The Unforgettable Desire

I was up on many nights, overthinking, searching the internet for information on ovarian endometrioma. I ended up watching a video of an ovary removal surgery. All I could think was, we look like chickens on the inside! My lower back was hurting for a couple of days now. My go-to response to it was, I can take it. Over the years I made it a point to remind myself that just because I have a high pain tolerance threshold, it doesn’t mean I have to tolerate it that long before making it a matter of concern. I kept telling my mom, it hurts exactly as it does during periods. There’s a cramp in my right leg too. It was weird because I was nowhere near to the call for battle – that’s what I like to call the 48 hours before I begin to bleed, the time when it feels like nothing in my life will work out ever again and I’ll die in living hell. It’s actually a thing! But, there I was, unable to move from bed, unable to find a position that will help me sleep, almost wanting to pass out somehow a...

 I am probably saying this one last time: Bad things happen, life is unfair. People describe their experiences of suffering from anxiety that make it feel like a collective experience. Just that, they don’t stop a certain section of their life, they aren’t paralysed from shock, unable to comprehend their life. Their hearts race, my heart felt like it’d stop any moment, as if I was physically dying from the inside. Now I tend to not speak about it, all the place-time displacements, and actions based on made-up scenarios in my head. Sometimes I miss the multiple voices having a roundtable conference inside my head, afraid that I lost my ability to express, to write, when I killed them. I often wondered in the year gone by, was it my madness that brought me stories? I spent months in silence, looking for words that used to flow like blood through my veins. I did the only thing I could do then, in my search for words, I read. What is the point of reading so much? I don’t read so mu...

  When identity politics begins to seem overwhelming you enough to want to get away from it entirely, the go-to book is The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. It’s a go-to book on any bad day when hope seems too far away, life doesn’t make much sense, meaninglessness reigns, and peace is forgotten. To me, it was a return to the real world, a world I had shut myself away from because it seemed too cruel and hopeless to change. It was a resurrection of faith in kindness. MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT Linus Baker works as a caseworker at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He visits orphanages for magical children, interacts with the masters of the place, and at times, with children if needed. He files a report recommending whether the orphanage should remain as it is, or be shut down. He lives a quiet, solitary life, abides by RULES AND REGULATIONS of DICOMY. He is so good at what he does that he is selected by the Extremely Upper Management for a highly classified job – to be ...

Once upon a time (not so) long ago on an uneventful night I decided to talk to a friend in something roughly resembling poetry . He, being the poet that he is, obliged in response. I ended up saying something I was toying with for a long time, that we have imprisoned ourselves in clocks only to say, time is running out. I know the argument often is that irrespective of clocks, the sun sets and rises, time passes. Yet, it is a human construct, isn’t it? A construct made for our convenience, mostly? My relationship with time isn’t a smooth one. I didn’t understand in class 1 why the year 2000 was being called 21 st century. Where was the 1 in 2000? Why did the new class teacher keep saying so? Should it not be 20 th ? It didn’t get better. I disliked history because I couldn’t remember the dates and years of so many wars. Even now it boggles me that Mughals reigned right before Britishers, like 200 years ago. Are not they supposed to be ancient history? How does 16 th century not fee...

It was December and I was in Delhi. I am always happy to see these two Ds together. Winter, blankets, too much coziness for my privileged ass. It was a different thing that as I got comfortable in bed one night, my cousin, who was in class 9, asked, Why do poems get complicated as we get older? How can there be poems without rhymes? To my complete and utter disbelief, I began talking about different types of poems, sonnets, odes, lyrics, elegies, etc. Not just type, but metre and what forms a metre. He kept asking, I kept answering, till we mutually decided it’s too much information that isn’t needed for his test the next day. I slept with pride that night. If I had been asked those questions a year ago in 2018, I might have cursed the poets and whoever gets to decide the syllabi. It is a little known fact about me that I absolutely disliked poetry for the five years that I studied literature. I could not understand what stressed and unstressed syllables were and even when I did, al...

