echo

hello?
ello
llo
lo
o


this is deader than dead isn't it?

on living a fraction of a life

It’s like a shadow.  

The constant threatening presence, somewhere beneath the surface, of the depression, my depression, for it sometimes feels like a parasitic pet that I have welcomed grudgingly into my home. It's always, always there, waiting for the tiniest crack or fissure in me, in my demeanor, in my shell. So it can ooze out and consume my being.

Is this how it will be? Forever? An unnamed, faceless monster that lives within, ready to pounce out at a moment’s notice, sitting skulking in a corner when I'm happy, resentful like a petulant child. Begrudging me every moment of joy. Raising its head, hopefully sniffing the air when things start to go wrong, when insecurities and doubts and let-downs, hell when life gets in the way of things, when the hay cart you're so merrily rolling down on suddenly hits a pothole, and things come to a shuddering, sudden halt; that's when it comes joyously bounding up to tear and claw at your insides, demanding to be let out. 

And let it out you do, because you're too defenseless, too weak to hold it back, because you've all but given up fighting. And once it’s out there, once it's no longer caged, it celebrates its freedom by embracing you like an old friend; with no intentions of ever letting go.

You give into it. You withdraw further into yourself until you're reduced to a fraction of yourself, until only a faint glimmer of the person you used to be is visible.

It takes over your entire life. Your interactions with people, your habits, your attitude. Responsibilities and relationships and carefully constructed frameworks for the life you could have all break down, for they are new, made from fresh bamboo shoots, and not strong young trunks like those of others your age. Tentatively put there by you, held together by flimsy gossamer thread. 

But fragile; so, so fragile.

It starts living your life for you. You are the puppet; it holds the strings.

So you recede. There is a place, somewhere deep inside of your own self, a tiny place, where you can withdraw and be safe, lock all doors, shutter yourself out. Be sad all you want in there, cry your eyes out, be fucking devastated and torn up for no reason. No one will care. No one will give a shit. 

You tire yourself out eventually, and then your emotions start cutting off one by one. It’s like in James and the giant peach, when they want to drop the peach a little bit, they cut the cord to one of the many seagulls keeping them afloat. And the peach drops just a tiny bit, and this is how they control the pattern of their flight. 

You’re like the peach. Except you're hitting rock bottom much faster, and you cannot exactly comprehend what's happening. Because you've stopped caring. You've stopped feeling. You react to terrible news and happy news and heart wrenching news the same way, the only way you know how: with stone faced stoicism. You actually have to consciously mold your face into the appropriate expressions whenever around people, have to actively remind yourself to punctuate conversations with nods and hums and hahs. 

You become adept at pretending, and you resign yourself to this life.

Things are pretty much fucked. Everything is pointless. Nothing matters.

I don't remember exactly what it was that brought me out. I was under for such a long time that I sometimes fear I'll never be able to fully function again, and when I sometimes relapse for a day or two or three, I am honestly scared out of my fucking mind of how bad it can get. I never want to go back there again. This is not how life is supposed to be lived.

I don't have it all figured out. I don't know how it is that life ought to be lived, but I'm trying, I'm trying the best that I can to stay afloat. I just hope... I just hope that there are a few buoys around to help me, just in case.

I watched a film the other day, a film called 'detachment'. There was a lot of Adrian Brody face staring with melancholy eyes at the camera, saying profound sad things. But there was one thing he said that really hit home.

That helplessness, that realization, that foreboding of being adrift in a sea with no buoy, no safety net when you thought you'd be the one throwing the buoy . . .

Really though. When did it all become so utterly, unfix-ably fucked. I was supposed to have this figured out.

Wait.

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.

#k3wl

WHAT is with all dem bitches on facebook who put hashtags on everything?

Am I getting *gasp* old or something? Is this a thang now? 

NEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

.

.

.

just... go away, man. go away.

(I was about to hashtag everything and exit in style, but I can't find the key... how very classy.)

