Tag: life

In my bed

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The melody of love songs from decades ago
Curl around my ears and ask,
When will you fall in love?
Ringing laughter from sitcoms on TV
Knock on my eyelids as well,
When will you laugh as much?
I am just beginning to live
Perhaps I need my cocoon much more
Much longer than I knew
I see the sun shining and the cat licking its paw
I feel the joy of eating a candy
And throwing the wrapper into the bin
Which falls on the floor instead,
I see, hear and I love
Conversations with myself,
My dreams
My life inside my head.

It’s still a life worth living
Curled up in your bed.

Modern Indian Woman

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 I am looking for opulence
 The tags of success
 Houses, cars, and a bank balance heavier than a grieving heart
 Looking for all of it
 Of course, with my eyes shut
  
 How pretty it feels
 To be a careerist woman
 The glossy air of perfumed professionalism
 No more the stench of burnt rice and messy lentil soup
 How else to be equal to man?
 
 
 I haven’t got a plan yet
 (God forbid someone finds me out)
 Without a gold-aimed focus, what will I be?
 Just a girl waiting for the shehnai
 A gold-digger whose housework fails to fall under GDP
 To be looked down upon contemporaries
 To be ruled over by the smug elders
  
 There’s no room to aim for minor roles
 We should only look for big things
 Superimpose our sight with the really feminist aspirations
 No more petty positions
 You can be Lady Macbeth
 Let your ambition kill you
 But never the reverse
  
 Of course, I’m still thinking
 And looking
 With my eyes shut
  
 Padma, Qayanat, Lakshmi and Sheila
 Have all the doors already shut to them
 While I bicker in my cocooned metropolis
 While I compare my feminisms
 While I waste my words on them and myself
  
 So before I open my eyes
 To inevitably jump into the rat race
 Running to be equal
 To finally be a modern adult
 A modern Indian woman,
  
 Let me for one last time
 Dream of smallness
 Where I travel throughout the land
 Settle anywhere, work anyhow
 Just enough to keep alive
 Free as a bird
 Without any man or an elder snatching away my wings
 Terrorizing my honour;
 Free as rippling wind
 Strong enough to turn into a storm anytime I choose
 A wishful wanderer let loose
  
 Let me dream of simplicity
 Let me be.

Forgive me

ahonarc2 Comments
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 She was singing because she lost her mother
 I was listening but I did not cry.
 Her song gave me a perverted joy
 As I had something she didn’t
  
 I pitied her as night fell
 She went home to rest;
 We met again the next day and she smiled at the men
 How can she smile, I wondered
 How can she smile when I can’t
 Even though I have my mother
 And a family ten times larger
 And a house far more decked with ornamental books?
 It is wrong for you to smile
 I wanted to say
 But instead I cried alone when night fell and she went home to rest;
 I wanted to embrace my mother
 Tell her how delicious the curry was,
 Instead I felt guilt churning in my gut
 For that one moment of blasphemous joy I had felt
 When she had sung the sad song of loss
  
 Forgive me, friend
 God bless your mother’s spirits
 Forgive me, mother,
 For creating absences and pain
 Forgive me
 So I can forgive myself.

Burial

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I think I’m dying

My smiling face in the polaroid
That I left behind in your heart
Is losing its colours and I
Am out of focus
I multiplied my two arms
Into thousands
Hand-in-hand like a mesh
The thatched wall of blood and flesh
Is crumbling and
I’m scattered all over
How do I protect you now?
Your lips have forgotten to sting
At the strike of my name
Oh how easily now
They’re just vowels and consonants
I think I have indeed
Begun to end.

Bury me when the sun finally sets
I’ll leave the rope of my long hair
For you
Not as a reminder to forget
But to secure the ones who come next spring
Bury me now
Bury me
So that I can bury you well.

Stay/Go

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Sometimes I stop thinking
And paint myself into a blank wall
People who run into me
Leave behind a taste of their minds,
Their greasy forehead impressions.

I'm standing still
My blank face changes colours
A perfect background for any of you
I will be the poker face in all your pictures
Calm, quiet and free,

I can't move at all
But I can hear your songs
And I don't want to dance
I'm listening to your stories
How they've ended and begun.

