Author: Kanika

Reading your favourite quote or poetry to them.

Feeding a morsel to them.

Sing in your voice to cheer them up.

Making trinkets/souvenir from the scratch.

A personal message on their birthdays.

Walking them to the door at the end of evening.

Leaving little notes around.

Suprising them with a hand-made dish.

Knowing how to keep a promise.

I am a carousel girl
I pass by
swiftly
quietly
cat steps.
You might not notice.
I revolve around
circling in your thoughts.
My dreams reduced
Carnival, waltz and you.
I push
exert
fall
around you
looking like someone in love
in a white shirt and a red beret.
And I chase colors,
fairytales,
hands.
I played
You played
Time moved on
My address stamped.
20th July,
carnival evening, 6:30.
Yes, I still live there
mute
cat steps
stealthy.
I pass by.
I will pass by
one day.
But till then
Must I go round and round
and yet be fixated in one memory?

©kanikachugh

There is only so much a person can do. It’s not your fault. You are just a responsible person.

Responsibility in itself sounds a heavy word that shrieks of an unannounced oath of putting others before you. But what if I say this feeling is growing unhealthily for you, in you. It has become so imperative for you to keep them protected that you have forgotten you need protection too. You need to be loved too.

Being responsible is really hard. You are sure everything is lying on your shoulders. You can’t catch a break. You can’t afford to commit mistakes but are expected to ignore other’s. You are always the one looking out for others whether those are younger or older to you. People slack around you knowing you’d handle everything. That is flattering only to a point when it’s not draining you out anymore. When you ignore these signs you put yourself under unnecessary burdens and stress. You can never fully relax. Your routines, priorities, organising things for others, piking up other’s shit can make you forget your own dreams and aspirations.

All I wanna say is take it easy. Don’t lose sleep over it. It’s gonna be okay. You are going to go through it so don’t kill yourself over it. Let others take up some of your burden. Start to share. Let them learn by their mistakes. Be there for them, just don’t spoon-feed. Otherwise there would be lot of unsaid resentment that will make you bitter and your energy around. Take help when it’s offered. Ask if there is none. Don’t be shy. Make time for your dreams. Do activities you like doing. Be responsible, trustworthy but surround yourself with people who’d have your back too. Find a balance between duties and living a life.
You are doing enough. You are enough.

It’s not the phrase but actually your voice that makes me believe everything is gonna be fine.

If you are an introvert and moreover, a bit of a reader like me, then you are always looking for the comfiest spot for your low key therapeutic sessions with yourself. By now you must have chosen and marked your territory; becoming Sheldon Cooper of your house and announcing “This is my spot” and the dangers of ignoring the red flags if ever this is occupied by anyone else. You make sure you keep the place clean and lay the softest mattress fairly won after having a tiff with your mother because for her, things like these must be kept only for guests. With fairy lights or few scented candles decorating the corner you couldn’t stop yourself from giggling while your mom rolled her eyes looking at your silly face but not uttering a word against as she knows someone is busy carving their own world, tiny as much so, but closest to the soul.

It could be a corner in your balcony absorbing the fresh sunlight or a nook far from the snuggly bed where you curl up in restless nights. You laugh, you cry, you enjoy pouring rains through the place, and before you know it becomes your tea/coffee partner. When you come and sit there you feel you’re almost with a friend, someone who calms your mind without having a word uttered.

You spend all your positive energy to fill that space with your own passion which resonates strongly as your alter self to help you read, write, think, or be lazy around the clock. With incessant encounters, that place becomes your pal. One that knows you from your mischievous acts of rummaging through the kitchen cabinets at 3 in the morning and eating the stuff before your sibling does, to the one who encountered your raw emotions mourning for either the real people or over the fictional characters. But someone in whose arms you tend to get asleep faster than intentionally trying to sleep on your comfortable bed.

You long to get to that place after the day’s hustle because its where your inner self unfurls, sheds all the masks off or the pretentious laughs, and finally be yourself. Where your heart decides if it needs a quick hibernation or a hardcore reboot, where your loud silence isn’t misjudged or poked repeatedly to use ‘I am fine’ words.

Sometimes you just sit there and nonchalantly look around. Once there were posters on these walls, medals from juvenile competitions now nicely tucked away in the glass cupboard. You look at those from that spot wondering when did you grow up so fast. Accessing deepest of the emotions you now understood, not only yours but of everyone living or sharing a life with you. How they carry their lives after they are broken as if nothing ever happened to them. How those smiles aren’t genuine but a lot more compassionate to avoid bad mood influence around. It’s where you face the truest of moments and that spot is no less than a regal palace for you.

