Swimming lessons

It was like drowning during a drought. Every passing minute of every night felt like an ordeal with whatever was keeping her from not spiralling into a paper ball and being tossed over into a random bin; one at a school classroom where young love would twinkle faintly at the tips of two- or more- overly sharpened pencils, before the teacher came in and hushed the drooping children back to their queasy benches. She needed to learn to swim, and quickly, before the pools of ink that were caged in her mouth would either be bitterly swallowed or callously gorged onto her thin sheets that hardly kept her warm during monsoon nights. Brushing frantically and flossing every day without fail hardly helped. Perhaps, she needed lessons.

Perhaps, she could kiss, and within that kiss, she could unsuspectingly bury her breaths of exasperation for the time being. Or, she could chew gum, and stick all of the jitters that shot up from her thigh to her teeth on it, and try to spit it out every time she was required to speak. She could even drink water, and swallow the ink forming in her mouth like an undiscovered writer in her mid-50s, turning the colour of a midnight sky. She could barf, yes. She could just hit her chest like a gorilla and force the dryness out of her like shampoo in an almost empty bottle, that erupts in spurs from the untimely squeezes of the wrinkled fingers of a cold, naked body.

“just get into the water, it’ll come to you,” she thought, from memory of being told the same over and over.

The water was warm and felt light against her limbs. So light that it almost felt like air. She just had to swim in air, she thought. She had buckets of ink filling up through her chest to her neck and nose as though she eternally is audience to something gross.

Bend into a half fold,

Pick the right leg up,

And then the left,

Shuffle,

Wave your arms,

Time your movements,

Flow with the momentum.

She followed the lesson as though it were a computer program instruction. It was funny, how instructions worked, for they seem like they want her to perform her own version of them but, really, if she did put in even an ounce of herself into it, the referee would blow a whistle and show her the offense card. Freedom, as was written on the little posters around the walls of the pool, was that everyone follow their own tracks. They could splash extra, make egotistical and flamboyant spins in between, mimic dolphins and wail in ecstacy as they “expressed themselves”- whatever they pleased- but within the confines of their own track. Something that was not written on these posters, that she observed as she tried to paddle, was how for the others in her swimming class, freedom was being able to ignore instructions or doing well despite them. Some would get the yellow card, but the referee would wink as he gave it to them and she would feel her eyes roll eternally like sand dunes before a storm. She was probably imagining it. What kind of refree winks while showing a card?

She paddled and paddled until her feet resembled withered sponges, that still could be used to scrub utensils “until they tore off into pieces in one’s soap-y hands.” All this workout made her core feel numb, and at one point, breath itself took a break. To be a fish in the sea, one had to resort to alternate means of breathing. That is all it took to change form- alter your breathing. To survive, one must breathe. And to live, one must breathe different. She wonders if the water in the pool ever takes pity on her. She wonders if it resents having a fluid form that slides right off its occupants, or binds them so well that they have to stay in. The water is no wise, nor does it actually care enough to cherish the memory it keeps, she thinks. Water excuses no being that does not want to learn to swim. It does not even let her hold it within her for a while. Even in its forgiveness, water is brutal.

Stroke, a breath of fresh air, stroke.

The referee’s whistle blew off, as though he wishes to inform her that rice was ready to be served, and only she has to do it. Until then, whatever made her loathe being in the pool became a hundred fold worse the moment her limbs were exposed to the air outside. She thought, after spending hours on, learning to swim, air was supposed to be liberating. But the water demands so much attention. The force of the pull was exuberant on her lungs, and she gasped several times before she could stand up straight at the edge of it. Her clothes clung to her body exposing every little crease and bulge, and she instantly felt the urge to cover herself up. Her shoulders swooped down low, exposing her collarbones to the gratifying air. Droplets still heavy on her eyelids, she began strutting until her feet got used to the walking. It was as though, they had already forgotten to swim. She would dry up and the air would provide for her.

And onwards she went, to wherever her home was, without bothering to change, without wondering once if she would ever be back. She was sure she learnt one lesson that day.

