(Re)intro

“I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru…I am sinner,
I am saint. I am the beloved and the
Betrayed. I have no joys that are not yours, no
Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I.”

from “An introduction” by Kamala Das

————

Maybe not all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, Mr. Tolstoy. Perhaps they are left on their own to deal with it, is all.

I’ve worn the same silver flower nose pin for so long , sometimes it just seems to have grown into a part of me. Almost as if it were always there, like some groove or ridge on my skin. Sometimes, my finger brushes against it accidentally and I remember it like an old secret I wear on myself. One that is visible to all but unspoken of, unaddressed. It’s like that secret sigh of relief one feels, finding your own reality hidden in a sentence or a moment in a book.

I dream of penning down biting social satire, or even better, political. Instead, I find myself biting down on my own tongue. Temple built,corona kills,Kashmir razed, delhi burning, feminists rage, workers of the world unite, revolutionaries revolutionize, dalit lives matter. My weary words rest their heavy heads on beaten down pillows at night, blinking back at the sleepless ceiling. Kya farq padta hai? What unfeeling monster have I become…indifferent, apathetic. Floating by each day in an island of isolating self-absorption.

Even this act of writing is selfish, not one of love. Not of creation in a real sense. Not giving as it should be. There’s so much me in it, quite literally. Just as there is scepticism of the personal and subjective, i feel sceptical of my motives. All my ideals have been broken into, a bank robbery in broad daylight. Some blame it on alienation in an advanced capitalist age. Some, depression. I feel like Fitzgerald himself in the short story ‘Crack Up’, a portrait of his psyche unravelling in the roaring ’20s…mine,a desecrated coconut in the 2020s. Waiting for the wall street crash of this century entailing fascism to take over in many of its forms ( which it has anyway lol). Guess this is the point at which we speak on the futility of war.

Instead,I’ll talk about the futility of family. I’ve repressed things that are beyond fixing. The violence of the oppressed is always justified, that of the oppressor is not. Does the shroud of silence ever lift?  Power corrupts and absolute power…I don’t have the will to finish my sentences. I’ll trail off mid-sentence, retracting into my cultured  petri-dish of privilege. The world a festering wound, better left unaddressed. Protect my honour, I will and it will keep me safe so long. My father doesn’t approve of  nose piercings because it is a cheap giveaway for the lack of respectability apparently. Even your grandmothers don’t have pierced noses or tattoos, genteel women don’t. I long to be nobody and nowhere,  just the vast emptiness of words.I still don’t know how to write conclusions, or even beginnings for that matter. 

 

Why is the prosaic not good enough?

Papery pink flowers frame the rock formations characteristic of this city,

they fall,all over the place,isn't that the phrase so many people use to describe their lives.
I stare at the stale air that hovers over empty tables in a cafe,so romanticized like the streets side ones of Paris but these have unlit yellow lamps above them,because it's 2 pm and the sunlight is too bright and a couple of bougainvilleas peek from behind the green cane shutter ,greeted by a clump of bamboos.
I wait for an almost something,nothing at all.It's not the butterfliesinyourstomach kind of anticipation,it's different this time and as I wait for my iced tea to arrive,it's not the voice I was waiting to hear that I'm met with.It's almost as if it doesn't exist,it's just make belief.

Laaltin

One cup of coffee gone cold,

then,a couple more

A forgotten summer,

 and a decade past

Glass walls in muesums 

and glass walls in shopping malls

An urgent desire to dive headlong

into love,

a consistent disinterest swarming around it

From understanding one ideology

to another,to making sense of none at all

People I've forgotten exist,

words I've forgotten exist,

half written poems,

fantasies grown flaccid before climax.

Phallic symbols I need to stop seeing,

all the labels that musn't weigh me down.

Power cuts and kerosene lamps,

musquitoes and string cots on a terrace

the ice candy man's bell in the 

sweltering street,

nostalgia with its memories 

sticking out like old screws

in a wooden bed by a window,

where a silver haired woman

sits,shivering;more with excitement

at winning a card game,than her palsy.

The courtyard well with dead 

magura fish at it's bottom,

they swam exactly for a day.

Laburnums

When I first moved to this city,about a year ago,it was a little past peak summer and the laburnums were fading out of sight.

