Excerpts on Nascence

Fragile as a flower

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 19:44:03 +0530

Buried inside rosy lips
Peeking through emerald-colored hair
Is an artless soul
Lost in vines of thoughts and fears
Get closer, you will find me there.

Christmas Wishes

Sat, 21 Dec 2019 19:41:21 +0530

On a chilly day ahead of Xmas
I was strolling along the street
The night donned fog
And trees played with the breeze

As my podcast stopped playing –
Why’d you only call me when you’re high
Someone broke the silence on the lane
With a deep, hoarse voice

Now I know it’s dark
But who can convince the heart?
I looked for that familiar stranger
Who stopped by the book mart

The tree in my backyard

Fri, 19 Jul 2019 22:43:01 +0530

Slowly,
The creases of my hand
Are erasing the imprints
Of the fingers I’d clench
When I was a child.
The tree in my backyard
Is also shedding leaves
As if ready
To pass the baton
And let them fly.

Slowly,
I’m stepping into a world
Of the unknown,
Of mystical beauty
Of (delusional) freedom.
Those fruits
Have also fallen
On the barren land
Unwary of strong winds
Careless of the season to come.

A letter posted to Heaven

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:47:21 +0530

Silver shining hair
And a golden nosering
Vibrant colours on your dress
And also on your crocheted mats
I guess you loved every colour
Just like you worshipped every God you knew.

I still remember the chants you made me learn
And how to bow down before closing the doors of our temple
But you never taught me
How to unsee the void at the porch every evening
And that green wooden chair where now only the dust sits.

You reek of cigarettes.

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 21:19:19 +0530

The doorbell rings
At four in the morning
I reach the door
With blurry eyes
The room smells of smoke
From the candles I lit hours before.

It’s you at the door
Clenching my favourite flowers
Greeting me with a grin
I ask you in my mind
“Where were you last night?
I waited for days and hours
To get a glimpse of this smile.”
Guess you heard me,
Like you always do.
“I was caught up in work”, you say
Giving me reasons for your absence

Meant To Be.

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 22:08:44 +0530

Two sides of the same coin
We’re like a glass of
half water, half wine.

Just as the kettle is meant for tea,
And the hill always shelters cold breeze
Just as every picture has a memory,
Some things are meant to be
Together, inseparable.
Like the green of the forest
Like the sweet in the dessert
Like your hand in my hand
In a 0°C weather.
And I may not ask for perfect endings.

Bayt: Home

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 11:52:36 +0530

She was trying to
Find the oxymoron
To her sorrowful life
As she turned
The pages of the past.
“I will travel the world“,
She had once proclaimed
When asked what her dream was.
Oh, what an irony it seems
That she travelled through countries
From the Arab states to Turkey
And sailed to the beautiful Greek islands
Which were nothing like her home,
Where she woke up to dark skies
And where the alarm
Wasn’t the chirping birds
But deafening explosions
And still, unhappy,
As if she regrets
what she dreamt of.
She now searches for a covert
Which would be her home
But unlike her home
Where faces wouldn’t be so alien
And love and food would be in excess.
And as she takes refuge
In the next alien country
To be persecuted again,
All she wishes for her life
Is to turn from awful
To awfully good.

Summer

Thu, 17 May 2018 21:14:14 +0530

Like a bright light
You came in through my
permeable window-like heart.
I opened it all for you
For flowers to bloom
And darkness to fade
But too much of something
Is bad, they say.
The heat burnt my skin
The flowers wilted
The home of amour I offered you
Was filled with hot air.
Guess you were like summer
Seasonal, transient
Leaving raindrops as you depart
Washing off every trail
But making a promise to come again,
Making a vow to come again.

She.

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:57:27 +0530

Draped in white,
She,
Born in hospital
With all the glee
She bloomed like a flower
Away from thorns
A daughter, a sister
Cheeks, red and curls, brown
Embracing red as she marries
Discovers a life
That’s not about fairies
A brunt of home
She, a wife, a mother
Eyes glisten bright
Hiding all the trouble
She grows old
A stick, no teeth
Her soulmate has died
She’s all bleak
When end comes near
God, they see
Draped in white
She.

Just Another Day

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 00:56:25 +0530

You wonder, how resilient
Are those sunflowers
At the backyard
Fighting the winters
To be able to see
The sun, afresh.
I see a sunflower
Everyday, in you
Tackling issues
And waiting in calm
To be ready to bloom
In the morning, yet again.

The story that wasn’t

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 18:54:29 +0530

Twirling to the song,
I giggle endlessly

Trying to plie and flip
As I open my arms
Not sure if
I should move along
To this catchy beat
That’s taking me away
To the world of happiness
As I go on with my sway

What was that phrase
In the ‘Kite Runner’?
“They only let you
be this happy
When they’re preparing to take
Something from you”
Well let’s just risk this once
I will see what to do
So I take a leap
To get in to that place
But guess I’ll fall
And break my legs

Saudade

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:41:41 +0530

Years from now I’ll reminisce
How you and I were a thing
Lending shoulders
To sleep and cry,
But got estranged
In a labyrinth
And couldn’t come back.

The Song

Sat, 16 Dec 2017 21:53:33 +0530

You wrote a song for me
Said it entails everything
From what we had since the beginning
You added tunes and jingles
Took all the efforts you could
And presented it to me
On a sunny day, in the woods
I didn’t like it
It broke your heart
Disheartened, you went away
Somewhere far.
Turns out the song
Got imprinted in my head,
I listened to it everyday
Till my death.

Beautiful Things

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 09:56:42 +0530

Some things are beautiful
Only when they’re distant
Like a bee sitting on a flower
Humming a song
Or a radiant sunshine
Constricting your brown pupils
Some love you yearn for
Are too, riveting from distance
The closer love gets to you
You get off the deep end.

THE BLUE

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 14:21:14 +0530

“It’s a good day”,

You come to me and say.

You shine like the sun

Laughing all the way

Vacillating,

Whether to jump or fly?

Fear adulates both

But so do you.

So what if you fall

Into the ocean of misery?

I’m standing

Right where you began

To help you swim through

To the shallow end.

Again you stand, you rise,

For you were destined

To seek the ether of wise.