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.

"The seduction of inadequacy."

I begin using the phrase used in the post title,something I overheard a celebrated woman use in her video while trying to describe how hard it is,breaking free from an ugly self image.
Let me also begin by honouring this infamous statement : "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."but I have a little something to  change in  it-Nothing feels as good as a wholesome meal tastes.First off,in a world where more than a third of  the population doesn't have the blessing of nutrition,I don't think it should be turn it into a curse,hold it responsible for all that's wrong with the way we appear or don't.Yes,the food does go to waste-binged and purged out by bulimia,or flushed  down like the "unbearable ugliness of disproportion."
Have we really been reduced to embracing self starvation for the sole sake and cause  of  vanity? Clad in  skeleton suits,advertising eating disorders?
At Seventeen,I hate to see my friends silently giving away their health to fit into the norms of society-to fit into that skinniest pair of skinny jeans.
They live on tissue paper and nuts and fruits,on fortunate days.Caged birds have more liberty,indeed.
No,noone is forcing them to  do this and  noone can stop them either-and it is  wholly supposed to be their fault and flaw.And that is the saddest part of it all,society's hypocritical lack of approval and acknowledgement,ever so juxtaposed.
I also recently came across this post that claimed if  one is disgusted with  their own body,they will continue to do so even twenty pounds off the weighing scale.Why so? Because it's a way of living,not just physically,but emotionally just as much.
The actual and only kind of proportion one needs,is that of balance-of body,mind and soul.
In a country like mine,every second  person does this and noone talks about it out in the open,as I mentioned earlier in this post.Most adults adopt an attitude of nonchalance,believing denial is the best therapy and "phases just fade away themselves".And I ,left to my quiet misery of mere thinking matter,by the fodder provided by myriad thoughtless ad campaigns.
I'm no expert at psychology,but I do know we need to stop  the glorification of androgenous bodies and boxy edgelessness.Poker straight hair and air-brushed cheekbones.Oh,those cheekbones.And that wait.And those boobs! God,if only-
No.Stop.Right there.
Stop sterotyping beauty and looks.It's only us who's laying down these prim lines of conventional beauty.So,stop.With this cloned perfection,mindless obsession.
When did we stop feeling beautiful?When did mirrors become a source of self aversion? Rememeber being little and staring into the mirror? When the idea of beauty just began developing in yout mind? When " pretty" was something not predetermined or something to be achieved.It was what you saw looking back at you from the mirror.The wonder of eyes that can fill up with wonder and lips that could curl into a smile at any instant.Yes,lets go back there again.Be enough for ourselves before trying to be someone designed by everyone else.

Felt tip feelings.

                                                  I like leafless trees.I know they look very bare and all that,but I think that's exactly why I like them-they are not afraid of being vulnerable.It could be argued that they don't have an option,but nonethelss,it builds character and the kind of sublime beauty all the hiding behind leaves and shade,playing it safe,never letting the soul even peep can never conquer.

                                                I also felt this  certain feeling while looking at one,latticed above me in a criss-cross dream,as I pretended to count all the dragonflies flying low,indicator of rain,they say.

I felt this great burden lift off of my chest,set me free from this imaginary pinion I myself had created,

There were pink flowers like inverted tutus,that day-the edge of spring,the beginning of summer,deceptive petrichor-one could barely tell anything apart.

I felt whole and free and full.Like after satiating a food craving.And at the same  time,light as a cool breeze,the air curtain breeze lifting an instant of a blizzard through your hair.

A niche I had carved so within the depths of mellow denial,I  did not realise endings could feel like drizzle on your face,when you're longing for the rain.

Pretty pictures are not pretty just because you make them out to be,it's because you look at them as nothing separate from a part of who you are-

And that's when I learned that fatigue could feel good,in dark bags below my eyes and tired fingers bleeding with ink.
And sometimes the more I think,the less I feel,secured tight into suffocating knots like a fishtail braid,but what overpowers is-

                                Love embraces you much before you make note of it.

Chronicled classic.

How do classrooms feels when they are emptied of their true contents-
The presence of laughter,the whiny sighs of  protest to a surprise test,the clamor of mundane chatter and the fish market tag.
Do they feel like textbooks torn to shreds,devoid of any true purpose of existence?
Do they even stand classrooms at all-those empty,noiseless wooden chairs holding no backs,do they feel dead?
Who do those faces drawn on the charts lining the walls monitor? Who do those vandalized tables speak back  to,shout back lyrics at?
And those smiley faces,who do they peer at? And how lonely does the timetable and syllabus lists strung on the wall get with only the attention of a tree branch?
And what when-
Yes,when the classroom is shaken up,upside down,empties of its essence,the presence that it learned to define itself with.
The end of a term,the holidays gone were sad enough,what when they will be gone forever and it will be stripped of it's glory and the charts torn off-
Remaining but a fuzzy memory,injecting the feeling of warmth and familiarity,and the cold wave of change and fear,alike.
There will be new faces,it knows.New presences and in it,it will learn to seek solace,that is but it's destiny.
But every passing batch makes it old,impersonal,so,so senile.Scabby walled and monsoon-roofed.
And yet,she will throw her door open,get sidelined and trodden with scars of careless caressing.
A little emptier than the last time.

Hope for the hopeless,love of the loveless.

Waking up with eyes too swollen with unfinished sleep.
Crescents of dreams,swirly, ribbon-like,honey at the edge of teaspoon,dissolving completely into liquid consciousness.
Waking up.Eyes fixed on the little mirrored disco ball dangling at the edge of the curtain rod.Between the reflections of nothing and everything,daylight dangled too.Pouring  in,spilling,a not-so-thrilling new day.
Caught in cages by the ceiling fan,sunshine casts little dappled shadows on the floor,splattered coins of light,whirling.
Photons.Little packets of energy.The speed of light.And me.
Waking up a little more,as I watch clouds of steam,ghost vapor arms strangulate the still air,rising,rising from a cup.
Late nights.Unkempt dreams.Shallow introspection.
I want to be her.I want to be she.I want to be somebody I cannot be.I want to be-
Voice too sore before I can utter "me."
Blood is thicker than water? But love is thickest of all.A thicket of wild weed that can only be uprooted to grow back again.Like skin over an old scab.Healing,peeling,old scab.
And I will want to tear the walls down with my nails and pull my hair apart in splits,
but there is,a truth not so unsettling as every other assurance.
There is hope for us.And there might be love unknown too.
Lets pretend to stumble upon it,pretend we always knew..
The" truth".

Laced up corset full of secrets.

Happiness never looked like a flowery edged plate,with it's unusual curves pushed out like actual petals.They  had always told me it would resemble a classic,circular disc of a standard dinner plate.I looked so much,but never found even a shadow of a suppressed smile in those.
They never mentioned how longing would be painted a rose gold,and not streaked blatant crimson.
And in a generation when every little tragedy and every pretty nuance of  whatnot could be romanticized into the glory of a love song that falls soft into ears,singing them to conscious sleep...
They never hinted that wild roses could outgrow their bushes,instead of being taken care of or tamed.
 Weed out,so persistent-till they are taken notice of and deemed "beautiful".
Never suggested that the nightsky could fit into a teacup or one's fist,with all it's constellations of dreamy stars and nebulous dreams and wishes.

I found out anyway,found out for myself,when I let my feet dangle graciously over the edge-swish and swoosh.
Here we go,they said.Discovering all the truths unsaid.