Or, How We Accept Care Earlier this year I was out with a couple of friends from school. I met one of them a few days ago, so I knew what’s up with her. I had absolutely no idea about the other, I was meeting him for the first time since school. As we sipped our drinks, they began sharing life stories. He was confident about his life, including marriage, pretty sorted. I wondered, how can someone be so sorted? Then, I realised, he doesn’t feel the need to fight convention. I envied him, for a moment. When she fell apart talking about her life, he comforted her, reassured her, and the phrase that comes to my mind is, like a gentle man. I adored them, the care he offered, the care she needed. It was my turn to go next. All I said was, there’s nothing wrong in my life. I sipped the last of my drink, admitting, I know I have the power to make every single change I need, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. This scene of comfort returns to me every now and then. That’s how it’s suppose...

Or, The Questionable Purpose of Remembering Someone asked, ‘Do you want to be remembered?’ I smiled at that text. I was already surprised to find someone who openly talks in terms of love and loneliness and also, likes psychoanalysing people. His question took me back to the time I told my teacher that I couldn’t bear the idea of being forgotten by him. I think I meant to tell him that he made a difference in my life and I want him to know that. I do this if I can, let people know what they mean to me (might seem creepy and unnecessary). Yet for reasons I don't quite understand, I was driven crazy by the thought that I might not matter to people who matter to me. Those days! My smile got wider as I typed, ‘No, not anymore.’ I was glad that he didn’t ask, ‘What changed?’ I don’t have an answer to that.  If I had a tagline it’d be, I drink coffee (not anymore, damn you, lockdown!) and I remember things.  I remember events from my life believing they were huge for others....

One would think I’ll be guilty for being happy ever since the lockdown began. I am not. At all. This is the happiest I have been in last couple of years (conferences/seminars/fests don’t count here – they are my ultimate happy places). My theory is that I am taking comfort in the fact that world is slowing down, so I don’t have to feel bad about being slow at getting my life back together. I kept rushing so much that I crashed, and now I am okay with not having everything at once, not skipping steps. In December 2018, I wrote a poem to remind myself that I am ‘just’ 24, I have the rest of my life in front of me. So, I can take ‘crashing’ in consideration, look back at my life, and evaluate why I crashed, instead of simply living with the guilt of ‘failing’. Failing at a life that I dreamt of as a kid. When I turned 25, I switched off my phone by midnight. I didn’t need the excitement of my birthday. I couldn’t bear the idea of pretending to be someone I am not, not on my birthda...

I say, ‘I have survived a lot on my own, I can do it alone for the rest of my life.’ I wait for, ‘I know you can do it alone. I am saying, you don’t have to. I am staying right here.’ No, not just the words. I wonder, is it too much to ask? I know the answer, 'You haven't asked.' I heard Jerry Pinto tell an aspiring writer, ‘Make a pact with the universe, nobody needs to know about it.’ He advised another, ‘Read one hour every day and start writing today. I’ll see you in ten years in a literary fest.’ I smiled standing on the side. I spoke to him after everyone got their books signed. I didn’t tell him about writing. I said, ‘I have been through cancer, sexual abuses, and mostly, emotional abuse. I look at them as facts. I wrote about them, I tried to, I keep trying. It’s like I am the performer and narrator at once. I have always been that, just more aware and conscious about it since a couple of years.’ He nodded in affirmation. I didn’t hear, ‘You should get y...

My friend and I were walking towards The Arena when I told her, " You know... I get it that Hyderabad Public School is beautiful in terms of historical monument and it’s spacious... But, I am kind of glad that this is the location. Everything is clustered together so beautifully, this is perhaps the first time that I have been to everything or at least am aware what’s happening where. This school... it just feels so...” I trailed off, unable to find the word I was looking for. My friend smiled at me, “It just feels so warm, I know what you mean. I was a bit hesitant on the first day but everything feels so warm this time. It had never felt this way before.” “Yes, warm... Everywhere I look, there’s something hanging or built, there’s not a single wall that’s empty or even a tree. I am just so surprised every time I turn my head. Yeah... it’s just so warm, it...” This time I trailed off not wanting to say the words that were at the tip of my tongue. She completed it nonetheless, ...