It's peak summer now,and they are in full bloom in the courtyard outside my room when I wake up on an obscure May morning.They're so familiar,so close,unlike the ones I used to look at from behind car windows while we drove through streets whose names I did not know.
I pack my life into a cardboard carton,seal it tight with space just enough for whatever will happen in the year to come.Staring at the dusty duct tape shadows that remain on the wall above my bed ,after I've taken my posters down, fills me with a profound sense of loss for a second.

Like the laburnums,
so much else has blossomed,
blossomed with metaphor,
meaning blooming
like annotations around a poem,
handwritten interpretations unfurling
like petals out of printed verse.
So much has withered,as well,
so many friends,so many dreams,
so many notions that used to be.
Black and white binaries aren't for me,
I understand neither extreme,
I've learnt that to let something grow
you have to inevitably let something go,
a friend once said to me,
"you grew,they withdrew."
if you love,you will love to know that you'll lose,
if you don't lose,how will you ever find anything you
love with that intensity again?

You're the laburnums,
firework,transient spark,
chandelier,crystal clear,
reflective,fragile,sharp.
But poster-less,whitewashed walls
and flower-less green foliage
can only mask
that you've been there,
not that you'll arrive again.

Wonder

What I'm most afraid of is waking up one morning,aged fifty five,having lost all sense of wonder for the day ahead of me or the world that awaits me with all there's left to learn.I'm hardly an adult now and on some mornings,I already wake up having no sense of wonder for what the day could unveil or the people I could meet.I know everyday cannot be exciting and monotony is an inevitable part of life,there's only so far away you can chase it before it creeps back in,in one form or another.

I'm not afraid of ageing or monotony,I'm not even afraid of mediocrity..these are only the limited and limiting constructs of a hypercompetetive society.

I am afraid of losing that phenomena,

where you discover a new word and then you see it everywhere-it pops up on your social media and on television drams or when you notice how fascinating someone is for the first time,and then,they seem to be everywhere you look.Almost serendipitous,like writing a poem about a moth and coming across a poem you wrote about a moth three years ago,based on a memory about moths from when you were three years old and you tried to contemplate the wonder of life and death and all the unanswerable questions fit in between infinity,at the sight of a lifeless moth lying on the floor.Wondering if you should be happy or sad at the sight of the moth.Watching the marching band,with white hats outside the window and car with flowers cello taped all over it,even its windscreen,wondering what the music meant or what the beat of the drums taped glittery blue,meant.Finding old posts of moths on instagram.A chain reaction,butterfly effect from one thing that you are fascinated by.

I want to never forget what it feels like to look at someone and wonder how it would be to kiss them or hold their hands,I never want to stop looking for little whirlwind galaxies of water draining from a bathtub.

It does not matter what this wonder materialises into,that's the best part,it's not about the materiality or even some kind of self-rewarding,self-actualised concept..it's just that

the childlike wonder of finding a pink bead in your shoes,or a shard of broken bangle or teacup in the sand of the playground,pocketing a feather or a dandelion blown by the wind,watching a lime green caterpillar in the corner of the swimming pool or hearing the word "kind" for the first time and imagining what it must mean,something like a kite,one of those things that fly? It must be blue in colour,it sounds like a blue glass window or the sky.

Sometimes,not even a physical treasure to stow away in a box,just a string of thoughts all woven into each other like a intricate lace labyrinth.

Wondering is just as important as knowing and if language is symbolic of how me construct our worlds,we're learning to wonder through words every moment,although we've been wondering from before we had the words,for we've had symbols as thoughts to articulate wonder with.

I'm afraid the more I know,the more I might kill wonder and forget that there's infinite realities I cannot fathom.On some starry nights,I forget to look at stars and feel,not insignificant or inconsequential,but infinitesimal and this worries me.I don't want to swallow yellow paint of being consumed by everything I know,even when it consumes me like an ocean wave I didn't anticipate because there are almond blossoms waiting to be awe struck over and written about with wonder.

