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