sweetened tongues in summer, sweltering heat making the tshirts stick to our backs (circa waves - tshirt weather). my toenails painted, bright blooms in sand. ice cream sticks thrown after chewn to death. a haze took over all of us, we were all going crazy in our personal ways. but purple ran through it all — like box dye running down my scalp, like the fizz out of a cough syrup medley that we accidentally shook too hard, like the ink from a glitter pen that was stolen from a kid i tutored who had more than me at her smallyoung than i ever had. purple ran through the veins of an overdose, and then through the eyeballs when red just wasn’t worrisome enough. purple stained my eyelids too, whenever i’d have one of my cooler nightmares, the ones that would take place at nighttime, in terror that wanted to escape using my body as a medium.

more than a visual, it’s how the taste would make me surrender. it was how i imagined the velvety black shampoo in black bottles would taste like. the chilled lollies in plastic tubes, right after getting down the school bus. i tried the others — green, blue, pink, white (frank ocean - pink + white) and i could only taste betrayal. the cough syrups, in dark bottles, contained further in a brown paper bag. they would go down the throat as a prologue to all the liquids that were waiting for me in plastic cups, years later. and i would always sweeten the aftermath with something like a pill; a chewy skittle, a hard candy — my favourite. it was called heartbeat, and came in the shape of tiny hearts. i remember when i tasted my first, my father had been having a lucky few weeks, and they coincided with my birthday, so he got me the fancy confectionary to raise my swagstocks at school. i tasted all of the varieties of the artificial sugar rocks, to deduce which ones to give to my best friends; the memory betrays but the fuzziness of it all alludes to the fact that i must have had at least a couple best friends then, right? i wasn’t that bad as a person, i hope? surely, somebody would have picked me? the mango, the lychee, the strawberry, they all tasted fine, but the blackcurrant took me in. the heart sat on my tongue, purple and wounded, a preface to what would happen over and over, to me and to my others, in the coming years. it didn’t taste sickly sweet, like you’d expect candies to be. it was the first complex taste of my life, tucked away in a small plastic wrapper. there was something electric to it, a buzz that could only be credited to the colour. blackcurrant, an exotic word that had entered my vocabulary reading enid blyton, and left much to the imagination, was now packaged, somewhere in rajasthan, under technical assistance from thailand. such an important international relation, now mine to swallow, and throw the remains in the dustbin, probably made in china. the candy was everything — buzzing with a minty quality, like vicks made edible — and enjoyable. i saved five for myself, and gave everything else from the packet up in school to subject myself to 40 seconds of “happy birthday” by 27 unruly kids my age, some of whom would grow up but never grow out of the meanness that had become their own personal bruises that would keep on festering. they would always find something to feed it.

i was lucky in some ways. my brother preferred the lychee flavoured more, and my mother, the mango. my father did not enjoy anything hard entering his system, he’d rather send it all out shooting like bright red magic beams — like sparklers on diwali, like the sun setting right before the violet of the night settled all over us like a void, like a blanket.

so i had heartbeat blackcurrant all to myself, and then, so it goes, i forgot all about it. other things replaced it. mood indigo (nina simon - mood indigo), i moved through cities, replacing the sweetness of confectioneries with the loudness of concoctions that helped me be better at forgetting the concept of Best Friendship. i started liking green more. the heart within turned purple and harder, and my tongue lost color, for a bit. nothing tasted the way it was supposed to, so i went to bed hungry. nobody wanted to be my heartbeat blackcurrant love candy anymore, nobody wanted me all by myself. i would have made a big deal about it, but it didn’t hinder the usual routine, so i stayed put. until, i fell a couple times, the boots fraying. the knees bled, and then shut themselves in, a layer of blue and black all over. it reminded me of the party thrown to celebrate my baby brother. i hit my knees on the marble floors repeatedly, until i bled through my pink and yellow frock. there were still parties, but wasn’t much to celebrate. my only party trick left was leaving early, and that’s when i fell in a ditch made of purple leaves and red mud and it all tasted all too familiar. i laid there all night, not waiting for anybody. i saw the sky, and my heart splattered all over it. the birds made their way in and out of the stains, and i could feel each tug within. daybreak and i got up. i chucked my boots. i walked some more. it was the edge of summer. mulberry trees lined the concrete of a city i now begrudgingly call home. i squashed some, i picked the rest.

