One day, I will drop my act
Go driving on a lonely road
With wilderness as my ally
I will slowly drift in anonymity.

No one will come looking for me
I will rent a caravan and live off it
Singing, writing, and listening to earn a living
Do my own chores, live by myself.

I will become the long-lost relative, friend, acquaintance
My name and contact will be deleted from phone memory
They will have to settle for the fact that
I exist in a world they are not a part of.

-

Somebody is living the life you are yearning for.

In a parallel universe, your hands shake when you try to write
Or you are blind in one eye, deaf in one year
Or you are a hunchback, or chained to a machine for movement
Or your skin is scabby, or you pick your nose
Also, you laugh shiftily at things you don’t understand
You are meek, or outspoken, friendly or a loner.

Or you are somebody with perfect skin, face symmetry, body agility and captivating speech
But you have no one of your own and no place to call home.

All this time, you are yearning to be better
To earn more, to travel more, to get up and walk, to be seen
But believe me, somebody is living the life you are yearning at this moment
Somewhere your dreams are coming true, somewhere you are where you want to be
That someone must be thinking the same thoughts as you

Only you don’t know which matters more,
The part of you that exists there
Or this part of you that exists here.

-

Singing my way to nostalgia and back

-

Somewhere feelings dozed off
And you didn’t know
Because you dismissed them
As encumbrances to your soul
But maybe they were not so subtle
In you they reside
When you shoved them off the surface
You were creating a layer
Where feelings acquired depth
And turned into emotions
Some frazzled, some bubbling up
Till they erupt
Leaving you speechless
You cannot answer for them
For you knew not
Where they lay, for how long
And now they took their form
Which was not
what they really were in essence.

-

The rain clouds gather
In tiptoed abandon
Trying to surprise the earth into lushness
All pluviophiles take deep breaths and rejoice
The dark, heavy day makes hearts light
Moments later, romance blooms in their minds
They take out novels to read by a window
Cook something savoury, prune some indoor plants
But their minds stray
They think of their beloved ones
Some love them back, some don’t, some have never expressed
But even the ones with no loving gaze, no tender hearts (as told to them by the world)
Melt, like a soft mound of clay in the long pouring rain
They yearn, they adore, they welcome the feelings
The distance, the loss, the abandonment doesn’t lessen their wanting
They wish to see, to hear, to feel the presences
In those moments, not one of these romantics look
Ugly, sad, angry, but perhaps a little disappointed
The rain takes away their doubts
Reinforces their beliefs
That love cannot be given up
Love cannot be not felt
Someone’s face pervades your thoughts because
you love them
Even if they do or don’t love you back
Just as the rain seeps in the earth, drop by drop,
Melting the hardest rocks into sediments of their own.

-

How was your last trip? My friend asks as soon as we meet,
Not meeting over a cup of tea, or coffee, just meet
To talk about kids and a new shirt and belly fat
I murmur, trip was good. That’s it.
Not great, not illuminating, not dope, or whatever it is that Gen Z says now.
I guess I’m too old to like new things.
I love my chipped corner teeth in my lopsided smiles
I love my occasional milky coffee with lots of sugar
I love my curling hair at my temples that are so hard to pin down
I love my old jeans, my worn shoes, my college pencil case.
I go on trips, see a immense breathtaking view, and tears overflow my eyes.
Same thing, when I open my window and feel the onset of a monsoon breeze
I see shaded trees, huge patches of green, and my heart yearns to run across
Same thing, when I see my kid playing in a park, shrieking at the top of his lungs
No, I have not yet seen the Eiffel Tower (fingers crossed!)
Or the cherry blossoms of Japan (so want to see a Geisha perform!)
Nor the tulip gardens of Kashmir (soon I hope!)
Or walked the picturesque countryside of Switzerland (God, when!!!)
But all I can say now is
“Been there, done that,
The earth is round, but my views are flat.”

-

There is less fire in one’s being now
Less rancour in one’s mind
Less corruption of thoughts
Lesser reason to really smile

Crying with all one’s might
Feels natural, feels relished
Pain is not just a passing moment
Its there, but unseen

Go away somewhere, one thinks
Let the cold get you
Or stay at home and eat and sleep, just relax
Find peace with solitude

But one has to see the end of each day through
One has other loves to care
Pain can take a backseat now
Its too much a burden to bear.

-

Only if
people wrote letters to their beloved
from whom they have been separated
by time, place or loss of heart
and sealed them in glass bottles
and dropped them off in the sea

Only then
some would wake up at the break of dawn
and sit up at watch at the sea shore
to collect those bottles, to take the letters out
read them, store them in a sanctum
or even a drawer to peruse them later

Those letters, those thoughts
were not meant to reach anywhere
but only to be read for satisfaction by most
to search for deeper meanings by some
and to grieve over the memories lost by a few.

-

All I wished
Was to never think of you again
Never speak your name
Never remind myself of the sweet things you had said
Never conjure up your face in my mind
But
By chance
I saw your first name
Spelled neatly out on a piece of paper
That was torn up from an official application
And suddenly it was as if
The whole world was chanting your name
I see the letters of your name spelled everywhere
On billboards, on the television ads, on leaflets
Even on a random reel by a celebrity influencer
And I am nearly convinced that the universe is trying to connect us
To bring us together again somehow
Then I remember that you had made the choice to leave
You chose to make me eternally unhappy
How I had died bit by bit when things had ended
Maybe that’s what the universe wants to remind me
To not waver, not give in to temptation
That the depths of my heart you could reach into,
To make room for all the love you said you felt
Had turned into a void, that I have filled gradually
With snatches of love and kindness
That I continue to receive
From family, friends and strangers.

-

We will never notice at once
The loss of colour in our lives
The day sunrise looked more white than yellow
Or the moonshine more grey than silver
The leaves start looking brownish than bottle green
The sea water turquoise than pale blue

Everything shiny within our sights dim
Then we wonder if we are getting colour blind
Or is the world fading faster than we thought
Amidst loves and laughs, we lost our sense of self
And we looked nowhere, but within
Grasping with new realities, newfound knowledge
And suddenly we look out
And see the world losing colour
Our lives moving on like archived videos.

We think about the lost glitter of our smiles
The brazen bronzeness of our skin
The dull sheen of our unfocused gaze
So colourless, so shallow, so misty
The walls of our living rooms,
once painted a garish green
Now look like mottled clay
As if they seeped all our happiness in
And broke in a sweat of unfulfilled dreams.

-