Image Source

The Thing About the Stars

_{A poem by Remus John Lupin // from the Harry Potter Universe.}

When the rays of the sun are bottled

into dissipated dust for the evening,

and my stomach rumbles for light

and more light,

or for a tasteful imagination of it,

the hunger in me

is not prudent or rile.

It is gentle yet resisting

as the flapping wings of an elderly bat.

It is as eventful as said elderly bat flying into a full moon sky.

“Can you stop romanticising about black birds

and the cosmos

and hunger?”, you ask me.

How cute of you to think that I am in control

of my metaphors, of my scars, of my heart.

When I go on long walks,

I do not simply come back-

I arrive in tussles and curls of flowers

with twigs in my hair

and the fibres of my sweater.

I go into the open fields or

Walk a little past the banks of the Lake,

and yet,

I am hardly in the open.

I feel closeted –

And not just in the Whomping Willow.

When I am surrounded by these walls,

I tell the invisible beings voicing at me.

I tell them I am a monster and not even they believe me.

“Does he really not believe that too?”, I ask into the air above me.

I can see those words leave my mouth in pale blue

And mix with a suspiciously clear monsoon sky.

I then see clouds

Forming as they collect enough anticipation

Until they give in.

I see puffs of clouds above me like smoke from chimneys

That feeds back into, once again, my very empty lungs.

Night falls, as it does not fail to carry its duty

To make me cry once again.

And then can I finally see the stars.

The magical observatory in that ridiculously tall astronomy tower

Is useless because they can help dreamy children draw charts of

This universe, but they cannot carry them to the the stars.

Or the moon-

As much as I am terrified of it,

I wonder if in celestial hindsight it is just a giant monarch

Watching me dance till I bled

Every time he ate a full meal.

But, I have learnt to ignore him on other days.

I assume a worm bigger than the giant eats a chunk of it every fifteen days

and the alternative fifteen, he spends his time barfing his food out.

I’m sorry to write about barf in a supposed love poem.

Love? the stars.

My inhibitions form walls around me

But I just need to look up,

And they present themselves before me-

Before a monthly feral.

Sometimes, I am not ready for their kindness.

And I could be sitting to a corner with my knees folded,

my head bent over.

But the stars, they are compassionate.

They generously reflect upon the floor

under my feet, for me to still see them.

And suddenly, they are my chariot.

My soft carpet that keeps my feet warm.

They all wish they could capture the stars.

But that is the thing about them.

They don’t need to be captured,

They will show up again tomorrow.

Sirius always shows up again tomorrow.

His stupid and gorgeous hair flouncing all over his brown forehead.

His presence,

The soft moonlight reflecting off of the lake

That does not traumatise me.

He is the ink that a hungry, disheveled artist

Purchases minutes before they finished their masterpiece.

He is the gentle blow of breeze that

tickles an overturned bug back on its legs.

His jokes are so idiotic,

Like a crow with a hat on.

And when I don’t laugh,

He does.

And I am tossing the hat right off of that crow

and eating the bird up raw.

It does not make sense,

It never did,

just like the unfair deal between

night and day where they agreed to

Heal for half the day and then again torture into silence the other half.

It does not make sense

expect when I see a wet black dog

panting towards my cage,

right before I blacked out.

It does not make sense that the stars are just out there,

Existing genderlessly while everyone in the world

writes poems about them,

is not afraid to admire them, study them,

and be utterly in love with them.

Yet, here I have,

All the stars bundled into handsome skin and terrible jokes,

Lulling beside me in a silly leather jacket for all of the day

And most of the night,

And I have never been so terrified.

– R.J.L / Hogwarts, 1976.

source

locked in.

The past few weeks have made me think about causality, and more importantly, the continuity of time. I have been spending sweaty and unsettling nights by the corner of my bed with my feet almost touching the picture above it that I painted in the summer of last year, when the colours looked brighter, and my paintbrush flew seamlessly, albeit distortedly, but pleasantly nevertheless. I do not consider myself aware enough to discuss philosophy. I would rather want to talk in metaphors and similes about a time that is softly draining our emotional balance into an overused and dented aluminium canister, that usually stood by the soiled dishes, that held the final remains of a pale green, once turquoise dishwashing soap in a bourgeois Indian household. The lights at my home, should I sit down to immerse in the mossy eeries of my thought train, have begun to diffuse across the room like a sand dune that was birthed by wind to subdue a mere stone, like a ghost that had no bodily form and that plunged over a sleeping child in one wave. This veils my vision and suffocates my intuition as the pungent smell from a leather bag store inadvertently enters the already stuffed-to-the-zipper handbags with crumpled newspaper. But doesn’t all that suffocation scream “NEW!” nevertheless?

