standstill

Sometimes you feel like pouring the contents of your heart out in their entirety; 

tendinous cords and all

just letting it all out and not care, for once, about the many many walls you have carefully constructed, not care about the spikes running along their tops or the deep trenches at the bottom, not care at all and 

just get past it all in one giant brave leap of faith.

There are some people you want to make the jump for. Some people your heart tells you you can trust fully wholeheartedly completely 

without any doubts 

at all.

But still the tiny voice at the back of your head bugs you, still it tells you to be wary. 

surely this cannot end well. It's just not possible. 

So you retreat into your shell.

And then

at the end of it all, it’s you again. 

you with your thoughts and your crippling self-doubts and fears and insecurities

you with your meticulously erected barriers

you with the invisible hand crushing around your heart, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until it goes squidge between the fingers and turns into a mess.

just you 

alone.

brambles

A smile plays at the edge of his lips. He looks at her all tired eyed; all wisdom and experience and lack of sleep, and decides not to say anything. 

He is absentmindedly playing with a strand of her hair. Twirling it around his long fingers, letting it go again. 

She hates it when he does this. Hates it when he shuts himself out completely. She knows he’s not there. He may be able to fool others with his well-timed nods and smiles, his perfunctory words of greeting, his seemingly nonchalant demeanor, but she knows. She knows that even when listening to her talk he is off somewhere else, in his own little world, getting repeatedly assaulted by unpleasant thoughts that will not leave him alone. She hates how vast amounts of prodding would only produce a meager ‘Me? Oh I’ll be fine by tomorrow, just need to get my head screwed on straight… look at you, worrying about silly old ME, of all people!’. And then he’d proceed to attack her with wiggling fingers, tickling relentlessly until she breathlessly begged for mercy. 

She doesn’t like it when he does that. 

Laugh it off like it’s nothing, when she knows it’s eating him up from the inside, that he’s going absolutely stark raving mad thinking about it. Not that she would be of much practical help, not really… but she’d be there. And maybe, just maybe, he’d realize that sometimes that was all that was needed, that was all that helped.

har dil jo pyar karega woh khana khaye ga.

About two months ago, we had to give our juniors a welcome party, as all senior classes must. Twas quite a nice one too; we had a rather good time ridiculing them as much as possible without being criminally offensive while they sat there looking sad... And the food, oh what lovely food was had! 

*cue rapturous music*

The leftovers were seen being furtively carted off to the male hostel once the thing was over, and I waved goodbye to them as they passed by, for I knew no one would see or hear from them again.

But wait! The next day my friend and I espy one of our girls walking about with a little plate full of kababs. Kababs that look suspiciously like the ones I had so mournfully bid adieu to the night before. I am flabbergasted and I am bamboozled. 

'What!' I ask her. 'But where! But how!'

It turns out her boy had brought her the food. How sweet of him.

I turn to my friend and a conclusion is wordlessly, simultaneously reached, a very important one at that:

Scene on kar lo. Kabab milein ge.

Anything for food.

(cake like) inconsistency

I fear that this may be one of those nights that are spent embroiled in existential crises and extensive cleaning of rooms and laundering of clothes, nights spent rooting out chips wrappers and empty juiceboxes from corners and crevices and filling up garbage bags, nights that end with a nice shower and an intense need to sleep for the longest time possible. The latter part will not be possible though I fear, for classes are to be had in the morning and studying has to be done; for this, this utter beghairati, can go on no more.

your orange peels have fallen

(a precarious tower in flames

cemented with seeds and

white, lacy, membrane)

KEEP CALM MY GLUTEUS MAXIMUS

I have begun hating this poor once-cool World War Two poster.

It is everywhere.

People are misusing it.

It is everywhere.

Misuse I tell you. Keep calm and happy birthday? Testicles, I say.

Next thing you know this'll be pooping up, excuse the pun.

peopel pls.

I was going to tell you about how the moon looked like a giant luminescent ball tonight, 
                              
                                                      suspended in the inky sky                                                                                           
by invisible threads. shining bright like lamplight.

I wanted to ask you if it was the same all the way up there, the moon, whether it looked as beautiful from there as it did from here.


but I couldn't 
because we are not the way we used to be.