The end of time

Can you feel it beneath your fingers?
The skin on her neck, the blood running beneath, her fight for air, and you - her noose-
Strangulating her without remorse,
Anticipating her end with sheer indifference- like a murderer left loose.

Do you hear the sound of her gasping for breath?
I can, when I shut out the noise of you arguing about
God ,land and oil- (None of which was yours to begin with) ,
Sit down with me and listen - I can hear her, without doubt.

Can you feel it around your mouth?
The scars from the sutures that tied your lips together, where it cut into your skin?
The sutures are off, but it's like muscle memory to shut up in conflict now,
You were promised happiness from
minding your own business -  where is your big win?

Do you feel like a fool now,
For believing those men who loved money more than the forest?
When your child crawls into your lap- her eyes, a pool of trust,
Do you wonder how she will breathe in a few years- atleast in solitude, are you for once, honest?

You're busy setting down traps for a rodent,
When your house is on fire, your curtains are ablaze, your life hangs by a thread.
It's time to pull out the extinguisher now, to call for help. Yet, you don't.
You're waiting to be killed. Or are you already dead?

The Jenga Masters

Growing up is constantly challenging yourself,
A constant state of feeling out of place,  in an effort to expand,
being the square peg, trying to fit into a perfectly round hole.
Always having to choose, always in the conquest of a new land.

When you've grown too tired of fitting into this mould, 

When your knees have been scraped from trying to move on, 

An old friend comes by- this miraculous being , not bound by blood nor law, yet who chose to stay.

A square hole for your square peg- sometimes on their knees themselves- telling you to hold on. 

Like the comfort of settling into your own bed after a long time away, 

They let you stay, just the way you are, not judging you for the fact that you look nothing like a fighter.

And like a Jenga master, they pull out just the right piece

and step back, quietly, while you get back on your feet, balanced, lighter.

I wonder why not enough gets written about these simple beings called friends,
Who sit up with you even when you are not at your best,
Who completely understand how weird your family is,
Even when your family doesn't understand why you need to stay up with them at night when they are stressed.

The untrained therapists-on-call who work absolutely free of cost,
The constant givers, the advisors, the jokers, the wise,
The innocent hearts that really mean it when they ask you if you are fine,
Friends, you see, are simply family, sent in disguise.

To Fall in Love With a Mind

She ran her fingers across his spine,
And felt it arch, ever so slightly under her touch.

She took in his scent and cradled him in her arms,
Careful not to cross too many boundaries, not to betray too soon, too much.

They settled into a quiet corner of her bed,

Or was it that the noise died down the moment their eyes met-

Nobody would know. She let him in, without resistance;
In return, he let her in, into his moments of silences, the doors he kept shut with all his might.

his moments of vulnerability, his search for the right words,
Into that void in time between being awake and asleep, where defences just don't work right.

One hour into this hushed affair, time lost its significance.
She was no more a part of the room, but a part of the world inside his head.

Just like that, on an ordinary summer night , a reader fell in love again,
She would hence forever be leading a double life- one in chaos, and the other, when she would hold him in her arms , waiting, into his story ,to be led. 

The first of your kind

Would you have been any different , had you been the first of your kind?

If there was nobody to tell you what normal was, how would you really unwind? 

Would you walk the same walk? Or would you bow down to gravity, and take  after our ancestors for good measure,

Or would you stand up a little more straighter, no longer weighed down by societal pressure? 

If killing was not a crime, would you turn into a hound, hunting deep into the wild, 

Or would you join the tribe of the meek, and discover camouflages to escape and hide? 

If you were the first man to walk the face of earth , and happened to discover another of your kind, 

Would you yearn to be listened to, to share a piece of your mind? 

Would you discover language together? Would you marvel at how mere sounds, 

Used in combinations can mean something - that to then be heard, there are no bounds. 

If you weren't taught the single correct response to "How are you", 

Would you have been honest for once? Would you still have built these walls of lies around you? 

If friends, family and strangers were words that you could brand people with,

Would you have found it easier to pull certain people closer, and cast the others aside, like rotten filth? 

