Rhetoric nights

"Why do these things happen if at all there's a god,a higher power?" I ask my father.
Some things just don't have answers,he tells me.My hurting heart is not satisfied.It's not enough of an answer,it'll never be.
Why does society make mockingbirds out of the innocent? Why do harmless little pets die suddenly? Why do some little kids grow up to be the bullies you find hard not to recognize as beast like?

Maybe there really are no answers,maybe life is a constant existential crisis.

But I fight my heart to believe there are answers within these questions,themselves.I'm no optimist,but I live because I see questions as symbols of hope.Hope is real,rhetoric and relevant as it gets.
It's like we're living the rhetoric.
A new day is the rhetoric we know to exist in every stormy night.
Children are the rhetoric form of the questioning fear of oblivion.
Grief is the rhetoric to heartrending loss.
Late night conversations,the rhetoric to loneliness that these pillow talks revolve around.
Love is the rhetoric to existence,itself.Because the universe doesn't care about us,
we have always been infinitesimal.We care about one another,we are all we have in this world.

HBD Taylor Swift

 

So,I'm a Swiftie for life.

But that does not mean I don't also like Lana Del Ray.
  Here's a song of hers that's beautiful.

It's been one of those hazy weather days where you can't see anything clearly and your mind feels foggy.Great,I've always sucked at small talk.So,um..yeah,it's really weird how I have all this latent energy inside me in the form of repressed feelings waiting to explode,like a rain cloud too full of vapour or an ice cube that's absorbed too much heat and they need to let go,to evaporate,to melt.Just that,in my case,there is no outlet...no melting point.There's no state of being.There's only sublimation that makes it seem sweet to implode instead of express.

Everyone asks me why I'm so quiet and I shrug and think to myself,maybe I don't want to be.Truth is,I'm lost and I don't have words I can find that can justify this void.

It's weird how sometimes I feel more at home in other people's houses.I make my mind a makeshift home of sorts because it's hard for me to find a home where I belong in the physical sense of the word.
It's like other people's parents know more about me than mine do.They get me better.They take me out for dinner,they offer me ketchup in bowls,they read my blog,they tell me I write well and they hug me.How much I wish these people I refer to were what my parents would be a little like.
It's not how it's supposed to be,I guess,but, oh well.

I get the whole idea of appreciating what you've got but those who preach this do not live with my parents. I get that it's always a two way transaction.
But it isn't a transaction,see? See what they've made of me.
When I was younger,it din't matter so much.I never let it get to me bad enough...the older I get,however,the little things get to me more.I've tried showing my parents that I love them and I care,I've tried asking them,outright but none of it seems to work out well.It's not that we don't love each other,it's just tough love.And it hurts.
I understand that people have their own ways of expressing affection,and showing that they care,but sometimes,just sometimes it hurts not to have physical evidence of it.

I'm not asking for too much,all I ask for is a "How was your day,darling?" or a "Are you alright?"
,a hug to know I'm safe,or to feel welcome,or a hug goodbye,a kiss on my forehead,maybe even a simple "goodnight" or a "goodbye",a homemade cake or a handwritten letter on my birthday.Any form of a gift any day.A simple "thank you for doing this".
Maybe I am.

It's all these little things,you know,that make me feel loved.
I've tried and I've failed and I can't stop wanting to feel a sense of belonging,for, everywhere I go,I feel lost.A feeling that I'll never belong anywhere completely.
It hurts to know that those who are supposed to love you the most find it hardly worthy to let you know,because they're too busy to see you need it.If those who made me can't find that kind of unconditional love for me,how would someone else, possibly?

Everyone asks me why I'm so quiet,well,it's because if I wouldn't be my malignant heart would make me someone I'm afraid to be.

Tumbleweed

Sunsets make me sad
and remind me of my emptiness in crowded buses
filled with men I'll never see again.

Sunsets also make me happy
because in this world so full meaning,there are a few things
that do not need to be understood to be loved.

Sunsets remind me of trying to count time,
like looking at the huge clock with roman numerals
 instead of regular numbers,in somebody else's living room.

Sunsets make me nostalgic,
of all the nights spent staring at glow in the dark galaxies
stuck to the ceiling like lying awake in a dream.

Sunsets set me free,to hope that
 one day I turn into tumbleweed,wandering without purpose,
or a dandelion,disintegrating,dancing with the wind.

Wanderdust

 Song:Dark Doo Wop

Faces beneath black gas masks,

Wilting flowers in place of hearts

Bodies that are bowstrings,

Arrows that are actions

There is no way to win

With ourselves,to win ourselves

Our own compassion

There is no forgiveness in the cities

Painted the colour of ash

Burning landscapes of the mind,

The smell of blood,a rainfall of feathers
 on heaps of bones,then,

the sky stares back,unblinking,as soft as snow

There is no light,only glimpses of darkness,

Mellow and empty

A skeleton weed of a tragedy

There is no mirage in this desert

It runs as dry as the fight inside us

Be

Our friends, they have it all figured out,

they say they know exactly where they'll go.

futures mapped out,plans marked out like frontier boundaries.

We try to compete,but manufacturing defects leave cracks in us

that refuse to be fixed and we can't win with ourselves,we can't win life,

we can only be.

Maybe they'll laugh if we try to say

'Happy' seems good enough a purpose of living to us.

We struggle with thoughts and words we can't explain,

and give life to them,anyway,

 it's  the only way we  know to see each new sun,

and fall in love with it.

So,we'll settle down with our dusty daydreams,

Hoping,one day,we'll be somebody,

While we're the ones just getting by now,

We'll be free from having to win at all,

Wasting our time,not trading our peace,

Dancing to our heartbeat.

Sad kinda happy

                                                            

Looking at old photographs on the bathroom floor,the winter biting my ankle,cold to my bone.
The photographs form inverted images on my eyes that whirl to a psychedelic effect and the light falling on my eyes is not the same anymore.
It's us walking down a street,holding hands,fairy lights strung on the sides long after festivities have died..it's dark and pretty.So surreal,so empty.We sat in a cozy cafe where service was slow and time was never tired of being timeless,we din't want to go home that night..it was frozen warmth,a guarantee growing up never assured us of.
The air has a nip of November now,as we weave through potted plants on the pavement..winter is sunsets before you anticipate them,winter is time growing old,winter is letting go of the warmth of summer's palm.Maybe that's why I was never too keen about this season in the first place.Only the memory of summer gets me moving.
We blew bubbles out the sides of the auto,the wind blew them back at out faces.Teenage troubles din't matter on days like this,they din't even exist.It din't matter how screwed up it was to see a a beggar tapping on a Rolls Royce window in front of me..that same afternoon.
Sort of like when you sit on a terrace tank and look down on a world of miniatures and you could sit there all day watching clouds and airplanes and advertisement hoardings in the distance,and zone out because tomorrow wouldn't exist if you sat there long enough.
The gasoline rainbow sheen of the bubble popping on my face takes me to yet another place,
A baby pink bath tub,my four year old feet wouldn't reach the end and I wish I wouldn't be so small,
Now I can only sit in it with my feet huddled up beneath my chin,
it's sort of terrible how children are unaware that growing up doesn't always entail certainty,
but only more doubt.

When it rained

                                             Those feelings that happen in between extremely sleepy,numb,happy,sad,content,confused,lost ,nervous,excited.Those feelings which have no name,but intrigue most.
That feeling when we ate tender coconut ice-cream out of tubs at your house when it rained,
the feeling when we drove by the lake late at night and goosebumps revealed themselves on my skin and you put your hand on my knee,almost smiling.
The other time when what I knew was not quite love,but looked like it and it scared me out of sleep.
That sentiment when an old house help comes back on every festive occasion with my favourite tamarind rice.
the forgiveness when friendships that should have died surprise me at the door,"Let's go for a walk",they say.
That freedom when you choose despite the odds,when you win even when you lose.
The warmth of watching someone you love with all your life break into a smile,genuinely..like watching someone open a present you know they'll love.
Almost as many feelings as faces in the world.Maybe even more,who knows,some you'll never know but will always want to.