Stigmata – according to Wikipedia: in Catholicism, are bodily wounds, scars and pain which appear in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ: the hands, wrists, feet, near the heart, the head (from the crown of thorns), and back (from carrying the cross and scourging).

Think of all the mysterious blue-black wounds on your body, think of the hours you have spent obsessing over them, nursing them into a placebo sickness. Yesterday we talked about phantom diseases, hypertension. How I said I am grounded because there is somebody operating within reason next to me. If not, I would be on my bed, hands crossed over my chest, waiting for my imminent death that won’t come for a while. Meanwhile, I would end up missing the world, the ways of it, the ways of seeing.

Pilgrimage – Pilgrimages frequently involve a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs. (Wikipedia)

There’s a light that never goes out, and for that I am grateful. It leads me to places unknown until. I refuse to die, because it’s simply too much of a hassle at the present moment. I have scattered my life across ports, and I will need to reach them all.

The blueprint of my dream house is a lighthouse.

A girl is a gun until the bullets are lost. A girl is a spear when it is time. I think I am headed in a direction with light-like intensity. I promise I will not make a sound. I am also on fire. I hope I end up in water. That is the way I have always wanted to go. Despite reading about it extensively as a teenager, and what happens in the last few moments, I think water is where I must end up.

I do not know how to swim.

When they come for our jobs, I will gladly surrender. When they come for my life, I will have nothing to give. When they try to imitate personhood, I can merely laugh a void.

On Keeping A Notebook, before it all. I have kept this image of Butler’s notebook in my head for at least a decade now. I look back and see piles of notebooks, scattered with names and facts of my life. I see a story in the making. I will make it; a pile of dough, kneaded into a file of known, compiled for everybody’s entertainment. I hope nobody’s watching.

Recently (months ago), I read an essay by Ian Frazier titled “If Memory Doesn’t Serve.” It was the perfect piece of reading for somebody like me whose brain is an entanglement of information. Names, songs, movies, facts, and factoids; random access memories.

Frazier writes delicious bite-sized phrases like “unknown law of synapses”, “thread of a conversation”, “the mental pleasure is keen”, “remembering soothes and resoothes”, “limpid rush of enlightenment” — phrases that make my brain rearrange its tapestry to make space for them. All of these can be playlist names.

It is currently windy, but there is no promise of rain. Not even a false alarm. The dam from my balcony looks deep blue, and it seems to get farther away from me each morning. There’s an ugly lizard in the house, and I am terrified, so I have locked myself inside a room. I called my boyfriend to inform him about the lizard. What can he do from Delhi? He can indulge in my fear and reassure me that if a lizard were to be in my vicinity at the same time as him, that poor reptile would suffer a fate unimaginable. I am soothed. Subsequently I am resoothed by the memory that he stood in the bathroom, of the place we were staying at on our vacation, while I peed; all because there was a baby lizard in the bathroom. I still remember it, a small, translucent creature, I could almost see everything it was made up of on the inside. Sometimes I think my boyfriend can see everything I am made of, maybe when I am comfortably numb in my siesta and he is up and about. The fact that he still greets me with love when I wake up is a solid enough proof that somewhere within my veins runs some liquid goodness, some organ inside of me creates something lovable. Resoothed, hence again. Reassurance, the key to a happy married life. And here I go, spoiling it all by admitting to it.

Admittance has always been a flaw within me. I cannot admit anything – be it good, or bad. I don’t want to admit when I get hurt, I don’t want to admit that I am so tired my bones rattle like chains holding me captive in this real, alive world. I don’t want to admit that I enjoy certain things in life despite it all. I don’t want to admit that I have fucked up over and over and it is all my fault and I am going to keep suffering until I admit. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. To attain a Nirvana record, you need to go through it all. Five stages of life, also known as unending grief.

