Smothering Silence

  I'm lurking between the palpitations as if I'm the matter and the thought While I swing between you and me I wonder if I'm there at all.  I wonder if I'm there while we draw lines I wonder if I'm there  when you're awake and I'm dying  I wonder if I'm there when there's love and tangled breaths  I wonder if I'm there when things are being said.  I wonder and  I slip away feeling the aching tingle inside my soul While I swing between you and me I wonder, if I'm there at all.

 To love is to become the other  So when nothing remains in this world the quiet of this sacrifice floats in the air Like the silence of a lost one does Years later they're gone. So years after you've been lost  And so has everything in the world And nothing remains  The void will remember you for bending it By becoming its own In silence, in love.

 Perhaps the silence scattered in our minds, stuffed in our stories, layering our reality,  sneakily growing on the pretext for peace is lost on us.  It remains forgotten until we're arrested by it. Sometimes, in the happiest, warmest, truest moments,  in the company of those we love dearly It transforms into an unspeakable grief. Now, this is why I stress on love: It acquaints us with the truths we thought we'd never get to know but have known all the while. That one fine evening when my silence arrested me, It was your tenderness that made me utter- "I should've said it long ago, but I didn't know what to say." The grief didn't remain unspeakable, after all. I held your hand.

 Our animosity towards God is reflected in every distressing possession we have sacralized. every piece of land we split in two every door we latched to keep someone every unmindful attempt of being. Our misgivings and that cynical terror, each one, each time is a violent attempt  to ravage his idea. His effortless tyranny we say  is a way to speak to us,  As if he's begging us to say his grace, Rub our hands into rivers, till they melt Beat our backs, till they break Sing songs till our parched throats get drenched in blood. His barbaric ways- tests of time, we think are his favourite methods of communication. With our  coward beating hearts,  severe reluctance to take a chance, We refuse to even touch  that it might just all be made up. Our cracked understanding of concepts, Disgust for a shared bite, uninterrupted convenience and piercing silences, All dance upon the rubble of his home While we light up a candle, ring some bells and join our hands f...

 The depth of love letters written by an indecisive man to his mental mother, a prayer. The depth of his tears, the uninspired life thriving on the probability of hope, a river. The depth of an unrequited love story that couldn't surpass the law of statistics, a rotten fruit. The depth of human mind to feel millions of things as if they are its own While nothing in the world ever is.

  Between romance and revolution a city runs. Delhi has always been a city that  has accommodated various cultures, interests and tastes. More importantly, it has matched my idea of romance better than any other city I've been to. I've grown up to realise that it is more of a colour palette than a city.  Delhi’s sense of royalty hasn't ceased to exist. It is still served in plates by small vendors, it glistens in its colours and the entire shape of the city itself. Delhi carries itself magnificently, acing the tests of time. But it belongs not only to the ones furthering its richness also to every person who has loved flavour, fervour, fables and freedom.  As someone who had never visited Delhi before she came there for higher studies and has now spent three successful years there, I can totally attest to the claim that Delhi embraces you each time you knock on its door.  The four different directions are a celebration in themselves.Be it the loud and vibrant st...

Carrying the taste of home to an outland, one deigns to keep a part of oneself devoted to one’s roots. But is it enough? Bhatt ki chidqwani, a prominet dish eaten mostly in Uttarakhand. The air in the house would be filled with the sweet aroma of boiling soybeans every Monday, usually in summers. As Manjula Joshi remembers it, it was a frequent occurrence till a few years ago, when her children hadn’t yet left home for work and studies.  The sweetness of the aroma still fills the house, but not as frequently.   When Manjula wed Jiwan Joshi, she had to leave behind the beautiful hilly village of Lohaghat. Located at an altitude of 1754 meters, Lohaghat is a serene village in the Champawat district of Uttarakhand. The beauty of the place remains unmatched for her even now, and her keenness to bring her culture to an outland and assimilate both could never fade away with time.  One of the strongest thread that weaves both cultures together, according to Manjula, is the ...

  It's hard to find "grass and straw" sometimes    From the shore of Santana Beach, Mahabalipuram. What could compliment the echoes of a grand sea, cold sand and sweet, cold breeze better than a plate of sizzling, crusty crabs? The aroma that dances its way to your nostrils and makes you crave it a little more every time can have a very different effect on someone else. As somebody whose  toes curl up every time one offers a graphic description of a dish made of flesh, I can never identify with the sheer happiness of having a plate of crustaceans or tender squid or fish in front of me.  The thing about vegetarianism I have discerned is that no matter how much you're after saving the environment or adhering to your religious and spiritual beliefs, you'll always end up eating alone and being persuaded by innumerable people to quit your adamant belief. “Once, just once, try it.” My inbox after dining out is usually flooded with the messages from friends adamant abo...

  Corroded love is a disease Like words that pierce through your heart And the little life that floats inside the cracks of your thoughts Through helplessness, it thrives. The body gasps for fresh air to be pumped up in the blood  A kiss by freshest flesh or maybe  some petting or thrusting would be fine  A Cure can be unearthed, there is a probability. Thriving on probable outcomes Let the noise be on a roll and until the time it wears down An "I love you too" will save us all.

 There are no last days of sadness sadness is like the jot of candy stuck in your jaw, it sticks.  It is the cold feet dangling out of quilt, wet socks, a dry tongue running out of words, a song of discomfort.  Sadness is everything in everything, in the roads you travel, in the houses you exist.  Undisturbed with what your lenses witness, It lingers even in the brief, silent moments of oblivion that are all yours.  It's an anxious thought, even an afterthought, an incomplete sentence, a lie to a lover.  sadness is not a state of mind,  it's a state of being.  A truth hanging on the tip of your tongue, but never coming out, toppling almost whatever the heart holds the discomfort in the body, the filth of the world.  the only truth which fills the void,  the void of our being,  sadness is you, sadness is me.  and there are no last days of sadness. 

