The Burning Sensations at 8.00 PM

It starts slowly. The spine gets all stiff and cramped, pain slowly jumping from each, single body hair to the next. My legs start shaking, unable or in denial to carry the weight of the lively corpse that I’ve become. I lose sense of touch. Still, I try to walk, but all is in vain. The agony continues it’s journey upwards, reaching the gut, I get sicker. I lose sense of taste. Then comes the weakest spot, heart, oh it’s a incomprehensible mess. It’s been beating somehow, I don’t even know why or how but it has been quite a long time since I lost the sense of love. Then come the larynx and pharynx, I have been gulping a lot, and am always thirsty these past few years. As if all this torment is not enough, my eyes start to burn as soon as I wake up in the morning. The sunshine feels like a curse and the daily routines have become an existential epitome of monotones. This burning sensation lasts throughout the day, as it has been lingering for all these years. The cure of my maladies is, You.

. . . .

Another Year, The Same Feelings

Another year has gone by, while I’m still trudging slowly, faintly yet miraculously still walking.

Another year is here, and I am supposedly going to be there, in time. As I continue my journey, the same old thought has latched on me quite heavily. It keeps on circling my mind, body and soul.

Am I still the same good old jolly fellow, who in the beginning had his grit and glory tied to the lullabies of melancholy. Am I still going to make the rest of the journey.

I won’t say that not much time has elapsed, because it has been an overwhelming 30 years. I suppose I am just about to realise, how old I have really gotten!

– Ankit Singh

US

​US                                                             I am restless most of the times and in the moment that I think of you at times I grow more restless, a few other instances that I recall are not that troublesome. There also are times when we are in close vicinity, soaking the other in, inch by inch ,through eyes and through this mortal skin. I remember myself asking you several times, “why & how do you love me so much?” I now realise the futility of this question because it’s like asking the river why it flows when it does, I amongst the many revelations yet to come; now only know this you love me plain and simple for who I am. This fact will remain unchanged till our very last breaths, you will simply flow like the gentle river quenching my doubtful relentless thirsts, showing me my true reflections in shrewd hours and soothing my worried creases of forehead with a splash.
 I am assured of this too, that your love like many others will never run out of it’s purity, devotion and courage. For the times that I myself put you through shear flames of agony, ended up getting burnt myself through your tears which had turned to vapors. I have had enough scars from time to time and might have (though the very thought of it is killing) have given you a few mild ones, remaining aloof told the fact that I am your only drug as you are mine! My dear beloved, if only, now you must know that why my efforts had been in vain, the answer would just be me. I have been weak, I have been treacherous and I have questioned your Godly affection till now, and there can be no penance for this hideous deed, that I know very well. So, today I need not any witnesses or grandeur of thoughts in telling you that I will change, for this whole act of love cannot proceed like it has been until now. 
If you are the river then I will have to soar above high like the mighty yet humble clouds which are able to harness the river, which gets vaporised by the sun’s scorching heat. Like you have wet my dry wounded lips, I will hold you up close in my arms in your grave hours singing you songs of glory. I will contain you for so long until you wish to remain in my arms, sleeping and will loosen my hold ultimately releasing you to soothe others like me, yet knowing that I will hold you again. I will always be the one to remain the honoured recipient of your devout unconditional love; and when I will be able to return so in the minutest amount possible then my dear one we will unite never to be separated again. 

Faces and Happenings

​It’s all about faces, I realised a few minutes back while returning from the city. This has been happening with me since past few months the longer I tried to stare at a particular face, from the crowd the more lost I ended up feeling. No matter the gender, age , caste, creed or color I used to look into the crowd for something, someone if not totally, then close to familiar. Those classmates I used to sit with, the best friend who is still in touch; we talk to each other, though not very often but we know what’s going inside our minds when we do. That first love that was dear & lost, another which is waiting anxiously for the coming December frost!
After the faces come the events , tiny small fragments of happenings that propel us back in time which sometimes feels like paranoia. That first hurt(the faint memory of it), mother’s pats and kisses, father’s own childhood reminisces and the marks left on our knees & elbows by earth’s surface. The first walk towards the school with the schoolbag on the back and a tiny water bottle dangling in the front, that first touch which melted us both like pure wax. The faint voices heard in sleep which remind me of my maternal grandfather, and the very young deceased maternal uncle famous for his roaring laughter.
These faces and happenings are at times troublesome but more than that I wonder why do they keep coming back, what do they want to tell me, what have I missed  what is the point of it all. The questions keep piling up and at times I realise I’m sitting and scratching my head, infact this happens mostly. I don’t know what answers lie ahead, I am not worrying about the consequences instead, I am trying solely to focus on these faces and happenings. I will keep doing that, I will wonder and try to fight then surrender, and then gear up again. Hope I soon find out how much I missed and how much has remained! 
#faces #happenings

Pain and Pleasure

​Hideously hibernated pain has come up again, from deep within the marrow.. 

