Strange

Its been strange that for the past few months I have not been able to write. Not that I have not tried. But every single time I would try to write something, there were a thousand thoughts in the head that fought for expression and I just could not choose what to write first.  Even the last two posts were found in lost pages written long ago. But today I read these lines posted by a wonderful woman, a very dear professor. Now I know the reason why I could not write. Today first time on this blog, I write lines that have not been composed by me but the thoughts that these lines express are exactly similar to what I feel at the moment. 2 paragraphs of lines written by others that hopefully will make me breathe again. I had stopped breathing. Hopefully these lines will let you breathe, again, too.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP

“You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.” 

― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

Leaving...

The door was half open,

From the partial openness,

I noticed her bags and packed cartons on the floor,

Neatly labelled with black bold markers,

From Hostel Room 303 to Flat 17D, 

On orange post -it notes and brown tape.

The packers were coming in five minutes,

She looked lost among the cartons,

She stared at her phone,

While I stared at her,

Tetris, calendar and the calculator applications on her Nokia E-71

Were over-used. 

She still played tetris when she felt lost. 

She wanted a smoke,

Marlboro lights.

But she chucked the pack last night,

Into the River Sabarmati flowing in darkness,

Right outside her dusty brown balcony,

Filled with the rivers sands. 

She was leaving,

She was getting lost in society,

She was fulfilling her social obligations.

She had a reserve in the grey groove,

Of her Nike backpack, 

Stung with badges collected from all over the world.

I hated her to break her promise,

But I loved to see her smoke,

Of how she pretended to take the nicotine in its entirety,

But almost choked before she released most of the smoke.

But today she was different,

She rolled it herself in a marlboro light,

It helped to ease the pain,

Of tolerating me for 2 years.

She stared at me from the half opened door,

She wanted to stay,

But she also wanted to flee,

She stared at me constantly,

For the last week,

As if her eyes wanted to store my every movement,

In a polaroid snapshot.

She loved me,

She left because she fell madly in love with me.

She decided not to come back

Because Alexander Super Tramp inspired her stupid soul

With his last words…

What if I was smiling and running into your arms,

Would you see then what I see now?

The packers took her belongings away one by one,

As she descended from the cemented stairs,

I stood still like concrete on the striped mattress of her room,

I could not bid her good bye.

The synapses asked for consultation,

Stopping her would be more painful,

Than letting her go.

I thought so then,

But was it vice-versa?

Questions have weird textures.

All questions don't have answers.

And do answers change with time?

Time infects context.

It creates and clears doubt.

I wanted time to help me,

But I fell in love with time,

More than her.

So I let her leave,

Leave me with her shadows,

Intermingled with time.

I loved him through pictures...

I loved him through pictures,

Clicked secretly and cropped at friends get togethers,

And birthday parties.

I kissed the pictures,

So that he could feel my warmth,

Through the distance.

I collected tea bags from expensive hotel rooms,

Because he adored tea.

But I never got a chance,

To make a cup of my favourite tea for him.

He remained silent,

In a room of loud chatter,

Thinking about things,

I wanted to know.

Then one day,

The crumpled white paper napkin,

Scrawled with a black pen,

Was pushed into my fair hands.

He wanted me to make a heart,

And write I love you,

With curvy typography,

On the cream card chosen specially

For his most loved one.

I laughed in my head,

That finally the dream has come true,

The man I loved for 633 days,

Will propose under the moon lit skies,

And melt my heart with his warmth.

He gave the card to my closest friend.

And gave me a huge smile.

Yellow Shorts

She sleeps in her yellow shorts,

The ones she bought with Him,

In the yellow Bennetton shop,

When she found her right size,

Number seven.

She baked the hilsa fish,

Wearing her yellow shorts,

As he smeared mustard paste on them,

She never washed the stains,

Fearing she would lose His only touch.

She found her fears a month back,

When her frail body failed to fight her fears,

The world told her, 

That a body once sold to love,

Can never be loved again.

A month back,

She sold her body to love,

For the first time.