 What kind of story is this? A sad demise of our promises.  A tongue tied, a chest sinking An old rose sighing, a new bell ringing. A slow sadness surfacing the clicks of time, A thread burnt black, a vicious crime. Have all of them been robbed of the sorts of bliss? What kind of story is this?

My grievous, treacherous state of mind sunken in an untagged bottle. Mine are the two hands that touch it,keep it careful with the vaccum? It's rather funny. But  very cautious, grabby and clingy I hide it when it can't be handled, but never HAND OVER. This untagged bottle is everything I can hold close a vital need in a gruesome night how would I let it be touched by you? a descretion of rules of a sugarcoated  immaterial, irrelavant life a gloom that can't be cut through and it leaks in the most vicious, gruesome nights, this bottle it's a canvas for most of the violent events, life. It knows and bears certain weight. A little peek in this pit and I'm lost, an interrupted incident, but it soaks me. for whatever time but it does. and I am aware that here, grief is subservient to confusion here, even the sadness is suffocated. A confused, tangled, mesmerized metaphor struggling to be uncorcked once again,this bottle amongst the various bottles of wine, perfumes, liq...

You couldn't avoid it and the circumstances brought you here but now the only way, you realise to gather peace in a place that was once familiar to you is to gather them in the pieces of the past. Gathering them in your little basket of remembrances, you realise, a certain smell or an object would give you the solace that everything else and everyone else now is failing to. In a room with people you know, the tea is served,with some ideas that are obnoxiously stupid for you and plainly simple for them and your silence at the dinner table, communicating toxicity towards some of their recognitions about you. No sooner than that, you realise that there's a division . A division or maybe an unavoidable conflict between what is ought to be ideal and what's not. Distress shrouded in disagreements and soaked in daily routine, political discourse, faith and beliefs, but most importantly the discrepancies in definitions. Their inability to keep track with your ideas and your loss...

I don't mind being empty. Every time, I leave trails for you So, you catch up with me When I can't. But then, I wouldn't mind I wouldn't mind, if you failed too. We can maybe sit at a distance then And let it pass. Let it all pass. And then, meet once more, if it pleases to fill each other again with everything that we think, matters. And if, by any chance the odds are against us, I will leave trails for you.

A thousand mouths of my lover and when I kiss, I'm unaware which one's swallowing me. When you swim in the river just because you want to you wouldn't want to know the depths, you'd swim because you WANT TO and when I kiss I forget which one's I'm kissing because you know, it goes the same way. Until, I'm reminded. By a diffferent feeling a different flow a different pace the roughness of the water. A brief journey to consciousness to take measures, check the direction of water before I swim to be aware of which one's I'm kissing because the deliverance of misgivings, distances are noticable when they're in the forms of kisses and most importantly when you want to drown and you can't, anymore.

While delving into the frustrations that adulthood brings along with itself and throws straightaway at our faces, while we still vacillate between floating around with memories of the past and confirming to the ideal way of ageing, art is what we believe and with time realize that truly frees us. ART in its various forms and ways is something difficult to put into a certain shape. It's actually like water, changing shapes and forms with different ideas and beliefs. It is hard to get art into some specific words or describe it within their bounds but it is, what it is. Anyway, before I derail from what exactly had amused me enough to write something, I might get this straight. The thought of struggles and hollowness led me to the idea of art, the idea of art led me to the idea of writing and the idea of writing led me to the fact , how impossibly difficult it becomes to write about something if your commitment and feelings towards the idea are weak. How this weakness impairs you to...

Scents attached to seasons that lead your senses to some beautiful places. Sometimes turbulent too that stir every ounce of your strength, but sometimes so safe and warm that the love of it glistens at the brim of your eyes. October to me is like an old lover in that regard. The scent of an average October day is something I'd always want to be lost in. To be lost in that smell is similar to be found by someone who knows solitude. It gives me vague memories. There are some untouched ones, some tangled ones like stubborn locks of hair. But the smell of it, lets me run my hand through them.  There's some rush as you remember it, sweet, stomach turning rush. You remember it like you remember your first kiss . There's yearning, a strong pull and a deep yearning to know it more. To hold on to every bit of it as much as you can, because within seconds it fades, but you like it, how you love it. You won't give up on it. Because it's like the first time you were aware ...

Sometimes when I'm too exhausted of sliding into seasons Sometimes when the summers are weary and tired Sometimes when there is a longing for a smell, a colour  I wonder what those winters were like. Like a brief suitcase of untouched memories Like an old album hidden under my mattress Like a note from the favourite lover  There hides a season in this unmeasured greatness. Was it my mother roasting popcorns in butter? Was it the ritual of lying under the sun with my sibling? Was it my father who'd make his way to home sooner? A thread woven, cherished in a memory that's constantly tingling. And when I can't fathom the pangs of longings inside my chest When I can't fathom this usual music standing uptight When I can't gather the fear that's simmering from the cracks I wonder what those winters were like.

To be back in the element 

This window didn't know your life, But knew your demise very well. And if only you had known how unforgiving and haunting its indulgence in your departure would turn out to be, I know, you wouldn't have ever gone. But, did you really want to go? Or, Did you really know you were going? Where did you go, exactly? And, did you really go eventually? I am sorry, but am still at this window or say I am carrying it with me, all the time, wherever I go because neither am I able to find the answers to all these questions nor my peace of mind. But unfortunately, at times when I let my mind drift a bit, it always finds you and you're silent, always."