Author: Kanika

To the one who’s afraid of taking risks/ or changes happening around. I know you must have felt overwhelming by all those people who seem to have understood life like the back of their hand and you are still figuring out what music you want to listen to right now — Finding undefined comfort in your non-escapism.
You want to try new songs but end up listening to the same one because of the familiarity it provides. I know we get so attached to our safe places, our refuge that changing even the sleeping-bed troubles us. At the same time you admire people who are always willing to take risks, the boldness to accept or rather bring the change.
What if I told you, you already are on the brink of glass full of risks all the time. The first time you walked you risked yourself getting hurt. The first time you held a cutter/knife you risked yourself getting a cut. When you went outside you risked yourself getting into an accident. See, you always had it in you, an indescribable courage of overcoming the fear. You got so accustomed of the previous activities that you didn’t realise the soreness of the thoughts you used to had before. Because now it isn’t new. It’s familiar even though risky. You are much more than you think. Take one step further each time and see how wonderfully you’ll be surprising yourself.

September arrived like
two patrolling cars to comfirm
if I am still a criminal.
And my salty eyes gave away.
Yes, I am fugitive who still runs away from the feeling of lonesome,
from the unacceptability that it’s belongingness has been uprooted.
Like a twig whose Tree has been lost
like a tongue who lost its taste buds,
like a guitar whose strings stopped producing melodies
like an invisible faded light of a tea-candle
in a sky full of trembling fireworks.

September inspects the universe I created
of self-fulfillment, of gratification
and catching me red-handed with
a black hole of anxiety that kept forming
in a middle of my saviour cosmos
gradually engulfing my nerves to glory
bringing me back to a virtual reality
like someone who lost his lover to amnesia.
The one that existed and didn’t
at the same time.

Does getting older makes you
more honest
or better at hiding?

• 

I am that little explorer who loves exploring everything. Like the corners of the house abandoned for years, like the vases left untouched forming a dust-shadow at the bottom just to see if there is anything new I’d found in it which once held beautiful flowers, like examining the old toys or board games to astonish myself and how could one come up with this idea. I want to explore the childhood of my grandparents to know were they born  wise & old unlike me who somewhat begrudgingly, blame the self for failing to accept the societal norms.
When on a trip, I like exploring those thick woods or scarcely lit paths which are strictly forbidden but everyone wants to sit at one place because they are tired. For me, I get tired of monotony, tonelessness and fear of not exploring anything new. What do I say, danger allures me like a bait to a fish. Ready to die but not ready to extinguish my thirst to know more, to know why has it kept at bay. I keep staring at birds, sometimes from afar, if only I could understand them my world would have been different or perhaps it still can be if they would accept me as their own because I’m a nomad too with invisible wings who can’t settle at one place, who wants to travel far and new places everyday the moment the dawn breaks on you. I keep mixing some odd colors with a locked hope of creating a brand new one – the shades, the hues that are already invented are now settled in their life so there’s got to be more. The tinge and the undertones that wants to be found, to be understood.

You see all these stuff makes me stand out. Sometimes a loner, sometimes an ignorant, sometimes a rebellion, sometimes a weirdo but I call it knowing the roots of life. So when a storm hits, those trees can re-grew itself because they know their roots.

Have you ever met someone who was murdered in cold blood, veins popped out, death clock dancing on their head yet revived without any prayers? You meet it everyday. Your ever so beating, ever so throbbing, blazing heart.

A simple token of appreciation might not compensate the numbness, the sufferings, the cold nights it went through over the years. The chaos of silent thoughts, the endless worries in slumber-less nights have a peculiar way to putting the heart at the precipice of life where it shrinks in fear, gets paranoid over sedated emotions, stifling the insomniac doubts that it feels like bursting out and jumping off the cliff of voidness yet you find it beating hard the very next morning.

A facade to fool that you are intact with brokenness as a distant relative.

The world is a strange place. It poisons us with lies rubbing against our own lips, tricking us into the shenanigans of always(s) and forever(s) and when we start to believe this butter-coated little prisons we realise we are already trapped in now. And what cripples us, is the condition that we could fly away from all this only if our wings weren’t clipped.

Those wings are present, always there with us. But we are tormented to believe that our wings were ravaged while fighting the war and had been snatched away from us.

In those conflicts, standing at the crossroads our hearts has some humongous bravery in choosing a path called ‘moving on’ and closing the gates (a straight doorway of relapsing) of ‘closer’ whether we got it or not.

The heartbreaks, the first time you left your childhood home, moving to a school where you are lot less loved or paid attention to, witnessing the first death in the family, the first time realising you aren’t born gifted and your parents silently adore other children, betrayals from friends, family or lovers, someone else’s anger when directed to you, toxic and demotivating people around, abandonment issues, acceptability issues and a lot lot more this heart goes through.

The pain you needed to grow,
The pain you never needed to stay traumatized for years to come- the heart takes all.

