During my recent move, I stumbled upon this sketch I made over twelve years ago, and it made me smile and sigh at the same time. I smiled because it whisked me back to my teens when I’d lock myself in my room gorging on Harlequin romances, and sighed because it still feels just like yesterday!
Mills & Boon books were my guilty pleasure at fourteen, filling me with butterflies, and probably some of the delusions I carry to this day! I remember deciding to recreate the book cover of “A Wife in Waiting”, and grabbed my 2B pencil, then moved to pencil colors, and then to a black pen. Halfway through an overwhelming urge to draw skeletons (instead of the protagonists “Josie” and “Dacre”) took over me. I resisted at first, but let it take over eventually. I couldn’t put the black pen down again.
I usually keep most of my sketches private, but I’m starting to embrace my style more and more. When people look at my sketches, they often react with concerns or counsel. Yes, it’s dark, and moody, and might ruin your day. But, I think that’s what I do best. Not ruining your day I mean, but capturing the darker emotions.
It is harder to make someone smile or laugh, hands down. But I don’t think I chose the art, the art chose me. And if I’m being honest, I love how deeply I can feel these emotions, and translate them into my art and my writing.
Last Friday, I wanted to write about love. But I had just moved into a new apartment, so the natural scramble to unbox my journal ensued. (Pen and paper? Yes, I’m old school.). I found it after going through five boxes and as I sat down on my chaise by the window, my gaze caressed the New Yorker building. “This is love too!”, I’d thought. So I got carried away into what became my last post. But oh well, let’s talk about the “love” love.
The song “आपा फेर मिलांगे” or “Apa fer Milaangey” has been all over social media lately. I’m not the one to keep up with the trends but recently a friend posted a reel with the song in the background, and that’s when it caught my eyes and ears. I looked it up on Spotify and I was not disappointed. I understand the language Punjabi just enough to get the “vibe” of the song and it’s different. It’s probably autotuned like every other song these days, but it does not seem “autotuned” right away, if you know what I mean. It almost sounds like a dude wrote a song for his girl and recorded it in his basement, and I mean it in a good way! Because that’s rare now, and that taps into something few songs do.
If you’re a Hindi/ Punjabi speaker, or just love to explore music from all over the world like me 🙂
One example is “Hey there Delilah” and I tried to think why these songs make me feel the way they do. Is it because they’re happy and sad and hopeful and hopeless at the same time? So my brain is basically scrambled, and I don’t know what to feel? Does it take me back to a specific time or a specific someone? I don’t think it’s either. Maybe the answer is it’s just heartfelt and simple. No frills, no bells, no whistles – just a slice of someone’s life; a love that was so great it was bigger than the people in it. So it got immortalized in the song, and continues to bring comfort to who it touches.
It’s been a minute I were in love, well seven years. And I only realized it recently. For even when I might have dated after, and even when they might have been long-term monogamous committed relationships, I was never “in love”. How is this possible! What is even love! Maybe I’ll think about that another time. But I’m glad I was in love once upon a time. I strongly recommend falling in love to everyone. 🙂
It was young love, and the best kind. Maybe because it was so innocent. Even though I was just seventeen, I knew I could fight every human on the planet for this man. And by the way, when you’re sixteen, you most likely pick the wrong man. But that does not even matter, you move on. I think love is the most selfless and the most selfish emotion. On one hand I would give my life for this person in a heartbeat, and on the other hand, I would not want to share them with anyone (and I don’t mean it in an unhealthy way!).
I remember there was always an “us” in every decision, even when we were nineteen and making plans for when we would be thirty five. Those make-believe scenarios from future family dinners, or family vacations, or imaginary kids. I remember dressing up in the morning for college and rushing back in to swap my red scarf with blue because he liked it on me. He was a priority even with all the craziness around, and I knew if the world was ending tomorrow, and if I could save only one person, that would be him, even though it meant I’d have to walk through hellfire for the next eternity. Every bone in my body, and every inch of my skin was in love with this human. Now looking back at it as I’m older and wiser, in all reality, it was probably the most incompatible match of everyone I’ve ever dated, but when you fall for someone, you just do. There is no rhyme or reason. I was all in, heart, body, and soul and I gave it everything I had. And maybe that’s why love has been so hard to come by again. It’s not like you get a set quota of love to spend in life, but when you see something so pure and great like that die, you start holding back. So maybe it’s only heart the next time or only soul or only body. And sometimes when muscle memory kicks in nudging you to dive in, you spend too long sitting on the fence. Maybe you overcome that eventually, maybe you don’t.
