Human Lives as Fireworks

How is everyone doing today?

It is raining heavily in my part of the world. I hope you’re safe and warm wherever you are (or maybe cool and crisp – whatever works for you).

Sometime back while scrolling through an endless pit of reels I saw a particular one about Japanese fireworks in action. Vast and sparkling, fiery streaks racing through a dark sky. I stared at the screen without blinking, waiting for each to explode in its time. They did; every single strand of fire eventually burst into smithereens of sparkles and light, eventually fading into grey smoke.

I kept the phone aside and an odd analogy struck my mind which I will share here because where else? haha.

*

Everyday, someone would explode into a thousand happy sparkles. If I met someone racing through the sky with their tail ablaze, I knew they would also eventually combust into light. If not now, then eventually; in months; years; decades. They would find their singular moment of absolute unfettered joy and unable to contain it – would explode; taking their new happiness with them and starting on some new path – a path where the rest of us couldn’t follow.

Lately, many of us little tails of fireworks are exploding and vanishing into their paths – one after another. You watch the one darting besides you also explode behind.

Yet you who is reading this, you keep on charging further.

Your trail of fire has been going on and on without repose. There were moments you felt you were close to bursting but the joy didn’t stay long enough. So you continue racing into the night – dark and hopeful.

Have you ever thought that at this rate of streaking through the sky you might eventually meet the creator above?

What will you ask if you did?

*

If you’re still reading this, I hope your time of bursting into light comes soon and the journey till that moment becomes less burdensome. May you find your final moment joy soon.

Love always,

Your blogger.

Journey to the Centre of Light

everything was always grey,
mornings made your gut nauseous,
afternoons made you dread homecoming,
nights were yours to tame alone. 

you were a bearable, fragile thing
taught to be quiet,
make no noise about childhood happening to you.
it’s yours to deal with,
you did your best. 

you did not know that you didn’t deserve this,
nobody was there to let you know.
so you kept on,
thinking the world was one big storm cloud,
& everyone fought the same winds. 

until one day,
when maybe you were five or seven,
through leaves of books,
or frames of films

tiny flames of possibilities 
were laid gently in your arms,
yours to protect,
they fuelled your heart to keep beating
despite.
despite it all. 

so throughout years,
your greys seemed bearable,
as long as there waited a promise of orange;
stark, crisp, radiant. 

so you left,
in search of better winds. 

you battered wilted peel of a flower,
taking whatever wind life threw your way,
occasionally finding yourself on someone’s palm,
only to be blown away,
for a wish. 

today i tell you,
although it won’t change a thing,
that,

if light was allowed to enter the space you grew up in,
you wouldn’t have taken difficult roads to seek it elsewhere. 

but look what you became in your quest,
the very light & colours you left to seek,
a heart ablaze with profound love,
& ready to be someone else’s beacon,
but before that,

your own. 

 

Love always,

Your blogger. 

Ohayo, 2023! (not the state lol)

This is my last blog for 2022. I wrote a lot lesser this year. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing and I will not try to figure it out. But I hope I can write more next year, for myself and for my 3 friends who eagerly wait for me to write. *waves*

How cold is it in your part of the world? I’m freezing where I am. For me, a stark indicator that winters have finally checked in and settled with their luggage is how cold the tip of my hands and feet get. I find myself rubbing them all the time, trying to find ways to keep them warm. An easy way to warm your hands is holding someone else’s – who’s hand did you hold this year? 🙂 aaand, will you still be holding it as the clock strikes 12 tonight and your calendar changes to 23′? (No? loser).

*

Where does Winter go in Summers? Where does Winter hibernate? What if I could follow it?

*

We all endured this year didn’t we? Quietly, persistently we kept enduring. Always looking ahead and waiting, waiting for it to get better. One day, some day. When I see people who have never endured an invisible pain I feel like throwing rocks at the sky. How unfair.

*

A thought:

People who are kind meet unkind people so they that can turn some parts of them kind. That’s how God restores the balance of the world.

*

How do you spend NYE? Do you cocoon in a blanket & watch shows that make you feel things that you keep looking in other people (& not finding them?)

Do you spend your evening trotting around brightly lit streets & eating hot meals with your friends or family?

I’ve been on both ends and both are equally good and comforting. Don’t let carefully edited reels tell you otherwise.

*

Life is like a large, turbulent body of water. And how you tame the current depends on your mind. At times, it is exhilarating, at times it is excruciating. But you carry on nonetheless.