It is about to be my birthday soon. That is like a second New Year wave, you are thinking about everything and it is Not Good. Since big changes, unsure changes, are happening in my life, I am scared out of my wits. I don’t show it though. I don’t admit to the fear. I just sit and rewatch 30 Rock, I stop listening to music, I wash a lot of clothes. Cut my hair. Fight with people. Call my mother more.

I remember my birthday when I was in fifth grade. A film camera has stood the test of time, the proof of that disastrous birthday is archived as a photo album. My gift on that birthday was a doll, the first in my life. Imagine saying that I got my first Barbie when I was ten. I had been asking for a doll since I was three. My father thought it would be a pleasant surprise, he would get to gloat. All I could think as a ten year old, who had already started writing, was man this is lame as hell. I still played with her, dressed her up, chewed on her plastic shoes because of the texture, cut her hair and put a bindi on her big forehead. I felt guilty for not liking that gift so I overcompensated. She was my first and last doll, and she is still in a steel trunk somewhere. I also remember I had tried to curl my hair using one of those plastic combs, and it got stuck in my thin, silky, straight hair. I had a huge bump on my forehead on that birthday, and I carried a faint scent of Moov, a pain relief ointment.

I remember the desert cooler in the bedroom, my neighbour wearing a bright orange suit-salwar. She died a couple of years ago, leaving behind a teenage son and a husband who had been miserable his whole life. She used to collect a lot of jewellery, she was very fond of clothes. I wonder what happened to it all. Her son took up smoking when he turned sixteen, he has a leg that is longer than the other so he walks with a weird limp, and he stopped going to school for a couple months. The father, on his way home, bought cigarettes from the same shop as his son. On my last trip back home, I spent a lot of time trying to unravel the mystery inside their home. What could they possibly be talking about, what do they do when they are in the same room? Where did her jewellery go, her fancy sarees and handbags that she showed to me one summer, when she was one of the first ones in our neighbourhood to get an AC and she invited me over, because she wanted to show off, but mainly because she did not have a daughter. She was the one who took me to a cosmetics shop and let me buy the Eva lip balm which stained a deep cherry, and tasted like strawberry wax. My school friend and I ate it all up in a couple of days, and because of the Delhi heat, it had melted so it stained not just my lip but also all around it. I looked ghoulish, but I was a child, so it was okay.

My father was very against it, this small plastic trinket that made me feel like an it girl. For some reason, this lip balm had caused one of our infamous family episodes and I ended up crying. There was a tension that hung in the air for a long time, longer than the stain on my lips – it would come off with a wipe. That’s all I had to do to calm my father down, wipe the girlishness off my lips, but he did not seem to understand that. Maybe he wasn’t really angry about it. It could have been something else. But that summer, everything was cherry red – lips, knuckles, knees, his anger.

Another lip gloss I remember is this green apple one. It was green, and had one of those Bratz dolls on the tube. It was my prized possession. When my then favourite maasi (mother’s sister) got married, and I went to visit her, it felt natural to me to give that lip gloss to her. I loved the lip gloss. I loved her.

I ate a green apple for the first time last year. It was delicious. I don’t know why there had been abstinence on that part. My father only bought red apples, and he bought a lot of them. But something about these Granny Smith Apples… if I was Tracy on 30 Rock, I would say that these granny smith apples are so good I want to take them behind a middle school and get them pregnant. If I were Charlie XCX I would have said that over the brat green layout. It would amuse nobody except me.

I ate a lot of green apples until now. Mango season is upon me, and I miss my naani. I remember my mother buying a green nightgown for naani, so that she could be at ease when she slept. It was met with shyness, but within a couple of days she had warmed up to the idea. I remember her wearing it, carrying a steel bucket full of mangoes left in water all evening, to the terrace. Walking behind her, I could only think of my mother growing old, and looking exactly like her. We would then sit on the terrace, no lights, and eat mangoes. Faint sounds of her children would reach us, and she would confide in me her worries and secrets from her girlhood, all of it making me glow more than the moon. I was her confidante, I was important.

