The Fall of Autumn

As she made her way to her cold car- the only one in the deserted parking lot- Amulya’s mind took her to the night when he ended up here. And she wished it hadn’t. 

Last night, she saw him again. Of the eleven nights Amulya spent religiously walking up to his room just to stroke his cheek and wish him a good night, this was the last. He has left her and there is nothing she can do to stop him now. “I just hope you shine as bright as everyone said you would, wherever you end up”, she said to herself, her breath billowing white puffs in the cold December air. 

He and Amulya went long back. In fact, he was a part of her life for as far back as her memory took her. It had been just a day since he left but it felt to her as if an entire lifetime had passed. She never got to have much of him in his last days, anyway. So many people had hovered all around him that she can bet her last penny on the fact that he did not get enough time to even register their faces. Sitting on the corner of her bed in the darkness, she allowed herself to go further into her memory since she had ventured to step into it anyway. She took a deep breath and prepared herself for the inevitable outburst of helpless sobs. But she seemed to get a weird high off this. She would think about him, tear herself into pieces, then gather those pieces back up and go about as if nothing had happened- until some random instance struck her memory once again. This had become a pattern for the past twenty- four hours.

This time she thought about his blue eyes. Throughout his life, people had marvelled at the way he looked. This, along with his kindness and his wisdom made him the star attraction in the family. His milky white skin paired with those impenetrable crystal blue eyes, in a family of brown skin and brown eyes, made him stand out. What else made him stand out was his upright, strong and confident demeanour. He wasn’t particularly tall but the serious expression he always wore on his face made people respect him the way one would respect their guru. His dark round glasses and his loud and clear voice made him someone who could not be messed with. He was grand. He was enigmatic. He had been a great sportsman and athlete. From hockey to long jump- he aced it all. In fact, he had turned his passion for sports into his career at Roorkee University. But- there’s always a but- just like with every single person on this planet, life happened to him.

Amulya now went back to the day when she was shooting for a short film project with her friends. She was in the middle of being slapped and thrown on the floor by her abusive husband when her phone rang. The hint of alarm was clear in her mother’s otherwise calm voice.

“Beta, go back home right now. We’re on our way back as well. Baba lost his balance and fell.” There was a short pause on the other end and then in an almost whimper, her mother said, “he’s hurt.”

Up until this moment Amulya had not been too acknowledging of Baba’s presence in the home- or in her life. She had done what was required of every grandchild to do and that was essentially where her relationship with him ended, apart from the occasional storytelling sessions where he would narrate anecdotes from the past that Amulya had learned by heart over these seventeen years of her life. But she loved hearing them over and over again.

The last three months, Amulya thought, went by in a blur. She tried remembering what those three months felt like but all she could recall were little bits and pieces of stark images that now seems to be engraved on her mind. Endless, sleepless nights, shaking hands, dribbling drool, forgetfulness and broken speech. This is all she could remember and, perhaps, all she would remember from hereon of those three months. Instead of tearing apart this time though, she surprised herself. She got up and gave out a little sad laugh. It was funny, she thought, how a lifetime of grandeur could be overshadowed in three swift months, and be packed away and sent over to the other side.

That pleasant October day fastened Baba’s departure. With each passing day, Baba’s winter neared until he was as cold as that December night which took him away. 

Abyss

I know hell exists

3 am and here without you

Enveloped by darkness

Surrounded by loneliness 

And afraid to fall asleep

Because the fiend that

Fosters in my soul

Won't set me free

Even in my dreams now

My mind is tired and afraid

Of seeing the things I now see

Behind these shut eyes

As they try to take me away

And I cannot gather the strength

To fight them off anymore

Because the longing

Of the comfort of your arms around me

As I slowly drown into the darkness

Of the most peaceful sleep

I had

Ever since I stopped clutching onto Teddy

Has robbed me of the ability

To fight myself all by myself

And I yearn for those nights

When you would not let go of me

All through the night 

Till we woke up.

I know what hell is

3 am and longing for 
Your smell, my lullaby

Hemispheres

Your voice still rings
In my ears as clear as day
"Dare not cry"
Cry? I am not
"While you're gone
Too many thousand miles far
For I am no sailor 
Who could cross the seven seas
And wipe those crystals 
Off your cheeks
And the knowledge of this
Is too insufferable
For me to survive."