Mustang

The loneliness of being young is often forgotten,

left behind by adults who change in ways usually
not noticed until the change is concrete.
We become better at deluding ourselves
into believing we aren't as lonely
and we buy into the romantic notions
of youth,promised to us by pop culture,
the market capitalizing on the glory days
of coming of age.
Mustang means stray animals
in Spanish,I suppose
and that's what being in college is like.
I realise that home is a construct,
well,everything is,
but it's the only construct where
clothes smell of comfort (the fabric conditioner,you know?)
and potatoes and drumsticks are cooked in ground mustard,
rooms smell like dogs have been around the place,
it's never too late to catch a sunset in solitude
and it's never problematic to take a nap without worrying
about the wasted hours,
Home,with always enough,endless supply
of green tea and coffee stocked up in the larder.
I once read somewhere that home is a person
but that was young adult fiction,idealistic,
read owl-eyed at 4 in the morning,
(In my defence,I still really like YA)
I'd stayed up all night to chase away the mystery of teenage romance,
struggled to stay awake for school the next morning.
I'm twenty now and home is not a person to,me,
it is people,yes,but not always the same people
that I go back to.
When I first moved out of a place I'd lived in
almost
literally my entire life,my friend said
Home is creature comforts,
he was right,but I felt it was more,
it was nostalgia,it's a permanent abode
in imagination,
Memory
and more.
Maybe I'm just as destitute as the hostel cats
and campus dogs,
living on the leftover mercies of human beings,
getting by on the affection they anticipate.
 I watched people blur into each other's
movements,from the distance,on a grassy slope,
next to an oversized Labrador,Ash,
he recognised me even on days
I hid a sob fest behind a bathroom stall,
he soothed me with his presence,
 making the telltale red nose from crying ,vanish.
Does that mean I'm trying to be stronger?
I'm better at hiding my weaknesses now?
I don't know.
I wanted to be alone,get some fresh air,
clear my head,breathe,
go on a walk.
That's the recipe to feel better,
everyone says,
but it's in these moments
when you realise
how illusive totality is,
how impermanent home
or anything wholesome is.
Maybe being older is lonely too,
just being lonely around more people,
a far cry from going home to somewhere
you belong.
For now,I'll just roll down this grassy slope
and watch the sky become the grass become the
sky again,
till I'm dizzy and the blood rushes to my head
and I'm laughing so hard,I can't breathe.
I will try not to think about how itchy the grass is
and the bath that will entail as a result of this
spontaneous exercise in the spectacular now,
There are only moments in a day,
nothing more,nothing less.

Walled City

Within the walls of a walled city,

my thoughts grow invisible wings ,
born inside a closet sized,shoebox like room.
They struggle to take flight,
stumble and fall,some taste the dirt forever.
A cat we called Tilly Kettle,
as the namesake of a modern artist,
often purrs in front of my door,
I don't know what it is that she's been asking for,
it seems a lot like all the things I struggle to
say.
Labyrinthine is the structure
of most things I've understood
 cannot be fought.
I'm not yet sure it's impossible
to transcend these concentric circles
of creation,perpetuated
through walls we've build
because humans love
to categorize,classify,stick people and objects
into glass jars as specimens,alike.
Ideas might be just as futile in their ambitions
as Icarus,
or the renaissance man,
their waxen wings might not endure
the sun's strength,
or the ocean's might,
within walls born,within walls
predestined to crash and burn
like stars,
just as distant
and alluring.
We spend our entire lives
moving from one room to another,
walls within walls,
familiar we make them,
the ones we sit on,some we even cross
over,
only to realise we'd have to leave
 them behind anyway
to meet new walls.
Within the walls of the walled city,
I've come to learn to let go,too
not only to look beyond walls
but to make peace with living
within some of them,
as long as I can paint them in shades
of grey,
grey is not just monotony,it's comfort,
it's not just uncertainty,it's exploration.
Some of us might never break down
walls in this lifetime,
but it's enough,sometimes,
to see them as more
than mere walls,
paint them in shades other than the
standard off white
and black.

Faiz,Fish and Feminism.

In no particular order,
like stream of consciousness writing,

like the endless afternoons and 2 AM silences,

Shared,as we sprawled ourselves,

under the ceiling fan

laid bare our most intimate ambiguities

 in the summer.

Played a poem on loop,

it rendered out a refrain that stuck with us,

it claimed to promise us a time in the future,

when we'll get to witness the

mountains of injustice that loom over us

blowing away with the wind like cotton wool.

I don't know how revolutions work,

but I've walked with fleecy cotton wool,

floating by my feet on a late summer evening,

lingering on the street,final attempts at shadowing

the seed from losing it's sheath.

I've seen dandelions losing their feathery tufts,

in the pattern that was printed on 

my sociology professor's cotton shirt,

like the plausible cover of a novel.

I realise that all those that are vulnerable 

are endangered because they're frail,but this very

vulnerability will become strength,

letting go of inhibitions,

even if it means letting go of the fleecy 

blanket they wear.