It is not like I did not try. I have opened my windows at all times, I have only worn skirts and pyjamas, I have sung and meditated and painted and written and read and laughed and watched and thought. I had, to say the least, slouched over an old plastic chair and tried to reach out to that version of myself that was slightly less wilted, but I wondered if I should let that be, since the unpicked daisies from a lone tree in my backyard mirrored my sagging chin and drooping eyelids. The spark of a dreadful summer begins to dawn on my temples as I step out 5 meters from the main doors to fill my lungs with air. Was it clean? I do not know. Was it fresh? The scent of sap from the trees around me lingered, so I must be breathing what they have exhaled. Must be fresh. At this point, I make a prayer. Atleast I can still breathe well if I wanted to. Atleast I do not have to travel thousands of kilometres by foot to make a daily wage (and not be able to, indefinitely), or fight for a loosely tied packet of pale tamarind rice from stranger hands and faces emerging masked from grey vans with cameras shuttering at my destitute like a teenage male wasp prying over an ant hole to prove itself to its male counterparts. Atleast I was privileged enough to feel thankful for being loved and loved enough to miss someone dear.

The homeliness of an afternoon ray of light across the silver mesh and the brown windows that wind and rainwater over the years have bloated them to the extent that they never fully close, as though symbolising the constant need for an interaction of the inside of the house with its immediate outside, brings me to wishfully think of the countless medical personnel that could not have this mundane luxury right now. It makes me think about the world and what it has come to, what feels the sudden pullover at a tall grass field for a whiff of the dew at sunrise but eventually too pulled into the maze so as to never be able to get out, what feels like a majestic eagle just before scooping up a snake has travelled back in time and dropped off at its nest as a trembling eaglet and is vulnerable to getting gobbled up by the snake at any moment. The quickest retreat to this seems to be a snap back from a nightmare, a reflex from an electric shock, or snipping a stitch on my dress made too dense to show the flowing frill.

There is a pair of wall hangings that are rightfully hung to the either side of the door, and every time the wind sways them ever so slightly, there are a million reflections and all those images, I capture with the clasp of my palms, for those were my world at home. That was the travel I could afford. Those were the worlds that were clean and just, and they hung at the very door to the room I slept in.

A labyrinth that is love

The cookie jar that held my savings
In sinuous cylinders, placed high up
On the shelves I have to reach
Only with the aid from a high-chair,
Is now kept on the table beside my cat
Who seems fascinated by my whimsical earrings,
Made from shards of my old window-
I am quite crafty-
Reflecting on the jar, is my
Turbid face
Waiting to be washed off of the grease,
Of the dirt from the dramatics of war
And the stains from the char
Of love, of love, of love.
I beseeched every ounce of my sordid veins
To match the color of my blush,
To be the ruddy irridesence of my front door,
Outside which sit roses addressed to me
Every Sunday morning,
And they would still be blue

Every Sunday morning I wake up to the chirps of newborn rays,
Bring in the roses,
Juice the oranges,
And whisk out a tune or two
That I imagine to be the the song of my rendezvous
I lapse onto the recliner
Like the 80-year-old that my soul is,
With a cigarette for lollipop,
An ashtray for a flower vase.
So here I sit and contemplate:
What is it that makes me any affable?
Is it the scarves I sew for myself?
Or is it the books that replace the clothes in my wardrobe?
Is it my aching feet from all the
Toddles along the street in my hat with
My purse and my cat?
In search of a artist
Of flowers and entwines
Who often grunts at my sight
For the roses I buy
Every Saturday night to decorate my doorstep?

Image credits to respective owners.

Looking back at the future

20 lifetimes ago, I have fathomed myself into being

That girl who knew not that the world

Would come upside down

When you hang onto it.

