South Calcutta lanes and sonder.

Sonder:

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

A beautiful definition provided by the forever brilliant Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: 

I recently came across this word because a friend and mentor shared a poem of the same name with me.

And it reminded me of how beautifully the word represented an evening of urgent writing on whatever paper pieces were at my disposal, trying to explain an almost inexplicable experience I had on the streets of beautiful South Calcutta (while the lovely gentleman opposite me at the table patiently let me finish and offered to be first proofreader).

14th November, 2016 @ La maison des délices, South Calcutta.

It was quite extraordinary, the ordinariness of that sight. 

Clad in a dull cotton saree that had been washed often and more, she held the black grill on the stairway window, looking out onto the street, at nothing in particular and yet holding something so potent and piercing in her gaze that the mere sight of her made me stop. 

It was an old two story building on a street corner in the heart of old South Calcutta. The walls mellowed in yellow paint and weathered down by the ravages of a forgetful, or perhaps helpless owner, who it seemed would have had a keen eye for bright colours in the youth of the building when it had last been painted. For the dull municipality yellow of the walls was contrasted by a bright earthy orange column of colour that surrounded the grilled full length windows on the stairway, offering a view of the beyond while keeping the house-secrets to its unyielding inner sanctums. It was as if time itself had stopped for the hands of a skilled painter to capture its essence into that moment. The lady, in all her commonplace wistful dignity, framed on a stairway window amidst the orange of overcast sunsets, looking out at the world and thinking, ruminating on a life that I will never know. A life she lived out within those weathered walls and fiercely laid claim to. A life that stood for all others that I will never know.

It was such an intensely private act of contemplation done with such disregard for its public accessibility that I stopped. And I took out a camera with the intention of capturing what would make for a beautiful frame and then left without clicking anything because I couldn’t come to terms with desecrating that time and moment.

* * *

Happy Diwali! Aao milkar diya jalaayein :)

Here's wishing everyone a brilliant year ahead and hope you had a beautiful Diwali :)

May you all find the courage to let the light in.

For Diwali, I translated one of my favourite Diwali poems into English. Here goes:

The original by Atal Bihari Vajpayee:

आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ

आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ
भरी दुपहरी में अंधियारा
सूरज परछाई से हारा
अंतरतम का नेह निचोड़ें-
बुझी हुई बाती सुलगाएँ।
आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ

हम पड़ाव को समझे मंज़िल
लक्ष्य हुआ आंखों से ओझल
वतर्मान के मोहजाल में-
आने वाला कल न भुलाएँ।
आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ।

आहुति बाकी यज्ञ अधूरा
अपनों के विघ्नों ने घेरा
अंतिम जय का वज़्र बनाने-
नव दधीचि हड्डियां गलाएँ।
आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ

-- अटल बिहारी वाजपेयी

Translation in English:

Let's light again, the lamp together.

Let's light the lamp together again.

This darkness at the peak of the afternoon

The sun defeated by shadows

Let us squeeze out, as oil, the darkness within ourselves

And re-ignite the extinguished flame instead.

Let's light the lamp together again.

We confused the milestone for the destination

Our aim having fled our sight

In the materialistic trappings of the present

Let's not forget the tomorrow yet to come.

Let's light the lamp together again.

The sacrifice pending, the yajna incomplete

Surrounded by the obstacles born of our own kin

To remodel the vajra of the final victory

The Dadhichi's of today must melt their bones again.

Let's light the lamp together again.

*Yajna is a Vedic ritual in Hindu tradition which is done as a composition of offerings composed of specific ingredients to a sacred fire with the objective of collective good. 

*Vajra is a thunderbolt or mythical weapon, often touted as the most powerful one (references found in both Hinduism and Buddhism).

*Dadhichi was a rishi (saint) from Hindu mythology who melted his bones to form the material used to make the vajra.

This is the first time I've tried translating a poem. Do let me know what you think :)

HAPPY DIWALI :)

PS: Special thanks to the people that took out time to help me make this better. I am glad to have you in my life <3 font="">

Untitled Ode and Obituary to my generation, part I

We are a puff puff pass generation
Of puff puff pass rebellions

So take a drag on your cigarettes
And smoke out your lungs

Aakhir aag koi dehek rahi hogi andar
Jo itna dhuan hai
Aur agar mehez dhuan hi hai bas
To kabhi maa ke man mein jhaankna
Tumhe wahaan dikhega
Dhuein se aag kaise sulagti hai

We are a puff puff pass generation
Of puff puff pass rebellions

So take another drag of depression,

And anxiety 

And slit your wrists, pass the blade

Cut cut pass.

