4 August, 2014: Sit with me

Will you hear

what I ask of you?

Just sit with me

at the edge of this road

and watch all these people

 - the heartbreakers and the heartbroken -

let's watch them pass by. 

Love is a Laserquest: To You

Do you still feel younger than you thought you would be by now

    Or darling have you started feeling old yet?

When was it, that you figured you had to be this great, this tired, this ornery?

When was it that you decided that being lonely would give your ambition a jet-pack,

And how did you think, love, that no one would see through that carefully cultivated image?

     Do you look in the mirror to remind yourself your there
Or has somebody's goodnight kisses got that covered? 

Was it when you decided to save others, that you decided you didn't need any saving yourself?

Did you get jaded with all your great loves chipping away  pieces of you?

All of them, constantly asking for so much, that you forgot what receiving your share tasted like.

I can't think of anything to dream about

I can't find anywhere to hide

When did people start treating you with no heat, no care, no mind?

Did you feel entitled to it? Or did your cowardice creep in, unbeknownst to you?

For you had to be the champion of cowards to let this life decay you so. 

When I am pipe and slippers and rocking chair

Singing dreadful songs about summer

How could you have given yourself away to grief, to pity, to hopelessness so easily?

So much so, that you feel that blinking your eyes to softly lie would change my mind -

About revering you, about saving you, about loving you.

I'll never pretend that you were just some lover

To My Broken, Drunk Heart

My scruffy radio played Bach

(Misery, after all, needs a background score)

He had always been great at sales talk,

Isn't the customer responsible for the blood and gore?

I wish I could say that he had - eyes like sin,

The Physique of a rugged warrior and the words of Yeats.

He didn't. He wrote love notes to Java, had an affair with the Recycle bin

And - Those were pretty much all of his feats.

And yet the heart craved. And yet, the heart broke.

You can hear the green monster, as he picks up his hammer to bash.

Do you want to see the pieces of me in a Baroque?

Care for a kaleidoscope, to see my system crash?

Oh, let me be dramatic. Let me cry and have the booze.

Rejection has never been an associate, let me be rude.

For I fell for the boring, the beautiful and the damned flooze,

And he left me, so let my broken heart brood.

17 July, 2014

I hope you've had the summer all to yourself

Have the arid winds dried all your tears?

For here comes the moribund Monsoon,

Whispering you needn't hide them any more.

Us

You 
And I
I and you
And this swirling vortex of 

Stay, Please?

Uncertain love and Unkempt lust,
Will consume everything,
Anything -

Including us

I'll Miss You: 23 June, 2014

I am going to miss this. And that.
Passionate, esoteric arguments on Mangoes.
Speaking in Hindi. Bollywood songs. Shah Rukh Khan.
Complaining about the heat, the cold, the rain, the government.
The empowering Delhi Metro. The hateful, hopeless autowallas.
Silly radio shows. Irrational and argumentative family.
Asking Dad for money. Charming Ma into buying me new shoes.
UPSE toppers. The forty minute bus ride to school.
Books that were loved and tended. Pages that call out to be touched.
Dirt-Cheap Manipedi. 100 meter Vault jumps with a safety net.
Knowing the best places to hide.
Knowing that someone will always find you.
Home, sweet home.

She Will Be Loved

I drove for miles and miles and wound up at your door

Something needs to be said about familiarity. The necessary, decadent evil of change.
And longing. For home - the one we leave and the one we seek
For love - fathomless and unpredictable.
And their troubled love child, Doubt.
Persistent, Nagging, Hopeless doubts.

I've had you so many times but somehow I want more

The thing is, you can escape home. Make excuses to distance yourself.
Call them valiant choices, if you will.
Love, too, can be ignored. And if you really put your heart to it,
You can ignore its reverberations.
And you'll be impermeable, indestructible, infallible. Almost.

Tap on my window, Knock on my door

That's the thing about doubts. You can't run from them.
They don't look for your convenience.
They creep in, stealthily breaking your fortress.
Exploiting every vulnerability and poking holes
In places you thought were perfectly safe.

Look for the girl with the broken smile

So you can hide from them. The futility of it will amuse you.
Or you can bring them in for a buffet, let them devour your kingdom.
While you guiltily look at the remnants of yourself in a broken mirror.
Believe me when I say that we all pay our debts. Wouldn't you rather
stab Doubt in the belly? And stop this endless running. This endless trembling.

Do you want to stay a while?

Blessing

May invigorating inspiration always part 

To find its way into your tumultuous heart.

May your brick roads, paved with sunny cloaks

Teach you a thing or two about balmy blokes.

And may your wild, stormy mind never settle

As you find your way with hope and fettle.

In Praise of My Body

 To my body, something I refuse to be ashamed of anymore

Body-loathing is an easy thing to fall a prey to.

Through all of my seventeen years, I have always wanted to change something or the other about my body. I wished my hair was straighter. I wished I was a slender version of myself. I wished I had the cheekbones of X, the thighs of Y. No dark circles, no celluloid, no stretch marks. Just a tuck there, and a nip here. 

Life would be wonderful if I was a perfectly assembled robot, with the ability to change anything about my physical appearance, whenever I wanted to. 