I think of these things sometimes. do you? 

Because I have been proven wrong at almost everything that I once thought was true.

The good and bad, once black and white, is now just one big pool of grey. 

In this confusion, is a constant need for an escape, a distraction, a meaningless conversation; anything to help look away. 

Maybe adulting is about watching your bubble burst, your belief system crumble;

Yet, getting down on your knees to build again, sometimes before the wounds have fully healed from your last stumble. 

Maybe it is about unlearning every single thing that we have learnt, and shutting out the world, to look within for your worth; 

Because if you look at it in a way, each of us really are, you see-  the first of our kind, to set foot on earth. 

Chapters And Blurbs

People are but stories gripping,
Typed on brand new, good smelling paper,

In a world fixated on the make and cover,
Where truth weighs lighter than vapour.

A book more weary of its readers than about being read,
The blurb is sometimes all that the commoners get.

The chapters reserved for only the special,
At the first sign of unacceptance, to be shut again, and outside let.

Gushes of wind sometimes leave the pages agape.
A momentary loss of restraint- of emotion a display.

The solace in solitude when you feel blue,
When you draw into yourself, to keep the pain at bay.

The weight of one wrong reader weighs heavily upon your book;
The binding cuts through , the edges chafe,

Maybe we are all just looking for one reader right ,
to read our stories in the quiet and then, keep them safe.

To the proud acceptors of money in the name of marriage

We haven't met. You have a face from the photographs that I have seen of you in your matrimony profile, but no identity. Many of the boys in my friends circle  and family have opted for arranged marriages, so you are easily one of them. In my head, you are already a human being , filled with what they call the three R's- respect for self, respect for others and full responsibility for all your actions. Which is why saying 'no' to paying money in exchange for your body, like they do in red light areas, comes so easy to me.

There are places in India where families sell the girl child as a bride to the highest bidder. Which means that the potential groom pays money to a family in exchange for their daughter. Sometimes, this makes its way to the newspapers. The bride is shown, sad and forlorn, the pang of betrayal sparkling through her tears. I understand that. She may not know a lot about love , but it surely should not begin on such wrong footing.

But somehow, you are not saddened by the fact that your parents are seeking a reimbursement on what they spent on you and a little bit more , in the name of finding a bride for you. No offense, but the conversation regarding this could easily be held between a chief courtesan and her customer, where she has set a price for the virgin she brought up and will not settle for anything less. She has been getting better offers from across the world, but she is doing you a favour by talking to you because she thinks that you need to have a chance too. Even here, the girl is usually offended by this, yet, you are not.

Have you seen the hoardings of 'beti bachao, beti padhao'? The parents of the bride are the ones who did just that. They treated their child as a person first, they educated her- like the girls you have as friends; the ones who grew up to be responsible , hardworking females and stood shoulder to shoulder with you. At the time of their wedding, however, these girls realise that the world is stuck at where it was centuries ago. She still has to be decked in gold (when her idea of dressing up is nowhere close to looking like a Christmas tree) and pay money to get married to a person who is just as educated as she is. Don't be fooled by those who call it her 'share'. What you are getting is mostly the entire hard earned money that they managed to save in their lifetime. There is nothing respectful about it all . Do you see how your silence and acceptance of all this as being part of the norm is a big contributing factor to female feticide ? What's the point of being progressive in every other aspect of your life, except with the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with?

I know that my friends would cut off all ties with me, if I would offer them riches and ask them to be my friend for life. Why isn't it an obscenity if it's done in the name of marriage?

It's really sad that your parents are selling you for money, not for one night , but for life. The fact that you hope that you will find love somewhere in this transaction is another level of ignorance all together.

I don't hate you, because you are easily every person I know of our age. But the fact that you are ok with your parents looking for the highest bidder shows how little thought you have put into it.

I am simply trying to slip in a mirror from under this door that separates us , for you to reflect upon. But if you are more offended by the fact that I even thought of slipping in this mirror, maybe it is because you don't like the person staring back at you from it.
Food for thought?