These feelings that don't have names but deserve such acknowledgement.They make a home for your heart.

Should you have cried //Dewberry sky

Screwy souls always fill more wholesome spaces in the world than sane ones,
and although they're sore from life and its sickeningly sweet atmosphere,it's spells of solitude that conditions solidarity.
                                 And when life ceases to be the party that went on all night,and begins to be the mess of a morning that follows,and you're hungover from the happiness that dulls down to a memory.
Try escape the loop of inertia stuck to you like chewing gum on a shoe's sole,and you fail.Fail miserably,only offsetting routine,replacing it with ornate excuses not to be.
                                                   Your soul is a screwy stew,reduced to chunks of smiles and fears.But it's these same souls that make art,that make the world a piece of it.The grand scheme of things.                                                                        

                              

Faery child of the concrete jungle

A pair of wings tattooed on her shoulder blades,

her thick braid rested along her spine,the body to the tiny pair of wings.

Scraps of conversation created the buzz of words that mingled to mean nothing at all,and the melange  of noise created by fake accents that make one homicidal scattered in great abundance.

All evening,I kept walking into people,elbowing them in their faces,shuffled along with the crowd ,but I found her and I followed her,to look at her back.

She moved languidly and with an elegance that din't belong to this century,a certain sorrow about her face when she spun around slowly,as I held my breath.

A glimpse,a flash of her plain face,yet it was something else..not long before the crowd pushed me behind and I vanished into the insignificance of numbers,and the stranger,she stayed in my line of sight till she grew into a blurry ice blue speck in the distance,a star among all the others in the sky.A memory,a mottled picture from another time.Cosmic dust could fall out from the seams of her satin dress  as she swirled ,creating a cosmogyral universe of it's own and I wouldn't notice,though,so disenchanting feels the razzmatazz of the everyday world to me.Blame the media and its influences,I say.

But she needed no words to speak,she enchanted with silent mystery.No trace or shadow of a smile even in her eyes,just a hint of agony.

Just when you think wonder will wash away,fade,fray with age...something or someone will make you realise it stays.

                                                                                       

Mr.Middle

Gerontophobia is the fear of growing old.Numberless people live with it because they fear the loss of all dignity and refuse to become a responsibility to someone.Instead,they choose death.
It's not growing old I fear,for that would be a blessing,a rare grace of life even in moments of utter disgrace.
           The thought of being on a boat in the middle of an endless of ocean ,half of possibility left behind,half of it,left unknown.The only assurance would be responsibility,because you're too old to have an excusable manner of letting yourself or people down but too young to be dismissed as a sheer mistake of your circumstance.
Neither the innocence of inexperience nor the full wisdom of experience contribute to the middle ages,that make it appear so lackluster.
                          Have you ever seen a table at a restaurant filled with middle aged men,chugging down beers to their bellies that could explode any minute by the sheer size of their ballooning and gawking at women that don't belong to them? That is revolting.
They make it appear as if happiness is not the food you ordered at a restaurant coming to your table finally,that all frustrations stem merely from the mental exhaustion of the years of expected peak performance.

I fear this loss of identity brought about by age,by knowing the half your life is over for good,that thin line dwindling between novelty and mediocrity.Half-wisdom and weary love.

Second hand book collection

To know that a stranger's hands once leafed through the same pages,and smelled the same scent  of a new
heaven hidden in these pages of print.

To know that someone out there had their heartbeat stop to the same words,the same syllables that take your breath away,

Death doesn't exist for these tattered books,neither does oblivion,they will live in multiple memories for years to come,and create new ones,passed on from generation to generation.The same little details  and reading in between the lines will make another kid smile in the years to come.

Sure,they belonged to someone else once who now betrayed them,but it was a betrayal for the better,

because it only means they will get newly christened again,learn that love will find them,and someone will make them their own.At the same time,preserve their identities,creases and folds and different stages of yellow complexions accompanied by age.

Holding them,piled up tall,close to my chest..I have this feeling.It's indelible.Here I am,looking at disowned or half-owned books looking at me,here I am,invited back to the land of magic.I stand staring at half of my childhood..spent in these stores and those long afternoons sprawled over these books that gave me the endless want of these books.

Trying to justify this feeling is like trying to answer why some families are happier than others,or why the sky drapes itself in funny colours at dusk  some days.There might be answers,but the mystery is the most beautiful part.Keeping it alive is love.

Like old souls they charm lives,sometimes,with the previous owner's name and other details scrawled on the front page,sometimes even a date.Like wine and cheese,they are better consumed grey.

A gift from a stranger without their knowledge,almost miraculous.Have you ever found yourself talking to a stranger standing next to you,assuming they were your friend and wondering what that person's thoughts are like?

Ever wanted to see all the stars at once,or desire to know all the people of the world with their stories and craved to make an impression on someone you din't know? There is such dignity in meeting a stranger,such grace in discovering the impersonal comfort that strangers offer?

Trying to fit in an entirety into an instant and preserving a still frame of a universal feeling.

Always a fan of living in the yesterdays,my eyes fill up with joy at the sight of these books,stacked in shelves,stuffed in cardboard boxes or lining the streets in an array.

Selling second hand books is not just selling stories,

it's selling the souls of strangers,to strangers,

weaving an uncanny kind of unity.

Don't get all metaphysical on me

                                                     

This post was originally intended to be titled "What's the drug of your choice?",but well,it did not seem apt enough to describe the sentiment I'm about to express.
All of us,every extraordinary mortal consciously or unconsciously picks a cardinal trait of pleasure to center their life around.The world was designed for diversity,so there are inevitable individual differences in what we choose to devote ourselves to,but the fact that we all possess this central tendency itself in a sign of unity.Oh,the irony.This is the very cardinal trait we commonly term "purpose" and finding it is why we survive.
We all choose our very own versions of a drug,an addiction to thrive on,to give us that adrenal rush.Add that zing to life,that kick that makes everyday exceptional.

But there's a valiant villain called pain,he who steals patience and hope from the recess of our strengths when we're not looking,a thief in the darkness,a lucid nightmare beyond control due to the state of sleep,but we always feel him.We sympathize with the bad guy.
Pain and pleasure,pleasure and pain,are they not the same? Don't get me wrong,I don't want to start sounding negative or take this on to a cynical footing,but claims at lives that are absolutely charmed and immune to disturbances are false.

Here's the part where it all starts to make sense in a story,when just as you're thinking "Hey,this is not interesting enough,where's the downside,where are the problems,the flaws?",the pain that spares nobody in its largess.We all talk of the purpose of life,but what about the purpose of pain?
A girl I know once said "There is pain in everything we do" and it's true.Sometimes so much so,life stops making sense because pain and pleasure blend to the extent where they seem inseparable.
It's in the big blows that leave us feeling so blue and bruised,like the winter's wind,that we're hurting for longer than we can tolerate.It's in that ever persistent dull stab in your heart  and even when you try hard to make it go away,it's hiding in that hole you din't know exists and casually ignoring until it decides to stop playing peek-a-boo and become a surface wound.There is pain even in happiness,hiding,prying,waiting to strike.
Pain is when you hear or see something and you can almost feel your heart physically aching,it's the feeling of drowning without water,it's the stone that weighs you down beyond words of wisdom and hope.Pain is when feelings fail to transform into words and take shelter in the language of tears.
He is in that surreal world you see through foggy eyes,blurred boundaries,loss of rationale.
He dwells in the death of your dreams,he looked upon your shoulder when you first understood death the morning your labrador died,he ticked with the clock in silence when your family fought the first time when you were four.He lingers in every failed effort,in the wild beating of the heart,fueling the fear of the unknown,wallowing in unrequited love,he swims in every puddle of sorrow that rolls down your cheeks,he smells the scent of nostalgia,he occupies farewells and creeps even into the happiest memories.Omnipresent,omnipotent.

