Music

Stop the goddamn music
Just stop it.
No I don’t want to dance
My body rejects your happy beats
The lyrics don’t talk to me
Who are they made for?

My ears have been fed with generic
Western music
Bollywood
Bengali songs
And every time you play a song
My linguistic identities change.
Who the fuck am I?
In what language do I love?
Or exist?

English is too formal
A dress which I once borrowed for a day
And never returned.
Hindi is an ornament I bought for myself
Only worn on special occasions.
Bengali? It was always with me
Restricted reach, taken for granted
Nothing too special.

I’m sorry
It’s not your fault that
My ears are repulsed
By every tongue I know
Since I know not which one is mine.

They say
Learn the language of love
What the fuck is that, pray?
I’m sorry I’m angry
At myself, really
Confusion is choking me
That’s the only sound I hear.

Did you put on another song?

Thanks for holding my hand.
I used to be bored by instrumentals,
I never knew
That’s how music truly speaks.
Perhaps,
I don’t need a language anymore.

Prosaic

I wanted to write another poem and was hesitating if I should write anything but poetry in my blog ( being a newbie blogger I’m nervous anyway) but I decided that a little insight into my prosaic life does not deserve poetry.

So here I am, a second year undergrad student of English Literature from a city named Kolkata in India, trying out blogging despite being cynical about it. Who even reads these days? I honestly wonder. I used to be such an avid reader (although I gorged on thrillers and not true literary pieces) but now I just can’t seem to concentrate on any book, write-up, and so on-nothing captivates me, and I feel that this happens with all of us now.

Our attention spans are shrinking too fast, we are a generation of bored people. Or is it just me? I love it when someone is often excited about a book, or a TV show or a poem or a song- just about anything at all- because I miss feeling that way. It’s very rarely that I get excited about anything like that- and it is the best feeling ever.

I even dread conversations because I’m always afraid of boring the others. I can’t figure out what to talk about? I have been told to speak more but I keep running round and round in the vicious cycle of-should I call it-shyness? Social anxiety? Whatever it is, it kills all words that dare to come out of my lips. As if, I try to push the words outside of my body but the words come running back inside like scared little children. I know this is stupid, people will not probably hate me if I talk to them, but I get a feeling that I have nothing worthwhile to contribute to any conversation-so why waste words? In the span of a year, thanks to my shyness, I have had a proper conversation with hardly half a dozen people in my university.

There’s another side of the same coin-I get bored by other people easily. It’s a paradoxical feeling- I believe they are cooler, smarter and more eloquent than me, yet I mostly don’t want to listen to them. In the end I end up not talking to anyone at all. I am happy in my own company, but sometimes it does get lonely.

Things are looking up since I am actively making an effort to talk to others. Technically my second year has not yet begun, and I hope that this year is going to bring me a lot more smiles 🙂

I am again afraid of boring you, reader, so I’ll end my piece, but on a less-whiny, happier note. Here’s a picture of a temporary tattoo I drew at a tattoo art competition at uni (the topic was stardust). I stood second (because not many participated XD ) and so it’s a good memory of my first year.

Think of dreams and smile at memes, reader, and we’ll meet again.