The terrace. I remember the terrace. We would wash the concrete with water so that it would cool down, before laying our beds. Every night we would lie down together – cousins, uncles, aunts, and entertain each other until somebody ended up crying. I would always pray for it to rain. Once it did, and I told my mother to leave me and go, so she took the mattress and left. I woke up on a bedsheet on concrete, the rain hitting my cheek at a sweet, rhythmic interval, and I stayed there, until I heard some profanities directed at me. I want it to rain soon so that I can appease that inner wish, and sleep on the terrace. Chahe garmi, jaada ya barsaat… Come summer, winter, or rain.

The lizard has disappeared somewhere. I remember a lizard when I visited my naana at his flat in Jamshedpur. A big, darkened lizard on the wall by the papaya tree. It was doing nothing to us, I was not terrified because it was Outside. This other kid in the building compound, same age as me, hit it with a rock, and with a clean shot the tail fell on the ground, a losing struggle. I sat there and waited for it to stop so that I could touch it. I remember my maasi tying a thread around a lizard and smacking it against a wall. I remember my uncle’s wife running away in terror. That summer was good. My naani and I were eating mangoes, her kids were on good terms, and I was still considered a child and not a liability by my uncles and older cousins, so there were numerous bike rides to nowhere. It was all cherry red –my aunt’s georgette saree trailing behind her as she ran from the lizard, the bedsheet I woke up on, my nails, scraped knees after playing cricket, the sun when it would start setting and I would be finishing up a book on the terrace in the coolest nook possible.

I am trying to be good at memory, at admittance. I am preparing for all the grief in the world, I am preparing to wake up one day and see that whatever is inside of me has leaked out – some filthy mucous, all shades of red, and it has left a stain so permanent on everybody I love that they cannot help but turn into my father. That time, I won’t be able to just wipe it off. So I will prepare, until I turn 24.

I had been nursing a backache for the past week or so, and that was the most comfortable conclusion of all positions I had tried to put my body into. I could hear a song on one of the carpenter’s phones, the quiet afternoon stitched by the cackling of the fire and the beats of an 80s hindi song about promising to meet without letting the world know.

I was aware of Romi moving about in the house, somewhere away from me. His leisurely body mapping the entire house plan, leaving his imprint for me to chase on lonely nights.

Some nights I would wear his shirt and imitate him — standing with arms folded, staring into space, thinking of something untouched by everything else. His making was markedly mysterious, and a cause of pain and anger to mine. In early years, I would throw fits and sob into his arms, begging him to let me in. He would lean into me and make me drink something poisonous with his kiss that I would forgive him for his stoic refusal to allow me his being.

I would often forget in these moments that he never asked for forgiveness, he was just tending to me like he would to an irate child, stubborn and asking for the world.

When the song blurred into the sound of a barrage of vehicles passing by, Romi walked into the room and sat on the floor next to my foot. I could not get up and look at him. He started pressing my foot, the sole, the toes, the heel. I could hear him singing the same song, half words half tuneful murmurs.

I don’t remember when I fell asleep. I woke up to the weight of Romi’s head on my upper thigh, him looking at me. When our eyes met, he was unmoved, as if waiting. He ran his hand over my belly, stopping in places to remind me what he was capable of making me feel. He slid his hand under the fabric, his palm hot and sweaty, leaving a damp, cool effect on my lower abdomen. I pushed his head away gently and raised my feet back onto the bed, making space for him to lie down next to me. For a moment he seemed to consider, and for that one long moment that seemed to stretch the entirety of summer, I waited. In the end, he got up and left, to go on a walk all over the place. I turned to my side and put my hand between my thighs. I waited for another wave of sleep to wash over me.

Later in the day, the fire was still alive. The smoke had reduced but the orange was still burning bright against the violet of the evening sky. Violet, violent, violin. A colour, a symphony, a tune.

I kept reading until my eyes felt the heaviness of darkness sitting upon the eyelids. I settled in for sleep that was making its way to me in a slow rhythmic manner, like a bride on the way to her in-laws house. I could hear the footsteps getting closer, and before the slumber could cloak me over, Romi was getting under the covers next to me, his hand reaching out for whatever of me was available to take. I turned towards him entirely, all of me, all of it.