Pain is inevitable.
There's no escaping him.
Although accepting him seems impossible,it's the solution.The same girl who pointed out the omnipresence of pain,added,"There is pain in everything we do,changing that into smiles is what you're all about".
She also said "If there in no love,there is no pain,If there is no pain,there is no love,If you have neither,you are not human" think about it,because without some degree pain,the purpose of life would be less valued.There is no perfection,no perfect creation,no invention of man or any creator without flaws.Even the perfect machine has friction that makes it real.Pain makes pleasure possible,he makes pleasure real and complete.In every ounce of pain,there is also the same amount of pleasure and that is why they replace each other and sometimes,even,coexist.
Another blogger,In not so many words, said to me "Pain is like fabric,the stronger it is,the better" and I try to create something out of the hole inside me,I realise I cannot fill it in,I can only try turning it into something that can be beautiful.Pain will exploit,just as pleasure will,they're the couple that fuels all purpose and creation.
Pain is only so much more captivating because pleasure almost always seems beautiful,we seldom question the purpose of pleasure,she seems to be a natural,pain appears ugly but in his depth there is a beauty that only sadness can convey and it is taxing to touch the essence of the sad kind of happy or the happy kind of sad.Pain is a part of us,as much as all the atomies that make a human being,he isn't an external force,he's an effect,a reaction,a fight that makes us who we are.Pain is within all of us,he is born out of our hearts,made out of us,just as we create pleasure and therein lies the source of all creation.It's the immune system of the mind fighting away oblivion with the help of the drug of pleasure.Hence,he weakens,suppresses but in the long term,strengthens.In the larger scheme of things,it's only pain we turn into wisdom.
Many claim that it's the ability to reason that makes us human,and it is this ability to realise the states of feeling and being are as interchangeable as the states of energy.To know that pain can be converted to pleasure,be changed and yet accept that it will always exist in some form and cannot ever be completely destroyed.
And that's the reasoning behind unreasonable pain.Someday it'll make even better sense to me,the purpose of pain.
Maybe there is none,it's just in his nature,pain is like poetry.

The glory days

Raindrops on car windows look like glitter when lights falls on them at night,as you drive to the supermarket where you'll walk down the aisles aimlessly,shopping cart empty."I just enjoy grocery shopping" you say to yourself.
You actually go there to watch a veil of smoke dance sensuously over the ice cream storage area,invoking your gaze to watch the screen of frost,a crowd of consumers walk past you looking for other things,or they look at you too long,and too hard,with the kind of scrutiny a scientist dedicates to a deadly microbe.
You need a brown paper bag with slits on the eyes to hide yourself from assault  and battery of gazes,later when you find yourself alone on a back alleyway or a footpath,next to overspilling garbage dumps,with a lone stray dog,you can puke your guts out into it,the smell of putrid smiles is nauseating.It has nothing to do with rainy days,you're used to them now.Start to wonder why ants and rants have such long straight lines,intersecting each other like there's no tomorrow,and conclude that coffee is a boon to all of mankind.It's only Friday night when the city's on it's streets,a flock,a fleet,shuffling to a beat they blindly grind their two left feet too each day,every week,for months and years,galore.It's a textbook excuse of a living.
A child of accident is a lucky one because he has someone to bag the blame on to,or maybe it just blows more because he shouldn't have belonged,had it not been for the lack of a second thought.Why,India needs the colors of fall to adorn October to make it warmer and colder at the same time,until you feel just fine.
The smell of celery is so enticing only to you,oh,the sweet smell of greens.Songs from different decades shuffle through your brain..Maybe you should zone out like a zombie instead of sending messages across hemispheres inside the globe of your head, when you stare at shadows on ceilings,maybe you should dance on the streets to celebrate what you feel.What it feels like to be a skeletal soul.Raw,raw,rugged,whole.Wholesome as a bowl of soup.
Indigo tiles on kitchen walls are soothing like magazine rifles are soothing against the cool skin of your temples.
Hitler and Gandhi were the same person in cardinal essence,their lives just spiraled towards different ends.
Why do dogs have that light in their eyes like sparklers on Diwali,who stole the light from your eyes.
You know that feeling when you skip through the lawn sprinklers on a summer day and get your clothes all dirty and your mother screams at you because mothers scream at children and children make castles out of mud,with little flowers at the windows,such skilled masonry and the drill perpetuates into long summer nights of hide and seek where you have to pee so bad,you can't breathe.Such imagery it suffocates you,like when you're standing on stage and your mouth forgets to move and your throat dries itself up,forgetting it can produce sound.What a wastage of memory space,nahi?
But yet you never forget to include the irrelevant details like rattling swings,ceramic bowls heaped onto each other,striped umbrellas,hot cups of cocoa and the sunlight on white spaces that looks like a rod of  rainbow colours.
Drink up your rose milk,or flush it down,the staircase where you sat talking to the stars still has the sharp edges where you once fell.The scar running along your back is memory of who became you in the eyes of those who watch. Where did you go,where did they go,the days galore?

'Fat'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi3bc9lS3rg


As a little girl,I always wanted the texture of skin like a watercolour painting,
a fine china nose,carved out like dainty flower  on a bone china teacup,
I wished and wished that my name would be 'Rose'
and I dreamt of running as fast as other six year olds could.

Pink was the colour of my whole,entire wardrobe,
slick,straight hair,adorned forehead,babydoll fringe,
and my little feet fit into a Mary Jane collection I took pride in.
Everything Barbie, and tea sets and dolls defined,swimming pools
and cartoons and colouring books- all I ever wanted from life.

My sister and I,we dressed almost identically,
except the identical outfit colours contrasted-pink was a colour only I owned.
Soon,I was 'too big' to fit into pretty clothes anymore,
my feet outgrew the junior section size,'not for you',
 the look on the salesman face read.

Hurt was my precious world,tainted pride,
my parents shushed my sentences that came out
like a lisp,tongue stuck to palette,they scolded,
'no longer a child',I was doing it for attention.

They made me a circus clown at five,
 I walked the stage feeling wronged,
hating me for being too tall for a ballerina,
Thinking,"those dainty little girls are so lucky".

Once I found a transparent pink bead in my shoe,
that looked like a diamond to my naive eyes,
I treasured it,but  lost it too soon,
like all the broken shards of bangle and broken teacup glass
I picked from the sandpit at school

I missed being carried,lifted up by my parents,loved
before I was too tall,too heavy,too much
of a fuss I knew not how I had become..
'fat' was the new word for me.

The youngest of the lot,annoying baby sister,
life is a bully,and I learnt the better part of this,
the night I waited an hour at my only friend's doorstep,
because her mother thought me a waste of time and mine,
screamed down at me from the balcony.

Names,what's in them,many given to me
"orange" and "lemon" in games played,a buff,
never taken seriously,"pregnant" because I couldn't run fast enough,
"unhealthy" when we were first taught what it meant.

This predilection meant,Love was not meant for me,
In a futile future,he said "no" because fat and ugly is all he could see,
no poem I wrote,no beautiful dream I dreamed
could justify this harsh reality.

A child,I did not understand the meaning of most of what fat meant,
but it sounded negative,the tone it was hurled at me in,
hurtful and mean,so I believed,believed,
that it was all I could ever be,"a disease",

Like that doctor said,the one who said "obese",
Walk it off,don't eat much,
unhealthy.Cry now,hope you feel bad about it.
No one ever said to me"don't take this shit".

What remained?
An identity?

Fat.
A broken record on repay.
Sometimes,
I still feel it so strinkingly,
a joke to others,but just a shape it should be,
why can't I ever be good enough just as you see

Why do most not choose to say just pretty,
over "pretty for a fat person,she" ?

