mujhe teri baarish mein bheegna hai

ghul jaana hai

I am so inside my little big world that the rules of the actual universe don’t seem to apply to me. THE DELUSION IS SPREADING. I have contracted the virus but a different strain of it. I don’t manifest, I don’t feel hopeful about things that are never going to be mine. THE ACT OF OWNING THINGS IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME. I fall sick but I don’t go to the doctor. THIS BODY IS NOT MINE, IT NEVER WAS. I have other diseases and disorders to worry about. Loneliness, for example. Perhaps only an alien abduction can save me, or someone needs to cut this mutation out from me and eat it. MUTATION / MUTILATION. Another affliction of mine is missing my city. Delhi. New Delhi. Old Delhi. All of it, interwoven, patchwork of stories and history that is constantly shifting inside the beast of a city. The metro is not a steel angel, it’s a sentient being. Every person in Delhi is an angel. I USED TO BE ONE. I think of it, I think of the places I used to go to, and it makes me want to clutch at my heart and sit down. Maybe if I close my eyes hard enough, and not eat enough and not sleep at all, I will end up shifting into a space which is just me and the city, no people, just a skeleton. The city haunts me, I haunt her. Since I am miles away from it, everything about it is so glamorous, so out of reach, so tempting. I wish I were a big monster. I AM A BIG MONSTER. However, I mean in terms of magnitude. I wish I could walk all over the city, trampling everything like berries, and then eating it. Would you come to watch this show? The city is so wet and slick and inviting. I want it to engulf me and never throw me out ever again. Since I am so far away, everything is smaller, including the tragedies. I miss someone who isn’t even in my life. I miss streets I will never walk in ever. I miss miss miss miss miss. The city is amiss from me and I am deprived of it. We need each other. This is where you could call me delusional. Why would Delhi need me, it has tons of me, and then some. Dreamers, Hopeless ones, Romantics, Sluts, Whores, Tryhards, Writers, Artists, Rebels, Revolutionaries. Delhi is a containment/contamination zone. I want to be chewed up by the city, turned into mulch and then regenerate. I am like a parasite. PARASITIC INTENTIONS WITH PEOPLE - ALWAYS. I hope you try to understand the beauty that I am trying to convey. My insides are filled with the city. I have never yearned for a person the way I am yearning for this city. I have started making one year, two year, three year plans. Dodge the rope, the bullet, the knife, the razor, the cliff, the building. Jump through suicidal hoops and get back to my city and be untouched, un-reached. Nobody should find me. NOBODY SHOULD SEE ME. I should see everybody. I have no friends left in Delhi, except a couple, and maybe a few people who just like to have company and white noise. I don’t mind that. It’s never about the people. It’s about the buildings, the tracks, the noise, the food, the buzz, the buzzkills. ALL POTENTIAL DEATH THREATS. Sorry, no talk about death and suicide anymore. But the city is so deadly, so dangerous.Never visit it. This is an anti-tourism campaign for my city. MY MY MY MY CITY. I have started reading Lonely City by Olivia Laing. It hurts me. It tends to me. I have also started writing more about what I am doing to stay present in the moment. NOBODY MATTERS TO ME. 

So yeah, that’s how I have been, at least that’s some of it.

all images by Mayank Austen Soofi

Here’s a playlist for my city.

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April began with resounding hope for me. A month full of the weather turning, days big enough to write as much as I wanted, and the beginning of sweltering heat that follows up in May and goes beyond the middle of June. I wished to be back in Delhi, walking around, the metro bringing some respite. I wished to be a stranger in my home city, but I am here, in another city, a stranger to it, but trying to find my place. 

Exactly fifteen days in April have gone by. I did not write as much as I would have liked, typing away madly until I fell off the chair, or coming up with story ideas that don’t remain wispy ideas flailing in the wind and then leaving me forever. I firmly believe that when you conjure up a thought, it doesn’t disappear forever, there’s the possibility of metamorphosis, of your memory returning in some new form. Thoughts and ideas are all about rebirth and the loop.

Speaking of the loop, are you stuck in the loop, or inside it? Sometimes you are repeating the days, sometimes the days get repeated while you stand there, still a young boy, waiting for the sign. There’s no sign, there’s no message. It’s all clear, but not loud. Move on move on move on. But the loop is electric, it strikes, it bites. If you find a way to leave it, please let me know. But if you get stuck inside mine, don’t resent me. Your method might not work for me.

I would elaborate on this right now, but I need to investigate it a little more. Just wanted you to think and let me know if this is too stupid. If it is irrelevant to you, then you are irrelevant to me and my loop inside of which I will keep myself protected and safe from the glares and glances. 

Song of Avignon Jonas Mekas

For the past three months, I got so focused on taking account of my pain that I gradually isolated myself from my regard for others. A sense of duty prevails in all relationships, and it is a constant practice. You wake up, you choose not to die, and then you decide on other things. 

I did not write on paper, I just stored everything in my head, until it reached a point where it would feel like I would explode. Somehow, a chance to get away reached me at somewhat the correct time. I felt time lapsing all around me, I felt protected inside of that room. Blue walls, pale floral curtains. A mattress, an island. I was stranded, but I had company. The interior was rotting but my body was complex, turning, twisting and beautiful. I read, I got drenched in the rain. I lost my voice, dyed my hair red. Talked about things, and did not resort to a knife-like quietness. It’s indeed interesting how my silence is not mine when I use it against people, it’s theirs to question. Sometimes I feel like life would be so simple if I was left alone. I want love, I want friendships, I want the beauty and the ugliness to permeate me, but I cannot be answerable to everyone. I don’t want to give back sometimes, it is exhausting. I feel like a tired beast at the end of the day, only, the day never ends. This Sisyphean ordeal of life and relationships is something I champion and endorse in society, among friends, wrapped inside glittery and long-winded advice to their troubles which are all the same in the end, but it is NOT FOR ME. 

I have grown bitter, angry and unwilling. However, my exterior is separated from the real self via a hardened endoskeleton, so I am still doing alright as a person, in company. I have nobody, but I am always among people. When does it all end, when will the party end, when will I be farther from everybody and closer to the dream I conceived and raised since I was ten? A house of my own, where I can open myself up and leave bits scattered all over. 

I wish to write ten stories this year. If I am unable to do it, I will say the same thing again next year. 

BIGGEST FEAR IS I WILL DIE WITH THE WORDS INSIDE OF ME. THIS IS HOW SUICIDE PREVENTION WORKS. DON’T DO THE THING YOU WANT TO DO THE MOST UNTIL TOMORROW. DON’T COMPLAIN HOW YOUR LIFE IS EMPTY. YOU MADE IT EMPTY.

Salman Toor, Three Friends in a Cab

HELLO,

I am still alive. Went through two rebirths and at least one metamorphosis. Saw a dead snake today. Had a tough conversation which we left incomplete. Will eat a mango now. Are you still around? Thank you. I wish to be better here, and everywhere. Many things coming up. I am back baby, holed up in my heart! This issue is just me standing on a rock and screaming everything. Peeling the top layer off so that I can find something that might be a “matter of importance.”

ig is @ / yearlyblues

love,

heera