Sitting in the backyard,

Swaying in the swing,

The bird of paradise bloom,

Right in front of me.

Ma, I recollect planting it,

Just you and me,

The sun and your face lit,

Grass had grown jet Green.

How I wish I captured moments,

In polaroids on the fridge.

Or heard you a little longer,

When you poured words while you spoke.

How I wish I told you,

About the three heartbreaks

And sunk in your arms, just a lil deeper,

And spoke about friends and nerves,

While you still could walk.

As the sun sets and flower withers,

Your ailing voice complaining plays back.

How I wish I sat,

When you complained about the violence,

And your feelings being hurt,

But all that surrounded us was silence,

And conversations of void and dirt.

Now that I think, we both hated it,

Living under the devil's eyelashes,

But he lingered over you longer.

How I wish I told you,

About my best friends,

And my march at the pride,

Or advised you on latest fashion trends,

And giggled at your pictures as a young bride.

How I wish we spoke more,

More of life and your wisdom

And your wisdom teeth, your favourite Assami saree

Or delicacies I cooked once a while.

Ma, I paint paintings that scream your name,

Your name etched by brushes,

They don't want to forget you,

Neither do I.

The birds go back to their nest,

I wish you came home too,

Back from your hospital bed,

Where we left you.

The bird of paradise shrink and fall,

Happily and gracefully onto the ground,

Phone rings in the empty hall room,

It's from the hospital, I wonder what it's about.

I hear the cheer outside. A thousand expectant voices join the low hum that stirs in my belly. In that moment I know that the show must go on.

My mind flashes to the time when I would stare from the comfort of my shaded awning window with furtive glances at the several ants scurrying below. The want in their eyes, the weary faces, the look of utter desolation, and I think, that could never be me. And yet, I see the very same sullen, pothole eyes stare back at me, mirroring everything I do.

I step out onto the stage like I have done countless times before. The harsh lights blind me, but the pain is it is oddly comforting. After all, it is all a part of my monotonous existence. Look at this now, I’m all set. The show has begun and my mask is on. I get acclimated to the heat flaring in my face, he discordant twinge of anxiety, my insides reeling, the sweat dripping off my brows, stinging my eyes. And the hate. The hate burning away everything from the inside, bringing with it waves of welcome pain. The blaring voice in my head telling me to give up. Run, it urges. But the show must go on. And so my smile is firmly plastered on, as bright as ever.

I pirouette and prance and bow ever so slightly to the carefully constructed, mellifluous tune, all oh so well rehearsed. Like a well oiled machine, my mind turns its own gears, absently flitting to the past. All the doctor visits, the pharmaceutical wonders at work, the betrayal and acrimony, the place I call home that houses a thousand monsters; my catatonic mind is a disheveled array of broken, vitriolic thoughts.

If I had known then as a complacent, starry-eyed dreamer yearning for beatitude, that I would turn out to be a wretched wreck, what would I have done? This isn't the life I would have chosen to build. And yet, like clockwork I build my world of pretense, cocooning the pain and tears in a squalid blanket of lies. One minute, everything is falling into place. The next it is falling to pieces, and as hard as I try to hold it together, the decay is too persistent. It happens so fast, yet so agonisingly slow. Everything is decayed now. But the show goes on merrily, and finally I bow, wowing the audience with the grandiose while they are blissfully unaware of the rot and mayhem behind.

Now, I wait for the bus as I stare at the puddle at my feet. To find a murky reflection, to find myself and stubbornly try to recognise a familiar fragment. I find a newer piece of shrapnel, making it harder to remember the older reflection. Still, it seems every newer version of myself I find, she’s so far removed from the girl I knew. And there’s no strength left to change her. All I can do is remind her that just like today, on the morrow the show must go on.

This is a hello and a goodbye. Sometimes the start looks a lot like the end. It’s about how these are different memories but have the same essence. But I think it’s the specificity of love that makes it generalizable. Love is similar, even in its differences.

It happened speedily in the start and slowed to a drawl in the end.

Witty quips, shy smiles.

The stage,the time when two people just get to know each other.

When love is still surprising.

Ribbons around pinkies over expensive cocktails. A red car and pillion riding on a death machine.

Two truths, all lies.

One doesn’t always know the way when it comes to love, doesn’t know the intricacies.

3 AM on a communal Chesterfield, mathematics and a steady friendship, lost clarity and vanquished comfort.

Heavy trespassing, love drunk on a pale ale.

19th birthdays and a handsome prince.

Wasted fidelity, shoes off, my feet on your lap in the backseat

Uncertainty of the ever afters

Maybe it’s just the thrill of the chase?

But then, there’s love

The thing that seems so common, like the mornings, visible everywhere, yet incomplete.

Lost glint, unsaid words, incomplete goodbyes and broken hearts.

You love me, I love you hurt me. It hurts.

I stumble around for scathing words that’ll make you disappear.

Go away, stay away.

Come over, stay?

My head hung low, I admit defeat, since you were there in the time of need.