You

    

To say that you're a part of me,

are colours my eyes have not learnt to see,

Or maybe colours I cannot describe well,

like the glass wings of a delicate yellow dragonfly,

transparent and iridescent fail to express.

Knowing that I crave for the comfort of

 the warm blanket of your skin.

Ridges on your palm  are the lines I fear to fill,

yet these are the same hands I grasp in 

the darkness of House of horrors,the hour of need.

The theory I apprehend to learn 

the night before an examination,

Uncertain,but I know I can answer 

the phenomenon which is you ,

even if it sounds this cheesy.

                                                     

The intricacy of incest

Is incest really as wrong,as tainted as it's made out to be?
I am lost for words,to describe what I think and feel.
If it's a feeling,an act of consent,why should be adjudged immoral by society?
Love does know no boundaries,
The risks are many of biology,
As they say too for homosexuality,
but why,do we let convention decide how we breathe,
Noone chooses love,love chooses them,
and how is it any different than a choice we are all entitled to?
Who are we to decide and dictate what to feel and when and for whom?
We were born free,they say,then why can't we just be.
And why are our minds framed to think so conservatively,
why as children are we not allowed to ponder free?
We're young and we believe we're the change we want to see,
but almost two decades of rigidities are hard to unfreeze.
We question what makes us feel what we do feel,
but we forget to question if our ideas can change completely.
Why is it that marriage in kin is an acceptable form ,why only consanguinity,
but out of wedlock,it is considered "sin against humanity"?
Leave alone society,leave alone sin,and biology,
is it still a question  of morality?
What makes us make that choice that seems an anomaly?
Mere absurdity,or is it reasonable rationality?
Is incest really as wrong,as tainted as we are made to believe?

Damsels of youth

The night only grows younger by the hour,
Younger,even,that we are.
Times like these,
are the youngest we'll ever be.

Moments as new and naive as a daydream,
Dreams as swift as the breeze,
The brightness in your chest you feel,
Surreal seems the glossier side of reality.

Feathery and fertile feelings,as you look up,
blossom into full bloom like night beings,
the stars,they were never enough,
you had to know that the sky was yours for keeps.

Song for a long day

Coffee cup watermarks on old tablecloths,

those same empty whites that swim around,

those same hollow irises.

This poem feels like it's already been penned,

inked into verse like blood into veins,

half writ story of a qaurter of a life.
Sprawled across the cold floor,tonight,
lying limp to the tunes of Bastille,and a starless sky,
It's raining down in torrents too hard to fight.

A bottlecap full of vodka trails down our chins,
as we try in vain to turn sorrows to many a giggle and grin,
Do our tragedies end where our new stories begin?

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The inklings of an ending

Watching reruns old sitcoms on languid Friday afternoons,sprawled out with a glass of coca-cola,
my idea of freezing time.Like savouring comfort food.
It hits me hard that a few months down the line,I'll never be able to come back from school and wile away time watch television will never be possible again,and the knowledge hurts.
I stare at dappled sunlight on my ceiling on Saturday mornings,contemplating life in blank verse-
I stare at the sunlight long enough for it to look like the roof is growing wings,I never did enjoy magic realism too much.The point of living seems to be a non-existent dot.A period at the end of a sentence.
Propped up against the cold tile wall,swabbing a wound with a cottonball of Dettol,I hear the sounds announcing the arrival of night,as I think to myself "Is this all?"
And then,as if on second thought,I steal away an old,empty bottle of Musk scented Old Spice."Smell like a man" it reads..The bathroom sure smells like a macho man,then.
Again,I stare at the ceiling till it resembles one of a high-rise one with Fresco paintings,a museum's.
If I could close my eyes and transmograte,I don't know where I would go.All the hours seem just as hollow,the promising possibilities just as distant and lackluster.
I'm a giver-upper,I lose faith faster than the blink of an eye-lid,Don't take me too seriously,
Dear Life.

Chai stained momentum

Elements that unite and untie,
like ribbons that were once fastened bows,
Blocks that bridge gaps and create divides,
at the same time,complexity blows.

Hope that springs as naturally each time,
like words,like poetry and that daydream
you see over and over and over again,
like pain,like liberty,like love.

If love was the parent,hope,
the best friend,she understood,
you never gave up on her,because she stood by,
and watched you cry.

She watched you tumble and fall,and grow,
She helped you get away,and let go,
She is the songbird you wake up to,
The sun set will only play out to her tune.

And when in the quiet of night you close your eyes,
all these elements will blur into specs of soft light,
you will listen carefully and hear that voice repeat,
a distant murmur of a warm memory.

The feeling is memorized by your heart,
as good as your favourite song,
sending goosebumps through your skin,
everytime his lips curl to hold your name.

                                                     

"Arnold Palmer"

Sometimes,I feel that the bits of confetti flying on the streets
 are freer than me,only the aftermath of celebration,
                    they wander aimlessly.
And even if it's only for 52 seconds,with its breathtaking beats,
a song can leave you goose bumps,and for that moment freeze unity.
As we sat there,our thoughts scattered like a sea,

because we found a park bench that fit us perfectly,

I really began to see,what it was to be set free-
Like the little children collecting stray peacock feathers,
like the peacock,itself,serenading the skies,
like the strings of glossy flags waving on streets,
like the downcast clouds that can pour relentlessly.

Freedom feels like a third dimension of its own,
made up of Saturday nights and comforting silences,
Of exploring stories and childhood tragedies,
Words are but an excuse for the sake of
How much love one can hold out.

As our smiles caught the sun,squat in between
the path that curved endlessly-
Sunlit corners inviting our paths to merge,
The light at the end of a tunnel.
In that mirage of an afternoon,we were free,we were free-

Never did I know this is how it would feel.

                                                               

The art of fangirling and Beyond

I'm not a hardcore fangirl,I hate to admit it,but I'm not.I'm surrounded and by them and I love them to bits,I only wish I could admire something with that intensity,but I can't.

Most fangirls aren't taken too seriously,but it's an art,one you might not notice the beauty of until you actually look deeper than a peep.It's an art because art is abstract and free-spirited,because love,in every form,is art.Art is made of love.I think fangirling has existed in many forms before the term was coined,say,all the hipster groupies of music bands in the 60s,or the courtesans of Rome.And time and again,society tends to marginalize them,degrade them.Condemn them as silly because of a choice,just as is the case with consented incest or homosexuality or suicide or even abortion.It's a choice,and we're all entitled to chose how we live.
And those who say it's all just a stint of consumerism,us being unoriginal products of a grand scheme of deception clearly have forgotten what it feels like to love a phenomena beyond themselves,to acknowledge beauty in the mundane.To realise that this could symbolize unity without even knowing a fellow lover's name or existence.Psychology claims that infatuations are so common because unrequited love is easier,but what if we choose unrequited love over and over again because it feels more fulfilling.Because in a broken way,it isn't unrequited at all.Maybe every infatuation is as good as fangirling,because it looks shallow in its depth,deceiving in its appearance,but it is as full of impact as the intention it is born out of.It's complete in its imperfection,which is why fangirling makes sense.I don't owe a justification to anybody,but fangirling deserves to be explained in its true essence.Many may say its no better than an addiction in which pleasure triggers the want,and the chemicals kick in..but it's not always so scientific,so simple.I've always been the dreamy kind,anyway.