Thinking too much about oneself is always detrimental, so I think of words/images that feel/sound wet. 

Steeple. primrose. Lacanian. torment. blood does, of course, but a wound doesn’t. Shadows of leaves but not buildings. If you could be something made out of metal, what would you be? A telephone line — probably the one in My Private Idaho. Is there one? I am fairly certain. Oh, firefly sounds wet. What else? Anything with a little “l” moment going on. Else. Although. Preamble. Sicilian. Spleen (I mean). julienne. pencil. steel. silver. sliver. slice (open a wound and there will be blood). 

I think of what can be kept in a jar. Buttons. Rocks. Bones. Needles. Pencil Sharpenings. Sawdust. Tree bark. Leaves. Water. Water with food colour or sugar in it. Just salt. Chilli Powder. Coffee and chilli powder together for that perfect wake you up call. Bugs. Dead ants. A locket. Tea leaves. A smaller jar. 

I think of all the blue things I am collecting for something personal. I think of green and how I have abandoned it. I think of how green and blue are bound to meet, on the horizon, always. Soulmates.

If I am making tea and I add a little blue and green to it, it will turn to teal. If I were Bob Dylan but better, so basically Joan Baez, I would write a stupid song about colours and release it. Teal me something, do you love me too? Don’t leave me green with envy, leave me black and blue. 

I wish light were liquid. I remember a metal bucket on the terrace, the kind that is heavy even without water in it. I remember dropping it on my foot and a scratch that burnt. I remember bathing on the terrace, it was one of the cooler (not colder) months, the sun the air the clouds all in gentle adornment of the sky, enveloping my brown and frothy nakedness, a mere blotch. 

I remember catching the sun in the water in the bucket, golden that is imitating white, but is emptier. The water only warm in certain pockets of molecules, the breeze a cool sensation on my back, making my hair stand. My thighs aching from the constant crouching; but to stand up is to expose yourself (and in these trying times, it is necessary comrades). Is being awkward the same thing as being shy? I don’t remember being shy, I have only been overtly conscious and anxious and easily driven to tears. I am the mother that embarrases her own child, but then I tend to myself by getting an ice cream and sleeping next to my shame. 

A year ago I couldn’t bear it so I slept in foreign rooms on mattresses that were probably never shown to the sun. Everything was beginning to be foreign to me, and I could tell nobody about it.

In lieu of light, I have a wet sensation all over me. The blanket is sticking to my body and the window is now broken and the mesh has caught on fire and oh god so many bees inside when did that happen why is there a huge lizard on my bed the wind has turned into a storm and now I am freezing. I get up, don’t look at the lizard ignore ignore ignore, take off my clothes and stand upright. There’s no sun. 

Romi visited me a month ago, at the end of summer when the silvery monsoon had just punctuated the seasonal sentence of life. The dilapidated stairs were slippery, concrete chewed off at edges, seemingly fixed by Somebody using moss and moist green bloom that felt like earth’s vomit, reminiscent of my drunken days when I would be slime inside out. Nobody knows where Romi is, at any given point of our lives. He erupts when you need him, out of thin air. My reason to gloat over others is that he Knows when to reenter my life. My cause of shame is, I let him. 

He just showed up, at our ancestral place, suitcase on the side, a cotton shirt billowing in the breeze. I had forgotten what the human body could look like, yet in that moment I could see it all. 

He said he wanted to live like my childhood. I told him that would be too isolating. He didn’t say anything romantic or hopeful or loving, just asked me to show him the bedroom.

I sat in anticipation in the verandah, his voice floating downstairs. He was on a call. I picked on my skin, fixed my hair. I had already started to recede into the girl that I once existed as in this house, with more people and lesser space. 

He descended the slippery stairs, barefeet. He wanted to bathe. I decided to eat him. Told him I used to bathe in the verandah itself, out in the open. He took the bait, because he had placed the hook.