Making breakfast in bed for your people, sending little wishes to them before their big day, choosing to watch a movie they want instead of your fav one, saying a genuine thank you exactly when it’s needed,
Donating your fav stuff, encouraging strangers in a random comment section, smiling at a kid, respecting and appreciating waiters, janitors, cleaners for their hardwork, placing water bowls for the birds in summer, sending songs in a voice note to uplift their mood, carrying the heavy things yourself while shopping with them, listening to grandparent’s stories, do chores before anyone asks, bringing water without being requested, taking care of the plants and at times even if those aren’t yours, gifting a greeting’s card with a personal message inside instead of a printed one, helping an elderly with a smile, giving your people a tight & much needed hug, motivating others, reminding them how much you love them.

If you have been doing this then it tells you are a good person. Your softness is a strength. Thanks for existing.

I’ve written about love while being heartbroken
I’ve written about loyalty when backstabbed
I’ve written about freedom while it was suffocating.
I’ve written about loss when it wasn’t personal.
This is how I see my journey as a writer.

Writers are driven by emotions.
Emotions that we experience,
Emotions that others go through.
And we write about both.

We are quick to notice
the loner, the outcast, the black sheep, the non-comformist, the shy ones.
And we instantly feel what they are going through,
how torturous it is not being able to speak up
And then we write about them.

That, my friend
is a blessing and a curse.

All this time I tried running after perfection. But I have now realised how powerful is to be average. To relate to the most, to accept the true self, to feel the same pain of sweating hard for our dreams and then gulping down the microscopic results, knowing how well we deserved.

It’s frustrating, isn’t it? When you are capable of climbing different mountains but not being able to summit any one of them, when not being able to be the jack of anywhere despite being good in so many aspects. That’s because we expect a lot from ourselves. Because we are our harshest critics since somewhere in our gut the wish to climb up never calms down.

So, I thought may be my strongest suit is in being average. But not mediocre. It suggests even though I do a fairly good job in most aspects of life but I still strive to do better than before, only to fail better than previously. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop chasing what I dream of. I acknowledge my traits are average or a little above but all my arts are product of the truest intentions from the depth of my heart.

They ask me what’s my favourite flower. I don’t know. I never knew which flower I liked the most. Perhaps, I liked all that weren’t estranged from their stems. I always thought I knew myself well but got tongue-tied whenever asked about it.

Even in groups I notice, people always have something to say with perfect words and well-rounded achievements and none of them zone out of boredom. They have so much to share. Weddings, property, affairs, careers, gossips all these topics come easy to them while I have nothing to contribute. Then, I’m usually cornered or pushed or pointed at as a weirdo with an uncompromising pressure to be one of their kind. The times I cave in, I usually become the bearer of the most boring, lowbrow answers. And I get too embarrassed to speak afterwards.

I see an entire universe in my mind but possess a tiny speck of dictionary to explain it. Was I wrong in knowing myself? 1 out of 1000 times is a possibility for me to say something smart in those group which I’d probably rejoice it for years. Rest 999 times I just sit there.

But it’s such a hollow pain trying to be a part of something you don’t feel you belong to. Neither I’m so horribly limited in my thoughts to enjoy a satisfying conversation. I might be clueless to talk about the elite subjects but definitely not callous towards the one who doesn’t fit in as well.

If I meet someone diving off in the same trajectory of mind as mine i would have endless things to talk about. Souvenirs, trinkets, magic, eclipses, multiverses, rains, clouds, museums, anger, outbursts, bus ride, warm tea, beaches, mountains, sunsets, death. All these little things bringing happy air in the lungs.

If I’d see someone struggling, shrinking into their bones, missing their safe-zone I’d never push them into the pit of proving themselves to the world. I would rather make feel comfortable and would want them to be themselves with me. Because that shit is rare.

When I see myself in a mirror
I see a series of pleas
patched-up together
to escape in a world of
no dimensions; no trials.
The beauty had been there.
Now, it’s a shrine of ashes.

Hundreds of stories I wrote
while growing up
in my imaginary world,
those come back and haunt
through my reflection.
Freedom has a price.
It takes away the voice.

White satin curtain
unveils a window.
Tripping it over with
a drunken stride
might break a heavy body
but rekindles the heart.
But does running away fixes you?
Do you feel ashamed when
you face yourself in the mirror?
Does your version of story ends here?
Do you believe the liberty is outside
somewhere and not in yourself?
Is your lump in throat heavier
than iron feet?

O’ the terrible fear of not having
answers to the questions.
I pack my heart
then unpack.
I reach, I love, I break.
The mirror admonishes me
to bring the old hurt
and nurse it back with
confusions that grew.
‘Love like you do.
Cry like everyone does.’
It repeats until
my tears stop
and saves the soul
till the next episode.

©kanikachugh