Now, you can attribute my dissatisfaction with my body to my overly-critical nature. (if you know me, you'd know what i am talking about). But that isn't it.

I actually detested my body more than I detested my brains or my work. It was a conscious and continuous hatred. I couldn't help wanting better, wanting different. And I couldn't help being dissapointed when i couldn't have it.

In 2013,Taryn Brumfitt had decided that she was going to have a boob-job. She reveals how she had an epiphany, when she realized that she couldn't tell her daughter to be proud of all the bumps in her body without sounding like a hypocrite. So she decided to do the un-doable, that is, to start loving her body. 

Today, she is planning to produce a documentary named EMBRACE, to encourage women to love their bodies and stop themselves from unconsciously accepting the commercial standards of beauty.

Just what went wrong with us? When did we become so terrifyingly thirsty for acceptance that we are ready to undergo the unspeakable to tame our dissatisfaction? Who drilled into us that we had to have flawless faces, hairless bodies and the perfect balance of curves and bones - whatever that means - in order to make peace with ourselves? And that, as women, we need to be "groomed" and "presentable" and "pretty" at all times?

Just numerous magazines and newspapers.Taglines that declared fair was lovely and thin was in. Most faces in the public eye, who gave out their diet plans and their secrets for the curves at the right places, with panache. And almost all faces in the public eye, who had long lashes and blue eyes and pearl-like teeth that we sighed over. People we laughed and dined and studied with, who were as insecure (if not more) as us, and who told us that beauty was a formula to be learnt and repeated. 

And No one, absolutely no one, to say how beautiful and dynamic we are.

It really won't. So why care?

Unlike Taryn, I did not have an epiphany. It is the summer before college, and I have decided to be proud of myself. And since my body is a large part of myself, I decided that i need to stop loathing and wishing and hating, and begin to love. I have come to realize that I don't owe it to the world to look someone's idea of pretty, but I definitely owe it to my body to stop the pulling, and nipping and tucking.

I have way too many insecurities, which make this journey a particularly hard one. And the magazines or the people are not going to go away. (Although there will be a particular kind of joy in telling people where to shove their ideas of beauty. Yes, you guessed right.) 

But I will find a way to love all of me, with stubby nose and bruises and cellulite. 

And at the risk of sounding cheesy, I will tell everyone I meet along the way that they are beautiful and lovable, exactly the way they are. 

Remember Why You Began

As you find yourself 

On tumultuous roads

Or when the distance

Between your heart and your head

Seems greater than before,

When the lights and the stage,

The chains and the grey buildings

Are all but fiery monsters that scare

And the easy roads

are littered with potholes-

know - that there is 

grace in Doubt,

wisdom in Fear,

and beauty in Sweat.

And remember, my sweet, 

Remember why you began. 

Thought for the Day: 2nd May, 2014

What is it about

The truths of this life

That makes us so cautiously despondent

And so willing to believe

Its lies

April 29th, 2014

You talk of the monsters inside of you,

Of their defined, declared purpose

So why do you not speak when I ask

"What of the love?" 

Dear Love of My Life Who I Have Yet to Find

Dear Love of My Life Who I Have Yet to Find,

I know you’ve taken quite a few wrong turns, eluding me for most of my existence. But then, we might have met, given in to our stubborn natures and refused to feel. You and I, we’re messed up in all the right ways.

I want you to know that I stumble more often than I walk, and I have more insecurities than I can count. If you know me - the way only you are supposed to - you will also know of my love for the hopeless and imperfect and of the pride I have in my work. You must also know that I am capable of spite and jealousy and all the lowest of emotions. That I am capable of hurting you and spewing inappropriate pop-culture references. You have to know that my wishbone has a backbone and even my dreams have a certain pragmatism to them. You have to know of my need to be alone and to be overly critical. You have to know that more often than not, I am lost and have a hard time finding myself. You have to know, my love, and still love me.

I beg you to have patience with my fallacies and strengths, for I know – in my old, cynical way – that I will be fine. And so will you – with your own set of weaknesses.

 It brings a warm smile to my lips to think that you could be reading this, wondering what caused this change in style. Or grinning at the screen, questioning my sanity. But this might go unnoticed, while you struggle and cope with your own colourful life. I wish you luck with that.

I know this sounds a bit too tame, but I look forward to meeting you.

Yours,

The Love of Your Life You Have Yet To Find

Heartbreaker

She needed to break something
Hear the satisfying screech of glass against granite

Coincidence dipped its sticky fingers,
And the first thing that caught her eye - was his heart

Scribble Scribble

"I always thought I was going to be older,

That I was going to be someone, about now"

"Ananya, the only person you need to be

About now, and  perhaps always, is you."

Autobiography

I must confess
that I am infatuated
with the idea of heartbreak.
And that I have always wanted
to light a cigarette for myself.
I have felt invincible and fragile in the same moment.


I must confess
that my fickle heart
and my loyal soul forever battle.
I long too often for the unnamed-
so much so, that when I leave,
I don't walk, I run.

I must confess
that the tragic holds
a significant allure for me
What I feel is not serenity with my being
We argue too much, this life and I
But we are searching, always searching.