                                               
But what I really want to talk about is that which doesn't have a coined term yet,nor a euphemism-
That feeling when you've loved and adored something or someone long enough,that it becomes an ingrained part of your existence.It feels wrong to call it fangirling,when you grow up with it,when it teaches you and changes you and makes you half of who you are.Atleast,makes you believe in something other than yourself.
I don't even know how to convey the feeling...
"You don't fangirl over your favourite blanket,you don't fangirl over your mother,you don't fangirl over childhood home.You don't fangirl over your school."  as a friend of mine says.The love just comes to you,naturally..
I couldn't fangirl over Grey's Anatomy, Taylor Swift,  Dead Poets' Society, Coca-cola,Poetry or Ramona Quimby,if I wanted to.I love them.Because I am them,and they are me.And we're in a relationship that's the hopeful kind of sad,the sad kind of happy.Anyway,I don't want love that's easy.
                                        

Shadow of choice

I opened my eyes to a lucid dream,I stood outside my body,

Thrown out of a car wrecked night,

A pool of blood ominous to the arrival of farewells,

I looked tranquil as slumber slept over me,

Shards of glass strewn on the highway like confetti.

I stood there,watching,never knowing I had a choice,

Not knowing how to chose,how to say if I could stay,

When they waited for me back home,to return that evening.

It came in flashes,like they always said,and I had never cared to pay attention to it,

My mother’s smile,my baby sister calling out my nick name on a summer day,the favourite boxers I wore that morning,that familiar love song on the radio,

My first kiss so gentle on the lips,the endless tears that followed  a broken dream.

I wanted to stay,to be awake,to know I had a choice,a chance

At life,at growing up,at someday getting married,of being a parent,

Of working a real job,of being legally able to drink,of  growing old.

But life,she gave up,gave way,not too long did she wait,

She crumbled and fell face front  in the hour of death.

Night fell silently on the scene,I felt my loved ones cry,

Heard their hearts ache every time they realized,always hitting them harder than the first time.

I left,because I did not know how to stay,I wasn’t given the chance,

Ill-fated time snatched me away in a jiffy,my youth she stole,

"for a moment,then gone."Forever.

They still wait for me,I can still hear them pray with a faith they half lost that night,

I was eighteen,and it was the only goodbye.

Drunk on a moment

You're so buzzed on happiness,you've savoured even the last dregs of it from your paper cup.

The sky looks like a blanket and you could fall asleep on the hard concrete of the terrace to the distant music of trains and planes and sunset sounds of the city slowly coming alive at night.A premeditated act that feels like meditating to tune into the mind's hidden confessions.

You have never been happier,you can never be as young as this ever again,and it makes you nostalgic and happy and worn out all the same.

It's so fucking beautiful,you swear you could cry if it wasn't for the fast pounding of your heart reminding you to live in the now,and here.Who cares what time it is?

Just laugh,just take that breath you've been longing to,live that life of storybooks that seemed only faint desire until now.Real adventures,yes,that's what I'm talking of now.They say noone can measure infinity,maybe they never tried.This is as raw as being a regular,real teenager can ever get.

Just live in this moment of surreal perfection till your heartbeat grows faint and you don't know who's arms you're falling asleep in and you're head is dizzy and you swoon with the contentment of intoxicating beauty.This is life.

Phenomenal

Marilyn Monroe,they say,was a size sixteen,
a number only contributes so much to an identity,
but talking of filling out life's curves and crevices,
there is only so much shame as we allow,
and so much love as we embrace our embodiment of  beauty.

Neither the cheekbones are shallow,nor the collar line,
 Beauty can be beyond the line of sight,
Skindeep was never a scale to measure it,anyway.
Full thighs and muffin top tummies are not insults,
they are claims of self love,of the shape it takes.

The curve of calves might be sensual to some,
just as much as hair that has a life of it's own,
and the slope of  a meandering torso's edges
Hips that could make a room for one,
True charm lies in words that try to hurt none.

A pretty child probably declared that looks din't matter,
They do so,but an apetite for growth is
that which weighs it out,way out of proportion.
An intuition and some wit,teamed with compassion,
is sex appeal enough to covet outside of convention.

                                

One for the long haul

“Family can never mean friendship because friendship is a choice and family isn’t.” a friend of mine recently declared.

And it makes sense to me,having blamed my family for my very existence for a long,long time.My obsession with my family’s dire predilection was so much that I din’t realize that my life could revolve around anything otherwise.Not until a friend pointed out to me that my family being screwed up did necessarily not equal to my life suffering the same consequence,too.I will not lie,it’s not easy.It’s bloody difficult to cope up with dysfunction,I think I still get by with defence mechanisms,and the bottled emotion bottlenecks itself out in rather inappropriate moments.A  host of disorders making you their home.Call me narcissistic,but I like to imagine scenes of my future life being summed up,narrated to a group of people sitting around a table.
Don't know about you,but my family's funny predilection makes it  this way.Apply a base coat of trust issues,gently dab with mild commitment phobia-Ah,does the trick,viola!

And yet,and who knows,maybe because..I have all these freeze frames in my head,of expectations I don't expect.Of hurt I din't know I could feel or was supposed to be feeling.
A penthouse of pent up love,never revealed,waiting to be tapped.

And even today, when I’m angry, agonized, embarrassed, annoyed beyond consolation,it’s my family I first turn to blame.Simply because they’ll take the blame targeted  at them ,partly because they deserve it .I might sound childish and patronizing at the same time,but  even if you chose to ignore your past, you’re only suppressing the pain further,it will find a way out when you’re not paying close attention-acceptance is never as easy as they say.

I might come off as sounding desperate or deranged,but the truth is,I have all these silly things messing up my already neurotic brain when my family decides to go shopping together.Haha.Shopping..
Leo Tolstoy began the book Anna Karenina with the lines “All happy families  are the same,but all unhappy  families are unhappy in their own way.” At first,it seemed absurd,but think about it..how many unhappy families sit around a campfire and talk about their unhappiness? How many  even talk,persay?

I don’t know what’s harder,trying to understand the people you love or giving up on them completely.Whoever  concluded love can exist temporally ,unconditionally has never endured or witnessed a bad marriage,a broken home,a depressed parent,or death .Why even strive for a love that involves no struggle,no fight,no resistance? Maybe they were not even human.To know pain,is to be human. ”That’s the thing about pain,it demands to be felt",as the overused quote from Tfios goes.

Why do I complain then? Because I expect,it’s as human as feeling pain. Time is a test to every relationship,and what if it’s all actually getting better? What if it’s getting much worse?

The most intense electricity manifests itself into a resistance,maybe the same goes for families,maybe the  love itself resists its flow because of intensity.

You know how you listen to a new song and it sounds like nothing you've ever before? Like rainbows in your ears,and then with time,it grows familiar and you still love it,maybe even more?
But never the same way?
That's how I feel about family and family life.
                                                             
                                                      

In vino veritas

The drunkeness of truth,so surreal.Like entering an arena in a medieval contest,the music thumps through the walls,pulsates through the veins of the ground to reach us as we enter.The symphony of noise awaits us.
It looks like half o the life I've known,my past,half of my heart is abuzz in this sea of people.In familiar faces  I look for solace,but I find sadness-the dull glam of nostalgia.I love looking the past in the face-shreds of silence scant between the bustle is the sound that half of the life gone by makes while coming together.
A reunion of memories,the deceit of time,the prospect of an old life like bursts of confetti floating to the ground.
This is what is missing,what I'm missing-the noise they make,the casual coolness of balance,the youth in their blood,the adrenaline rush of it all,the old high I used to know-the vibe of testosterone.It all comes back at once.

Fictitious imperfection

                                               

A beautiful idea,a useless feeling,
A pretty picture,a crappy meaning.
What cannot manifest into much,
we keep out of rational touch.

Love is an art,no absolution,
an abstract one,little logic and laws.
A smell might linger too long in memory,
a sigh might forever hinder you from moving.

Stillness and sound,they seem the same,
but the chalk dust line dividing it?
It drives us beyond  insane.
We wait and we wait,all delusion awaits.

                                                    

Patron Saint of bias

Is discrimination is dead? Only taught about and talked of as a myth?