But if you’re reading this today from your fence, I hope you find the courage to make the leap one more time. One more time is ALL you need in this lifetime. Belated Happy Valentine’s Day!
Last Friday, even though it was just me in my solitude (मैं और मेरी तन्हाई…cringe yet?), I struggled to acknowledge, “I did it.” It feels like the moment these words leave my mouth and enter the universe, they cease to exist in the realm of reality; that is, if they were true in the first place. But I did it! And as scared and as vulnerable as I feel saying that, I almost force myself to take a second and breathe it in…and I just cannot.
I write this from my very tiny NYC apartment. It took everything to get here. I have been dreaming about this for 16 years, or maybe more. What I feel right now is what I felt looking at “Starry Nights” at MoMA in December 2023. Art critics who say it’s overrated can take a walk!
I saw Gogh’s paintings for the first time in my “General Knowledge” book in maybe fifth grade, and the groovy brush strokes were almost like an electromagnetic field pulling me in. And I remember wanting to share it with my friends but no one seemed to care. They don’t “get it”, the 10-year-old me had concluded. And it was only the beginning of many things my friends wouldn’t “get” and I would feel completely out of place and time growing up. (And they would all turn out to be WAY cooler than I’d ever be!). So I buried myself in books, and literature, and art. And as a sixteen-year-old, I had thought about what it would feel like to look at “Starry Nights” in real life! So I wanted to apply to colleges in the US based on everything I’d heard, read, and seen on TV, and that idea would immediately get shot down.
Little did I know I would stand in front of “Starry Nights” amongst a supercharged throng at MoMA in a couple decades. And I would stare at it with every strength my eyelids could muster, and I’d just fail to see it because my eyes would just be flooded with tears. “Starry Nights” would always be the embodiment of an impossible dream for me.
For someone who grew up poor, dreams do feel like a carnal sin. You learn very early on to lull it down and shove it deep under your skin. You learn to talk about everything else over time, even your deepest trauma. But you never talk about your “hopes and dreams”. Even today as I sit by the window in awe living one of my many dreams, it feels like an out-of-body experience. It must be a mistake, a glitch in the matrix, I’d wake up tomorrow and this would cease to exist…I won’t get my work visa approved and will need to leave next year anyway, so what’s the point, this is all fleeting!
Last Friday, when I wrote this down, I was surrounded by boxes that needed unboxing, and I was already doomsday planning laying on my back on my mattress on the floor, head tilted backward and staring at an upside-down Empire State Building. I don’t know how long this is supposed to last, but this is life for now. And like every other time I know I’ll see this through okay. But tonight I feel like the six-year-old girl peeping into the Barbie store pining for dolls she knows she cannot have.
In the essence of my being lies a truth, fundamental and clear, I’m a procrastinator, wired to sprint; they say it’s born out of fear. Be it a hundred meters or two hundred feet, Last night fights before exams, chasing deadlines on repeat.
Then how did I end up in this marathon, now running the eleventh lap, Five years and four cities, I was following a map. Convinced I was running toward something – a goal, But it’s been a long time now; uncertain, I question my soul.
An unseen tether, a spectral noose, tightens around my nape, I wash the glaze off my eyes; the earth beneath I scrape. The track marks have long faded; I realize a spiral course I’ve tread, Thundering encore from the last homestretch bleeds through; the finish line turns red.
Lunging for the fleeting goal, ethereal and sly, The rope tightens relentlessly, and I run, there’s no time to comply.
