that explore human behavior, social dynamics, and resilience. These bite-sized parables are designed for readers seeking meaningful, thought-provoking stories in a quick, engaging format. "Hadwin's Gift"  is a featured entry in this collection, exploring the subtle psychology of expectations, desire, and the complex dynamics of interpersonal generosity. (Note: This is a newly revised, expanded version of the story originally published in 2016, now fully integrated into the Microfables of Jivavarta collection.) One day Hadwin asked his new friend, "What do want for your birthday?”  The friend thought for a moment, and then said "I don't know. I can never decide, what I want."  "But then, what should I give you on your birthday?" asked Hadwin.  "Why don't you surprise me?" said the friend.  “Sure, I will try." said Hadwin.  After hi...

The Governor of Trishala was by all accounts a decent man. Though he never visited the poor, they were always in his thoughts and prayers. When the poor's plight was read aloud to him, he often sighed and tapped his forehead, for their suffering genuinely touched him. The people of the Lower Town, where these poor resided, called him the first caring governor. The Lower Town had a network of canals, which had become blocked due to poor upkeep. Every rainy season, when these blocked canals flooded, fever swept amid the poor who lived beside these canals. "To fight this," the caring governor declared, "we must record and compensate for every suffering. No victim, however small, shall go unnoticed." And so, he established a Grand Archive of Suffering. The Grand Archive employed a thousand scribes, each assigned to a poor family in the Lower Town. For months, these scribes documented every cough, every sleepless night, every life lost to fever. Vast ledgers ranked s...