Does it only dwell in the inklings of books like To Kill A Mockingbird?
It's something we live with,really.Each day,every day,we breathe it in,we breathe in it-suppressing it,the same way discrimination oppresses us.
So little space for merit,it's filled with despair.They say it doesn't make you any better or worse,but it's hard to ignore the hurt.
It's easy to make big talk about living in the present,for the past could be not so pleasant a place to dwell in.
It's easy to pretend to forgive and forget..but has it ever been that easy,really?
Don't you silently blame someone,too? Yourself for having expectations,maybe?
Try to control your life,breaking into tiniest bits,every little pin in your body in place..and yet met with so much disappointment.And yet we expect,because it's human tendency and we all suffer from the affliction of being faithful.
Rush to fall into the snares of delusion all over again,so said Tagore.

The sun in her smile.

It's not your money or your charity the less privileged want,lest I call them that-it's your time and love.

Your smile and your warmth,your questions and your kisses.

A little girl taught me,taught me when I felt I was beyond being taught.

Reminded me what it means to be human,the simple joy of sharing the universe a constant flash across her face,small acts of kindness the catalyst to a better world.

She came as wee as they come,Mary,she called herself-adorned by a pastel pink dress and her best smile,he touched my nose and said my name for the first time,repeating it only with what I would call the recognition that registers as fondness.Like all little girls,she liked to be twirled around and spun,lived for ice-cream,loved to imitate those around and awaited for a ball for her to play with.As she asked for my dupatta,draping it around herself like a cape,I silently swore how her smile could be the superpower for so many people.

When she ran,the breeze ran with her,not against,worries too far away to touch her-love was all she knew,love was the only spirit to touch her.Her giggles resonating through.

She,the little one,that reminded me that benevolence was not restricted to words,it did not require sentences,but mere laughter and actions,the silence of crowds died down,time well spent.

She reminded me of how I found solace in the smell of frothy ice-tea on a rainy afternoon,sitting on a swingset and turning my tongue blue from all the ice lolly slurping and the affectionate hair-ruffling my dad pursued as I drifted off to sleep.The little things that always hold the most power in our hearts,and the most influence in our lives.

Her old brother,looked on dotingly,he was a slightly older reflection of what Mary reminded me of.

And as she kissed my cheek goodbye,I knew I had found an answer I din't know I was even looking out for.

                                                   

Corrugated ambition

"Who do you want to be when you grow up?" is one of the most recurring and significant question every child is asked.Sometimes,this question is posed even before one has learnt to spell their name correctly.
Sometimes,I don't know why it's even asked-the older you grow,the more they try to make you conform to the adjectives they find suitable,why even bother trying to let us learn and derive our own definitions of ourselves?
The chances of beating the system are bleak,you either suck up,succumb or survive.How you manage or don't matters not much.
Would you really blame people for believing in a subculture,then? Or creating one to make an abode out of?
It's ironic to be learning about stereotypes and then learning to label people .They claim it's moral education,what seems to be hypocrisy.It's a free country,why can't I choose what I believe,what I want to read,how I see.
Is this really an education? What about compassion and empathy and forgiveness,about being considerate?
About the freedom to feel,space to be,the power of dreams,liberty? Fear and humiliation can only coerce me to foster hate,hostility and incurable cynicism,not develop a passion for perfection.The frivilous little things you term my ethical misconduct is probably irrelevant in the grand scheme of things,maybe all I'm learning is that being fake and phony gets you by.There is but little space for genuine curiosity.
The problem is that we live to please,it's that you teach to be politically correct instead of  integral concern.
Now,teach me step by step,how to be a lady.Really?Patronsing,I'm not sure,is a sureshot technique.
All the test papers with verbatim answers, they lie,we fail,we fail everyday as the lies fall through efficiently.The education system fails me,as I begin to critically appreciate and analyse it as a poem.
It's all word vomit,memorised mediocrity,such a pity.I roll my eyes,the same way most do when I tell them what I'd like to pursue.

Let me rephrase the question for all the adults who've ever asked me,they've been posing it wrong-

"What kind of a world do you want to help create?"

                                                          

Giveaway

You're the photograph fraying at its edges and sequestered with dust,at the bottom of that old suitcase I forget exists most of the time,anymore.

Stashed away in a secret place,beneath the bed,where I lie,tucked away from the humdrum of conundrum coated hours.

Only quiet thoughts of you remain as I stare vehemently at the wooden slats,growing old and spotty,some scars of a couple decades,traces of tragedy.It's dark down here,and most would term the silence eerie,but it mostly makes up for the musing my words can't emphatically justify.

The clouds refuse to rain on most days,monsoon fails to reign,flailing it's feeble arms in vain,and the umbrellas suffer oblivion,just as teenagers suffer identity crises.Over dramatizing days,kneading them into dough that shall never bake,thoughts of you- the only caffeine that keeps me up at night.

                                                                  

                                                                         

                                                               

A strong word

Who is hatred? Where was she born?
Has she always dwelt in our hearts or is she a creation of our own?
How does she manifest herself into acts of malevolence?
Does she spring from a bad past,a deficient childhood,the lack of love or the absence of solidarity?
Does she house herself dormantly within the walls of tolerance and seep out of the crevices created by pain,
or is tolerance just a mask unveiled when hatred is revealed?
Is she coupled with love,the antidote? Or is she just the all-overpowering,all encompassing drive of action?
Is she a spur of the moment rant or is she a cloud of negativity omnipresent?Is she a defence mechanism,denial,repression,blah blah?
Does she feed on familiarity or does indifferent ignorance make her the fiend she is?
Is she the fiend at all,or is it you and me?
Hatred is a teenage identity crisis,"who am I?"
                                                       

Charmed,I'm sure.

"And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

-The Great Gatsby

There's just another frazzling charm about big dance parties-
Walking into blinding darkness,flashing lights,mirror mazes and groovy chandeliers.A picture here,snap snap,a million shutters going off like paparrazi,
Hustling to muffled music in the quiet washroom,skirts twirling in time with the music,
Smiling mid-dance at people you don't know too well,because there are no formalities,you really feel the heartbeat of the dancefloor pulsing through all of you.All of a sudden you dance even if you're a shy dancer and such is the vibe,the pulse of the lively bout.
Frantic phonecalls made in attempts to stall exiting the grandeur of it all,away from the everyday,away from effort-
All only you to leave you wit post-partum depression form the event of extravagance and in snares of hope for the return of it all.

Nuclear abberations

The inkling between dusk and night,when the flowers all look too pretty not to be painted fiction against the sky?
The death of the beat in a song,before it hits a high that reverberates?
The instant after you put your pen down in a paper and look at your destiny staring back at you,frozen for that second?
That's what you live for.
It's crazy how the most beautiful things don't take credit for their beauty.Hah,they don't even realise they're being created in a moment of pure inspiration,bright flashes and innocent effort.Unaware that they will ever resemble the grandeur of what would be termed art.
And why,irony is the wallpaper theme in the room of uncertainity.Yes,irony is a metaphor of life.
This,that,everything is iconic as John Huges 80's teen movies that came of age-All you believe is in a metaphor.

Mid week miseries.

She looks like love

"She speaks in smiles,and smells like crushed petals.
The language of her efforts speaks of pleasure and reflected pain,but never pressure.
She whips up her thoughts until they can be piped out like whipped cream icing and makes you believe in dreams.She would always be an investment for one's happiness,and an asset to one's  contentment.As it usually so happens,until you're in love,you never realise it's about choosing to give rather that picking to be given your share of it.She who showed me the beauty of it all,the sparks that make the world shine on,is the one who breathes life into my fire,ignites the dormant volcano of desire within-is my perspective of being loved,too.It's she,only her,that has me with all of my heart-and it's she that is the mark my world is most imprinted with.She's the sun in the centre of the crayon caricature I made as a kid and it feels like holding light,itself in your arms when she's in them,she looks like love."