It’s crushing and gnawing and makes the body grunge, somewhat like the tunes of a singing sparrow! 

Is it remotely plausible that I’ve been living with it, some small episodes every now and then made me feel accustomed ; but all of a sudden it came rushing like a volcanic eruption after years of dormancy which has made me dubiously defiant of the truth?

Now what exactly is the best reason to believe that it’s the pain that causes trouble, why only pain has to be blamed, why pain is not panache?

It’s the attribute of pain to bring out the best in us right, yeah so I’ve heard and maybe caught a glitch of the same gorgeously for a while; but then has it yet sufficed!

Where’s the answer, what were the questions, pain makes us aware of them, it makes us follow what we should have way before, but lacked the balls.
Yet pain is said to be bad, pain and gain and yes they will be in rants to tell you all about at without having the slightest idea themselves.

I do not know much as well, but I know this, we came here to decipher pain not pleasure; so make it your most valuable treasure. 

Beyond

​Beyond
You know what I have loved you since I drunk dialled your number the very first time; and proclaimed my undying love towards you. Since then I have been quirky, smirky, cynical but most importantly I have been feeling happiness in a very different way. I have cursed the distances and circumstances equally but now as I come to think of it this all is being unravelled as a part of nature’s mysterious ways(honestly, I’m not sure of it either, but I’d like to). I don’t know even why am I writing this to you, the usual answer should be out of love, but no I want to discover something beyond love, something beyond words, something beyond poems & beautiful phrases. It’s like I’m traveling back in time for those instances when I missed out on your innocence, your inception of me & mine of you. And I feel I’m not alone, we are both doing it in our own ways, and yet again, I haven’t figured why we are doing this!! But I want to tell you this, beyond love and beyond doubts, beyond fears and my irrelevant angers I will love you like I do now, like I did then. So that In the end if one of us despite of our promises of leaving this earth together, goes away first, then my dear beloved I know that you will end up in my heart and I want to be in your soul, embedded, forever. They say forevers don’t always stay, so I’ll try and make sure this time they do for Us !                                                     

As soon as I finished the first paragraph I had another realisation, you know this all too well, right! That makes me think now what do I even want to convey? Is it the obviousness of my long lingering unwillingness towards the obvious priorities, or the fact that knowing if I were in your shoes I would be thinking differently, a little bit too honestly? Though our shoes are not going to be replaced sooner or later, I have my own demons to fight, and you have your own monster sucking away life out of you slowly. Maybe I want to rescue you out of the darkness I can see encapsulating you gradually, I want to be the knight in the shining armour. I’ll be fighting on two fronts parallely, so before being a knight I need to be a Hero the one I need the most, , the one we need the most. In the process of confronting the darkness I’ll get to know what light is , though what I must have is the hope that this will happen. To reach beyond & further from a mark I first need to reach that point, and from there onwards keeping the aim in mind take the leap of faith. We know all of this is achievable, I just need to keep rekindling the hope for the same. It will take time for sure, as per your mother’s words “before anything good is about to happen, all hell breaks loose.”

Earlier & Soon..

​Earlier it was Monsoons, now it’s August, soon it will be another December..
48 hours since it has been raining, sometimes the waters gushing heavily from heavens above.. And other times it is mild like my lucid afternoon dreams, of you.. 
We keep asking each other how much do we, of each other remember.. 
You spend your 5 am wide awake till you are numb thinking of me.. And I go to sleep often with your whisper tugged underneath my pillow..
We keep asking ourselves how much do we, of each other remember.. 
Earlier it was Monsoons, now it’s August, soon it will be another December..
#sleeplessness #insomnia #wideawake

7 years

7 years , tangible fears. 

Petty laughs, pitiful sobs.

Burning nights, hearts on fire .

Hope in eyes mind full of desires.

A distant land seems a bit familiar.

A city left behind awaits return of someone similar.

7 years, such wonderful years. 

