We are not essential

Children are promoted to the next grades without any exams, everyone including the suits are shut indoors, well the world didn't end, did it? Atleast yet. Turns out our jobs and what we do and how we score and what you think of me, is after all non-essential in the face of life and death. Remember when the world wasn't so clearly divided into essential and non-essential? When we thought that a one day or a week off we take from work will be the end of us, what will the boss think? will my work be rendered worthless? Worse, will the workplace stop functioning without me?! Ah well this is a cruel joke by life, a very tangible material insight into the fact, that we all are infact, dispansable.
The world can make do without you, whoever you are, you're better off indoors. That's your current biggest role in society, to move out of the way of those who we always believed to be "low-skilled" workers. Guess who is holding it together for y'all. Take that, suckers, life must think. We need to know our places, to stay rooted and give back to those who're not so lucky as we are. Sometimes when we are too daft or screwed or our wisdom is too clouded by "non-essential" issues, nature steps in to do the job.
Not sure, if we'll survive the disaster, but if we do, there MUST be a perspective change. We are NOT the centre of universes. Take care of your loved ones while you still can and don't be an idiot. Patience, empathy and not being an asshole will get us through. 

मै ठीक हूं

हुआ यूं है कि मेरे अंदर एक पूरी सदी बीत गई है
कई तूफान आकर गुज़र गए
कुछ किस्से अधूरे चोड आयी
कुछ किस्सों ने मुझे चोड दिया
एक तारा मर रहा है मेरे अंदर
तुम्हे शोर सुनाई देता है?
यहां जो मै खड़े होकर तुम्हे सुन रही हूं
क्या तुम्हे मेरी हसी आंखों में दिखती है?
ये जो विरान रण भूमि है मेरे अंदर
उससे कहां भागूं?
मै जब ठीक हूं बोलती हूं
क्या मान जाते हो तुम?
चलो फिर मै ठीक हूं ही सही

To unhide

I write to unhide. To strip naked. To let you in and display my imperfections in its grandiose entirety. Do you see these demons? This scar here, that wound there? Do you see all the unsent love letters because I was scared of letting my guard down, of being left broken when it ended? All the times I said I was fine and we both knew I was for fucks sake not fine, but oh well. I unhide from all the defense mechanisms, from all the jokes meant to fill the silences, to distract from the reality. I strip naked in front of you, without a blink of an eye, unapologetic, unashamed. I will not hide the wounds that I'm nurturing like a pet refusing to let 'em heal. Romanticisng pain and drawing a false strength from this stupidity. See. Behold. I'm as human as you are, made of mistakes and flaws and bodily imperfections and I finally think, this is exactly what makes me and you, beautiful, dont you think? I refuse to hide anymore behind modulated tones, intelligent gestures, grandiloquent sentences, smart ass comments, pretense, feigning strength and laboured small talks. I dont have the heart or energy to pull it off any second more. Take me as I am, if you will for I refuse to hide.

Ask a lover what's in a name

I say your name and my entire body starts functioning differently. Breaths too many too fast. Lips parched. Heart beats stop and come back a million times. The color of the sky changes. The sun tears the night sky apart and is forced to rise. Oh, you are oceanic waves' colossal energy slapping me every minute of every hour for perpetuity. Yet I stay. Afixed on the shore. Ready to be destroyed. Things we do for love. Sometimes, I want to leave. I do. Run away from you as far as I can get with whats left of this frail fragile set of skin and bones, but can't. My skin leaves my bones, but refuse to leave your side. You are entwined in my veins. Present in every fragment of my bones. Where do I run away from myself? I guess, this is what love is after all. You build a pyre and I get ready to burn in it.

What the hell is wrong with the world?