Her lapel has a tiny brooch,she wears a different one

everyday,today,it's a fish,mustard and red,

it's eye staring down at me,

like those fish filled with swirls of Madhubani strokes,

ubiquitous in folk art.

Is it a hilsa,a flying fish?
Is it koi,the fish that symbolize luck,
the ones my roomate yelped with excitement
at,the first fish she ever saw,
 realised the childhood dream she dreamt,
having grown up up in a desert.
Is it one of those tiny river fish,
I swam with in my father's hometown,
wild and free and slimy,they tickled my little feet.
Is it the kind of fish my sister grills

with basil,

its tender flesh dissolving on one's tongue

like a strip

of acid,

at least that's how they show it in the movies.

Look for love,

and you look for love,

but it's not where you're looking for it.

It's not about others

loving you,

or how much you deserve,

for that is just an age old way

of preserving

"who should be loved,how and how much",

pickled with salt,heirarchies and whatnot.
Often,in your confessional mode
you mete out poems
about love that is not a commodity,
about people that aren't commodified.

Saltwater fish swim in doodled seas,

sketched beside annotated texts,

clouds of cotton tumble past time,

what is sublime?

Look at the moon,I'm dead

Said my friend,so burnt out from the consumption of a neon culture we didn’t necessarily create for ourselves,but perpetuate,nonetheless.The moon looked huge from where we sat.We sat on some rocks,with a vantage view of the rows of shingle roofed houses we’ve lived among for a few years now.All of them aligned,identical,except for the different number plates behind the white picket fences guarding the well  manicured gardens.Paths for people to take evening walks on,but ones not meant for dogs to “dirty”.Are any of us human beings or just parts of a well oiled machine? Stepford wives and Complan children.

We munch on green apples dipped in peanut butter,sip on Caprisun,snack we think we’re consuming.In earnest,it’s the market consuming us.

It is a dog eat dog world,they say.

I dream of forests and wake up wondering why I only visit shopping malls instead of these seas of green I see only in a state of semi-consciousness.

Shadow Of An Almost

Faiz wrote,
and I echo,
When the scars that missing you has left behind, begin to heal,
I begin to find reasons to miss you again.
I let you go,
because that's what loving means,right?
Every word of small talk
I say to you ,silently screams,
of wanting something I never had,
but dreamt of every night when I fell sleep,
every time you said goodnight to me.
I keep waiting for you to say goodnight
again.
What hurts,
is not that you've found somebody else.
What hurts is that you took half
of my hope away with you,too.
I used to tell you,
of how I've always wanted to know
what being loved without asking
for it,feels like,
but you forgot,
forgot to see the pain I'd let you into
the realities of my most horrific dreams.

Colour schemes

My sister always told me

She disliked photographs

In black and white,

colour looks better,she said.

I arrive home at midnight,

From the flight,I watched the city

Scattered like purple pixie dust,

Mocking the stars,mirroring them.

Woke father up,he looked haggard

In his royal blue kurta,

creased with fatigue,worry lines.

He enveloped me,sealed a kiss on my forehead.

I’ve been trying to find home

In the off white drapes

And aquamarine couches in the old age home,

Pastel has always seemed inviting to me.

I search for home,cling to the idea of it

In the soft silver hair of Nanna,

In the moist banana loaf she cuts up carefully

For us, the mellow lamp lit beside her.

I speak in fragments,it’s all there’s left

Of home,some term this post modern,

I call it mere poetry,when we watch yellow 

leaves fall for the summer,nature’s confetti.

 We laugh,as we savour our bubblegum jelly

Ice lollies,losing colour to our tongues,

turning blue.Colour looks better,she said,

I look for hope in colour schemes.

The absence of poetry

The words I took refuge in are no longer in plenty,I made it to the college I dreamt of but it's been reduced to a facade for me,someone I was in love with picked another person and there remains even no shadow of small talk anymore.

It would suffice to say this year was one of experiences because that's what you get when you don't get what you thought you would.I watched the sun sink behind rooftops last evening,the second last time this year,it looked like it left watercolour shadows on the clouds,while it skidded its way to sleep.Blackbirds and crows flew homeward,encompassed by a sense of direction that guided them home at dusk,one I was envious of.I've almost forgotten how sunsets meant a sense of comfort to me.

I moved to another city,one full of strangers,one where I'm a stranger,myself and although people tell me roots can change,the sense of home can shift,I can only wonder if it will.