AHA FOUND IT

#i#mean#whut#unnecessary#bullshit#lawlspartyfun# 

yaar kya scene hai yaar auntiyo ka.

You go home after ages and all the aunties have for you is a 


Hayeee kitni kaali ho ke ayi ho! Moo dekho apna!! Khanay ko nahi milta Karachi mai?


Your face:

must... not... turn... axe murderer

abciximab

Oh how I love being home.

I gots issues

I am having serious Punjabi-withdrawal. All these Karachiites with their aaaaraay bhais and their taafreehs and their chourangis are pissing me off.

The other day I was coming back to my room after class and overheard a couple discussing their baby's fever in OH GLORIOUS GLORIOUS PUNJABI and it made me go all warm and fuzzy inside. I kid you not. I felt like going up to them and initiating a conversation just so I could hear them talk for a while longer.

I did slow down and walk behind them like a creep for a while though, listening in. But only till we were walking in the same direction. Okay. >_>

Khair. I am now going to amuse myself by yell-typing out Punjabi shituff.

KHOTAY DE PUTTRA!!

CHA! <3

AALU DE PARAUNTHAY

CHITTRAUL KARANI AA TU?

DUNGAR DA DUNGAR.

Aeda tu BURGUR.

slogging

days are like

three day old snow; dirty and muddied and coming up to your knees

seeping through your shoes

(cold and uncomfortable)

weighing you down.

good times are coming 

soon

soon.

homesickcisemoh

it's always the last few days that are the hardest, the last few days that seem to drag on.
never-ending too long
there is too little time, there is too much.

the dog and the priest talked and came to the conclusion that no one loved them, not really.

that’s her right there, do you see?

awkwardly dancing around, but happy,

in her pajamas, the shirt holey and the bottoms frayed and

worn thin, almost to translucence 

and her feet socked;

the left one has fallen into a purple puddle around her ankle.

she dances (to her own merry tune)

and she laughs, and her red hair twirls around her

a dancing dancing flame.

she laughs, and her eyes laugh too

she laughs, and it makes me happy.

This blog looks like something someone's pet llama threw up
and then ate
and then pooped out.

hissy bitch fit.

You get sick of believing sometimes.

Sometimes, you start wondering what your stubborn faith has gotten you so far. Nothing, that's what. Life's going to screw you over just as bad as it will most other people. You're going to have to suffer and cry and bitch your way through too. Learn your lessons the hard way. 

Sometimes it's too much, hanging on to that last tiny thread of hope; the silver lining on a damp sodden cloud. Just waiting to rain it's tears down on the world.

tell a child santa doesn't exist,
that ducks cannot be pink
the trees never blue.
tell them to stop believing,
that there is no magic
and no faeries and unicorns and dragons
waiting to whisk them off to far off lands.
tell them that they can let go of all hopes
of ever finding neverland
of ever finding the cure for cancer
of bringing world peace
of becoming a wildlife photographer
an astronaut, a chef
a philanthropist, a dinosaur-hunter
all at once.
tell them that eventually
all their dreams will come crashing down
that if they become artists they'll be bums
musicians they'll be looked down on
actresses they'll be whores.
tell them that it's no use;
that all their hopes and intricate plans
will never come into realization
that they will look back someday
and laugh at their own naivety
at their innocence
and at the same time wish
(secretly)
that this world hadn't made them it's own
that their auras were still as fresh as they were the day they came here
that they were still able to conjure up an imaginary friend
if need be.
they'll laugh, and they'll cry, and they'll look back with regret
and they'll soldier on.

-bittersweet

tell them, and save them all the trouble.

moo

daredevil,
stuntsbat.
walking along ledges in the dead of the night
tempting fate, peering down
just waiting for a foot to slip
for the ground to kiss you
for your ribs to crack and tear through your lungs

what is it
you desire

infinite

you and I waited
until the flowers withered
until the rivers ran dry
until I could cry no more.
but you never came.

I never came.