In these torrents we’re all trying to find a small bank to rest and make a home on. I know you’ve been looking your whole life and I know it sucks. So if you haven’t found your bank yet, I hope you do in 2023 and I hope you build the warmest, most comforting home there (& invite me for dinner).

*

2022 was the deepest, most volatile current I ferried. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t living inside my mind – but in present day. It felt strange; like navigating new territory. But I couldn’t stay there for long, it didn’t feel like home, no matter how much I tried –  it remained strange, cruel and unwelcoming. As the year end came near, the storm eventually passed. I receded and went back inside my own head. spending time in my mind, speaking lesser and lesser, reading more and trying to give myself the love I try to find in the darkest crevices of the world.

I don’t know if you’ve ever ventured outside your mind but I hope you do – and when you do, I pray you don’t find the place strange and unloving, but the home you’ve always been looking for. And that you can receive the comfort of going back and forth inside and outside your mind as you please.

Try to leave everything from 2022 behind. Unload your chest and walk in next year light as a feather. I hope you don’t let all that happened deter you from being kind and loving – and that you find people who don’t put these virtues to test. Even if you can’t, don’t ever stop looking.

I will be writing more next year (fingers crossed) so I’ll see you around. Keep me in your thoughts & have a drink for me will you?

Note: use this post as a fun NY drinking game. take a shot every time you find the word ‘hope’. lol. 

Love always,

Your blogger.

How Love Builds its Sacred Grounds

It has been ages since I last wrote here. 

If I do not appreciate the beauty of little things & moments that pass us by like common events, I will not survive this world. 

*

The year is 2020.

It’s one in the morning and I’m standing in the kitchen watching the bright red bulb on my electric kettle. Drops of fresh steam seep through its spout as the noise of boiling water slowly echoes my almost empty kitchen. My roommate stands next to me. Quiet as a swan, head slightly tilted, intently watching our water boil; two litres, one for her, one for me. 

As we lived the clockwork life of the pandemic where the world closed itself on us, certain habits birthed naturally upon finding common grounds between the two of us. Two women sensitive to cold, both boiling water the night before to drink through their own bottles (& sometimes share) the next morning, almost like a sacred ritual. 

Funny how two years later, I think of that one memory as winters settle in and I boil my water alone, not having seen her since. 

*

Sharing a life with another soul and body creates many such shared grounds, that slowly & subtly make their space in your common everyday life and become sacred, unintended rituals that you do together. Gently, these rituals become the centre around which you build your lives, events you both look forward to (without quite realising).

Extra ginger in your evening tea and each taking their exact spot on the balcony while sipping it. Saturday laundry days, Sunday ‘treat yourself with the extra cheese you saved over the week’ day. Drinking wine only and only on the rooftop (& only together). Making one bowl of raita runny, another thick and placing the right one in front of the right person. Saving grocery bags to recycle and using the best one when stepping out. Leaving the geyser on for the next person to shower. Sharing fruits in the sun. Getting flowers every Thursday evening. Keeping the vase ready every Thursday morning. Kisses before leaving, kisses on returning. Your body moves before your mind can. 

Tiny rituals. Sacred ways through which love persists.

And one day like every natural thing, your companionship ends & the grounds lose their common space as one leaves. You are left with a vacuum where you do those rituals alone & carry the ache of memories fondly.

Or if you’re truly fortunate, you share those grounds till your last day here.

So if you haven’t already, I hope you find the person you’ll share thousands of grounds with. Forever. 

*

If I do not appreciate the beauty of little things & moments that pass us by like common events, I will not survive this world. 

 

Love always,

Your blogger. 

 

 

Anxie with a Cup of Tea

Lately I wake up to soft rain pattering on my windows and the smell of damp furniture. I try to be grateful for it – the rain, the wind as I draw the curtains open to a grey overcast sky. Swollen with rainwater, about to burst open. 

It’ll be a bit cringe to compare this to how we too break open when we’ve reached a limit – when we’re swollen with enough sadness to finally split open for a few minutes (or a good part of the night?). But nothing on this blog is cringe so I will be bold & leave this analogy for you to ponder over here. 

I hope the weather in your part of the world is nice. 

Once again, apologies for my sporadic presence on this blog. I’m in a phase of life where the part of me that used to pride itself on its emotional grit (from whence trickled all the posts on this blog) is sitting in a dark room doing cocaine & laughing to itself hysterically. So pray, forgive. 

