Aww, baby

You say I wear my heart on my sleeve,
that I always love a little too much and a little too hard.
That’s why I get hurt so often, you say.
In my head, I vehemently disagree,
but when I am sitting with you,
I nod.
I have learnt that disagreeing
is the shortest route to resentment,
and I don’t want to hate you anymore than I already do.

My therapist says that I learnt staying quiet
during the years I spent at home with my parents
struggling to disappoint them less and please them more,
training myself—
to nod, say yes, practice, perform, outperform, win—
until I couldn’t do it anymore.
The first time I failed a test,
my father didn’t talk to me for three weeks,
and my mother looked at me
like I had just handed her a death sentence.
So I started focusing on being good
at everything they hated,
and being the absolute worst
at everything they wanted me to accomplish.

You see the pattern here, don’t you?
Each time I disagree, disobey, disappoint,
someone explodes.
And baby, I am so tired of cleaning up someone else’s mess.
So I would rather listen to you go on and on and on
about how you have got me all figured out,
and nod,
while I think about the best sex I have ever had
(and it wasn’t with you)
instead of saying “fuck off”.

You see the pattern here, don’t you?
After all, you have got me all figured out
after three dates and mediocre sex (twice)!
You should,
because I (“the girl who falls in love
every time someone is nice to her”) do.
So when you call me the next time,
asking for a fourth date,
I will cut the call, and block your number.
And trust me, baby,
you will see me flip you off
from your fancy flat in Hauz Khas or wherever,
and you could clean up your own mess,
afterwards.

– D

A study in grief

From the eleventh floor of the hospital building
the world looks almost minuscule.
The air in the waiting room is laden with despair,
like all the grief on earth has been condensed
between its four walls.
Dinner is eaten out of steel tiffin boxes
and aluminium foil pouches,
hands shake.
There are no tears,
but a mother says,
“My beta had to be brought to Dilli
in an air ambulance from Ranchi—
the doctors there had given up.”
An unuttered consensus is reached
by everyone present,
if time were to stop right then,
on the condition that they would
never see their loved ones again,
they would agree in the blink of an eye,
if it meant they won’t have to read
the obituaries in the newspapers,
or worse, write them.

A man sitting in a corner all alone,
says that God will make things better.
The silence in the room shrieks—
God has been a little deaf to the prayers lately.
These lives have been intertwined
through hours spent waiting
in a room on the eleventh floor —
like balls of yarn
left in the bottom-most shelf
of the almirah years ago.
If you were to try to untangle
these lives from each other,
you’ll probably have to tear some of them apart.
All of them knew,
their lives will never be the same again.

– D

For the women named defiance

Pyaari Ruqsana,
You are going to remember these nights.
When you grow up,
you are going to tell the story of the winter
you did not go home for so long
that you had started to forget the colour
of the walls of the two-room apartment
Where you lived with your Ammi and Abbu,
and you will tell it so often, and so earnestly
that everyone who listens
will know how it feels to be born in broken country.
You will tell people that during the coldest winter
that Dilli had seen in decades,
you learnt the definition of warmth.

Ruqsana,
You will tell them that despite spending the nights
on the streets, sitting on the red and green carpets
rented from the tent-wallah,
you never went hungry.
You had just turned nine that winter.
The women sitting around you,
they exchanged smiles,
they exchanged words,
“Tabiyat kaisi hai tumhari? Kuchh Khaya?”
These women, who were portraits of concern.
were also portraits of defiance.
“We won’t move an inch from here,”
Said the women of Shaheen Bagh,
who will be written about in history,
for their resolve.
And you, Ruqsana, are a woman of Shaheen Bagh,
and will always be.

– D

I’m not a war veteran

Trigger Warning: Self-harm

A boy I had once loved used to tell me that
every breath we take should be a struggle,
so that when we died no one could say
that we didn’t fight.
He said every cigarette he ever smoked
was a mutiny against his life,
every night he spent alone in his room
was a reminder that the fact
that we didn’t ask to be here
didn’t matter,
that we were all stuck in this game called life
forever.
And we had infinite turns left before
someone could be declared a winner,
so everyday we must smile at strangers
and shake hands with our own demons,
remind ourselves that this pain is only a sign
that we are alive.
He was wrong.

Because every moment hundreds of kids
are picking up a blade for the first time,
and every scar they leave on their skin
will make sure that they never feel okay
stripping in front of a lover.
Every stranger they bring over after a drunken night
will always ask, “What happened?”
And they will never know the answer.
Because how do you tell someone you just met
that you realised at thirteen that this was the life
you weren’t supposed to live?
How do you tell them that
there’s not a story behind every cut,
that sometimes you hurt yourself
just because it was the only way
you could get through the day?