And while I am at it,
I will also confess
that the brave things i say at night
never occur to me when the sun is out.
And in my proudest moments,
I don't say anything, I sing.

Maybe

Maybe you will accept me
and all of my stargazing
Shall have meaning.

But maybe you won't
And I will say I'm well
Broken, I will try
And believe my own words.

Madness

A scarred, ugly face, Beady eyes-

Glittering with desolate desperation

A torn dress- the colour of melancholia- drags itself

As she speaks to the creatures on the wall

A sudden change in the eyes,

She runs across the ruined room

Finds what she was searching for-

The blue box of red rubies.

Storms settle, as she clutches them close

Fondly, carefully caressing the stones.

A sudden scowl on the face

And quietude mates with hysteria,

Haunted by a memory, she screams,

Screams as madness beckons her again.

The only portrait on the wall,

A striking woman in a scarlet dress

Breeding in her stance, rubies on her neck

A manicured mannequin of perfection

With a composure that flawlessly belies-

The madness that lay inside

Abandonment

Tremors – Once, Twice

The swirling vortex of emotions smile,

Pleased with the havoc they have birthed

I pick up the leftovers of my soul

Look at bruised Pride in the eye.

Another tremor, another maligned memory

Sunrise, Candlelight, A puritan’s passion,

And the abandonment with which I gave myself away

To Him. Always Him.

How Do We Get Out Of This Labyrinth Of Suffering

Simon Bolivar’s last words were “How do we get out of this labyrinth of suffering?”

That this world is a pitless labyrinth is not a fact I can dispute. But I did question Mr. Bolivar if I was, in fact, suffering.

The answer was a resounding yes. And not just me, but the world around me suffered from an unnamed plague. Our momentary happiness lasted for too short a period of time to heal the wounds from the battles we waged. We suffered from common cold, from homework, from poverty and from avarice. We suffered for love, for ambition, for one parents and our children. We suffered from our perpetual quest to be happy, and then happier. 

The materialist suffered from his love of all things luxurious, and the hermit from his disillusionment. (I have always thought that it must be indeed a deep gash of suffering that compelled people to leave all).

We suffer so much that suffering comes to us the same way breathing does- in a naturally lithe flow.

My mother often asked me why my writing always sounded despondent, dark and cynical, and I always dismissed her claims saying that children always sounded despondent, dark and cynical to their parents.

It was, however, silently stated that I wrote only when I felt despondency in my views. I was a victim to the populist ideology which dictated that suffering triggered creativity and art. And every time we rejoiced in a song, a dance or a heartbreakingly poignant piece of writing, we celebrated this suffering of the artist who crafted it.

Clearly, it must be a strange kind of God who underwent a strange kind of suffering to have created us – his spawns of sufferers.

Having justified that I was really, truly and ceremoniously suffering, I came to realize that Mr. Bolivar has asked a valid, if dramatic, question. How do I not suffer? How do I get out?

John Green suggested that I forgive. Now, I have never been too generous with my “It’s okay’s” so it is a genuinely hard proposition.

Add to that the dilemma of who do I forgive. My parents – who had made the champion of all mistakes by bringing me to this world? My friends, who as disillusioned and lost and lonely as I was? People who I had loved and been betrayed by? The society – a bitch who had laid down the rules to which I had to conform else I would be rejected? Words like Fate, Destiny and  Ego which forever stood before me?

It is, as you can see, an exhaustible list. But I could not forgive them all for a different reason than just large numbers.

Forgiveness implied a blame to be put on something or someone, and I did not blame any of the above for whatever they had done. It wasn't a noble sentiment that brought out this response, but essentially the self centered mind which had learnt to take credit for all things done to it, even by externalities. (Look at me, already passing on the blame!)

At this rate, I realized I had no one else to forgive but myself, but there was only pity I harbored towards my unfortunate existence and I couldn't  find any blame, even when I searched.

This forgiveness thing was obviously not going work for me, so I turned to The Buddha’s philosophies. Asceticism, as I have already stated, seemed like another abyss of suffering to me, for it was in my nature to yearn for rosiness and I wasn't really sure if giving it all up was in fashion these days.

What could I do?

I could love and hate but loving and hating were just different names of suffering.

I (surprise, surprise) suffered when I couldn’t find an answer to the question. I suffered for Simon Bolivar, but more for myself. Bolivar had died. I still had this life to get through.

Annoyance, I learnt, bred more suffering. Why couldn’t Simon just say how?

And then it dawned.

But of course he answered the question. The only way to get out of this labyrinth of suffering was to die. I didn’t matter what context we died in, for we all essentially died in a battle that we waged against ourselves, not unlike Bolivar.

To stop the endless cycle of suffering we had to pull ourselves away and the only way to do so was to stop breathing.

This sounds like a despondent, dark and cynical suicide note. But it isn't, you see? I am, of course, taking of the long term and of a world where dying were as easy as sleeping. And I am going to live a good 60 years to figure out another answer.

Until then, if you do make the mistake of asking me how do we get out of this labyrinth of suffering-

I’ll tell you – you can’t.