It heals. It keeps on healing and sometimes they’re wounds or pain it never recovers from yet it finds a way of dealing with it everyday. Through daily chores, through menial work, through day-to-day businesses, in consistent patterns, until it finally finds a day where it rests. Gives itself a break, a vacay until the next cycle of uncertainties begins.

So, these words are dedicated to a healing heart for being so strong and brave. Pat yourself for being courageous and valiant sustaining all that you are going through. 

Let’s just say, I’m proud of the way you’re holding up lately.

Maturity is making peace with the fact that even your closest friends depart from your life. And it sucks no less than any breakup.

I see you
sipping coffee
adjusting to the world
pockets perfectly covering the pain
as if lyrics of an old song aren’t commited to memory.

It takes me every ounce of my strength to gulp down the discomfort and write what I had been hiding under the blanket of gutless defeats.

There had been plenty of eclipses I have been covering under the silhouette of my smile when I found being over-shadowed by my brimming fear for not raising a voice against a bully.

I hung myself like a canvas on a ruined easel and let them sketch rough, furrowed lines, painting me a filthy face. A clear reflection of theirs and I spent years accepting bullets from my mad thoughts who never stopped watching  me, like pain was what I was supposed to feel at all times.

Jealousy was like getting entangled in a string leading to a massive knot in an un-preserved, unhealthy bonds when I thought I was weaving honeyed chits and sweet letters for my friends. Their enviousness over my skin color was far more dominant than my attempts of chasing cotton clouds with them.

I, a sad coward who couldn’t cut ties for the fear of being lonely and re-living the memories of self-made prisons; from where I watched those friends painting happy towns with others yet I waited for their feet to march back to me as a last resort. The apologies that I never gave to my ignored self snowballed over time taking away my own warmth.

My fading self that was angry, sad whose simple desires were mocked, summer dreams crushed in validation,
still challenges me with the same mouth and silently judges me for my wimpiness.

Sometimes, when I am well adjusting to this world, kissing away the fine wine, running on the shores with a blended sunshine with brave, proud feet- it takes a moment to throw me back to those years when those feet tip-toed flinchingly at the thought of being abandoned.
And it says
I see you

I am not sure how many of you have came across this but I am sure there will be subsequent number of daughters who would have heard at least once in their life “How can we take daughter’s money” from their parents. My only question is why do they feel uncomfortable in taking their own daughter’s money?

So, I have been brought up in a pretty gender-neutralized family where you divide the chores, where you must be equipped or aware of all the household work so you can sustain on your own if ever you get to move out of home city. My reason for asking this particular question isn’t that my income isn’t taken seriously, or I am not regarded as mature individual whom they can depend on or who is regarded as some ‘paraya dhan’ who gotta save up for some matrimonial alliance – nope, none at all. I am not look down upon my job or stopped while making any decisions related to my financials either but…. There is a big but here because if these are not the reasons then what are? Why it is only son’s responsibility to provide for the living at their vulnerable age? It’s not 19th or 20th century anymore. I so want parents to not feel burdened over taking or spending their daughter’s money.

I know how parents are, if they wished they would keep sustaining themselves for as long as possible, keeping their head high but after a certain age I believe they should just relax and have a gaga time, the time they thoroughly expended on their children but they don’t. They don’t relax at all. And taking money from their daughter when no other option left isn’t same either. It remotely feels like asking for help from an acquaintance as a last resort, when it shouldn’t be ‘asking for help’ and more of a right. I believe this should be normalized too like so many other things going on. Whether we get married or not our parents must feel it’s their right spending our money like we did while were growing up. If we needed something we always turned to them.

So, parents could you please stop shying around in spending ours, you own daughter’s, money. We want to spoil you the same way you did. We acquired good education because of you. We are making good money, thanks to you but stop fussing around the right-hand side column of the menu. Don’t feel pressurized thinking you don’t want to buy this outfit because it’s too expensive, because ‘my daughter works too hard for it and I can’t just waste her money’ – No, please stop. We love to buy things for you, love to buy presents for you and not just as formality; we love to spend for household expenses too. That gives another sense of equality to us. We are capable enough of sharing responsibilities and mature enough to understand how it shouldn’t be only son’s duty.

Dear Parents,
Hope you understand.

And no mom, I wasn’t arguing again 🙁 😛

Finally I hear the compositions
rain produce with the ground.
Both, vivid and vague is the
backdrop sound that
floats freely into my ears
then to heart;
ever so serene
ever so dramatic.
And I puff up being unable
to stop swaying along the melody.

Somewhere far far away
a tree was uprooted,
a landmass moved down,
a boulder stormed up,
witnessing the winds
being gutsy;
meeting with the ground too.
Crushing anything and everything in its way.
The rains conquer the mundane roads
devouring all like a parched soul.

We click pictures of blossoming skies,
they are clicked for their lands when filled with floods.

So much so for two sides of a story.