I once spent a night with a girl
with scars in the same places as me,
and we shared silences the size of epiphanies
because neither of us knew what to say.
It was as if we were waiting
for Archimedes to say eureka in his grave
because we had found two pieces of a puzzle
that no one else needed.
If that night had lasted forever
we’d have had no regrets
because as far as our stories go,
that was all we needed to be.
We both refused to keep the lights on
as we made love,
our hands searched for SOS messages
on each other’s skin,
we both knew where to look.
She told me she had once slapped a boy
who had called her cuts battle scars,
for she thought it was unfair that
we were foot soldiers in a war
that other people had privilege to not see.

I never saw her after that night,
but despite being an atheist I say her name
like a prayer every morning,
because I know that she’s somewhere out there,
and this fight — we are in it together.

So everytime someone tells me that
we need to be in pain to feel alive,
I call bullshit on it.
Don’t tell me that we’d have smiled less often
if we didn’t have wounds to nurse,
that our lives would have had no meaning
if they weren’t defined by the scars
that on the best days we call mistakes
and on the worst days,
our identity.
Our scars aren’t love poems etched on our skin
for the world to see,
and you smoking a cigarette
and calling it mutiny
will never be the equivalent of a ten-year-old
locking himself in a room
and cutting open his skin with a paper knife,
because he believed that was his destiny.

So, come here,
put on these shoes and walk a mile.
I dare you to then look at me with a smile,
and tell me that you want your life to be a fight.

– D

For an imaginary muse – i

I have been in love all my life. With the reflections of people in dark-edged mirrors, with their shadows on dimly lit streets, with the way their lips separate and come together with every word they speak. No one ever taught me that humans could also not be in love. I never imagined that there may exist people who might not have their hearts overflowing with inexplicable emotions. For me, this has always been a way of life, the only way of life. I think this is why heartbreak has never destroyed me. Even on occasions when my heart had been wrung empty, I still had something left.

I wonder what you think about love. I wonder whose face flashes in front of your eyes when you hear that word. Actually, I do not wonder. I know the answer, because I know you. But there’s a strange kind of satisfaction in denying what is, and imagining what could be. No, I am not stupid, I know this world is no utopia, and your definition of happiness will ever match mine. We both have penchants for different things; I, for loving, and you, for letting go. And I think if I ever told you that I love you, I’ll break. I’ll break and shatter into to so many pieces that I would never recognize myself in the mirror again. And I will never recognize you. In my dictionary, disgust is the ugliest word, I won’t be able to bear seeing it on your face. I’d break again, and disappear. And though I find solace in invisibility, that is not the kind of death I want to die. I want to be here, and witness your every smile. When I was thirteen, and had had my heart broken for the first time, I had written in my diary, “If you’re truly in love with someone, you’d be happy if they are happy, even if someone else was the reason of their happiness.” I wasn’t wise, I was a fool. But that was nine years ago, and I have learnt to value distance. If I was closer to you, I would have found out how human you were. And even though that wouldn’t stop me from loving you, it’d make everything ordinary. I like the inertia of my love for you. I’d like for it to remain as it is. If you change, or if I change, we’re doomed. Trust me?

Yours,
D

For Maa

Maa often tells baba,
“I hope you die before I do.”
He says nothing.

Baba knows how to cook
enough food to feed a village,
he knows how to wash clothes,
wring them dry,
and hang them neatly
with pastel-coloured alligator clips.
He knows how to clean under the beds,
how to dust the armchair, the curtains,
the unreachable corners on the top of the bookshelves.
He knows how to do everything,
almost.
The only thing baba doesn’t know,
is how to live without a woman.

Maa says that she grew up learning
how to take care of men.
She says her mother taught her that
men will never admit that they need us.
And yet, they will sulk
behind their newspapers in the verandah
if we forgot the fact.

Maa says men are stubborn.
I tell her, we are stubborner.
We refuse to put down the burden of duties
that a man decided hundreds of years ago
were suitable for us.
We refuse to look in the mirror
and see just ourselves.
We are convinced
that the fact that men need us
is the reason we need men,
that being needed is the only reason
to be alive.

When I tell maa
that I will never get married,
she wonders who will take care of me.
I inquire if she means to ask
who will I take care of?
She says I’ve been reading too much.
Every word I say to her after that,
she takes it like a rebellion,
she says that knowing too much
isn’t good for us.

My throat gargles up words
I want to tell her that there’s power in defiance.
Instead, I tell her I’ve become the woman
she had always wanted me to be.
I tell her that every time she said
that she hoped my life
turns out to be better than hers,
she was telling me to learn from her mistakes,
and I did.
Without knowing,
she had taught me to defy with my every breath.
I tell her,
Thank you.

– D

Feels like home to me

Your voice sounds distorted on the telephone. I ask you to repeat every word, thrice. You laugh. The laughter travels the distance of a thousand miles and rings in my ear. I ask you, what do you do on lonely nights? You laugh again. I wonder if you are still in love with me. Probably not. I am too scared to ask you because you might say yes.