Now she sleeps alone,

Under a blue striped blanket,

Wearing her yellow shorts,

In a white washed room,

With white wires in her ears,

Listening to Floyds Wish you were Here.

She had found, 

Her same old fears,

After waiting for years,

She wished for Him to be near.

Her slumber,

Her yellow shorts,

And white headphones,

Gave her a new world to dream.

She ran away from reality,

The claustrophobia made her scream.

She could not fight her fears anymore,

So she slept till reality came to knock on her door,

Reality posed a question,

The answer to which she did not know.

If love wanted your body today,

And after loving it,

Threw it away,

Would you let love,

Come tomorrow,

To love it again,

And give a chance,

To shatter it, 
A. g. a. i. n.

Fighting reality,

With her same old fears,

She chose to love Him,

Without Him being near.

She gave love a chance,

To shatter her again.

She washed her yellow shorts,

In a bucket full of water,

Mixed with antiseptic fluids,

And strong detergents.

She loved to hold on to her dreams,

And for the first time she loved her body

Even if the world didn't.

She slept under the blue striped blanket,

With white wires in her ears,

Wearing her yellow shorts,

And dreamt of Him to be near.

The yellow shorts may have lost His stains,

But her dreams remain embedded with them.

She chose not to get rid of them,

Even if it meant

That the world chose

Not to love her body again.

If you don't have hatred…

It took me a second to hate the

Stroganoff on the cream colored menu,

And ten minutes to hate the

Strawberry peach yoghurt shake.

But hating people for what they do

I just don't think that is in my taste.

We come across multitudes,

Some we love, and some we hate,

But what…

If you don't have hatred?

Does it mean,

That you are a saint,

Or saying a lie,

Or fooling your inner soul,

And suppressing the truth inside.

Or does it mean you never had

The power to truly love?

If you don't have hatred

You don't have love.

Protected

I cannot talk anymore,

I just hear people chatter,

So I chatter in the noise.

I float across 

White cement,

Water pipes,

Grey cubicles,

Glass windows,

Central air conditioning,

RFID cards,

6 latte's,

White paper cups,

Keyboards,

Clicks,

White hair,

Bitten chapped lips

Dark circles,

Dairy milks, 

Black pigment liners,

and Tyrells,

Knowing how alone can a person be.

I hear them talk,

So I talk,

About black plugs,

And good design.

I cannot talk anymore,

So I listen to Blackfield and Lacuna Coil,

And soak into Sigur Ros,

And write down lines,

From Into the Wild.

Others tried to define my identity,

I tried defining it too,

But while defining others identity,

I lost mine way too soon.

I cannot talk anymore,

So I scribble scrawly lines,

To know that I have my identity,

Protected,

In cream papers of my notebooks,

That will get lost in time.

I don't want to be protected like my lines.

It happened in a second...

It was just a transfer of signals,

Codes, numbers, accounts, identity,

From one secured space to 

Another password protected space.

It happened in a second.

On September 28, 2012,

I got my first salary,

First internship salary,

Sitting in my grey cubicle,

Made colorful by doodled

Paper coffee cups.

Is this what I wanted?

Is this what I needed?

Atleast it seemed that way,

When I signed on the call letter,

And contract forms,

Which made me sell my creativity,

For a while,

To a company that I owed a lot to,

For making me survive all my juries,

In my under graduate and post-graduate

Design life.

Material can never satiate the soul,

That is something I have concluded,

When the dream you had, 

Of earning your first salary,

Gets shattered, 

In a second of your life.

Then the vacuum sets in,

That makes you write,

Pieces like this,

Drinking scotch on the rocks,

And smoking marlboro lights.

If everything was complete,

And was going all right,

Was life worth living

Without the void and the fights?

The irony lies in ourselves,

We complicate our own lives,

By trying to simplify the complicated,

Only to get sucked into monotonous black holes,

Of a daily routined lifestyle. 

It happened in a second.

But it's novelty is gone.

Because it will happen again and again,

Like a letterpress machine

Printing paper leaflets,

That will get extinct with time.