Utopia

I kept writing with the well-rehearsed hand Knowing how much space to leave. But when I lifted my hand  To remove strands of hair from my face I knew not where to put my pen Like when you join a school  In the middle of the year. I learnt to use my left hand to fix my hair And escape the discomfort Of feeling lost.  Emotions began flowing out, I began pouring them carelessly. Not realising that there was a width That was stagnant  And I had reached the edge. It took the darkness to open my eyes To the limits of the page. And then I wrote and I wrote  In the middle of the pages Racing with my thoughts. In the dark.

It’s like being in a swimming pool When you don’t know how to swim You realise the breathing first Evidently heavy and difficult. The concentration shifts From the tears in your eyes To the cravings of your lungs And you sniff your nose  To the familiar smell Of choking on your tears. The emotions have broken apart Revealing the raw physical being An animal being preyed upon. A face hard to recognise In its least convoluted state With eyes open in disbelief  And streams flowing down From the eyes and the nose In an effortless pace. The socially conscious, problem-solving Attention seeking human breaks open To this rudimentary stage of evolution Where reasons are not sought Instead, all that is wanted for peace Is to be able to fall asleep.

The quick brown fox  Jumps over the lazy dog. The ‘the’ brings ’t’ & ‘h’  To the rare occasion  Of an alphabet family photograph Where the fox and the dog hold them all As close as grammar would allow. ‘The’ fox and ‘the’ dog? In a world where the computer Became the iPod And ‘okay’ became…k How can we afford A 3 letter article, the ‘the’ When one of them could easily Be replaced with an ‘a’? So I decided to give it a try. A quick brown fox Jumps over the lazy dog. A quick brown fox? Yes a fox doesn’t stay And it’s quick at that It’s sly not pretty And we use brown for that So, yes a quick brown fox Seems quite alright. Until you hear what it does. It jumps over a dog Isn’t that quite a feat? No, it can’t just be any fox This one is a significant fox It is the subject of the matter The fox that jumps over a dog Just to get the alphabets together. I mean how often do you hear that? So I thought it

Mere sapno ki rani kab aayegi tu The dulha’s chacha picks up the tune Upon the cheering of the aunties around And the relatives tossing Shagun money Which the drummers look at greedily In their shiny bling costumes  Carrying oversized instruments Playing to the beats of the song Celebrating a grand auspicious day Of a groom, whose name they don’t know. The groom sits on his abode Away from the baaratis celebrating his big day The words of the song  hit him the hardest As he thinks about his sapno ki rani Who got married to another Glad that the baaratis are too busy To see the tear in his eye Because boys in his society Especially on the verge of becoming men Are not supposed to cry. His ceremonial clothes fail to catch the attention Of the young boy in the car, playing on his phone Undistracted by all that goes around While his mother wears a frown After a dull day at work Bu