There is no poetic justice about growing older,only dramatic irony.There is no emptier feeling that not having the power of the very words that led you exactly where you wanted to be.What point or purpose does an achievement have if it takes away what you believed in.My friend says we could shout from rooftops,what we've learnt about ourselves.We could wear the realisation that we're too romantic for a nine to five working week like a badge of honour,but it wouldn't change a thing other than the fact that we're not soft enough to be moulded,not cut out to fit in and only we can try working our way around it.

Change is the abundance of verse,which does not mention ketchup,refer to books read and yet there is space for new friends to watch stars under a blanket on Friday nights with and ones who read out poetry on park benches,over cheap Chinese food.There is a body made up of the discovery that for every image we know,there is an alternative reality,there are people who will give you roses to press in between in pages of a journal,old friends who will make you forget all that seems uncertain,

I've lived most of this year rationed out in weeks and months,semesters and holidays,let downs and heartbreaks,Yet,I'm here to hope,to believe there's better.
I guess I've done a bit of growing up this year,the most evident life skill I've picked up is to shut people out (quite literally),hole myself in a closet of a room all weekend,cramped in with my apprehensions.All that once seemed pretty no longer does and I don't know how to feel about it but in the absence of poetry,I've been looking for an abundance of refrains.

Sitting here in the underbelly of a wave,for I have swallowed a sea of all that could have been,I'm here, hoping for a little more poetry.

Lessons learnt in room 27

 Twenty seven,an obscure number in an equally obscure space designated the purpose of higher education.

Sitting here,one can hear the mechanical swish of the flurry of everyday activity,the metro going by,the corridors emptied out of students who have now entered classrooms,being mopped spotless. Leaves of frangipani trees stand lacquered in sunshine,outside the little square windows,as I learn nothing textbooks can teach.
 I discovered that caffeine is much like popular culture,if you can't consume it excessively,it isn't culture at all(So is tea an equivalent,because it's a statement the intellectual use to perpetuate their own subculture,but will probably not admit to) and almost nothing comes in one colour.Not people,not culture,not life.It's never only black,white,roseate.I realised the futility of hoping for somebody who tells you you're a colour they haven't imagined yet,because then,you're probably not a colour they welcome on their palette any longer.
You cannot belong to someone or some place,cannot fit in,because you're a dream not meant for a coffin or a skeleton to be tucked into a coffer box in a cupboard.
You are the colour of the wind-all embracing in its invisibility.
You need not be a youtube phenomena or a firebrand feminist to feel entitled to just feel the way you do,you need no validation to be too independent in your childlike demeanour to mould your life around the idea of an institution,to be outlined neatly with a cookie-cutter like label of this or that,because you can choose to be this,that or neither.
You are the colour no one can contain in words,disappointing and hopeful,alike.You are the colour you paint yourself with choices,a transcendent feeling.
 

Rubella Red

Plopped alone on my single bed,I stare at the length of my arms covered by a generous scarlet sprinkling of measles,as if staring at them long enough would make them vanish.I squeeze my eyes shut and pray that they do,but it's not happening.Yet again,I realise the magnitude of how little a fuck,people,especially adults give about each other.I have no where to sleep for the night,and in an empty hostel room,it's just my despair,my rubella covered arms and the awareness of my adulthood sharing space and a comfortable silence between us.
I'm alone with my thoughts again and the sound of them haunts me like a late Sunday afternoon when everyone is asleep and the corridor reeks of quiet.I realise I have caved in to rejection,caved in to the belief that my writing is not good enough for the couple of college societies that I thought I could have been a part of,that as much as I dislike going home,it is  symbolic of a screwed up sense of comfort.I've stopped looking for a physical sense of home,altogether because no matter how wonderful the people,how positive the atmosphere..there is bound to be a deep seated emptiness that cannot be forgotten.Like a dark room with soft music,when it's raining incessantly outdoors-a feeling so immensely beautiful,it has a sense of tragedy looming about it.I've come to realise,college isn't half the dream it's promised to be and just like school,there will be lecturers who will produce a physical reaction of fear in most of the class with mere words.Life almost never turns out as planned,planning is futile,it just happens-for better or for worse.It's quite a struggle for me to just stop and try to participate,before it fleets away in the blink of an eyelid,leave alone trying to control anything.
Maybe my words and dreams are tainted in the very hue my arms are-rubella red,bold.Maybe they aren't for most people to understand and maybe,this is just a mere consolation I'm trying to get by each day on.It is good enough to make it with the lack of any encouragement,making a mark might be difficult for me,but I just might be a phoenix,reborn from ashes and I just might be Sisyphus,rolling a stone up a hill,that I know will come crashing down the slope,anyway.There is much grace in being either of them,I suppose.The most essential fact that keeps me afloat on rocky seas,however,is that I still write.I write for myself,I write when I'm rejected and feel inferior,I write when I discover I might be an average,first generation literature student,I write for my loneliness and I write for my joy.I write because I've survived and I try,each day to make a little more sense of my survival.I write for my childhood self and the broken home I grew up in,the stories that need to be told.Despite not having read cannons like my classmates have or being on editorial boards and having published lengths of my writing,I write.
Because that's the point,isn't it? Making the best of what you've got.Like Scout Finch understood of what Atticus said to her about the best kinda folks being ones who make the best of what they get.