I have suppressed my fear then of emerging triumphant,

Suppressed it so much that my clothes have wrinkled

Like the dead flower I use for a bookmark

Or as a reminder of the day I had the power

To kill a flower to keep its beauty-

It did not last a day.

My abs have shrunk

Into a paper ball that they tossed

But missed the bin by inches

So here I am, at the corner of the room, crumpled and

Ready to be picked up by the ants,

When I began to cry, when I began to tear up and tear down

Into wet sticky pulp

I stuck to the walls and when I fell asleep, my tears dried up.

I fell back on the floor,

Just outside the closed door.

All I had was the millimeters of freedom

Between the floor and the base of the hard wooden door of my classroom.

A little wind, and I would be free

To fly with the autumn leaves and the spring butterflies.

All I do now,

Is wait for the wind

To take me with.

leaf

The only time I could feel reassured again was when I read a story that wasn’t mine. Reading on a bench with trees and the chirpiest of birds all around me was the biggest adventure I’ve had in my life in the past few months. The birds keep calling out; Calling out to their peers, their friends, the air, the nature, and all of us. They sing so we can sleep but also stay awake and tune in to their voices- it was like watching a 4D movie. The tamarind tree under which I sat threw tamarind fruit pods without warning and you don’t know when one will hit you, but it will at some point and I can’t avoid it. So I did not move. The sudden thuds those tiny little pods made when they hit the ground made me understand pressure, and how they were full and ripe, came to the Earth where humans would stamp on them and they would mix with the tar, almost as if they’re invisible. Very familiar concept. There were ants all over under my bench but not one stung my bottom or back, because I didn’t know of their presence until I finished my reading and sat up and looked. Or did I? It could be ignorance. I think that day the story was not just the one that was in the book. It was from all around me, and it was a good story. How I can give back to nature for that can only be through feeding myself with more and more of it, until I’m able to write one.

Rosemilk with a sprinkle of heartache

my lips are pink, but not

from all the lipstick I put

and all the anger I shoot.

I’m holding a glass

much too heavy for my delicate wrists

where my bracelets still rest

and the beads form a nest

for my nerves to sit.

My pale, blue-green,

week nerves that they love to climb

and hold onto until my wrists

are more feeble than ever.

I gulp down the pink milk

and put the mug on the table

the colour dissolves into that of

my flesh,

but passes right through the hole

in my heart.

---

the milk is digested

the burps I made got them disgusted

my lips are sweet and my moustache, pink

that I pretend I didn’t know of, until you pointed to your own lips,

looking at me.

I wipe them off and laugh a little,

the pink from my mug

moves on to your cheeks.

The fork on your plate

is pointed at me

it is distracting me from your gaze

couldn’t you have just left it on my back,

so I can stare at you in peace?

---

The city is busy

and I’m finally alone

it begins to rain,

and my umbrella is with you

so, I just get wet.

The rain is as cold as the milk

and the colour is not any different.

I see pink everywhere now.

Like I am wearing a lens,

Like the roses that you gave me

have decided to churn themselves

in a mixie high above

and pour on not just you,

but me too.

Because I skip on the streets

that are slowly dying in hustle,

or of hustle;

And I smell the time

I was so much in love.

Now my rosemilk is drunk

and the rain washes my moustache.

I begin to melt.

My hair falls all over me,

my skirt crashes down and my shoulders

tumble with my shirt.

Soon enough I’m a puddle

grey and loose;

But with a clink,

Falls my heart.

Pink, and ever so rosy.

---

Wolves

For a girl
Who does not think she’s 

The best in the room

Even when she’s the only one there-

But also doesn’t really care;

Who trips in heels 

And falls over bookshelves

Makes everyone tea 

With ginger and honey;

Has a favourite sweatshirt 

With sewed patches

From cloth of different colors;

Who nibbled on chocolate

While brushing her hair

And thinking about how she should cut it

To avoid all the work;

Would have a humor of a child

But adults would laugh at it

Even at her, but

She kind of felt that it was safe that way;

Who wouldn’t look at anything in more awe

Than at the full moon-

The thought of which brought poetry out of her,

It is not so easy to fall in love. 