I sat and tore him piece by piece while the lime yellow soap, a remnant of my memory, traveled all over him. My naana would buy everything in bulk from the army ration store. All cousins smelled the same, like lime and sweat and minty talcum powder. 

I watched the froth accumulate in his crevices, while he looked at me like I did not exist outside of his realm of performance and pleasure. I felt the pain enter my stomach and drop further until. How I wished to be the soap, solid but capable of melting. Bright. Useful. Used by him. On him. 

My nail beds started to bleed, and I felt like the dirty girl I never was. I wondered if he would say anything if I went and shampooed his hair, touched his spine with slippery, rushed hands. What if I licked the bitter suds off of him and he decided that wasn’t close enough, and took me to my childhood bedroom. The old posters of actors long dead or married staring down at us, in the coolness of the room, emitting heat unto each other. 

coming back.

heera

I don’t die. I don’t leave. I fool myself by saying this is it. Then I spend the entire night hearing you wheeze and breathe. I touch your face, your arm and that horizon between your neck and shoulder wherein I want to fit myself and go wherever you go. 

I wish this were the past I am talking about. Tomorrow will come over and over, a thousand deaths unto myself. 

I have my own desk, my own bed. I stare at my wall with photos stuck to it, pictures that interest me, or I assume will interest me the day I turn normal. Curating a person to be in front of everybody so that no one looks into the well of shame that exists in me. 

I clean my bed before I lay on it until the morning sun shines through my blue curtains (the curtains were blue after all). I stand by the window and look at the courtyard, grassy, green, unkempt. I look at the lizard that's a constant in the room now and I ache for Romi. How I wish he was here to see me, not afraid of lizards. I guess this too is growing up, accumulating your fear and getting on with it. 

The elemental need for friends is dissolving. There's been too much hurt lately. I wander into my own wake sometimes, taking place in corners of me. I don't have it in me to ask or try for things anymore. The end is near, but so is the next day, which never stops beginning. Curled up on bed, I think of Romi, I think of you. I wonder how much you have grown and into what. Maybe when we meet next, we'll be new people to each other. 

There's been a lack beginning to take form in me, its shape ever changing. Some days I swear it's your outline, on others it's just a place to fit friends in. One day it was my father, with his slouch, and I stopped eating then onward. Cannot feed the body that hosts the fear, can you?

-

hi, these are all points i wish to expand upon someday. maybe. note to myself.

If possible, listen to Desire Lines by Lush after this. You can skip reading this and get straight to the song as well.

Yesterday afternoon was hot and sticky. It was like living inside an uncomfortable memory. My shirt clung to my front and back, and sweat made its way down every crevice. I felt loose and free. A little ugly. My hair was pushed back, uncombed ever since Romi left. If it were up to me, I would have not showered either, letting bits of him cling to me in a way I could only hope he entirely would. If I paused for a minute and let the world go ahead without me, I could still feel closer to the night it had all unfolded itself right inside of me. I know I could not afford to stay back forever, and I knew forever was merely a fallacy, but in those moments that were out of the loop from the universe, I was ready to risk all rhyme and reason. 

Of course, I could call him, talk to him like a normal person. Of course, I could ask him if he wanted to come over and come over and come. Over and over and over. But how could I bear to hear his voice, the gravel sitting at the bottom of his throat, the sudden lilt when he would ask a question? Unreasonably so, but I would want to split myself open and die. How could a person do this to me, how could I let a person do it to me? But then, what else could and would? He bore to touch me, and he bore it well, for that I was grateful. Such was my gratefulness that it folded my shame into the smallest possible version of itself and tucked it inside my rib. Not that being grateful was the right thing, but I had never learned the right things. I was not going to tell him that I felt that way, I did not want him to be tender anymore, not because I did not like it, but because I could not bring myself to accept it. So it all made its way under my skin and remained as an itch. So I let the gratefulness stab me in the back, while he pressed on me; a bed of thorns, a blanket of warmth.

Sitting on the stairs, rewriting my love for him in my head, I felt like it was a story as old as time. I was not tired of it though. 

