Detouring The Achilles’ Heel!

To my surprise, I think for the longest time I have detoured from the idea of entirely prioritizing myself (I do believe in doing that, entirely, yes).

Especially after a few turns of events in my life I have gotten surer about how much I want to put myself first (and I will) and stop thinking about the innumerable ‘what if’s’, not anymore. My brows have turned sore from squinching at the idea of what he/she/others would feel about this decision of mine. Frankly, I am done.

I have started to focus completely on myself, and on how to not hit a break-even point in my life, which I kind of did feel a few times in the last few months. Maybe the lockdown, the pandemic, the constant negative vibe from the universe, whatever, just decided to shut the door on its face and swing away.

The door will remain shut till I gain my sanity and the energy to fight back, again. I want space as much as I need to touch. I want silence as much as I need noise. I want a fair trial as much as I need a bias. I want things and I do not want them too. I mean, honestly, I feel this is normal. I don’t think I’ll be able to ever achieve this complete ‘I am at this side of the grass’ situation. I will always have two different reactions to the same situation, but maybe with different people, and that’s just human (isn’t it?).

I have circled the sun 30 times, and have had about 60 odd equinoxes (hopefully), physically and mentally both. And that’s the only kind of balance I have successfully achieved, thanks to science. For the rest of my days, I’m still balancing my life on my heart-piercing pencil heels avoiding one Achilles’ after another.

A Waste!

Sometimes there will be an urge to push it away

Push what you want so bad, away.

Not because now you don’t want it anymore

But because it’s overwhelming.

It’s overwhelming to know you can want something so much, again

An idea of ‘so much’ is scary.

You’ve lost your way and returned surprisingly sane once – from wanting something ‘so much’

So now gambling your sanity over the ‘so much’ feels like a waste.

Shankar, I think-I’m in Love, In Parts!

I am, I have no doubt about it.

I hardly have ever fallen in love with humans, rather I haven’t understood completely this unpolished (forced) organic definition of love. If you cannot love one place, book, type of food, music, etc. How can you fall in love with one person and be satisfied? Confusing!

You surely can like a person enough to settle on a forever, but love? I think we just pick on people for an easy forever, conveniently adjusting to the best from the lot. No, we don’t love them entirely either. Do you really feel your parents are soulmates? I think a subway is my soulmate- beat that? Anyway, this is debatable, and the land where I come from (India), to talk like this is incessantly displeasing and sinful (which also happen to be my self assigned KRA traits).

But coming back to Shankar, I have time and again, fell in love with this guy, (innumerable times). But oh this time, he has swept me off my feet and put me in a state of trance that I don’t think I’m coming out of anytime soon. To give you a perspective – Shankar Mahadevan is a renowned Indian (also fairly international) musician, who I think has a voice that doesn’t age and keeps getting better. So when I say, I love him, I only mean his vocal cords (or wherever that voice is coming out from).

So amazon prime came up with this web series ‘Bandish Bandits’, which basically does not have much of a story, TBH, has some really nonsensical attempts of pop music, almost painful to the ears. But the Indian classical, the city, the local-regional influence on music, each bit is breathtaking (and that’s an understatement). I haven’t in a very long time gotten hooked to a ‘raag’ per say, to a certain kind of music, or even a recreated regional techno mix (I like those recreated fused versions, judge me all you want, some fusions are beautiful). But this set of a few classical numbers has legitimately made me want to put on my headphones and not take them off at all (I haven’t since I started). What a beauty!

Although, just out of curiosity, I don’t really understand the desperate need to turn everything into a love story in most of the Indian web stories, where one person is always struggling to impress the other. Why can’t people just respect each other generally as a human for their talent and grow into each other eventually, I mean, for once be normal, and not maybe show crazy royalties?

Anyway, the idea of glorifying love is never going away from the cinema. Let’s be honest, today – you cannot sell Gatsby, like you can sell Gosling!

Beirut, Stay Strong!

It’s easier said than done!

This hasn’t sounded more apt than ever, as much as it would today for Beirut. Last night men, women, other, children – have slept in shattered pieces of their homes. The one they built with affection, sweat, and some very hard-earned money.

Now I say very, because aren’t we aware of the geopolitical situation, we are. Could you, even in your wildest dreams, imagine the plight of the families who saw their world falling apart, and having no control over – even trying to fix it before it was completely broken, no you cannot! The house that carried memories of loved ones, the one someone grew up in, the one someone probably saved for their last days, the one where there was supposed to be a marriage, a death, a funeral, a birth, a date, anything, literally anything. It’s all gone.

Sit where you are, and imagine all the walls around you falling one by one, and every little thing in your house that you have put together blasting off, and even then you wouldn’t know how it feels. I don’t either, and god forbid I ever do. But it kills me to know that there are people situation-ally handicapped and the government is too busy pulling strings that haven’t been beneficial for their economy, as if it wasn’t enough that their economy was collapsing and now, they have this to take care of or say learn to live with.