Fountain Coke

Fine,silver hair like fluff on the crown of an old man's head,
a dusty notebook where he records mundane details because mnemonics have failed him
A couple of hours spent getting to know a fragment of ninety-three years of life.
The courage to finally utter a "hi" to a dreamy senior that makes me swoon,and that indelible feeling when her face melts into the softest,most genuine smile.
The soothing after effects of a glass of fountain coke sipped out of a long,yellow straw on a sunny day and all of these things remind me,it's getting better.

Homage to a new home

The swift mechanical swish of the metro running on a line right outside my window is warm yellow reassurance at night,like lights illuminating an empty corridor.A new city awaits to be explored,I have a whole new world to discover,every morning is the promise of adventure,every day a constantly changing challenge.
College,they say,is the most abstract experience there is..where each day might seem identical to the next,like a line of dominoes waiting to collapse into each other until you create something worthwhile with catharsis or have an absolute burnout,but each moment is like that intricacy of a painting,you didn't notice the first time you looked.Only when you look closer,carefully,your eyes fall on those little details that add the kind of meaning to the painting you never thought it could convey.
Be it a torrent of rain that sends you running back indoors,one afternoon,making you smile like a child with paper boats in a puddle or be it sitting on a stairway,sharing comfortable silences into the wee hours of morning,cuddling with the campus dog and taking naps in a hallway,your bag ,a makeshift pillow.Eating tang straight out of the packet and spending all your money on one too many bottles of beer and books,without realising it might mean being broke for the rest of the month and walking three kilometeres,trying to find your way back.Every little stroke of the brush has been put on canvas to add hue,colour,contrast or even just space,you might just take a little longer to realise why some strokes have been added.

In a month,I have come to realise how much the very foundations of my world can change,entirely.How the safe little snow globe I had crafted to be my universe,has frailer walls than I had ever imagined.The people I meet were certainly not the ones I thought I would,the tears I've cried under the covers,each morning for a home that I never thought I would miss so much,the bittersweet nostalgia for a city that adds so much to my identity than I ever realised,the songs I've been singing and the dancing I've been doing,all so new,yet so welcoming.Even the kites and birds,flying in a distance outside my window,the fronds of the palm moving gently with the breeze,seem strangely stunning and familiar.
The questions I've been asking myself,mostly rhetoric,but I'm beginning to realise,they don't all need answers,always.Some of them are better mysteries than hypotheses.
Somewhere along sitting next to a lotus pond,pondering and musing, while walking late night in soft drizzle,plopping myself into a circle of near strangers on a grassy slope,singing along to the chords of a guitar,I realise.I realise that there is little we can do about what we're fated to,how much ever we try,even if we romanticize monotony.
The grand scheme of things will spiral out and spiral in like these moments,these minute details on abstract painting of our lives.Seemingly designed for a purpose we don't quite understand,at first.It is indeed our attempt to try to add meaning that,to try taking control,to try directing the strokes on our paintings to make our masterpieces a little more personalised,our belief that we can exercise choice,free will is what counts.Although it might be just a mirage of what we want to call an odyssey of self-discovery,it just this belief that is the truest sense of freedom we'll have.Like sexuality,like love,like friendship,like wisdom and knowledge,themselves,freedom is fluid,although in earnest,it might never completely belong to us,alone.It is psychological and even if institutions like society seem to shackle it with norms,we try,despite knowing there is no escape.We try to build a niche where we don't want to race towards a finish line,to compete and make a mark,we just want to fall and falter,and discover and evolve.This very attempt at letting go and finding a place to be and walking without a destination,taking one day at a time,that liberates me.I'm learning to let my hair down,to let the breeze kiss it and walk barefoot,to feel the earth beneath my feet.These unknown streets and sky rise concrete structures of my dreams,and all the uncertainty of a new beginning,,the confusion and despair of figuring stuff out and those sublime interludes of mundane peace.A city,like I began,awaits to be discovered..perhaps,this constantly changing cosmopolitan is within me.