*

You have several thousand doors inside you. Each guards a path that leads somewhere deeper. Every single person you’ve met has walked past this series of doors – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 …

Some open the first one, peer inside and leave. (phew)

Some go through doors after doors, opening locks gently, pausing after until they find the secret, smaller door, enter in there and lock themselves in. They know they are taken care of, no matter what. They never leave. You know they won’t.

Some knock their way through the 10th door & stand face to face with the smaller one. They pace around it for a while, almost taking the knob but they step back, take a final look and leave.

You watch for some time, then close all doors behind them.

Every time someone is not gentle with you – one door closes on them. When was the last time you closed a door on someone?

Who sits behind the smallest door of your heart?

*

I have a complex relationship with my own company. There are stretches where I can sit by myself and be amused, excited, happy & content. Then arrive phases where you yearn for a presence. This sucks because it’s never wise to keep your joy in someone else’s hands. Because people are careless, often unknowingly.

The more I grow up, the less I demand what I really want. The only person I ever place the burden of wishes on is myself. She’s the only one who listens, knowing that she can’t fulfil all of them.

*

In this frightening, frightening world – friends make us feel a little less helpless 🙂 Last month I felt a little less helpless because of a few friends & I’m very grateful.

*

Amongst many sinking feelings in the world – one is the sudden pause of your mouth chewing a hearty meal when you hear something that breaks you. The split second of painful rush recedes & you’re back to doing what your body was meant to do – chew, albeit slower. Has this ever happened to you?

*

Things I’m learning to make peace with (very poorly):

How I fantasised happy ever afters to be are not even close to how they actually are.

Most stories & poems are a lie.

You deal with most of your stuff by yourself. The idea that someone comes to shoulder things with you is a sham.

Loving yourself is the most important key to life. It is okay to learn to do that slowly.

People don’t love the same way you do.

Always, always keep your expectations low. That way you’ll never be disappointed.

*

We are entering the second half of another year. Winters will arrive soon & so will your hopes of being coddled up in a warm room next to someone. Whatever your idea of comfort is, I hope you find it in August, if not, then in all the months to come. Please be gentle to yourself & always believe that you deserve the best and that you will find it.

*

People have told me that they’re not a fan of my quieter side. They don’t like it when I’m brooding, grim, not the bright bouncing bundle of energy.

I don’t like myself this way either, good sir. When I sense myself getting quieter I go – ‘ah sh*t, here we go again.’

But hey, if I didn’t have these bouts of brooding, sulky, grey days – you wouldn’t have this blog. This wonderful public (but not so public) library of my deranged thoughts.

Here’s to grey days that keep seeing the sun in between. Hope this sun is a person in your life that brings you light when you need it the most – unsolicited because you never ask, do you?

Love always,

Your blogger.

Jumping Oceans

We’re playing a game of ball,
you and I
you throw a powerful kick,
i hit back with force,
measured enough to not hurt you
you throw back another
the ball slips,
and falls in a pool behind me.

i look at it float on the surface – lifeless,
then look back at you.
who will fetch it?
you’re quiet
your eyes are glass

so i don’t say a word
and head towards the pool
my legs are shaking,
i am terrified of water

you already know.
don’t you?

my steps are steady
one
two
i jump

my body sinks in the dark,
do you see the surface bubbling?
i grab the ball
and lurch back to you in victory
shuddering, drenched, weak.

i throw it you once more,
you hit back.
and so the game goes on.

if the ball were to be,
sucked into a hurricane next,
what would I do?

you already know,
don’t you?

Love always,

Your blogger.

To all that outshines (& those who chase it)

what good does a single star do,
for a world chasing newer galaxies
everyday.

what good is a river
however pure & white
against the steel grey of the ocean,
the ocean it envies,
but ends up feeding

yet,

Virginia walked towards her death,
wading through a river,
weighed down by stones in her pocket,

the river was kind enough to stow her away.

*

what good are leaves,
once parched & broken,
from the tree they fed through life,
their colourless bones,
only to be crunched,
beneath morning rush hour footsteps

yet,

tonight, i light up a small fire,
& throw in some dry brown leaves
i look up at the trees,
dark and sentinel in the shadows,
ghosts? no, guardians.
‘thank you’ i whisper in the night,
and the wind carries the words away

yet,

what good is a quivering yellow flame,
in front of your searing blaze,
children clap in delight,
people nod in unison

’tis the greatest fire!’