If I grow weary of repose
I will start to flow
I'll loosen into clear water and ripple with ease
Maybe I'll occupy your minds,
And the stories I gathered
Will turn to sand-stones.

Flip me a coin, Fate, and let me know
Should I stay, or should I go?

The day passes you by

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Cat – walking on ledge – Venice – Italy





The day passes you by
Like a cat strolling on a wall
The bricks inside crumble with time
As you watch her with
The corner of your eye
 
You look at your palms
The creases and folds and fine lines
Roadmaps to your dreams
You think you could cup the world inside them
If only you could begin
 
A cloud wipes the sun from the room
You lie flat on the bed
Eyes shot up to the limit of the sky
But the roof is thatched
With the straws of dread
 
You could have seen the sky
You could have been the stars
Yet the day will pass you by
Because you didn’t start.

	


				
	






	
	

		
Dream
	


	
					

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I went for a walk yesterday.
The evening was a blue blanket
Draped around my skin
I walked into a dream.
My hair grew into a bush of roses
The red of their joy
Splashed scarlet upon my cheeks.
I checked for thorns,
My fingers returned without a prick.
Oh, the air was so sweet
Like a child’s candy daze
Sticking to my face like a warm embrace.

Drops of light fell like leaves on my path
I stepped on them, unthinking,
A fraction of a moment later
I held my breath, afraid,
Did I bring back the dark?
It took me by surprise, when the little pools of light
Jingled under my feet,
Flaring through my form like soft thunder.
Every step staged a firework show.

I wish I had nowhere else to go
But the sunset had begun.
I had to return.
As I turned to retrace my steps
I was almost about to wake,
When I heard my dream speak,
“I know you have miles
And miles to go before you sleep,
But don’t you forget, if you don’t pause to dream
Your eyes will see a solitary street
When there are thousands not taken.
Goodbye for now, I bid you adieu,
I wish your dreams
May all come true.”

	


				
	






	
	

		
Shiuli
	


	
					

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The dead Shiuli tree stands like a grave
Mourning its unborn flowers.

I hated picking them up every morning
From our little backyard soil
During Durga Puja
The air hung heavy with the sweet scent
While ants crawled up my feet
Mosquitoes feasted on my flesh
But once my basket was full
I'd stare at their beauty

The little white flowers
Throbbing with their little saffron hearts
Sang of a time
Calmer and earthy
A time of faith in a goddess
With as many as ten hands
To defeat evil
A celebration danced with
Beats of the dhaak.

Now my hands are full
With questions and silences
I want a basket to hold
To rush through the new Puja magazine
To breathe in the fragrant breeze.

The flowers have dropped
Through the emptiness between my fingers
The colours have faded
Before my overworked eyes.

The storm took away the tree one night
And left me stranded
With the dead arms of a broken tree
Wailing for a hug;
Now I'm grieving something
I never thought I cared for.
Mellowing in memories of the past
I shut my eyes of today
I hope for nothing more.

	


				
	






	
	

		
Meet me halfway there
	


	
					

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In the heart of the city I want to see you-
You and I
Separated by a vast road,
Cars speeding faster than thoughts
Sound reflecting from every surface-
All will turn into blurred lines and white noise
When we lock our eyes.
You'll know who I am.
We have never spoken, no, 
Not in this world
But I remember you from the ones before.
In each of them
I'd written songs and ballads for you
Cried for your love
Loved in your name
And you have loved me too.
But parallels never meet
Neither did we.
All I ask is for you to
Meet me halfway there.
Even if it's impossible
Even if it's madness
Let us dare.







	


				
	






	
	

		
Resilience
	


	
					

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The broken hymns of our promises
Are crunching under our dead weights
The air we inhale is always so stale
The pit of chaos so insatiate
 
Hold my arm, my sisters, please
My rainbow hair is bleached and brittle
Wrap your kindness around my skin
Let your strength help prove my mettle
 
Our eyes unfocused onto a blank wall
Soft breaths heaving, we’ll lay still
Tomorrow’s so big, we’re so small
Won’t we stand? I hope we will.
 
Our strengths hardened by softness
A different resilience.