 

Paraphernalia of the past

The welcome smell as soon as you walk past the air curtain of a department store you've been shopping from since you were four,

Orange tongues from orange ice lollies after school that painted your tongue in the colour of the happiness they could afford you,memories at the cost of five rupees saved up carefully.
The warmth of dosa melting in your mouth and other everyday phenomena
you almost cannot bid adieu to.
The streets where you never quite learnt how to ride a bicycle without training wheels,
and the shadows of the looming neem tree outside your bedroom window sighed goodnight
with the wind as you fell asleep,The monsoon clouds that stand testimony to all the years in school,spent watching out of the classroom,all those afternoons you longed to go home and read ,undisturbed, into the evening.Your friend's terrace where you watched a fraction of the city,countless times with dreamy eyes and that coziness is something you cannot replace.All those hours of sitting on the swing set,talking about everything under the sky.
You're not going to miss the place as much as what growing up meant in it,the good,the bad,the mediocrity of it all.You're going to miss it because you will desire the streets and the people and the simplicity for what they used to be,but they grew up,and so did you.

Take a break from being broken

 Dear future you,

You have been rejected and heartbroken before.I know disappointment feels like a new phenomenon each time you meet it,like a sucker punch in your stomach,it hits you hard,but you've been here before,and you'll come back again and let's just admit to ourselves-it sucks and there is no sugar coating,silver lining,sunshine behind the clouds kinda hope.All your past selves call bullshit on it,they have learnt well from experience.
Each time you fall,they say,you fall harder and you pick yourself up,stronger.Just like putting back together a heart that feels like it's sunken and disintegrated into a million little pieces,raining on you like incardinine confetti.Even when you carefully glue all of it back together,stronger,less vulnerable-there's no denying the fact that it's a little more broken than the last time,a little more hurt and empty.
You can learn to let go,forgive,move on,get past all expectation-whatever it is they advise you to do in due time..even fake it till you make it,but the darkness of the depression will seep back.Embrace it,cling,let it shatter you because if it doesn't now,it will just slowly consume you from the inside like a demon,hiding behind the veil of repressed emotion.
You can forget people,you can stop missing them,stop feeling the loss..but memories hide in strange places,like a child who has mastered hide and seek.They will come knock at the windows of your eyelids when you close your eyes in a state of semi sleep,and your thoughts all blur and drift into dreams that take over.They will jolt you awake before the cup of sweet tea you brewed your self can cure you of perpetual fatigue,they will tremble like your fingers do when they scroll down the contact list on your phone and long for a number you can't call back on.They will haunt you every time you experience something immensely beautiful,saddening or overwhelming,waves of wonder..a song,a word,a smile will bring the pain flooding back
because you are reminded again,there are of only so much use if you have nobody to share them with,to reveal the secret ways of the world you discover each day.
You are mess,you are not enough,and you are too much for yourself.Life is chaos and love hurts like a shard of something broken in your throat,a lump accompanied by glassy eyes,you're almost crying but you are incapable of tears.Guess what? You're actually laughing at yourself,this cruel joke.You no longer feel sorry for your predilection,self-pity has worn itself out.
You never win,you're used to dejection now.Picking yourself up is easier,you've learnt to be bigger than the things that break you and it absolutely sucks.But you never win the ways that seem noticeable,you never notice how you never give up on yourself.Every bleak Monday morning,you tell yourself to take care and you break the monotony of existing by accepting that people cannot be saved,only loved.Your whole life might be falling apart around you,but you've learnt to live without love,without expectation..you've learnt to get by on mere hope,finding metaphors of it the mundane.
And even if you lose all the time,you don't lose heart.You still follow your heart,even if it promises all the pain of the path ahead.You guard yourself better,but you also soften with it all.Like wrinkles and crows feet and grey hair,time softens you,slows you down-you might not be as light on your feet anymore,they're all cracked heels and bruises.You lose,but you still walk on,you don't need the shoes that you really thought you did-maybe they would have made you better,but you've learnt to make better of yourself.Your old feet are better,dirt kissed.
Most importantly,you let the cycle of bruising and healing just be,there's no way of stopping it.That's when you win,that's the only victory-the peace of setting yourself free.
You're winning at life,because you're doing the best with what you know and you'll never have to regret having worn your heart on your sleeve.You're winning because you had the courage to be honest and to put yourself out there,and to let yourself break.You're winning because you're trying to let your dreams win.
Let me remind you,you have been rejected and heartbroken before.I know disappointment feels like a new phenomenon each time you meet it,like a sucker punch in your stomach,it hits you hard,but you've been here before,and you'll come back again and let's just admit to ourselves-it sucks and there is no sugar coating,silver lining,sunshine behind the clouds kinda hope,but let's also admit to ourselves how far we've made it and how much farther we know we could go.We've learnt to be enough for ourselves and the realisation that even if there's another heartbreak,another winding road we take that might not lead us to a happier place,we've survived,made it,grown.That takes spirit and it is this realisation that uncertainty cannot bother you anymore that nurses your broken heart and keeps you going.It is this rejection and heartbreak that let both better and worse things come out of them and that's more that the mundane victory it seems to be.