Revelation

Oh darling
I shall never forget that night 
When we stayed up late
Till the sun rose again
Showing each other our battle scars
That we valiantly lost
To win this one
And convincing each other of the beauty we saw
In our blemished bodies
Even as we stripped naked
And marvelled at our faultless flaws
That fit so well
With the stories we told
Of the life 
Now seemingly a distant past to us
As we vow to guard and to compliment each other
Till Death do us apart

To Blue Eyes and Toothless Smiles

I slip into slumber
Before I am awake
As my very existence
Is a constant reminder of you
And your aching absence
I want to rid you off my mind,
Let go of the things that are there no more
But I cannot
You seem to have become a part of it
And you will slowly devour it

A Letter to Heaven

I haven't ever told a soul
That I sometimes can still feel 
Your cold and wrinkly stubby fingers 
Intertwined in mine 
And see the way you flashed
That toothless smile 
Lying in that white bed
Tethered to various machines
Working every second to keep you breathing 
Inside those pale walls painted blue 
When I told you I'd come to meet you the very next day
But I never did
And now I cannot.
I cannot hear that breathy sound of your voice
Praying for my health and wisdom
For He who you used to pray to
Called you to Himself 
And now I cannot feel the gaze of your 
Light blue eyes looking at me intently 
Every time I read out a new essay I wrote
I miss the way you used to pinch my cheek
Every time I kissed you goodnight 
And I'm sorry that I didn't do it often enough 
I'm sorry that I never came back to see you 
To make you smile like you did 
And maybe help you live a day longer.
It's vain and it's futile now
And I haven't ever said this aloud 
But I miss you

Captive

Your shackles that tether me
To the corner of this room
Shadow me
And compel me to
Give in to the darkness
Forcing me to shell into myself

I am a free bird
With a heart that goes berserk
On seeing
This endless ocean
Stretched far in front of me
The places I haven't been
And the memories I haven't made
Make me go weak on my knees
For there is a hunger
Raging ablaze inside of me
That aches
To explore
And wander
And never look back

These redundant regulations
That you suffocate me with
Are a waste of your time
And mine
Let me be
Let me learn as I fall
And learn as I fail

I desire
Adventures
Experiences
And knowledge
And your grounding obligations
Take this life away from me
I can foresee
This will end badly for me
And tragically for you
Because once I leave
I shall never come back
And you can watch your precious
Fade away into the distance 
Taking all the sunshine
And happy days
Along with her

Don't cage me up
Let me break
Set me free

Salvation

This dark corner

Of my large house

Lit only by a faint bulb

With moths fluttering around it

Is home to my heart

Heavy with emotions

My eyes

Brimming with tears

And my mind

Burning with the need to express

But I cannot comprehend 

What this heaviness is

And I cannot fathom

What these emotions are 

I cannot unravel

This need to express

And as I lay wide awake,

Deprived of the ability to sleep,

My mind races back 

To the last time you lay here beside me 

But I know for sure

That you are not

What this aching soul needs to express

And I won't let you be

The reason for this aching soul

Because you are neither my life

Nor the centre of my universe 

You are not what

Other poets claim their lovers to be

I am a free soul

I won't let you be 

Everything I need

I won't let you be

Anything more than

Just a fragment of my life

I shall not float so shallow

I shall dive deep

And find more to my life

Than just you.

And somewhere unknowingly, I created another piece about you. I am dreading that you might as well be the reason for my salvation. 

Verboten

Today I found out what destruction in love really means. 

I remember when I was a kid, I had a stuffed monkey that I always used to carry around with me. Mr. Brown was the only true friend I ever had. He accompanied me to the tea parties where no ones else ever showed up and helped me fight the monsters under my bed and slip into deep slumber. And then came that horrific asthma attack tat took all my stuffed toys away from me including Mr. Brown. I would cry for days reminiscing about all the good memories we spent together and how my Dad forbade me from using anything that could trigger another attack. 

