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.