Take care,
yours truly.

Beating the blues

        

You sat at the murky bottom of a well,
tried to climb out
but your feet failed you,
they did not know how to tread the slippery surface
of the walls,adorned by moss

A glimpse of the sky,tar black,
you watched from the inside,
but soon,you realised,it was actually blue,
that stained the sky with its indelible ink,
draped it in a nebulous gloom.

I tried to reach my arm out to you,
but the dark distance swallowed
my feeble attempt,bruised my skin
blue,a shade so pneumonic and unbeatable ,
couldn't pull you out.

Looking down into the pitch black
of the well,I can see no end,
but at least it is quiet and absolute,
the blue you try to show me,seems
so much colder,uncertain as a dream.

I'm afraid I might slip down too,
I try to reach you a rope this time,
it snags and tears,soon to shreds,
my rope is not enough to
hold you all the way up and out.

What is a hand or a rope
in a sea so lemniscate ,
blue as a painting trying to recreate
a stormy scene,a tsunami,
praying to go back to tranquil black.

Top of the class

An obscure number can never contain all the dreams that kept you awake all night,working.
Neither can it count all the tears cried in the battle to balance out an education,
nor portray the pain you felt curled up on the bathroom floor,telling yourself you'll survive tomorrow.
I read somewhere,today,that experience is what you get when you don't quite get what you want,
and maybe,just maybe,
the intricate grace of a dancer's hand gestures,creating imaginary flowers with her fingers
and how your grandmother no longer smells of the specific kind of tobacco she used to chew
and how her sleep-like silence is a sharp reminder of all the stories she no longer tells you,
the smell of your dog's paws that lingers long after they've left the room,
the surprise you're taken by when someone notices the shadow of a cheekbone under your tired,waiting face or how one of your ears is missing a earring,
and the painful relief of watching someone you love lie in a hospital bed,recovering,as you sigh away the night
The wonder that strikes when you see comatose patients or cases of emergency,breathing heavy,
wheeled away to their destiny,questioning finality.
The small act of kindness when you least expect it,sometimes just a smile or a "hi" in the school corridors,or when someone let you get away when you were one too many times late for assembly.
Just the very the bittersweet loss of what once was a possibility
The gratitude of just having survived so much..just maybe
a number can never give away all of that.
A number can never personify all the stories left to tell and people waiting to be met and growing up left to be grown into.
No,a number is not enough.You are.
You are symbolic of survival,these numbers are just infinitesimal fragments of a universe of infinite possibility-
yes,they might matter in the moment,maybe for a while longer.Yes,they reward the best with medals and news paper articles and admiration,
but topping in an exam has so little relation to keeping well in life,it is such an inaccurate reflection of  ability.
After all,brilliant is an adjective,not a number.
It took me a week or so of moping to get to this realisation,because after having done conventionally "well",it did not feel like enough,it did not feel satisfying,It was too empty,and too full,at the same time.I realised I've been wasting time waiting for an approval that is not and will never be mine,my whole life.Almost like an indoctrination of how academic validation makes me good enough.
And all it felt like in the end? A fucking joke.
That's what all these numbers we compete for and compare with,and measure by mean.
Almost nothing.