The lesser known truth is that I sometimes used to take him out of that steel metal storage trunk where he was kept hostage and hug him tightly, take his smell in and try to remember it for as long as I could, for I did not know how long it would be till I got to see him again.

Love.

Irrevocable.

It will all be fun till it'll be time to bid goodbye until next time. And the uncertainty of that next time will haunt you. It could be a day or a week or a few weeks, you would never know. 

Loving the forbidden will be the toughest and all consuming. It will take the life out of you. Those moments of loneliness when you need them so much and yet they sit out of reach will be savaging. The helplessness you will feel when they're in need and you sit with your hands tied and can find no way to break through that rope that binds you will be ravaging. 

The fruit of the wait will always be 'worth it' but the excruciating pain during that wait will damages you. It will  make you cry yourself to sleep every night and that hollow pain in your torso will  became so familiar that it will only be noticeable when it decides to fade away momentarily. Most of your time will be spent in trying to remember their smell and in trying to feel every touch that made your body left tingling. But the tryst. Oh, the tryst! 

Get lost in their eyes and memorize how they light up every time they talk about their favourite sport. Or how their eyelashes flutter and shut close when you lean in to kiss them. Memorize how their fingers get intertwined in yours and how that dimple on their cheek makes you want to look at them forever. Remember every contour of their body and how well it fits and shapes with yours. Let yourself be the happiest person in that moment because God knows how long it will last and God knows how long you will have to wait to feel all of that again. Let your pain fade away as you snuggle close to them and let your heart beat fast every time they hold you by your waist and brush a strand of hair off your face. Let yourself be because everything is so much more fun when you are forbidden from doing it.

Joy.

Until next time.

Unfaithful

I lay idle like every other night with abstract thoughts flitting through my mind and not surprisingly, it zeroes in on you.

My mind wandered to that night when you poured your heart out to me. You construed our first date to me from how you saw it with intricate details. You remembered every single conversation we had, sitting on the terrace of that high rise building, watching the sun slowly dip behind the trees that lined the horizon. You remembered every insignificant detail of my life I might have narrated to you. You have a wonderful memory.

You told me you saw a big part of yourself in me- carefree and happy- just what you seek to be. And then you jumped about two months ahead and described the goosebumps that covered every inch of skin on your body when I first told you I loved you. "The best birthday gift ever", you said. You confessed proudly that I had created a writer out of you. Putting your thoughts into words was a skill that never came to you without difficulty but you claimed I made it effortless.

I will never forget the way you explained every feeling, thought and emotion you ever felt towards me. While I sat their motionless on the corner of my bed with the phone glued to my left ear and my head resting against the poster clad wall, with silent tears gushing out and rolling down my cheeks, my body was numb from the pain of knowing that there is a sadistic devil in angel's form residing somewhere inside of me, deriving pleasure out of those who gave their soul to me and faking promises to guard it with my own while it slowly burns down everything that made you feel and sucks out every emotion that drove you towards me.

Now I lay wide awake and wonder if my love will ever be good enough for you. I am incapable of loving anyone the way you love me. You are giving me your all and I can't even warn you about that angel which will soon slip out of my control and render me powerless.

Confessions of a Monophobic

The days go by

Fluently and facilely

The people who love her

And the people she loves

Hem her 

In ardour and amity

As the sun is high

So is the thin line

Of her pink lips

Curved up at its edges

To make her face gleam 

Red from the summer heat

And glowing because of the people she meets
 

As the bolt of her door

Appears in front of her sight

In the dead of the night

Her fears envelope her 

And try to drown her

In a dark cloud she can't escape from

Her bouts of loneliness

And helplessness

When she has no work to do

And not a single soul to talk to

Her demons slowly crawl out

From that space

Where she buried them

For the sake of the happy daylight

The people of the world

In dreamland and repose

But her nocturnal mind

Doesn't let her succumb 

To the weakness called tranquillity 

As she sits upright

The realization hits her

Straight in the lungs

Like a strong blow

As the wind rushes out of her carcass

She gasps for air

Fumbles for a breath

Her anxious eyes darting 

In search of somebody, anybody

But all she can see

Is the pitch of darkness

That penetrates her being

And she fathoms 

That her worst enemy is herself

She's in wrong company

When she's all by herself 

Fanaa

In the dark you sit
With your face close to mine
A faint glow of light
Coming from far away
Illuminates your beautiful face
Our bare bodies touching,
And mine trembling with the energy
That your presence makes me feel