Making doors on your skin

for your soul to pass through

Quick escapes

Slow deaths

Agar inti jaldi hai jaane ki

To koi asahneey peeda 

peechhe chhode jaa rahe hoge

Unbearable pain 

Hurt hurt pass,

this undying pain, 

unto those you love most.

We are a puff puff pass generation
Of puff puff pass rebellions

Rebellions which are born of old monks and young blood,

Mixing,

Making cocktails offered according to taste.

And you could order harmless fun

And you could order violence.

Aur 'madhushaala', 'madhoshi', sab shabd 

kavitaon mein kitne pyaare lagte hain

Shukr hai lekin

Us ladki ko in kavitaon ko padhna nahin aata, 

Vo ladki jiske pitaji ghar kal nashe mein aaye the

Jiski maa ne apne gham siskiyon mein dubaaye the

Jiski kranti bhi madira se jaagegi, magar aise ki

We are such a generation of puff puff pass ironies,

Cronies,

Stealing time from our own lives,

and I wish we could stop,

but we puff puff pass our time

"Killing time isn't murder but suicide"

But what do we care about quotes, 

they are but dead lines.

We are a puff puff pass generation
Of puff puff pass rebellions.

Brewing something appropriate for the night

Written on a train journey back home from the beautiful city of Lucknow. 9th October, 2016.


The true measure of the depth of an emotion lies in the volume of things left unsaid when you really wanted to say them, because the silence is heavy enough without the burden of words to chisel out its contours.

The silence that hangs heavy
I could use words to chisel it out

पर निराकार है जो
उसे कोई भी आकार देना बेमानी है

So I will talk about other things
And the silence unmarred
Will persist

जैसे पुराने घर में 
धूल समेटे परदे 
जिनमें समय की कहानियाँ क़ैद हैं 

Time trapped me,
And you
And trophies of silences on shelves of time
Gathering dust.

अब इन गर्द की परतों को इकट्ठा करना 
आदत हो गयी है 
जैसे शब्दों को पी लेने की आदत
बुरी, बहर्हाल ज़रूरी ।

Tonight, 
I am brewing myself a cup of the heaviest silence. 

नींद अच्छी आएगी शायद।

#latenightmusings

Good night :)

The measuring of love

The Poem I wrote during and recited at the Poets' Collective Meet #22 yesterday @TheLuggageRoom

This poem was written to be performed, so you might not comprehend completely the sentiments it tries to put across, but I hope it is enough.

___

We measure love through pain,
Because happiness is unreliable.

Did it kill you too?
That truck headed the wrong way
On a one way
Straight for your mother's car?
Did it kill you?
Well,
Then you must have loved her a lot.

Are you still looking for the parts of yourself
And the shards
Of the mirror in your chest
That used to beat once upon a time?
Do you bleed in silent agony?
Because then the leaving that broke you
Must've been true
love.

Love that we can only measure through pain
Because happiness, is unreliable.

Did you,
Did you rely a little more on sunsets
and a little less on dawns?
And get curtains for your glass walls
that were yellow on the outside,
painted grey on the inside?
Because you were so full of love,
that nothing,
Nothing but pain,
Could contain it?

Because you knew from day one,
That unless you put your complete trust in someone,
You will never know what love truly is
and what beauty trust is,
especially when broken?
These broken parts, glass shards,
that will bloom into flowers
under the kaleidoscopic lens of pain.

Because pain,
my love,
is how love will always be measured.
Until we give up on trying to measure love at all.

And happiness?
That will always remain unreliable.

___

 PS: I wouldn't have put this up today if I hadn't gotten what was like the third "Why aren't you updating your blog anymore?" from someone. It really pushes you to stay committed to what you started, no matter how down and low or simply busy you get. THANK YOU!

PPS: So I'm going to start being regular again. Do come back, readers. I love the page-view stats every time you do :)

Of wanting to take off a pair of non existent glasses.

Sometimes you're not mad at people, but the anger is still there, and it is only later that you realise that it is really sorrow, of the deep and inevitable kind, which can find no cause in a person's faults, but only in those of time, that is making you feel angry. So actually, you're not mad at anyone or anything, you're just in pain and that pain will make it's presence felt, one way or another. The sooner you accept it's presence, the faster will you be able to get it to leave. And in that leaving, you'll leave behind also a little bit of yourself, changing who you were for who you'll become.
Who you want to become, is therefore, the most important question to consider at such times. Because if you're going to become better, you're going to have to let go.
Let it go.
Let them go.
Live for yourself. And let the pain heal you. For it is the only thing that can. The only thing that will.
And try not to fall prey to that which has claimed many a heart and soul over time. Try not to delve into hindsight.
Because what you know now, you didn't then. And if you hadn't done what you did back then, you wouldn't know what you do now.