But when she would,

It would be so dreamy,

Because he was the prettiest in the room

But with insecurities;

He drank coffee but 

Wouldn’t refuse tea either;

He would lie on the grass 

With a book closed on his chest

Stressing about how 

He needs to patch his sweatshirt;

Sighed as the breath of chocolate

Filled the spring-time air;

He ran his fingers through his hair

Covered in grass and seeds

Chuckling to himself at the thought of

Anyone finding him attractive,

Then quickly going back to a gloomy gaze

At the clouds which he knew would fail

To conceal the full moon that night.

If only the moon were a portal

To each other’s universe

Where they could finally meet.

To Remus Lupin.

Idea of the sketch above is not original.

Happiness, and other disabilities.

 

The glasses I wear are thick.

They are heavy, a little too much

For the small cartilage that allows every reek and fragrance.

But thanks to them, I can see.

What is there, and much more.

Through the corner of my eyes when light is behind me,

I see rainbow colours.

When in front of me,

You can see me side-eye you better.

 

---

 

When I began to draw you,

I started hating colour.

When I still coloured you, you looked so ugly.

So I tossed you off,

And it missed the window by inches.

My cat still thinks you are what i knit my sweaters with.

She’s not wrong,

But it’s summer.

 

---

 

Guns and rifles,

Fire and havoc.

But don’t run away,

You’re the one holding the gun.

I am safe, but you need to save yourself.

Because now that I’m not crying, what will you feed on?

My blood? But how?

You’re the one with the gun,

But I am not imprudent anymore,

I know it’s not loaded.

 

---

 

Sunrise, birds and a good breakfast.

Been watching you grab my toast and toss it into your mouth.

Been watching you put your dirty finger into the jam bottle and lick it.

Been watching you grin with your chocolate-stained teeth after

You stole my cupcake and made conversation with my friends.

Been watching you feast

On my thought and imagination.

And as though you weren’t full, you drank my humor too?

Been watching you slowly die after that..you ok?

 

---

 

“Quick, move this face!”

*moves loneliness to the corner*

“Not phase, face.“

“Oh!” *Smiles*

“Hmm, something is missing.”

“Cause?”

“Right!” *Caws and cries*

*laughs*

 

---

 

Watching horror movies with you

Is always fun.

Love the background music,

The yells, the bloodshed,

The thrill,

And how you got chased, killed, and bitten.

You won every time, but

The movies didn’t stop coming.

Loved the yells, the bloodshed, the thrill,

And loved watching myself in all those movies.

---

To depression, my best friend.

 

70 Seconds

In Freedom’s clasp.

 

Shuffling through radio stations,Indignantly.
Searching for music as I

Sallied along the roads of the country that did not make that music.

My feet pressed upon the brake paddle,

and I grumbled.

70 seconds of waiting.

 

The rays of Sun falling through a Sun-blocking glass was my inconvenience.

But I had shades on, right? In my AC car?- Yes.

Amidst my loud music and my mutters

Of cursing time, I heard a tap on my window.

I think she knocked on a lot of cars before-

her knuckles were darker than the rest of her skin colour.

 

The face of a young teenage girl, I saw.

Baking in the Sun, yet beaming at me.

She held up a white plastic stick-

Similar to the straw in my coffee cup placed down beside the gear-

except, much more delicate and dirtier.

 

To the end of the stick,

Loosely dangled a wrinkled, pale Tiranga.

8 more seconds until she mouthed-

“Five rupees madam!”

It was hard to make out if it was her request,

Or her adversity.

 

Her eyebrows formed a ‘V’ as she pulled them together,

To aid to her vision in the searing heat of the afternoon.

Her other hand carried a bunch of many such shabby flags.

She didn’t stop smiling. 

As I looked,

She stopped by six more cars. 

For 70 seconds, she knocked. 

Not one looked back at her. 

There were reluctant nods without eye contact. 

There was laughter inside, 
Shatter outside. 

Outside- was out of liberty. 

Green lights went off,

And the cars behind me honked in unease.

The girl dashed towards the divider as vehicles scooted as though she were invisible. 

The pale little flag on the top of my dashboard sunk lower than ever.