Every time your lingering fingers
Touch my barren skin
A spark runs up my spine
Like electricity passing through me
And every word you whisper
Sends my body rippling
Fervently pleading for more

In your arms I lay
With our breaths ragged,
Our hearts a symphony of uneven rhythms
And I knew
That I'd need this sunlight
To keep my head up to the sky
For every moment I spend living
From this time forth

My manipulative heart whispered
To my free spirit
That feared needing a soul
To keep mine alive
And loathed annihilating me
"Let yourself feel
All the good things
That you thought you were incapable of feeling."

Unveiled

You made me feel so vulnerable
All my emotions-
Blithe or bereaved
In your ascendancy
Ever since I met you
I have you
In the space of my mind
That once used to be empty and lifeless
You gave me a person to think of
All the time
You gave me moments to cherish
And long for your touch
You gave me a person to crave
And a meeting to always look forward to
You made me expect affection
You made me desire someone
With every breath I took
You gave me wild butterflies
In the pit of my stomach
Every time we touched
And you made me want more
You made me long for you
Every time we kissed goodbye
You made me need you
Like my existence depended on you
You made me want to share
All my secrets
And made me trust you
So facilely 
You made an open book of me
You helped me up from my dark corner,
Dusted me off
And put me under the spotlight
You made me feel like I was needed
Like your existence depended on me
You made all of my doubts go away
And all my pieces fit in
Like a jigsaw in place
Like a treasure map
And you proved me wrong
When I thought you to be
Another demon who would play with my mind
And stayed,
Waiting patiently,
Letting me take my own sweet time
Even when I tried to care less
About everything you did
To maintain my guarded self
And you still stayed
Even when it took you 
Tiring days and long nights
To bring down the wall I had built around me
You still stayed
And waited patiently
You made me adore you
And that is why I abhor you

One Year Anniversary

Does your past ever haunt you

Flashing back

Right in front of your eyes

With those horrid memories

That kept you in the dark

For days at a stretch

When you didn’t eat

Or sleep

Or breathe

And ceased to exist?

Do you ever feel fatigued

And so worn out

So drained

That your humanness

Dries up

And all that is left of you

Is a spiritless body

Forcing itself

To function

But cannot?

Do you ever feel

Your sunny day

Overcast by dark skies

Takes away the laughter

From your being

When you suddenly hark back
And that stabbing pain

In the torso

Returns with gloom

And sorrow

Remorse

Chagrin?

It’s been ages

Since it ever happened

Your past way behind you

But suddenly it comes back

And you remember how you felt

And you don’t want to feel that way anymore

But yet you do

Of Broken Strings and Nostalgic Contemplations

I remember how we laughed

At the ‘best friends’ that broke apart

I remember how we laughed

When ‘true’ friendships that collapsed

But look at where we are

Yet another pair of ‘best friends’

That broke apart

And yet another ‘true’ friendship

That collapsed

I remember how we promised

To let nothing take us away

I remember how we promised

To stand beside each other

Till death did us apart

But now how it deteriorates

The relationship we once shared

All that is left of it now

Are the broken fragments

Of the strings that once held us together

The memories

Good and bad

Shall last for ever

But what lasts of us now

Are two people

Who acted like lovers

But do not look each other’s way anymore

Addled

A room lit
With only a bulb of yellow glow
A pen in hand
Trying to bleed the words
That hold her breath
But not a single word can she scrawl
Not a thought can she enunciate
Onto the white sheet
That stares back at her

Where her artistry went
She knows not
Where her afflatus wandered away
She cannot reach
The ache to delineate
The stories she keeps inside
Suffocate her
And claw her soul

She tries some more
To spew out the words 
That she holds within
Her heaving heart sinking
Into a crippling need
To do what she does best
_________