They are two extremes of a whole,
it is said.
one shines bright,
& lights up a room (or at least tries to)

yet,

the other descends
in a blinding flash,
& swallows everything whole.

*

‘do you like the sunset or sunrise?’
‘sunrise’
‘why?’

‘everyone worships the rising sun’, maa says.

Love always,

your blogger.

Because This Is Our First Life

Today I’m dwelling on the slow & consistent decay of things. I loathe changes. Sadly, they are the cost we pay for growing old.

Sometimes, I feel the slow, seismic shift in time’s axis. I feel it twitch and move just a little. Cruel time licks its fingers & flips another page of life, the world shudders & goes still for a second, then moves on like it is supposed to. Your parents become a memory, friends see other occasionally, priorities change. This heart of yours that won’t stop hurting right now, learns to look away & focus on things which, at that moment, become more important.

So the tiniest speck of change makes me fold my hands in prayer to a God I don’t believe in, ‘please, please make it stop. just for a while’

**

Please look at people in the eyes and tell them they’re doing well. Squish their face with your hands & say they’re doing their best, and you’re proud of them as they should be of themselves. Sometimes it only takes it hearing it from someone else’s lips to make someone believe in themselves.

**

I love Emily Dickinson a lot. Not because of her poems, though that plays its part in her admiration, but I discovered something about her disposition that made me feel understood. And it goes like this:

Her choice to let her work get published and be available to the world, but her decision to never accept any public celebration, recognition of herself is something I resonate with strongly.

Anytime I do something mildly well, I wish to be admired and appreciated. I should like people to know I did something well.

But I do not necessarily like being celebrated. I should like to be acknowledged silently, but I don’t like being raised and upheld for worship.

Acknowledged, but not celebrated.

**

I got to know about this idea called Room 19. It is like a fictional (or at times tangible) room where your heart turns to, when it needs to get away from the world. For some it might be a corner of the house they can stay by themselves in, for some it’s inside their mind.

When I enter my room 19, I don’t speak to anyone for days. And my heart and mind are at unrest, strained from the burden of never being able to make any sense of it. Joy never enters that room. It can’t, it isn’t supposed to.

Some knock on their room 19 & let themselves in occasionally,

Some carry it with themselves wherever they go.

During my childhood, I was always surrounded by people, my tangible needs were sufficiently met, i was safe & sound.

but in my head, I grew up alone.

I received a book in my mail box once, a gift from someone I once parted ways with.

The title of the book said, ‘Maybe You Should Talk to Someone’

Something squirmed inside. I held the heavy hardcover in my hands.
This is how I will always be looked at, from the outside. Someone who needs fixing. Someone not quite okay.
This is how I would be thought of.

Maybe, I’ve locked myself up in my room 19. I don’t go there occasionally, I live in it. Everybody in my life is outside that door. And it is going to be that way.

______________________________________________________________________________

A note: Time flies too fast to stifle words.
It is not enough to just feel them, they must be spoken aloud. words must reach another person’s heart, so they can stay there. Whether they live there or don’t, is not up to you.

Love always,

Your blogger.

Your Name?

I’ve been stopped midway, interrupted mid speech and often called at ungodly hours and posed different variations of the following question,
‘have we met somewhere before? Do i know you?’

It has become an event that occurs so frequently that the surprise that must naturally ensue such an odd remark has left me. I usually calmly reply no to the flustered, curious stranger in front of me and proceed with my day.

Regardless of whether or not doppelgängers exist in our limiting space and time, I am certain I have plenty of them. Seven, if I may go by the count of people who’ve claimed to have seen someone exactly like me at the train station, subway, airport or perhaps a dream? haha

(either that or I have a furiously common face – which makes me sad, so i’d like you to believe the previous narrative)

**

Once in high school I was asked an interesting question by a friend’s father. The principled, sturdy man examined me from afar and rebuffed,

‘Imagine the world is on the verge of ending. People are dying, it’s total chaos. We’d then need doctors, teachers, soldiers, lawyers to help save the world. The world would need their skills .. what good would artists do then?’ he scoffed & put the conversation to an end.

I didn’t have the answer then. Five years later in an almost prophetic coincidence, his words would manifest & I would have my answer and it would follow like this.