Centrifugal force takes over and my legs give away, My eyes are cloudy, unblinking, lost in an abyss of disarray.
Today, still running, haunted by memories, on the verge of decay, The elusive question still echoes, what made me run away?
You think you’re okay and then, every once in a while, you stumble upon that beautiful verse, that disarming canvas of art, that balmy air up the mountain, and it just stops your heart. Because you remember what it was like to be in love! To be irrevocably intoxicated, unabashedly euphoric, and hopelessly undone.
It was a chilly February of 2014. I was in college and had participated in a robotics event at the IIT Kharagpur Tech Fest with my team of four- consisting of my then-on-and-off boyfriend and a ‘new couple’. As awkward as it was, we are not going to talk about any cute love stories or get into the inner workings of our earthquake detector bot. This is about a series of strange events that started during our 2-day stay at Kharagpur.
College fests are a foreign concept to many outside India, so I will tell some more about it. Most reputed Indian colleges conduct fests that are 2–7-day events at the home college open to participants from universities across the country. During my time, fests had two major nomination categories – Cultural/ Arts fests and Tech fests. I was a member of the Robotics Society, and our team often participated in competitions during our engineering days. Our finals were on Day 2, and that’s where our story begins.
I miss you sometimes. You, or the idea of you, I’m not sure. Never mind. Today is one such day.
Let’s try to catch up. I met a lot of people in the short span of the life after you. You will never know about them. I’m sure you have come a long way too and there’s no turning back.
Apparently, I am an amazing kisser. Apparently, I am not as bloated as you made me believe. Apparently, I am a strong woman and it turns out, I have dreams and aspirations too.
“Call me Ishmael.” – undoubtedly one of the most powerful opening lines in the history of English Literature.
But, remember that time when you were a toddler and your mom used to flash these otherwise insanely scrumptious candies at you during meals, you pounced at them and somehow they tasted like spinach and broccoli, every time? Well, that is the déjà vu I had throughout the book. I mean, this, to me, is one of the most confusing books ever written- non-fiction concealed inside a very attractive wrapper of fiction. Book? Text book? Dissertation? Thesis?
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
Walden!
Well, I love it and hate it. But, probably I love it more. The book is so pluralistic, yet singular in the underlying idea. There are tones and undertones and overtones, yet it is the simplest thing I have ever come across.
This is one of those unwonted books that I have struggled to sit through. But, this is also a book that keeps me haunting back and forth days after finishing it. It actually makes me cogitate and think about things I had given up thinking long ago.
This book is not timeless, at least in my opinion, like the other books in this genre are. I remember myself getting so worked up with some of the ideas Thoreau planted in my brain and I could not see it materialize in the present era. May be it is just me, and technically his ideas are not impossible to execute altogether. But, I don’t find it pragmatic or rather beneficial to anybody today. “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
This book is unique in a way that two lines in and the book had me completely. That’s new, because I’m a skeptic and I normally take pages or chapters to finally make up my mind about a book. What Mr. Gatsby did to the people he met, probably this book did to me. Pay attention here, I haven’t said that I liked the content yet. I only said the book had me and my undivided attention. I do not imply that I hated the content either. The book, just somehow, managed to draw the kind of attention foreign to its genre. When you delve into a “great book”, a “classic”, you normally go in slow and give it time (at least I do). But, with this book, when I got in, I was devouring everything wolfish-ly, as if I were reading a thriller or solving a mystery.
“Really? He said that! Did he say he likes me?” Kiara could barely suppress her exhilaration at this point. Her heart was racing like a juggernaut.
“Yes. Now, shush and get back to your seat. Matthew is a sneeze away from thrashing us out of the class.”Diya said that mechanically, trying her best to look anywhere else, but at Kiara.
“Oh come on! Don’t be a chicken. Just tell me everything he said and I’ll be gone. Promise!”
“But, there’s nothing more..”
“You know what Diya, look here…You didn’t talk to him, did you?”
“It was still dawn when I stepped out of the cab and walked towards the entry gate of the Delhi airport. The early morning February air was pleasantly cold.