That night 
She sleeps 
With a cumbersome torso 
For she could not be liberated 
From the fervour 
That binds her self together 
And swells her hefty heart

Mettle

Armed with the INSAS

He sits 18000 ft above

Where no layman can reach

Or think of visiting

The need to protect

And to serve

The 1.2 billion

Sitting far, far away

Keeps him going

In the biting cold

In the scorching June

A bit of whiskey

To warm his soul

And to fill the aching space
In his heart

That longs for his family

Is enough today

To keep him going

Until he breathes his last

Cést la vie

She closes her eyes and all she can see

Are those aphotic, lurid days she wishes to forget

The feeling of suffocation

Of asphyxiation

Always haunts her empty mind

But she doesn’t realize cést la vie!

Such is life.

Her convivial days gone for her

When she sits all by herself

On a bed that saw many tears

And many nights

Spent in malaise

But she doesn’t realize cést la vie!

Such is life.

Does she know not?

Not always will life be a flowery road

Stars shine, but not without darkness

Suffering often makes good stories

And that there are devilish thoughts also in the most angelic minds

But she doesn’t realize cést la vie!

Such is life.

Does she know not?

Her demons etch her today

For she cannot be beautiful but without little pain

Eventually will her struggles

Strike her as the most beautiful

But she doesn’t realize cést la vie!

Such is life.

Happiness is a road well paved

It bestows opulence to her stride

But can she garden flowers

Or sow saccharine seeds of prolificacy

Upon this sheltered gravel?

But she doesn’t realize cést la vie!

Such is life.

“To live really,

She must

Die a few times whilst she lived”

“She must

Persevere if she encounters fire and brimstone”

Said they

But she doesn’t realize cést la vie!

Such is life.

She must not

Wish away her days

In search of better ones ahead

But savour the ones

That she holds in her hands now

But she doesn’t realize cést la vie!

Such is life.

Judas Kiss

They seduced her weaknesses,
Plunged into them
Incited her to the limit
Where she would cannonade with
The tremors she kept inside
But she stood there all by herself,
Eclipsed by their stalwartness
Drowning in their insolence
And she stood there all by herself
Trying to maintain her dignity
Her humility
Her heart burning for
A bastion
But they stopped and stared,
Crowed and continued
And all the covenants of aegis till ‘eternity’
By her ‘allies’
Seemed all like a delusion to her now
But they just stopped and stared,
Crowed and continued.

Bad Girl Going Good

You've been a bad kid. You've made your parents unhappy. You can see that, and yet you repeat yourself. What high you get out of it, you don't know. You have done things that are undo-able, unforgivable, and yet they forgive you, you don't know why. You used to be a good kid. Other Moms used to tell their kids to be like you.  Your friends used to look up to you. Where you wavered, you don't know. Your grades fell, and they still forgive you. Everything you did, every secret you kept, they forgave you for all of it. You never told your mom about your misdeeds. She came to know about them from other sources. She was shattered. She confronted you. You lied even further. When you ran out of lies, you just kept mum till she knew that you had confessed. She scolded you, she tried to help you out. You cried, and again you repeated yourself. What high you got, you don't know.

Now she tells you to be like that friend of yours. You realize that stones have turned, it's not how it used to be. It's the complete opposite now. You took everything they gave you for granted, and now karma is getting back at you. But still you barely listen to them and do things that hurt them. Hurt them to such an extent that your mom breaks down and your dad feels helpless. But you remain adamant, and yet they loved you, you don't know why. You never understood why they felt what they felt, why you never listened to them, why you got detached, why you became the good girl gone bad, why you staggered in front of your own parents, why you broke their trust, why you took their irrevocable and unconditional love for granted, why you did what you knew was incorrect, why you troubled them to such an extent that their trust in you dwindled. 

But today, that's all going to change. You're going to regain that trust of theirs before it diminishes completely. You're going to listen to her. You're going to watch yourself and try not to hurt them because they're the only people who're going to love you till their last breath, and you need to understand that, respect that.

Mental note to self: Remember that you need to regain their trust. Stop taking them for granted. Try to be at your best always. Talk to them, interact with them. Listen to them. Don't turn a deaf ear.

REMEMBER THIS.