If the world were on the edge of ending, an artist would save people from dying out of despair. He would heal that which no medicine can, grief.

There sir, you have your answer.

**

My mother has a habit of never accepting compliments. If you tell her that her meal was the best course of food you’ve ever gobbled, even if you sang hymns of her culinary skills, she’d still say ‘it’s no big deal’ distractedly.
ma, it is a big deal.

So it is true what Mitch Albom said; over the course of time, we all become our parents.

**

I find it particularly funny when people snark, ‘when will you grow up?’ while shaking their head with disdain.

& it is particularly amusing because in parallel there have been people who have smiled warmly and asked me not to grow up so fast. That I sounded beyond my age which made them worry. Life is funny.

Truth is, if I were to stop being childishly obsessed with all that moves me, if i stop going crazy about all that seems too frivolous to the world to notice, i might actually lose my mind. Reality is painfully unbearable. It is dark grey so I choose to keep my mind full of odd colours, that way I have a good chance of surviving (if at all) whatever this is.

**

They say the greatest cause of suffering is desire. Do you know what my name means?

Love always,

your blogger.

Tune In To Understand

As a kid, I appeared on the radio a few times. Not often enough to make me a star (clearly), but enough to recall a cluster of fond memories.

I was a part of a show hosted on my school’s local radio station. I was 14.

When I spoke for the first time in that mic, my heart thrummed loudly. We were broadcasting live. As soon as I spoke the first line, people behind the glass wall gasped. I shrunk. What mistake was it this time?

After concluding the show, I stepped out quietly, barely ready to face the barrage of reprimands waiting behind the thick wooden door. I enter the room and faces turn, all lit up. This is what I hear,

‘waaaaaah, you have a wonderful voice!’ 

if there are singular moments in time that stitch themselves up against your ageing memory, so tight that you never forget them, this was one such moment. I never believed I had a great voice until then.

I’m not really fond of the content that comes on the radio these days, but I’m fond of the idea upon which it rests. The art of listening. Understanding something without your eyes aiding you.

There is a movie called HappyThank YouMorePlease (interesting name, no?) with a scene that stuck with me. A conventionally not handsome man is pleading his uninterested muse to close her eyes and just listen to him. He requests for a chance to reveal to her what she’s unable to see. The woman is perplexed for a moment but slowly covers her eyes out of pity, much to her own surprise. After he confesses his sincerity for her in a long, impressive monologue, the scene ends with the woman opening her eyes, her jaw slightly dropped, and seeing him in a completely new light. It was as if ‘the particles in his face had rearranged themselves’ and that she was seeing him, really seeing him for the first time.

A bit too dramatic, in my opinion, but you get the underlying point right? She felt what her eyes were refusing to understand.

We’re so glued visually and busy processing it all through our eyes that we only soak what is said, and not what is meant.

When we listen, without the hundred distractions of the colour of someone’s eyes, or why their face looks tired, the empty coffee mug in their hand & why they clutch it so tight, why do their legs fidget, why does their skin glow, why do they play with their hair nervously, why is their palm smudged with ink, why is their shirt baggy .. everything that keeps our attention away from what is being said in that moment ..when we shut our eyes from this and choose to really listen, then the words shoot straight through our chest.

The transmission is straight into your heart. Whether it’s from the goddamn radio or that person you just can’t seem to understand.

Listen loud and clear. Feel the gravity of words being said to you. Their voice to yours.

“Broadcasting, love and, airplanes, do you know what they have in common?

They all require the maximum effort in the beginning.”

-Tune In For Love (a film)

Here’s a beautiful song for you.

Hope you smiled today.

Love always,

Your blogger.

Here’s to Melted Chocolates

How’s everyone doing?

It’s 3 in the morning in my part of the world and I’m in my bed trying to make a piece of chocolate melt in my mouth because that’s how I like chocolates. melted. I once heard of someone who liked their chocolates stiff and cold, snapping pieces in their mouth. Who does that? What are you a psychopath??

Nah jk man. Just eat your stupid chocolate however you like it.

I don’t have anything particularly artsy/angsty to write today. Neither is this one of those trademark, obscure poems I write out of sheer panic. I guess the chocolate is working.

When I was a kid i had a cousin that lived near my place. A distant cousin but I thought her more of a friend. In the evenings I used to go to her place to play. Her grandma, often spotting me running around the house would call me to her room and open her, what I now like to call, snack box. It was a small tin box with biscuits, crackers and other munchy stuff. She used to offer me some of it happily, every single day.