Maybe he was. Maybe he could sense the intensity and wanted to keep a distance as a subtle message. None of it made sense to me. Maybe it was the heat — the summer’s or ours from nights ago, but it was all getting to my head. I could succumb to it, but I chose not to. I let all of it wash over me, I walked inside my room and laid on the bed with my hair spread on the pillow. I reimagined it, thought of things I could have done better, thought of things he did that no one else could do ever. How was I to continue living knowing this was the end as I knew it? I did not want to ask him if it was the end, I did not want him to corroborate the corrosion of us. 

Yesterday was slow, honey dripping all over me. 

Today it rained, and I sat by the window, my hair washed, damp against my bare back. I let time move ahead, I waited for a while. And then I tied my hair and got back to life. 

hello, i could not let my birthday month go by empty, so here’s a little something. writing a bigger better piece but have been very busy in my real life. not going to lie, do not like it all that much, but we learn and live and learn some more. feel free to be critical i am trying to develop a concrete writing style for smaller pieces, something that sounds innately like me.

playlist for lovelorn losers

tumse badhkar duniya mein na dekha koi aur, zubaan par aaj dil ki baat aa gayi

तुमसे बढ़कर दुनिया में ना देखा कोई और, ज़ुबाँ पर आज दिल की बात आ गयी

I have to speak my heart today - never have I seen anyone in this world who is beyond you

(this is the song my ma requested today)

i am afraid i will keep putting out bad parts of myself and no one will ever get to understand me. why should they? but like, why such a juvenile approach? i was put on earth to be understood. i have nowhere else to go for now. i don’t know what is good about me, so i will have to start there. i don’t know how to do that.

love (yes even now),

heera

Cut to the next scene and nothing feels better. I have made plans for leaving  but I don’t know how to not look behind. 

I found my old notepad from a couple years ago. 2019. I used to jot things down when I was on the bus, on the train. I would write things down while sitting in restaurants, in parks. I was disappointed to find that some things haven’t changed even now. Maybe in the grand scheme of any story, the vein pulses to the same rhythm always. Does that make it reassuring, or does it reaffirm the tragic nature of it all?

1st nov 2019

Not eating enough. Intense panic convinces me that I am going to drop dead at the spot. Never happens. 

14th nov 2019

I wanted so much last night, and I did not feel guilty about it. 

24th nov 2019

I used to be smart.

3rd dec 2019

Next year I want to be better.

Last night Romi came over without any announcement. We sat on the sofa and watched a movie, whose details slipped my mind as soon as they entered it. It is fun, playing pretend. Everything is okay, nice, going great. Domesticity. 

Remember when we used to pretend? 

A beautiful house of mine, a gramophone and bookcases all over. I dry my clothes on the terrace; the sun stays in the living room until one. I love it. You visit me sometimes, spend the night. I love my house the most then.

meditations have turned into fragmentals. middle of the day for me right now. it’s cold here. my hair is red now, some of it. life altering events need to take place in rapid succession and with enough intesity that i am knocked off my feet. so romantic. happy (soon to be here) february, eat something nice. love, heera.

Romi came over after a week of silence. I am now used to our sporadic relationship, which makes it easier. I owe him nothing, and he returns the favour gracefully. I do feel bad about how he is aware of his place in my heart, but I am also grateful for it. Makes loving him a little easier. But love is never easy, it is never enough. If it was, wouldn’t you be sitting here, asking me questions about things I am doing?

When I am alone in the afternoons, I like to sit on the floor by the window. I like watching the trees sway, the silence getting carried around by the breeze. I turn the radio up, and let the songs split my feelings open, line by line. I hum them once in a while, awakening memories from years ago. All these songs are about love; by that I mean they are all about you. Today, Romi and I sat side by side, listening to them. Afternoon gave way to early evening. A kiss exchanged, nothing said. He was out of the door but he left all his questions on the floor. 

I often think about how I am left behind, by people, by circumstances. Or maybe I am the reason, because ever so often, I stop moving. I think the child in me is stuck in a time loop, and she is still waiting for my father to look back on that busy road, on that one summer evening. Did she stop with an intent, or was it mere childishness - the kind which makes you want to do things before you put questions to them?