Maybe that’s why we hurt, two people wanting the same things but in different ways.

The pain of two jigsaw pieces trying to fit together, but unable to complete each other

Maybe we were incompatible right from the start?

Maybe we just construe love as a remedy to loneliness

While it’s nothing but a drug we love to overdose on.

Smiling lips, and a heart full of glitch.

Alluring brown flesh, with scars of all the twitch.

She was another call girl, the insanity in me did call,

But touching her bare flesh, my moral didn’t allow.

“Don’t you feel ashamed, what you’re doing to earn.“

"What compelled you in life, to take this nasty turn ?“

Perhaps I sounded childish, with all the heart she laughed.

"Money isn’t the thing, Sir, for which we do such task.”

“This world has only ladies, and gentlemen. For a Prostitute like me, there’s nothing sane.”

“When you know that well, why did you choose this,

You could have a class, and life full of bliss.”

“I didn’t choose it but the world gave this treat,

Right when I was twelve, I was forced in this shit.”

“With a girl so young, lacking any sense,

The first experience was horrifying and insane.”

“I screamed in pain and cried in tear,

But never had courage to protest out of fear.”

“Kicked and slapped, and by hair I was dragged.

To show some mercy, whenever I begged."

"Never did they see, tears in my eyes.

Only they focused, on the assets I had prized."

“They made me cry, and moan and groan.

After they finished, naked I was thrown."

"In open they criticise, alone they rape.

It was my life, like rewinding tiny tape."

"The last I remember, was that garbage dump.

From where I was picked, the day I was born."

"Nourished, and loved and fed till I grow,

Then in that hell, they shaped me to throw."

"Oh, why I’m telling you, you are just another of those fellow.

Now since you are lost, It’s my time to go.”

“No, I’m not like that", inner me shouted in defence,

Meanwhile my brain flooded, sympathy over adrenaline.

How can this world, be so cruel, so unkind.

It’s a shame on our Humanity’s shine.

My heart was screaming, with all senses on mute.

I guess I was in love, with the girl inside that prostitute.

Confined due to the imposed quarantine,

I am doing fine just as I’ve ever been.

With occasional surges of fear

Even while I am with ones near and dear,

Of losing them or my own life

Reminiscing our days of joys and strife.

But my heart is full of compassion and sympathy

For those excruciating in apathy.

Boredom, anxiety, and COVID-19 kill some

While victims of domestic violence suffer in mum.The doctors and nurses are at risk

And the governments are concerned with the economy falling brisk.

The world is in turmoil- and a virus is what we blame.

But wasn’t the world just the same?

Poverty, terrorism, riots, and wars ebbing

Leave kith and kin of millions throbbing.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, bushfires, volcanoes, tornadoes

Ravaging like nobody knows.

Inevitable in this world is death,

And it shall not cease despite all the fret.

This is the abode of melancholia

Well-equipped with vicious paraphernalia.

Respite is euphemised as happiness

But the bridge over troubled waters lies in transcendence

The thick, malicious clouds hover over the skyscrapers, hiding away the last ray of sunlight's hope, turns the azure sky to grey-black. All the mothers skillfully enticed their children back into their homes. The poor children hesitantly dragged their agile feet back home, wishing it wouldn't rain.

The light of the street lamps that flickered from side to side had now slowly extinguished. The streets were completely deserted and pitch black, darker and eerier than the evil deeds of men. All that could be heard is the shrill crisp of monsoon wind picking up momentum, distant coos of the pigeons and the grumbling of the sky. Every noise around had unusually subdued.

Suddenly a flash of blinding lightening bolt was followed by the loud boom of thunder. Showers of raindrop began to hit the ground smoothly, splitting into other droplets. The tantalizing fragranced flowers were decorated with scintillating water pearls. Parched grounds have now quenched its thirst. The lush green leaves with tinge of of yellow and orange in the edges were firmly hanging onto limbs of the trees. The petrichor awoke all my five senses. The constant pitter-patter of the rain was like music to my ears. Nature was at her pristine best with the rich and vivid display of foliage and flora. A mug of hot chocolate in this blissful episode would elevate my mood. My childish hearts always wants to frolic about in the rain and jump on the puddles, letting the rain wash away my troubles that weary body is constrained with. I am a pluviophile after all.

But out on the main street a cacophony of horns could be heard amidst the incessant and unrelenting rain in the immobile traffic. The motorists and pedestrians wanted to rush to their homes before mother Earth unleashes her wrath from the box of Pandora. The branches were violently swaying and the car windows were shuddering. Dead leaves and flowers covered the cross-roads like a shroud. The aged tree with its roots firmly bound to the soil, toppled and fell with a loud bang. So many unfortunate lives were lost and some barely survived with fatal would of excruciating pain. The fresh harvest and the thatched roof of a shacked house is now annihilated. In this helpless situation one could only pray to see tomorrow's land. As wonderful as the rains could be, they are destructive too. The rains can come as a blessing and as a punishment from God for ill-treating Earth, the only source of earth.