Fast forward 12 years, I am now sitting in my room & suddenly notice the big plastic box from which I’m munching my own snacks. Life is weird.

You know what will happen after I finish this chocolate? I will immediately rush to the kitchen and search for something really salty, like a crackhead frantically looking for weed, and I’d need it really fast or I’d throw up. It happens every single time.

I really have trouble understanding my head.

‘i need to know what goes on inside your head. i want to get inside your mind.’ A thought communicated to me multiple times by several honorary members of the human tribe. Mostly male tribe.

What’s the nicest compliment you’ve ever gotten? Mine was, ‘Aakansha, you’re poetry in motion’. That blew me away.

I sometimes open my mind box and rummage for some strand of old memory I could use to feel better. Let me do that for you right now. One moment.

..

…

found it

This one time I was out for lunch with a friend. We were both having really giant burgers. Like burgers so big their entire insides spill out. And I love messy food. The messier the better. But while I was licking the sauce off of my fingers enjoying every bite, he was dissecting his into neat bite sized pieces and eating like a gentleman with not a crumb out of place.

I, being the competitive asshole, decided to give it a try and failed miserably, with every ingredient slipping midair and crash landing on my plate. Noticing me staring defeatedly at my mess of a meal, he quietly assorted a perfect bite for me on his folk, bun-chicken-lettuce-onions-sauce-bun and gently put the divine assortment in my mouth, which dropped open at the site of his slowly approaching hand. The moment still makes me all warm and gooey. How thoughtful. How affectionate. No, we weren’t dating.

---

This was the first year I think when I didn’t post anything on my birthday. Is that good? Bad? Were you expecting another sad poem from this grey cloud? Idk bruh.

My birthday fell in quarantine which doesn’t really make a difference because so far almost every birthday has been a quarantine (lol). But this time, one small tiny special detail happened. My gorgeous best friend sent me a bottle of wine because when you’re panicking about the future on your birthday you need alcohol amirite folks? Tbh mix fruit juice would just fine for me but anyway. So the weather on my birthday night was lovely. It was nice and windy, just how I like and the stars & moon were in full lunar glory. I went to my terrace and climbed further up the top of a small storage room built there. And drank wine while watching the moon with Charlie Cunningham softly playing on my speakers.

Not bad for a sad fu*k like me hun? <Head pats>

What else? You know what I made this small list of things I wanted to rant about but I can’t remember where I wrote it.

Oh, I haven’t been sleeping well either. I sleep around 6 in the morning and wake up at 10 for work. My eyes burn but I fix them with caffeine and my boss’ rebukes.

I finished a few books and I’m absolutely hyped about it since I haven’t read dedicatedly in a long time. <well done, you miserable Demigod>

Sometimes when I’m writing here I think of my glory days on this blog. Buried beneath at least a 100 posts is my time here when I had a lot of pen friends. I don’t know where they are now, neither do they write anymore but I hope they’re okay.

I also think of starting another blog at times. Freaking crazy right? Because I don’t feel comfortable venting here anymore. A lot of people from my life know of this place. Risky stuff.

I’m done with the chocolate. Ending this rant with a beautiful Korean song I’ve had on repeat. Here’s a rough translation:

아빠는 말씀하셨다. 너무 작은 것들까지 사랑하진 말라고.
작은 것들은 하도 많아서 네가 사랑한 그 많은 것들이 언젠간 모두 널 울게 할 테니까.
나는 나쁜 아이였나보다.
아빠가 그렇게 말씀하셨음에도 나는
빨간 꼬리가 예쁜 구피를 사랑했고,
비오는 날 무작정 날 따라왔던 하얀 강아지를 사랑했고,
분홍색 끈이 예뻤던 내 여름 샌들을 사랑했다.
그래서 구피가 죽었을 때,
강아지를 잃어버렸을 때,
샌들이 낡아버렸을 때,
그리고 아버지가 돌아가셨을 때,
그때마다 난 울어야했다.
아빠 말씀이 옳았다.
내가 사랑한 것들은 모두 언젠간 날 울게 만든다.
-신지상&지오 ‘ 베리베리다이스키 ‘

Dad said. Don’t love too small things.
There are so many small things that many of the things you love will make you cry someday.
I must have been a bad child.
Even after Dad said so,
I still loved,
Goofy with a pretty red tail,
I loved the white puppy who followed me blindly on a rainy day,
I loved my summer sandals with pretty pink laces.
So when Goofy died,
When I lost my puppy,
When the sandals were worn out,
And when my father died,
Every time I had to cry.
Dad was right.
Everything I love makes me cry someday.

