Utopia

Once you decide to leave a city You imagine all the final goodbyes And what they’ll feel like Much much before your last day arrives. You make a mental list or a tangible one Of all the places to revisit And the people to meet So many memories to celebrate And moments to regreet. You smile in the distance imagining What those people may say And what you may say in return Almost looking forward to The teary smiles and warm hugs And you wonder whether Those who have wronged you Will come clean and apologise You wipe away a tear when you realise How everyone will wish There was still some more time. But there isn’t. And you struggle to find space For every promised catchup And the new ones who casually said “We must meet before you leave” Some evenings you want to pause Skip dinner and get early to bed But the days are already too brief And you can’t afford any regrets. As the final week draws close You notice the other lasts The last time you cross  The city’s bustling market Or find a s

I always kissed him  On the forehead Before going away To school, to college, to Mumbai. Always kissed him goodbye Except now When I was home And he lay in the vault downstairs With a cannula in his leg And a drip hanging above Death Is ugly. He wouldn’t let  Any outsider touch him But today someone Shaved his leg To find a vein For the needle Someone who was assured That he wouldn’t bite He can hardly move I wished for a moment That he would fight Like he used to With dignity But death Strips it all apart. When I watched him  Gasping for breath It wasn’t with the hope That he doesn’t give up But with the desire To see his breathing get normal Again. Normal Is what we call a situation That is regular yet so perfect That it can easily Be taken for granted Until it ceases  To exist. We knew death was looming Although nobody spoke of it I knew we all wanted What was best for him With the hope

Young Sheela Comes from a household Where her father left To be with another woman Leaving Sheela and her mother To face the neighbours Who call them names That have no English translation. So Sheela Goes looking for love In a society that shuns it In the name of Immorality. But Sheela Hears the promise of being loved From a boy who is loved As a fruit of Patriarchy. And the boy instead Is looking for sex In a girl so naive She knows not what it means. So Sheela Does what she must For this boy to stay But tells no one at all For the sake of Morality.

I wanted to be a candle Bright with a flame Lighting up the face Of the movement. I wanted to be a candle Ablaze inbetween fingers Of a fiery envoy Of justice. I wanted to be a candle Alight all its life The harbinger of light In dark times. I wanted to be a candle I had felt the fire inside But when I looked into a mirror I saw a Matchbox instead. My small colourful self Carries not one but several flames Matchsticks for each occasion For every injustice in the way. My fire is contagious It is the spark before the flame I am meant to light the candles I was born to inspire the change.

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