Here's a short poem (taken out from a longer poem I wrote, but the longer one is about a particular kind of thing in life and the shorter one just so much more versatile that I left the remaining paragraphs out. Sometimes, you've got to leave some things out so that what you're left with is worth being left with.):

Of wanting to take off a pair of non existent glasses.

I wear glasses
And my vision is bad
And yet the only thing I do
Is wish that I had
Poor hindsight, as well.

So I couldn't go back and recollect
Every excruciating detail.

I wish I had poor hindsight.
Short hind-sightedness.
So that the farther things got
In the past
The more blurred they'd become
Instead of coming back
With such selective clarity
That I have forgotten how the roses smelt
But I remember how the thorns felt
And feel, I can, even today
Because my hindsight
Is 6/6.

Chashmish, you'd once called me.
I wish.
Because then not seeing the past,
Not remembering,
Would've been as easy
As taking off my glasses.

*** *** ***

TheDirtyThirty #2 Of the person that got too comfortable (for lack of a better title)

It's comfortable,
this bed.
It's silk,
there's bounce,
and no danger
of falling out.
Snug,
tucked,
it's brilliant.
This bed
of cobwebs.
And I'm my own spider.

Twin losses (for lack of a better title. I'm still working on it in my sleep.)

I give
You refuse with open arms.
You take from me, without taking
And in so doing,
Without ever having to give back.

I open my arms to ask
Knowing, from years between us
That you say yes with fists tight shut
But I ask still
For faith
Is our only hope
And in hope I put all my faith.

You've loved me
And I you
But the years show on my face
When it's only been days
And the furrows crease your brow.

You say you don't know
Why I'm wounded
I believe you,
and continue
hurting anyway.

You didn't mean to
I didn't either.
And between this meaning to
Not meaning to lose
I lost
Everything that ever meant
Anything to me.

You lost, too.

So did we.

(I think this could be better, but it looked too sad sitting in my drafts folder for so long, I decided to put it up and edit later when inspiration strikes.)

Common theme: Razor blade

I should ideally begin this with disclaimers but I'm not going to. Poetry should just be. I write it for my own reasons and you take from it what you will and what you do. I just hope, in some way or another, it helps you, even if to simply feel.

I was sitting on my window ledge at night yesterday when I wrote these two poems, which I haven't titled yet:

1.

The creases on the spine

Of my favourite book

Are the number of times

I chose to drown 

In words

Instead of creasing

My wrists 

Under a blade.

2.

Killing myself

Was never on the cards.

I just wanted to sleep

And never wake up.

So imagine my horror

When not only did I wake

But I did

Into a living nightmare

of shifty eyes

judgmental looks

And spontaneously combusting

parental tears.

Of anxious questions

Curious fears.

And a life devoid of

Razor blades,

Even when all I wanted

Was to shave.

(First readers' responses: Nikita thinks this is funny in a very twisted dark humour kind of way. I think it's just funny. Ananya thinks I'm crazy. Ashu thinks this is beautiful. :P)

(Not a disclaimer: This is not me making slight of suicide. I'm not insensitive to the struggles of people. I just have a perspective and I write. If you take offence easily, please don't read my blog. Thanks. Bye!)

The measure of grieving.

How long is long enough to grieve the passing away of someone you loved? How soon is too soon to get back to Facebook? How long is too long before you finally reply to your WhatsApp messages? Is sending smileys an acceptable thing to do, say, a week later? Can laughing too loud at a joke your cousin cracked be disrespectful because in that moment you forgot your loss?

What about thinking of the work you have, or the people you still love and who are alive; or your significant other for that matter. Is wanting to hug them a bad kind of wanting, now that you're maybe supposed to feel a hole in your chest 24x7?

If you've lost a loved one, you probably have come across at least some of these questions yourself, late at night, or in a stray moment of introspection.

I know I have. And it hasn't even been a week. But it's been one of the longest weeks of my life and if there's something I've learnt in this time, it is the intimate nature of grieving.

When two people are most likely to not even like the same flavour of ice cream, to expect them to grieve for the passing away of a loved one in the same manner is an expectation the society should never have because it won't ever be met. It cannot be met. In fact, different people will grieve for the same person's death in different ways and given human nature and its extremities, someone might just be happy and not grieve at all.

Not everyone goes into shock. Everyone doesn't cry. Some people lock the information up in a corner and live in denial. Some accept it and move on within days. And other people do other things, none of which are wrong.

There is no right way of grieving. There is just you and your feelings and you figure it out for yourself one day at a time. And everyone around you should help by just being there if you need them. Support is always better than judgement so if someone's going to offer something, let it be the former. Or don't offer anything at all. That works. Just be normal.
Time does and eventually will heal all wounds.

Death affects not the departed, but only the living. If you've recently lost someone, may the force be with you and may you find your way through it in your own time and in your own way.

And may we all find peace.