 

 

Hope you have a good day, wherever you are.

 

 

Love always,

Your blogger.

All that hangs in the air

i pour cereal in your blue, ceramic bowl
as blue as the creases of your sheets,
when you’re tossing,
& sleep is out of the question.

i’m as blue as your bowl
as fragile as the ceramic
perhaps not as glinting
but you won’t notice

cereal floats in cold milk,
‘my body is not used to warmth’
a naked corner of your diary says,
one you’ve kept since 02′
i know where you hide your diary,
in the same nook, you hide your hurt.

drops of cereal topple to the floor,
it’s 6 in the morning,
my eyes are heavy,
half open,
i feel your fingers,
untangle the knots of my morning hair
& slowly take the bowl,
walking away

my heart thaws a little.
the shampoo bottle can wait another day.

it all started,
when a song in my playlist,
asked me to knock on heaven’s door.
& there i was,
at 3 a.m,
knocking at yours.

 

 

Love always,
Your blogger.

Our Collective Fragility

What a bittersweet paradox our life is. I wish to weep and laugh at the complexity and simplicity of it.

We wish of the world to know us, but are terrified of being truly known. That life is at times a circle of trying to feel good enough about oneself against forces telling us otherwise. How our collective worth inevitably lands in the hands of those we barely know. Our sense of self affected so meteorically by external forces. 

I find it staggering how none of the structures created by men to falsely claim some sense of control over the independence of life, stand when the very foundations of the world begin to crack. When life itself is challenged. Then self worth is only limited to you, right here, in this very moment, living and breathing. It is enough.

We need not forget, in our quest for power & money that we’re human beings existing for a fleeting moment in a giant, incomprehensible cosmic backdrop. To not forget the decaying nature of time and that amongst the supreme impermanence of everything around you; love, joy & kindness stay the longest. Feel the greatest. Life is hard, but it can be made easy for each other. By empathy, by understanding, by being there, by reaching out, by opening yourself up. It’s terrifying to lay yourself out there in a world so undeserving of trust. Paradoxically it, for this very reason, is essential to lay yourself bare; because the world outside is too full of people afraid to share what makes them human, what makes them fragile.

 

There is no terror like that of being known. 

-Emerson.

 

Here’s what matters in the end; how you lived, how you loved, how you let yourself be loved. Evenings in a room full of strangers who love the same song as you. Music that brings people to tears. Moments that bring people to tears. These are what stay with you when your eyes close and breathing becomes labour. Not your metrics, not your payslip, not even sex. Money can help make some of those experiences richer, but it comes with no guarantee. Moments, however, can be created right here. Right now. Sometimes they’re just a hug away. Love heals the kind of grief medicine cannot. And it’s free. And it’s inside us all.

So love with all your heart. Open up. Blossom. Wilt. Decay. Go back to Earth. We all eventually will. Hold tight, we’ll be okay.  

 

Love always,

Your Blogger. 

heaven is here

you go,
wherever the urgency of time
leads you.

i wish to stay,
where the pink of our sky is just within reach,
& where waves crash & fall,
like a million diamonds scattering.

where cherry blossoms bloom,
with all their might,
carried away softly,
by a cool, summer breeze.

i want to be consumed,
evaporated,
soaked by the sky.

you go claim mountains,
as if they were your own,
i will be here,
as still as the ocean bed,
as roaring as its gut.

Poem to fix someone

Sometimes it gets so quiet my head hurts,
then i see a slender beam of morning light escape
through my curtain,
at 4 am,
and all is well for 15 seconds.

until I jerk to reality,
and go pee,
in the tiniest bathroom in the world,
but big enough to fit us.

sometimes at 3 am,
when sleep is out of the question,
i hear the distant rumble of a passing train,
bellowing through the night,
someone on that train can’t sleep either,
thinking of stuff he cannot fix,

like I think of myself.

To think that things cannot be fixed,
is a folly.
even a broken bone is healed,
what then is a broken heart?

only sometimes to get fixed soon,
you need a hand.
a pair of hands,
and a pair of eyes,
and a pair of arms.