“What the hell is wrong with the world” this is one phrase that’ll always be valid under all circumstances. Every single time. It has been valid for as long as I’ve lived and it’ll be valid for as long as you and I will live. Every day. Every minute. Every second. I remember watching Anjaam, the movie starring Shah Rukh Khan and Madhuri Dixit where tragedy after tragedy befalls the heroine and I remember being pissed at the movie for being so unpleasant and over-the-top-not-real and exploiting their exaggeration rights, I mean so much bad cannot happen. Can someone be so cruel, so twisted, so diabolic? Is it even humanly possible? I dismissed, ignored, labelled it as a bad movie and moved on with my life. I could sleep on it, thinking its just a movie, not real life. But, wow. Boy, was I wrong. The world is slapped with this reality day after day after day. We are so broken. So broken that we’re capable of inflicting and enduring so much pain and yet go on with our lives. The poor kid, all of 8 years old, had to go through so so much. It's unnerving. And a million other girls. We have failed so much, we couldn’t teach our kids. We let them grow into monsters. I cannot turn a blind eye, not this time. Yet, there’s nothing I can do about it, or about the news, I’ll hear tomorrow or the day after, every single day. I cannot do anything. We are drowning every single nanosecond as a society and not even a miracle can save us. No magic wands. No good books, no poems, no cheerful kids, no charities, no good deeds. I wish I had no brains, that I was a uni-cellular bacteria alive just for the heck of it. Candle marches and protests and burning ‘em alive is good but they did it, they thought about it and executed it. We can remove them from the face of this planet and tomorrow, a thousand others will pop up. Before teaching your kids trigonometry or the intricacies of PB Shelly's works or about a certain mineral found in a certain state, teach them to be fucking civil, too hard? Teach them about consent. About becoming a human being before a doctor or an engineer or a weatherman. You can go ahead and screw their dreams and their education but not before turning them into civil beings. Please. Respect. Don't rape. Seek consent. Fuck religion. Don't hurt-physically, mentally. That's it. That's all there is. That's our best shot as a society. Our only shot. May or may not work, too many variables, too many external factors, but worth a shot.
I’m sorry, I’ll end this hanging loose. There’s no closure. The nation didn’t get a closure. The parents will never get a closure and there’s no reason this post should get a closure. Yet another loose end, we’ll sadly learn to overlook.

All the beautiful things have stopped hurting..

I cannot write without getting overwhelmed with everything that surrounds me. I cannot write and it has stopped hurting me. Oh, the noise, so much noise. Is there one place I can run to?  I ran, I ran like a mad dog, trying to escape the madness, the chaos, people, their complaints, their self. I ran, it followed. "Faster, faster" I cursed and kicked myself, the faster I ran, the closer it got. What the fuck? my brain failed to comprehend. "It’s in your head, asshole", the heart gently slapped it on my face. What? how does one get away from that? Run from their own physical self? I’m exhausted. All the things, beautiful so beautiful that they hurt have stopped hurting me. The quiet of the night, the smell of the wet mud after the rains, being caressed by a lover,  stealing loved ones away from city madness for a picnic in the winter sun, the sea of stars in the dark of the night, reading in solitude, a glass of golden whiskey in the wee hours of the night with your favourite song playing on loop. It has stopped hurting me. The older I get, the more whites and blacks seem to merge into one another, the lines get more blurred, the more I cannot separate rights from wrongs. The world spouts platitudes and I have no heart and energy to pretend. To listen, to care, to acknowledge, even to respect. Let me be. Let me fizzle out into oblivion and I promise I’ll come back better equipped to deal with y’all and the world. I hope, I do.

P.S. Who knew you could be your biggest and the toughest enemy? 

It was good to know you.

I have always known but very recently dramatically realised that I don’t have to take shit from any of you, anymore. For years, I’ve put up with bullshit from people who matter and the ones who do not, thinking building on my tolerance was a consolation. Now I don’t care much at all about it. If it’s anyone who makes my life living hell, pushes me into an abyss, emotionally saps me, makes me feel bad about myself, it has to be me. NO one else. I will fuck up, screw up, waste my time, not you. I am done, Thank you. You think I’ve become fat? tall? short? ugly? thin? why don't you go write that in your journal? would that make you feel good? I genuinely hope it does. I’m too irresponsible? Lame? Lazy? Wasting my time? Aap jaa sakte hain, namaste. I will not waste my time, emotional intelligence and peace of mind over your bullshit, I'm getting old and it's beyond my physical and mental abilities to stand you anymore. Simply, because I don't have to. I have no energy to fake a smile and pretend to be courteous when you're saying something totally hilarious and crossing boundaries, no drama, no pretence, a very simple-please show yourself out. Life’s short and I’m so done with this. Please let’s just let everybody breathe. It’s not easy for everybody alike. Yes? I don’t want women’s day discounts on make-up, spas and everything you think I should be doing to look like you think I should look like. What a farce. Don’t gift me raspberry flavoured lip-balms on women’s day Please, for fuck’s sake. How can one not see the irony? Why aren’t we tired yet? I am. I am more than happy and respectful of your idea of a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a wife, but why should that be mine? Why should I fit into your idea of these roles? Can I peacefully be a fuck up wife who is clueless about marriage and work my way through, the natural way? Please do not tell me to behave a certain way. I don't know and don't want to know what a good wife or a daughter is/does, I just want to do what I do, the best I can, till I drop dead. It’s not very hard to mind your own fucking business if you try. I’ll help, promise. Till then, don't be seen and definitely do not wish me a Happy Women’s day. It was good to know you.