I folded all his questions with my clothes and kept them away for some other day, I am getting good at movement.  What I am saying is, I am not stuck anymore. All I know is I am still waiting.

things are in motion for me, or at least about to be. 2022 is the year of new places and your older dreams taking a different shape. i wish you all the best. as soon as i find three good news pieces about my own life, i will be resuming the actual newsletter business. or maybe i will drop it all and run straight into traffic.

take care,

heera

Now all I do in the afternoons is clutch at my heart and sit silently. I wait for the creaking fan to translate it’s laments into a language I understand. I listen for the sounds which nobody else cares for. I think of you and my heart starts to leak through my fist, onto the floor. I think of you a little more, and the heart is now a live animal - a rabbit perhaps, with golden eyes. I think of you sitting in front of me, just close enough. Your hands on my shoulder, pulling me in. Your hands holding my face, like it’s an orbuculum, holding all your secrets. 

I decide to take a little risk. I picture us walking down that park, hand in hand. Only we’re married. To each other. In this made up world, I am loved to pieces and back everyday. I cook for you, and you bring me a little more of the world every night. We lay side by side in our expensive, dimly lit bedroom on soft sheets and miss out on city life. Because who cares? I don’t! I love you and the fact that I can fit bits of you in my hands is all that I care about. I think of us being in love, and my heart-which-is-now-a-rabbit-with-golden-eyes jumps out of my hand and leaves a bloody trail on the floor, rushing out into the mouth of  the evening. I don’t go after it.. A few minutes later my phone beeps. A notification from you. “Was thinking about you, hope you’re well.” Oh so that’s where my heart went.

every day has been three steps forward and then falling down those steps because i don’t fucking look where i walk. i picture you, my dear reader, in your own orbit on this earth, doing your own thing, and it’s incredible to think about. may your heart be protected this year, may you get a taste of your own medicine, your own love. maybe this august i will be so so happy that none of this will matter.

again, thank you for sticking around. will be back properly soon.

source for image used in cover

This is not how it was supposed to be. I remember the first rain of this winter in December last year; an omen, I had supposed. Something shifted last night and now I am left with an aching gap on both my palms - time is slipping away, you are slipping away. Very gracefully, might I add. Our conversations are now punctuated with long periods of silence. You’re busy making plans, you have a life to go to. I am busy making plans to fill my day. All my plans involve me, and just me. When did I get so lonesome? Being an outcast is only cool when it’s talked about in a song. In real life, it makes you believe all the reasons you invented to explain why you’re unwanted everywhere. I have been sitting and sleeping and eating and combing my hair, and it’s all accentuated by my bursting into tears at any given moment. Life is beautiful and everything that it’s made of is ephemeral. I am not ready to grow up or grow apart. Who will I turn to now? No one will understand, and no one has to understand. 

I picture myself seven months from now, somewhere. I am walking in a city, maybe mine, maybe yours. Perhaps you and I don’t talk anymore. But I am still here, in this world. Life, as I know it, won’t end until it ends. Until then, I will sit here and wait for you to say something more. When I will be in a room full of people, a part of me will still be at home, on my bed, waiting.

this series is queued at odd hours, just a little experiment. someone told me to try meditation so that is what i am doing here. the song in the header is linked in the post somewhere. the usual newsletter (aandhi) will be resumed soon. thank you for being a reader, you have been very very kind to me and my emotional turbulence. happy new year.

Five nights ago, Romi came over. He asked me about you and I had nothing to say. Last I heard, you were getting married. Or maybe moving cities. I don’t know, I tend to not think about the real you much. For me, you don’t exist in this world. You are the woman of my dreams, and that’s where I keep you. Tonight I will go to bed, and picture you getting out of the taxi, towards me. Again. I will put flowers in your hair. You will take my hand and lead me to my room. If I keep quiet enough, the buzzing of the night turns into a softer hum, of you saying that you love me, over and over. I will sleep. Toss and turn. Get up. Make tea.