“Come here”, I say out loud in my empty room,

“I’ll fix you.”

Love always,

Your blogger.

Fleeting pillars

I put my chin softly, carefully
On your shoulders
They seem strong
like you have the world depending on them.
I take my first, calm, heavy breath in ages,
and look at you, looking at something else
you don’t even know.
you are looked at like that.
wonder if you’ll shrug & walk away
or will it make you sit and brood
the knowledge,
That you are looked at like that.

 

life has been gazing at, from a distance. From a safe distance.
life has been wanting to take a plunge but panicking on the first step.

Life has been aching from a distance.
Life has usually been a giant, barren field.

that gets flowers and rain occasionally.

 

my chin still rests on your sturdy, capable arms. Far more capable to ever turn towards me.

I know it. So I close my eyes and try live the brief comfort wholly.

And then I feel you slipping away.

then you stand and walk in a direction I can’t follow.
then I see you not looking back.

my chin plunges down and I take a moment to find balance.

you never knew,
If only for while,

you put all my fears to rest.

 

 

Love always,

Your blogger.

What is written but not said.

This poem will have no direction,

Like my life.

there is a direction, but it is too bedevilled with pain,
Pain others carry well,
Or don’t. How do I know.
what I do know is pain shared is easier to carry
Like the sack of potatoes I switched,
from one hurting hand to another.

but now it’s too hard to hold
all of this,
Days when something small but cruel hits you face-front,
Your heart,
It flees.
Perhaps recoiling to somewhere sadder,
Quietly brooding the hurt away.
with no one to call it back.

To say you don’t give a shit and to actually not give a shit
Are two different battles.
I choose to live in the ephemeral joy of not caring for 10 minutes.
For 10 minutes my heart is painless.

Sometimes, you vow you’d love yourself regardless,
And sometimes you almost do
Then the world happens.
And suddenly you don’t like mirrors.

I don’t like to be quiet.
But it now seems like the best (only?) resort.

because now,
I’m unable to carry conversations,
I feel the insincerity,
it’s leaking through their eyes.
always in the eyes.
what have we become.

Life is now a,
Constant battle between
trying to love yourself,
trying to love the world
and trying to love someone else.

 

Love always,

Your blogger.

Respite

Laying down on the edge of a musty wall of a slightly secluded, sufficiently elevated square of my dwelling. Peering straight into these magnificent swirls of silver clouds; beams of sun escaping through it.

Through most part of our ephemeral existence we’re too engrossed making a living to notice;

The heavens open their gates frequently for us. At times it takes a quiet, languid afternoon of unwashed hair & ginger tea to make you notice; at times a glance above through sheer chance is enough.

Gaze. Watch. Contemplate. Let your soul rest. Let it breathe.

Hemingway had said that the sky is the daily bread of the eyes. Rightly so.
For I’m glued today. Beguiled by the work of art spread above me.

‘If all of us looked at the sky often, we’d live differently’, poured Bill Watterson through Calvin, a character tiny in stature and still unmarred by the filth of society yet capable of doling out excellent societal observations succinctly.

These frequent retreats from a world hard to keep up with are as necessary as physical sustenance. Else I’m sure, I’ll be incapable of carrying on for long.

Thankfully, the sky (for now) doesn’t have an expiry date.

 

 

Love always,

Your blogger.

The sky is a Snowglobe

If someday you & I could get close,

I know exactly where I’d want to take you,

as I fall & watch you get closer,

my heart will swell with the urge to bring you here,

however, I would wait.

wait to see if you’d also gaze with quiet astonishment,

at how vast, how grey, how midnight blue the night looks,

from my terrace

my favourite block of the concrete house,

set aside from the wrinkled sheets & unwashed dishes below.

On evenings after supper, I’m often found plopped on the musty boundary wall,

Laying down,

Staring into the night, my daily repose. Purring, resting, contemplating.

With every sigh, Posing questions to the curving sky above

Hazy with gorgeous grey clouds,

Revealing the twinkle of stars as the wind rightfully sweeps them away.

The breeze makes my skin cold, like glassy slabs. I caress, smiling at how I’d bring you here one day.

You will gaze at the sky in awe,

I will gaze at you with wonder.

 

 

 

Love always,

Your blogger.

Crossroad

kindness is difficult

kindness and self interest often cross paths.

most times people give in to the latter

& why must they not?

if kindness were easy to choose,

we’d have a wonderful world.