Sometimes, just sometimes,
We mistake people for their silence.
We see their silence as साढ़े दो,
but their silence is ढाई,
We consider their silence
as the wrong sandal we wore
in the right foot.

Silence of words is not always
negligence, sometimes it is the
space you need, the love you
need to know.
When the clock says 2:30,
it's called ढाई and not साढ़े दो,
And by the time you realize this
you would've already mistaken
someone's silence to correct
the sandal you wore.

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Somewhere between nothing
and a lot of things
we search for everything.

You too, to yourself aren't everything.
You are a lot of things.
The sight, the taste, the touch,
the hearing, the smell.

All of us have a century
to show our belongingness to,
but we don't hold the whole hundred
in our purse, we hold a lot. A lot.
And perhaps, the lot becomes
everything.

But then you don't end up to nothing.
Because it's you, five senses, and a lot more.
Then I say, a lot is an everything in the few.
The words smirk.

-

In a bowl full of water
some grains sink,
some float.

The ones that sink
wet themselves
the ones that float
have air pockets
or, are dry.

That's how we are.
Lonely in the crowd with a pocket to fill.
The crowd in the lonely without a pocket.

Either not dampened
by lows;
Or not dampened
by loss.

Lows and loss are bookmarks.
Floating is a loss. Sinking is a low.

-

If my thoughts were in the lunchboxes
packed by my mother everyday,
I would savour them, enjoy each bite
filling my brain with dry stalks and chaff
dipped in my favourite chutney,
call them the favourites by her
and the only ones I love to have.
Somedays I'd have what I love,
Somedays I'd have what I like,
The other days maybe something
I don't like, say an omlette, for instance.
And on some days, edibles I wouldn't
eat if I weren't hungry; I would then
not complain of less salt, or burnt rice,
since I know the efforts they take,
the love they hold, from her, by her.

Nevertheless to say,
I fail to see they are already
a tiffin by mom. I enjoy them daily,
despite the fact that chaff catches fire
earlier than chutney laden wet leaves, and
I fail to recognize each thought as an exacto
knife carving me, to me. Just like you to you.

-

I sliced depression to pieces.
It screamed-
dip-rest-shun in pain.
I opened it up to find the procedure.
It said-
Take a dip into it, rest there, under
layers of shunning yourself from the
world, within each fold, overlay yourself
with dips of recession and let the
temporary social decline become
the most of your life.
I picked up each letter, it spoke-
d e p r e s s i o n
all of itself, so obsessive that the letters
stumbled upon each other, fell on the
alive heart and it died of suicide.
Depression murdered its own home,
which turned a stranger to itself.
It's a serial killer- depression.
It shouldn't be arrested in the body's
prison, instead it must be allowed to
roam free over the clouds, so that they
cry during monsoon, for you to call
someone's depression, a hope for life.

-

Call them miracles,
each dry grass you laid on the floor
for the green mangoes to ripe,
They ripe to yellows.
You call them joys.
Hence, you put them with milk and sugar
making a mango shake, you crush ice
call them tears,
you drink everything,
call it refreshment
It's a miracle.
Or is it not?
Was it overcoming?
It is nature.
Ripening, drying, dying,
rotting and everything.
Call it life.
A miracle.
That you exist, despite the fact
you think you are depressed, but you aren't
unless you truly are
Just like mangoes, just like mango shake.

-

A pink lily
blooms every monsoon
the green leaves fall like ribbons
it's an almost spring in rains,
an almost.

Incense stick's
white chiffon flows to fade,
to disappear, the fragrance
walks on the floor
skipping a tile or two
like piano keys
like a fictional heart
skipping a beat, it's an almost feel
an almost of holding
a heart in your palms
but you know you can't pull it out

it all slips, water too does, but not water
the froth of shampoo you can hold but
it falls from between your fingers
like the bubble that almost didn't burst
like the sneeze that almost left you
but now holds your nose blocked.

-

The tiny bangles still dangle in the dresser,
now they won't fit my wrist,
so they silently hide under the relatively
newer ones that still won't fit my wrist,
I ran my fingers across them to see them clinking,
The tiniest the loudest, they were glass ones,
and the more later ones were metallic, not so loud,
Do you see the transition? That's very much me.
Glass ones, tender and easily breakable,
Just a thud and all piercing tears,
Cheerful and loud, with a presence.
The metal ones, not very loud, yet audible,
You can reshape them the way you want,
they dare won't return back to a circle again.
And now I don't wear bangles, not even bracelets,
It's silence with an empty wrist, sometimes
a wristwatch, perhaps. Tick tock, tick tock, inaudible walk.
Mostly it's nothing, just those incomplete memories
I won't want to become full circles again,
And they keep on dangling even if they won't
fit the new me, I dreamt of them back then, and now
the dreams are still here, but I may just lose them someday
as a half glass smiling.

-

There's a grain of rice in the plate
the only one left after the meal,
I could pick it up and maybe swallow it,
'don't leave in your plate,
never you should'
is what I've made a practise
but I leave it,
I place it in the sink
water trickles down
and washes it off.

This is guilt.
Like a new grass broom,
like the last rice grain
arresting you in time,
making you think and think,
but not acting at the moment,
cleaning to leave more of it
making you wait
to leave, and hence, stay.
Guilt.

-

It's slight
like salt per taste.

Write कि, it's that–
the connection.
Write की, it's of–
the possession.

When I say slightest
it's just a मात्रा,
it's just a tinge or a tinch,
it's just a stress
wanted unwanted
leaving your mouth
like your childhood memories
you've lived them
you may slightly remember
like known connected
possessed rude
mistakes and lies.
It's all between कि and की.

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