If you knew how lonely my life has been
And how long I’ve been so alone
And if you knew how I wanted someone to come along
And change my life the way you’ve done
Bryan Adams sings on the radio. I remember the time I had called you up in the middle of the night, waking you up from a deep slumber. I had urged you to listen to this song, right there, right then, as I waited on the other side of the phone, the receiver cradled in the cup of my palms. My every breath sounded like a silent whisper escaping your lips and echoing through the nooks of my cluttered room. For the first time in my life, that room felt like home.
I wonder if you remember that song, and that night.

You ask me if I am still in love with you. I am too scared to say yes, too honest to say no. It’s not like I have never lied to you before, just, not about love. Never about love. I turn my head to look at the stranger sleeping on my bed. He will never ask me this question, for I will never see him again. I nod, hoping you would know what my answer is. You interpret the silence in your own way, and move on to another topic. I barely pay attention. I listen to the man on my bed snore. There’s a different song playing on the radio now, one I have never heard before. I close my eyes. You are talking about your work, I think. Yes, I whisper. You ask, what? I say it again, louder this time. What? Yes, I scream at the top of my lungs. Everything goes silent, inside my head, and outside my head. The man wakes up, and looks at me while rubbing his eyes.

I am coming home, you whisper.

– D

Love in ugly metaphors

Your voice reminds me of the constant buzzing of the swarm of bees in my dida‘s backyard. Hard to ignore, hard to forget. I do not know what would I do if you ever stopped talking. I sometimes try to figure out why the metaphors used for love always have to be beautiful. Because love is not. It’s usually ugly. Love gnaws at your skin, makes you want to lock yourself in an almirah and scratch at your body until you have peeled all the skin away. On some nights, love feels like insects crawling in my veins, and I only find respite in your arms.

You will go away someday. Or I will. We will leave each other at a crossing and just walk away. I think separation is the only ending that love deserves. An ugly, heart-wrenching tug of war where two people who believed that the eternity belonged to them fight to get the remains of their hearts back. And then, one of them keeps the pieces in an urn on their bedside table, while the other splatters them in the ocean. I think the pain that follows separation is the zenith of ecstasy. That is why I love you. That is why I love.

Your love will become the reason I am brought to my extinction, one day. That is what my every breath is leading to. A friend once told me that Dilli is a city of graveyards. There are tombs everywhere. So I keep burying all my memories of us in strange places, and mark them with crosses on a map. Because one day, you will leave, and I will not know where to find you. But I will always, and always know where to find us.

– D

Yaad nahin hai?

“Yaad nahin hai kya kiya thha unn haramzadon ne
Kashmiri panditon ke saath?”
My neighbour says.
He says they have had it a long time coming.

My voice box crumbles before I can answer,
and I feel myself choking on the pieces,
with anger.

“Uncle, suniye,”
I try to say,
I try to ask him the definition of loktantra.
Democracy.

“Uncle, Wikipedia ko toh Bhagvat Gita maante honge aap?”
He doesn’t understand the sarcasm, frowns.
“Wikipedia says,
‘The Hindus of the Kashmir Valley were forced
to flee the Kashmir valley as a result of being
targeted by Islamist insurgents,’
Samjhe uncle?
Islamist insurgents.
Individuals.

Uncle,
your political science degree from Hindu College,
hangs framed in your drawing room,
you must know the difference between
the individual and the State?

Sarkar maar rahi hai unhe, Uncle.
Ten years later,
when you’ll hear your grandchildren say,
“Yaad nahin hai kya kiya thha unn haramzadon ne
Kashmir ke saath, desh ke saath?”
Will you stay silent?
Or are you already raising them to be too scared
to ask questions,
Uncle?

– D

On bleeding

The women in my family
Talk in hushed whispers behind closed doors.
The secrets are smuggled in,
The struggles go unnoticed by men.
But it’s okay,
The men are the breadwinners
The caretakers,
The moneymakers,
They are busy.
They have the right to not notice,
They have the right to forget the lessons
They learnt in highschool biology,
The right to forget
That women bleed every month.
And it hurts.

The walls have ears.
The first time my cousin bled,
My mother filled a plastic bottle with warm water
And took it to my chachi’s room.
The bottle was pressed against my cousin’s stomach
And she was asked to not scream even if it hurt too much.
She was eleven,
They took away her right to feel pain.

My mother never taught me how to protest.
She taught me about endurance,
She taught me how to hide.
I learnt to stay in the classroom
Waiting for everyone else to leave before I did,
I was scared of being seen.

I often found myself staring at my reflection
In the broken mirror in the second-floor washroom of my school.
I stared at my face scrunch up
As the pain in my stomach made me want to scream.
But I remembered,
I was supposed to hide.

The women in my family laugh together,
Cry together, hurt together.
I sometimes feel like they have locked themselves
In an invisible glass room
That they don’t know how to escape from.
The men observe from a distance,
But cannot enter.

Someday,
I will pick up a rock and smash the glass walls,
I will help them escape.
Someday, when I have the courage.
But right now,
I am trying to teach myself to scream at the top of my lungs
When I hurt,
I am trying to teach myself to not be ashamed,
Of my pain.

– D