The Last first time

Desks with graffiti carved out all over the tops,names and dates and places I will never know,favourites and lyrics the only form of familiarity.Looking down at it feels like describing unity,being somehow strangely connected to every kid who once sat here,carving out their niche in the world,leaving traces the future would fail to recognise,and time would acknowledge,anyway.
The last first day of school you'll ever have,they all said,and the finality of it all hits home like a hurricane.
The courtyard is sprawling with little girls walking hand-in-hand with their parents to their first ever day of school,the entirely sentimental scene of taking the first school photographs occupies these young parents and in the midst of all of it,I'm not sure how to feel.
Calling the school experience bittersweet would be too much of an understatement,really and like a friend of mine says "School is our normal." Call it sucky,sleep through most of it,or wake up with a smile because you have a home,a niche,that nurtures your heart,lets you be,it's all too overwhelming to even digest that it's going to slip away soon,and you're going to be out of school and it feels more like being school-less,like some sort of abandonment that orphans you of a home.
I've loved school and I've detested it,the same.I've been the kid who lives only to see another day of school and also the kid who is so sickened by it,they need a break to create breathing space.It's the place that's so full of love and so full of crap,and you put up with all of it because you don't know better and you don't really want to.
I wish I could deduce a definition for all that runs through my mind at the moment,but after all I sum up,the truth is,I'm only in deep denial of accepting change,never been a fan,anyway.For once,though,things don't seem to be falling apart,aspects of my life seem to be adhesive to each other,making so much sense that I seem to be waiting for the next teenage catastrophe around the corner.Oh well,here's the year rolling out like blue hills in the distance,only slowly rolling into sight.

Crtl+Esc

ESC (Song that inspired the post.)

Zombies,trampling the dirt they have forgotten is called Earth.

This might as well be a post-apocalyptic movie marathon.But hey,guess what?

Those have more thrills and twists than the graph of my days can be plotted at.

A letter takes up the space inside my head,a letter never posted,

a letter unsaid,one never read.

So much is the power of a letter I want to address into space,if only one piece of writing would be enough 

for it all..that people cease to count as much as they used to.

Weak -Daybreak in the peak of monsoons,or leftover tea,this is it-

The last cup,of what I thought were bonds for life,turns out I'd only been blissfully ignoring the bottom of the cup I was drinking out of.

Sometimes,just sometimes,there is no cup,just strings like pizza cheese,holding up things that don't need to be helped.They spring like weeds between rocky slabs of concrete,no need for fostering,no use for fawning over.They survive all right without award or adulation.

Okay,I need to stop.Too much metaphor,too much cheese here.

See what I mean? I never took it seriously,when people remarked with half a smile,I'm getting older.

I feel you,all of you.

I wish for us all,for there to be an Esc key.

Hoping it wouldn't take us so long to have realised that what mattered and what din't isn't the same as what will.

Just a daydream away.

The sides of you that are parts of me,
Snow angel shadows of our dreams.
It's where we meet,first meet,
Burning bright as memory.

The blanket of stars and  cups of tea,
Monsoons of the mind unleash.
It's when we first felt,felt free,
Mapping out all the irony.

The shards of hope and crescents of hurt,
cut deep into wounds we couldn't see.
It's how we first knew,knew love,
sitting in your balcony.

The books our words could fill out,
dwelt deep in the grooves of discovery.
It's what me meant,meant to be,
Mettle of malleable metal cast across adversity.

Ode to a Submarine Sandwich

"You don't need to click a photograph of that," she said "not all beautiful things need to be captured by a camera lens,framed into definition,sometimes,your eyes are enough to hold all the beauty still,comfort it like a crying person in your arms."
The other woman,mucho hipsta-Pastel striped scarf teamed up with black shorts and T-shirt,short cropped hair,thick black frames-meekly nodded in reply,as she took another giant bite off her sandwich.It usually so happens,when you notice a pair of people,it always appears as if one does the majority of the talking and the other listens.I wonder if strangers took me to be the listener,I wonder if strangers really notice.Yes,I'm a bit creepy like that,analyzing the prospect of strangers analyzing me exciting me and all that.
And when I heard this almost profound statement,in my warm,friendly idea of urban utopia-Home away from home-Subway,it took me to another place.
That's the thing about unintentionally eavesdropping on conversations out of sheer curiosity,there are snips and bits you catch on and they always take you back to a memory you din't know you'd created,and revisiting a memory while hearing a remark about memory-loop within a loop,close to déjà vu.
Conversations like these remind me of the estranged quiet of sunsets on apartment terraces,blowing bubbles,blowing away a childhood,the evening prayers-the perfect music to the muse of the breeze-I swear this memory could count as a painting.The memory of not wanting to leave.
The nostalgia entangled with excitement-the reluctance to grow up juxtaposed with the adventure that awaits,the hurt of being chosen over,the triumph of learning to say no,to stop,the cuts left from jagged goodbyes,the rush of power that only comes from learning not to stop,beating the odds.Beat,beat-like eggs for an omelette,like a heart reminding itself to beat.
"Subway reminds me of Friends" my sister quips in-Yes,I agree,always takes me back to happy places I forgot-times of sharing giant cookies,while over the small things,that adda you go to before and after-a movie,a birthday party,school,when your hungry and you're not,when you're fourteen and not,and everything you feel in between.
"No" she says "The show,friends.Brick walls,and it's emptiness,and the intimacy of it all.The 90's.The big red Open sign,an invitation to life's neverending reverie."
Yes,strange woman who I don't know,you don't need to keep reminding yourself of anything,no keepsakes required for flashes of all things best-and thanks for reminding me,that's why you're never alone.Not with all this beauty in the world,to be cherished.Even if you are,you have havens,homes away from home,where loneliness is a common syndrome.And just for a minute,all of it can give you beatific bliss.

Stop to smell that rose.

When was the last time a song made you feel?
The last time a smile warmed your heart?
A sentence made you smile?
The beauty of a word baffled you?
A child made you think?
A memory lit up your eyes?

Smells like summer love.

A childhood that seems so distant,I could have dreamed it all up,all the while.
So different were those summers,spent on rusty cots that creaked under the weight of innocence and ignorance.
Of swimming down streams,tickled by shoals of tiny fish,fear trickled by,feet planted firm underwater.
Old nails that stuck out of wooden beds,scraping knees clean of flesh,just one tetanus shot away from pain.

Is it the same? Is it even of any resemblance,the same life? So turned over by time,turncoat nature of thoughts.
I,who is love with boxes of preserved memories-believes that the past before the keepsakes was but a dream?
I still can barely hold up a conversation.And love is till the sight of a swimming pool.
But the little things,the longings of childish intricacy,the language that befuddles the older-
do they just die inside our walls,vanish,disappear into the acceptance of reality?

I press flowers into pages between books,like slices of forgotten dreams pressed into semi-sleep.
And the same sad song plays back at me,when I look into the sometimes green,sometimes amber eyes of my big,gentle dog.
Blowing candles out for someone else,like on a birthday cake,but wishing for something beyond possibility,a wish too late.
Invest in the bizzare.Invite the quiet inside me.The only answer there can be before the strength to grow up prevails. Being understood  is as hard as it is to understand.
And I'll be waiting again,counting drops of summer rain till the end.

The eyes which seek.