And in a generic conversation with a friend today about Beirut, he mentioned how this is the call of nature and there always comes a time when earth takes it upon itself to fix things because we aren’t (Also casually mentioned Thanos).

Firstly, this was not natural it was man-made, secondly please put yourself in a barrel, cause you need maturing.

I immediately lost interest in the conversation because, how conveniently have we adjusted to the idea of death and catastrophe. And learned to make jokes about it, not because we are okay with what happened, but because we know we wouldn’t move an inch if it isn’t my house, my family, or myself.

Such people, ahh, these mothballs will shed, but only as long as it’s remote (both mentally and physically), I’ll preach but I’ll not move my ass, and be a tree and wait for the world to change on its own. And if that’s not enough, I’ll criticize the ones who try. Of all the situations in their life where they could open their mouth to freaking make a valid point, this is where they decide to exercise fundamental rights in a free democracy, at least on papers.

Beirut, I’m not sure how long will it take and how many more people have suffered and how on earth would they ever collect the courage to restart their lives, but I hope they do, I hope they have the strength to get up, collect the last few pieces, put them together and start again, even if it isn’t very swift, do it slowly, but do so!

Don’t let the aftermath devastate you mentally!

(NOTE: Pardon my careless writing errors, I was pissed!)

THE HEATED MESS…!

The wild long battling stare of those eyes, the raspberry sweet sound, but as cold as ice.

The melting slow touch of those fingers through the curves of a heated core, the screams of the want, the madness so gore.

The parallel running lines of the neck with the fingertips, the lenient little peck, the mental precipitation of every little speck.

The right amount of assurance to have it when you want, where you want, so much, like the favorite cushions pinned to the bed as such.

The wicked little smile, the smirk of the Satan, the look, the touch, the last felt breath, the one left slight unshaken

Yearning the same, yet, and more in distress, lying right where you left the undone in a heated mess.

Ghosts In My Head!

That there is my mind if you knew how to decode it

There’d be a, million broken pieces, unfinished dialogues  

Stories, maybe also a few poetries, spiteful proses

And some idle verse of sombre pieces

From my unfinished past, ghosts in recess.

So, sit down, take a notepad, like this was your first dictation

Write down my ear-splitting screams, the atrocious seems
the subtle weeps and traumatized dreams

The run between your exhausting demands,

The few that felt like direful remands

I had some scribbled on your pillow, the words that bled

The ones that rang like a song in my head.

Are you writing, my love? Because I am not done yet

I am yet to talk about the dark shadows you haven’t met

They lurk inside, behind, above and below me

Screeching through the walls of my ear,

like loud roars, which if it were you, wouldn’t bear

Foolish as it may sound, it is real,

Like our long walks on the streets of the capital, something surreal
Calm down, as you repeat on every war cry of my head,

Ever felt it doesn’t reach the traumas of my bed?

I hear shrieks of my failed brave front,

Awaiting its freedom from this dark mental cunt  

A failure I’ll call, both, you and me,

In recognizing and holding on to who I used to be.

• 

Mom!

Mom
I dropped quick and easy, like a ball of yarn three decades ago
Your shadow has lingered on me since
Your syllables, your voice, like an old audio cassette on loop
Like my favourite soundtrack.
You are the flying, shining, metal hard armour
Wrapped in a heavenly flesh, that once was my abode.
I’ve never once have had a blank static stretch
Your tape reels have been all along in my frames.
I’ll run blindly towards you, rolling down steep slopes
To tell you something, everything, to unwind.
To who you are what, regardless,
You will always be the lamps of my street dark old town

 

I’m A Postcard!

I remember the first intimate battle of ours, the way you encroached each dark corner.
You ensured the deliberate scars across my silhouette,
Before I entirely surrendered my inhibiting dementia.
To date – you incessantly visit, revisit, the same old hollow tombs and castles of my flesh,
Hasn’t the anonymity of my egoistic calling saturated you enough, yet.
Haven’t the walls, those that have been charged on to, remind you of the massacres we avoided,
Saved so many the wrath that the unison would have bought.
Mad as a hatter, they don’t just say it,
Underneath this life long carpet would stay the mental Voldemorts.
The rear gear of these sweat and fret nights, the ones that I replay in my head
have overshadowed every possible ray of shine for my tomorrow,
Oh such a beautiful wasteland you’ve turned me into…
Worsened my soil to sow,
But turned me into a picture perfect postcard!

Wouldn’t You?

The ‘4:20 Somewhere’ Rarity!

See… I’ll tell you the difference
You are a straight white line
You’re a single snort away from poofing.
While I run in the circles made of infinity
I’m a never ending rarity
No number of pots will ever be enough
To build what’s broken.
I took the morphine with me
When I left from that door,
Your ‘4:20 Somewhere’ rots in my closet