15 Semesters

15 Semesters

How many years did it take

to write my thesis?

6 months of Ambedkar,

Of assignments slipped under His door,

minutes before the clock struck 5:04;

6 months of sundawns with women

who held each other without a phone,

but rather: dinner plates that stacked

into breakfast lines of pani pitha

("Sorry, you get two. No more").

6 months of the TUnovation barbet,

of Danny, Elena and other bhou,

till mother switched continents

and only CAA came home.

2020-21 was a blur that hurt

more than the chest that broke

under the weight of 67 deaths;

But without a germ to blame--

Delhi flights and radioactive fights

strangled away the flimsy anchor

once called home

("Your fault!", they swore).

Three greying siblings followed each other

to the...to the... opposite end

of what it felt to lose 3 fingers

Of a hand dangling alone;

that year end my love and I

put on each other's clothes

for a sangeet no one came to,

and forgot all the lyrics

that came thereafter;

(We wanted dignity, nothing more.)

2022 January broke the silence

and came like that brother

disguised as a stranger;

But a piper cannot eat, with only

Two blue rats for sustenance;

So his horde broke the wall

("Hmph, it was cracked from before.")

By almost winter that year.

Aita's Chicken Do Pyaaza

no longer simmered for our friends:

They banged the skull,

 into dull aches

sharper than the knee's

 lost forever (to a heated fight).

Nobody came to hold

back the tears,

burned by the pyre smoke.

In 2023, the brother was nearly

lost, but traded just in time with

 all the selves who came before;

(She never made it out.)

The year end came the big flu,

whose husk split cracks less deep

than the frowning knives,

held with their absent hands.

("Yay, nobody left to tell

 you what to do.")

5 months of the flu helped fugue

the new normal: nothing new;

the missing sister thereafter wandered

off with hands that held hands

that grabbed the hands

you no longer wanted to be your own;

In between you caught your self

staring at your self staring at

your soul.

Then came 2025: a year finally

of my own.

***