 

Look at those Mary Jane school shoes,polished to perfection they sit atop the shoestand you once used to not reach up to.It's only your last year of school,the last span of being in these shoes.Stepping out of them,nothing less than a ritual or rite of passage.
It's only half your size now,but there are so many rules.So many directives to follow for good.And the knowledge that there will always be someone capable of abusing their power over you,inside,you'll always be that six year old.
Nobody told you there could be a difference between the kinds of human touch,nobody gave you a prerogative of  you what those around you could be capable of.It was always a lonely front you lived through,a one-girl battle.
Now they draw parallels,sure set conventions to conform to. No conversations,only rules to live by,adhere to,always.
All these rules,because people will look at you.What are you doing,stupid girl,people will look at you..You look inappropriate..it's the worst thing a human can be,exceeds all ill-virtues,you know? They'll call you insolent and they'll call you an embarrassment.Because you're the eye and object of desire to society by virtue of being female,you're a lesser being.But being chauvinistic male is completely forgivable?
Do you even see the irony in the statement "Asking for unwanted attention" ?
No bones,no skin,no pulse,no hope,no love,no life.Only struggle,survival,walls,and veils and what next? shrouds,perhaps?
I know you want to protect me,save my dignity.But how viable is your approach,this insanity of  hiding behind layers of insecurity to avoid indignity.Is denying yourself a personality getting any closer to achieving a true sense of life and liberty?
Ruinous to our culture you say,liberty,yeah?  You'll call me disrespectful,but culture evolves.It grows and accepts,because diversity,permutations and combinations is nature's way of creating life,itself.Why shouldn't it be a basic human right to grow out into our personalities? I mean,in ground application,not just an inked statement set pretty on paper.
At sixteen,you were supposed to develop a friendship with me not a hostility.A nurturing,conducive environment instead of the cold cover to shelter my wisdom from branching out-what good is it to emotionally isolate me and then condone the evils of society? It's true that the world and it's ways would hurt me,and you were only trying stop it-but it's inevitable and in attempts of trying to stop it's force hurling at me,instead of uneasy acceptance,my thoughts got tainted before they transformed into ideals.

You were six,who's fault was it really? He knew exactly what he was doing,you were too naive.Your parents still haven't told you anything,and like to keep you naive.And then they feel most disrespected at the lack of closure,the truths you never tell them.
They tell you little bits now,all so useless,you wish you could tell them.You were six and it was a classroom.She was nine and it was the neighbourhood.Another was five and it was the confines of her home.
Where were they then? The morally self-righteous? The protectors of decadance,that claim to be doing their part? How did they leave you alone,isolate you emotionally?
So unapproachable,that you couldn't broach them with the truth of cruelty.
You knew,even at six,you knew,like you know now.Preccocious children.They would respond with disbelief,you would call it shock but it's ignorance,really.
They love you,but time doesn't permit them to,neither does the structure of society.You love them,unabashed,but they will never see the story inside you,the lines connecting the pain,a crumpled ball,doubled up in your chest.
 They won't be there,no,not when you tell someone for the first time,finally sharing the feeling of needles pulled out of your pin-cushion heart.No,even then they'll term you wild and rebellious,they'll never see the layers of pain that casted you out of social circles long before they should have existed.They will try to preserve dregs of your innocence as if they ever had a clue,clueless about the story echoing melancholy grown cold inside your mind,long before you know anything about anything.Trust propelled like string puppets,put up a show, hollow and dark.
Some day,just some day,you might stumble across your kind.And you'll let the pain flow,let in rain inside a closed room.And the bell curve will go up then,you might feel like more than a statistic,more than a nameless little girl.
You'll survive and fight the way you deserve to,the way you were never taught you could.The black Mary Janes will grow into skeletons in your closet,you'll wear them out...push them into oblivion,and you'll dare to dream of a world grassy enough to tread on barefoot.

Paperback memories

She met me at cafe,
I met her dreams halfway.
A green tank top and
half a cup of green tea ,
is all it took to fall in love with me.

 She walked in with drizzle in her hair,
I chased some of her fears away.
Frosty circle stains from tall glass bottoms,
cold coffee sending chills down my throat,
is all it took to fall for this moment.

 She put herself into an easy back chair,
I sat across her in silence shared.
Clammy palms and cold feet,
tickled breath of impatience on my neck,
is all it took to make the clock beat my heartbeat.

She spared me a smile with her spearmint eyes,
I let my lips break into one in exchange.
The knowledge of sour childhoods and unfettered futures,
much resembling my favourite paperback,
is all it will take to make these walls fall to bits.

 

Date a girl who likes ketchup

 
(The fault in our ketchup lovers.)

Date a girl who likes Ketchup.Date the girl who always asks for extra sachets of ketchup.She will refuse to touch the food unless there is ketchup included in the meal in one or the other form.Date a girl who will add ketchup to her ketchup,and not complain about the food as long as there's ketchup at the table.

Find a girl who likes ketchup.You'll know that she does because she always has extra sachets of ketchup stacked up in her fridge.She's the one who keeps eying the ketchup bottle lovingly,waiting to get her hands on it.You see the weird chick who's licking the ketchup off the edge of the plate while waiting for the food to arrive at a restaurant?That's your true ketchup lover.They can never refrain from reaching out for the nearest source of ketchup available.

She's the girl who will ask for ketchup,and you'll see her eyes light up when she is offered with it before she has to ask.If you take a peep into her plate,you can see the excessive amounts of ketchup coating the substantial food groups.Sit down.She won't talk to you at first because she's so engrossed in making the most of the ketchup experience,but she might stare at you and then your fingers to see if you've been eating ketchup too.

Ask her if she wants more ketchup.Ask her if you can get her a particular brand.Pass her the ketchup bottle before she asks for it.Use the ketchup-y pick-up line about her being saucier than ketchup.She'll laugh it away but also find it adorable,the same.

Let her know what you actually think of Heinz.See if she prefers Maggi over Kissan or DelMonte.If she likes the squeezable plastic bottles over the glass ones.Understand that she knows that "ketchup" was derived from an ancient Chinese delicacy that had no tomatoes,and lots of fish and she still refers to it as "catsup" sometimes or she's just saying that to sound sophisticated.Ask her if she likes homemade ketchup.

It's easy to date a girl who likes ketchup.Gift her a bottle of ketchup wrapped in a pretty red ribbon on New Years' Eve,gift her sachets of ketchup with a note tucked in between on Christmas.Make her homemade ketchup on her birthday,lick the ketchup clean off your fingers together in unison.On a bad day,a ketchup smiley on her food is all it might take to make her smile.The one-liner about ketchup being a smoothy will always be sure to crack her up.It's more than she'll be asking for.Let her know that you understand that ketchup is love.She will never compare you to random people,because she knows that all brands of ketchup have their own distinct taste and nothing can measure up to her favourite.

 Fail her.She'll understand if she understands that the consistency of ketchup at different levels of the bottle cannot be the same.She knows sometimes you have to jolt the bottle harder,squeeze the sachets till the last dollop is out.

She will share her ketchup with you,served with her secrets.To her,it equals sharing half of herself and the bottle will now run out in less than two weeks.She will let you hold her when she cries,as you get her a bowl of ketchup to make her feel better.You will propose to her with a ring hidden in the fridge  placed next to sachets of ketchup from your last romantic take-out dinner.Her face will turn the  shade of ketchup at the prospect.
There will be way too much ketchup at your wedding.She will introduce to all the kinds of ketchup known to her and you will slow dance to the ketchup song.One day,she will make you homemade ketchup.That's when you know she's the one you grow old together with."Ketchup" will be the term of free-flowing endearment at your house,to show affection towards you and the kids.It'll grow on you.She'll maybe make you acquire a taste for ketchup,even.Her sense of humor will include pretending she's a ketchup zombie or faking injury with ketchup.You'll find it endearing,as you fall in love with the way she falls asleep,like ketchup out of a bottle,slowly and then,all at once."Ketchup? Ketchup. Maybe Ketchup will be your Always." (Tfios adding too much definition to life and all.)
You'll have a word that sums up "I love you" ,but so much less cliche and so much easier to mouth.All you'll have to say is "ketchup."

Date a girl who likes ketchup,because you deserve it.You deserve a girl who finds solace in the simple pleasures of life,such as ketchup and has mastered the art of bottling up fears,but letting them flow free before the expiry date.If you can only give her the monotony of mayonise,hung curd,barebeque dip,terriyaki sauce,mustard,ranch and salad dressing,you're better off alone.If you want to revel in the tangy aftertaste of every new adventure along with undying devotion for lycopene and love,date a girl who likes ketchup.