She’s a shadow always has been & always will be flawless in her own skin subtle in her speech. It’s like you are listening to a higher power, some divine grace yet there’s no compulsion but compassion. Your/My heart is crushed & the back feels as if hit by a bullet when she is unable to tell why she’s the way she is; or maybe she knows that our/my immature selves are not ready for the truth or she’s just saving us the trouble! It’s been a long & somewhat lonely journey for her till now, the ghat steps’ are a testimony to her visits, the Ganges writhed upon her touch but slowly started to soothe her angst& vice-versa!
The temples outside which we prayed I knew she folded her hands to the holy stone in front but with the corner of her eyes and fluttering eye-lashes she was worshipping me! That moment I was all, scared , amazed & amused that a creature as bold and strong as her was trying to resonate with my inner voice!                                             Then it dawned upon me how dare I could doubt her pious act , even though with a chronic history of defiance with myself this Goddess wasn’t made for my humane bullshit! And maybe that’s what keeps troubling me every now & then, but then it also keeps me parallel to reality ,this realisation that no matter how godly she is maybe all she needs is a human touch, the brushing of skin & my normal poetries that mean the world to her.
My every attempt to shake off this realisation gets ugly each time, as I wake up in the middle of the night thinking what the hell am I upto? For if the universe has made our paths cross there’s got be a store of goods hidden in it, the words, the laughs , the late night sensuous thoughts are always going to be there.The point is if she’s lending a hand then I gotta catch hold of it, ’cause even my insides know distances can be troubling and I’m not alone in this suffering if that’s what it is; I need to understand if I’m an untamed horse running wildly, neighing & shrieking out she’s the winds that will always be there to comfort.

It therefore, is my rightful part to slap that stubborn child that suspects, or accuses her or even both of us & tell him to go back to sleep. Right now I’m a confused man angry, burning & deceptive but what if the little girl in her is waiting for a kind hearted person to give her two red balloons clinging on the threads of which and to the unknown man’s finger she will ecstatically move along in the direction of her dreams, our dreams!
She’s the silhouette of my journey omnipresent behind or beside me, so how dare can I leave her. She’s meant to be loved not judged, cared not cursed, comforted not coaxed; for if the Goddess in her dies so will the man in me!
#GirlintheMirror #Shadow #Goddess #Humane

The Girl in the Mirror

It’s not about being loved but being able to return the same love with equal zest & fervor. The Joker realised this sometime after he met the Girl in the mirror! All his life and legacy of suffered existence seemed pity suddenly, not because he was in immense love with her but it was the love that she had been wanting to shower on Him! He was his biggest enemy and hers too for not letting her do the magic the reason being all his life he pretend to be the amuser rather than being amused; no wonder why his life had been a big, ugly joke! She stood there right by the door not minding the distance made her mind to stay for him in whatever form; but the stubborn fool wanted to play, play with words ’cause that’s what he was good at(well at least he thought so)!

When it came to standing up for his own self ah the fool just got cold feet, it was all his fault though! Growing up he wanted to be an actor, a comedian, or just star in a movie yeah he didn’t wish much; maybe no one told him maybe they did! He went on with his funny dramatics satisfying his lost dream and pursuing life as it came, and just one day he found lying himself in pool of extreme cowardice, remorse& self-loathing. It had been lurching over his hauntingly amusing all this while and now the pile of it was killing the man in him, or whatever was left to be called close to a human even. He needed courage but no one could give him that right except for his own self or the poor girl ripened by time into a woman.

So one night he distanced himself from her asking for sometime to figure out new tricks to juggle out of this commotion he was in! She knew this was coming and said, “whatever you wish I’ll always be there with you”. Even he knew that but what the balding joker didn’t have a clue about was his next dramatic move, so he waited for a while scratching his head, observing people, their ways, their lives. That made him more perplexed not more than previously but it did, cause his answers hid in him rather outside. Incarcerated in this world full of sensible lunatics he wasn’t ready to intermingle with the bunch better a lunatic than being aware of a sense of purpose!

The Joker had realized this for quite sometime he had this in him all the time, he wanted to be a nobody like no one else but only his eccentric animal-self ,wild& free weeping not on fate but the tragedy that had wrapped the world! He wanted to be a Nomad enjoying nature, drinking from a river, being all soaked up in rain, without making promises or keeping one. He wanted to sleep on clouds, travel on bulls, drink the rain and sleep with stars. She was the door to that other world but had locked herself tight and threw the key away, though wishing like hell that the Clown finds it. The Joker as sad his eyes were was well aware of that too, instead he insisted on breaking the door than to put up with the hard work of finding the lost key!
                                        And that’s what she never worried about being broken all over again ’cause she was able, strong enough to take it. What she didn’t want was for him to give up his search for ecstasy, waiting by the window of memories till he wandered lost in the jungle of concrete surrounding civilised animals! She had made her mind to be his rains, clouds, river & stars , the Girl in the mirror just wanted the Joker to stop giving himself those sweet little pretty scars!