Daadi

"If you don't come back from London after two years, I will cut you up into tiny pieces and have them thrown into the well right here."

With the most dead pan expression possible, my grandmother said these words to me the last time I saw her. And I laughed. 

She meant the threat but she didn't mean the killing. If you didn't know her, you'd be worried, but after having spent about two decades getting to know her, I knew she was hurt at the prospect of my being that far away from her. And that's probably the only way she knew how to show it. But then again, under other circumstances, in another time, she might just as well have carried out the threat. And that thought doesn't bother me. I'm not going to explain this. You're free to assume what you will, because assume you will anyway, but if anything, my grandmother taught me how to live a better life.

That's the thing about her. She was not just a person but a personality; the kind that I've never otherwise come across in my life.

She was a woman of substance.

Self educated in a family that didn't think it important to school their girls but made sure the boys went on to become doctors, she knew Indian religious texts inside out in the way you'd expect Sanskrit academics to. She could dissect their meaning for hours on end and was revered by every religious scholar and pundit that ever crossed her path.

From a humble village to a massive house in the city, she made herself the woman she was without much help from others. She and my grandfather, they put together every brick of this house with more than just concrete and sweat. Her sons were her pride. She raised them to be incredible men, my father being one of them.

It is true that she was proud of having begotten only sons and not daughters and that she may have loved my brother a little more than she loved me, but that doesn't make me cringe anymore. When I think of how she was raised, when I try to put myself in her shoes, I realise that her greatness was not in the social conditioning that she couldn't leave behind but in that which she did.

She fought her battles and won where it mattered the most to her. She did what she believed was right. She was opinionated and defended her beliefs till the very end. She was a fierce spirit and will be remembered that way always.

She was what I'd call a badass woman.

It is easy for me to type out articles about sexism in our society, especially rural India, and how women perpetrate these notions, and talk about people from the generation of my grandmother as if they weren't good enough to teach us anything simply because they didn't believe in what we today consider to be a fundamental aspect of living.

But it is enriching to have actually lived with someone like her, to have discovered her past and thus understood her present and taken from her all the invaluable lessons that I have, because she lived a life more real than my air conditioned city life will ever get.

So today I miss her screaming my name across the hall because I didn't wake up early enough. I was awake today. She was asleep. She passed away at 10.12 pm on 16.02.2016.

And she will be sorely missed by everyone who knew her. Because good or bad, her persona filled up the lives of the people she knew with so much more than just another relation or human presence. She lived a spectacular life, the kind I'd make a movie about if I could. She inspired me to do the same and I can only try.

No one will ever match the grandeur of her ways. She was loved, tooth and nail, and heart and soul. And will always be.

Rest in peace daadi. (Though chances are she's already the centre of all attraction in afterlife and has made it interesting for everyone there. Peace maybe. Incredible lovely ruckus, sure).

Character Flaws

This started as a short poem. One paragraph. That was all it needed. And then I ended up writing more the next time around. Here are both the poems, because they're both very different in what they mean to me:

Character flaws: I :


My only sin
Is not being sin cera
For marble still has it easy.
Humans,
On the other hand
Are chipped in places and ways
Marble could never take
and still stand.

I'm standing.

Character flaws: II :

My only sin
Is not being sin cera
For marble still has it easy.
Humans,
On the other hand
Are chipped in places and ways
Marble could never take
and still stand.

I'm standing.

So is my friend.

We're not chipped in mirror images.
That would have been easy.
Counterproductive even.
For easy come and easy go
Isn't just a cliche.
And I'd like our friendship to last
Therefore, it must be a task
To keep it standing.

I'm still standing.

So is my friend.

Her screams
My silent outcry
My word, sword
Her tears run dry

Still standing

A man
And three of us to tango
Hurt, broken
Flirt, let go

Still standing

That bitch, whore
Aggresive, passive
One day, live let live, distance
The next, joint at the hip

Still standing

We are chipped
But we make it work
You don't have to be sin cera
To be sincere
And keep standing.

I don't want to lose.

You lash out at me
Compensating for fear:
Yours,
With anger:
At me.
Not realising
That they don't operate with the same currency.

Your fear takes from you
What you can never buy back
With anger;
For all love lost in the world
Was lost between these two.

The way the two
Of us
Are losing.

Title of late night musings: The 'H' word

Hormonal

One word
Many characters

Hormonal

An insult to my opinion
A shackle that's heavier than you'd think an invisible thing could be.

Hormonal

An addition to a stereotype
More exasperating that you'd think a description could be.

Hormonal

An excuse I've come to use
More addictive than you'd think social conditioning could be.

Hormonal

An explanation always good enough
More frequent than you'd think that time of the month could come.

And I still don't understand why that's a relevant consideration.
For anything.