I was travelling to Bengaluru to attend a college friend’s wedding. It had been four years since we graduated from the same college. This wedding was also going to be a reunion of our batchmates. But what I didn’t know was that the reunion would begin much ahead of time; right in the queue in front of the airline counter.
I was almost sure it was she. Same height! Same long hair! Same complexion! Curiosity had my eyes glued to her. And then about 60-odd seconds later, when she turned, she proved me right. My ex-girlfriend stood two places ahead of me in that queue. We had never met after the college farewell.Continue reading “The Bucket List”→
I often wondered what love was; it took me a lifetime to discover you were in love, when there’s no going back from loving. That minuscule split of the second when it hits you and you start looking at them differently. You just love them even when they become a different person altogether. You might start disliking them, you might even start hating yourself for loving and disliking them at the same time; but when you take their name, even in your mind, you say it softly and you feel warm. You never fall in love for the sparkle of the eyes or the kick of humour; you fall in love with the chemistry you share. You fall in love with that energy, that aura that wraps you and them. There are no proofs for a few things. All you need to have is a little faith. Continue reading “A Requiem for Transcendence”→
It was a wintry December morning of 2012. I lay snug inside my hillock of blankets. I hated winters. I detested the chills, the piercing stroke of the raw freeze. I would give anything to stay there, inside my cozy hillock for the rest of the day.
Not long ago, there used to be a time when I would sleep like a baby. That day, there was a click and a strangled monotonous beep and I thrust my hillock away sprinting for the fax machine, forgetting my slippers, my sweater and the chills. Desperately, I hit the buttons and finally I had the fax in my hand. I ran with it to the balcony of my dingy one-bedroom apartment and began reading. Continue reading “My Blatant Plea”→
There were holes in heaven and humongous ice towers swelled earthbound. Chic-clad men, women and children lurched out of tight spaces dug in the tower, belching thick tar and it rained in the realm. There was no land anymore, only bogs of currency soused in oil and blood. The marshes sucked everything in, till the quagmire softened into a decisive reality- a perfect corporate ghetto. The Heaven was hell and the Hell was heaven.
“Silent night, holy night…”, she hummed as she scanned the wall with a scalpel in her left hand. It was almost time, she must hurry. But, the perfectionist that she was, she continued the sgraffito and mellow undertones squinted out. The painting was complete.
“All is calm, all is bright….”
The exhilaration in her sprightly gait reiterated through the quiet mansion. A warm shower later, she donned a blush-coloured gown playing off her skin-tone. There was something very calm about her demeanour. It would not scream glamour directly into your eyes, but kick you in the face in your own sweet time and leave you to gasps. T-strap shoes and a turquoise necklace sealed the deal. That deconstructed extravagance and careful insouciance created a definitive idiosyncrasy, just the drama that makes you want to know the woman more.
I held her tightly, her face right next to my heart. I held her strong in a perpetual grip. It was only a ball of my bedspread that I had curled up in a frenzy, but that felt right. That felt like home. That felt like myself again. With the dying flicker of the lamp, I drifted a world apart, in times bygone, another lifetime. Those were wistful times, endearing times.
I found myself in my parents’ house again. Moonlight sieved in on the bed through the window, hugging my skin. The room boomed with the illustrious laughter of my sisters. The littlest one clung on my back and her teddy clung onto her. The five of us began our little tea-party. I just loved adorning them, making dresses for them and styling their hair, just like mother did. I was fourteen again. I might not have been an absolute angel, but I was prim nonetheless. I laughed and laughed and just laughed. In the darkness of that fetid night, I had found my beacon once again. I danced around it like the psychedelic moths. I let that moment own me. She was me. I was her. I felt safe. I had found the place where I belonged.
I often wondered what love was; it took me a lifetime to discover you were in love, when there’s no going back from loving. That minuscule split of the second when it hits you and you start looking at them differently. You just love them even when they become a different person altogether. You might start disliking them, you might even start hating yourself for loving and disliking them at the same time; but when you take their name, even in your mind, you say it softly and you feel warm. You never fall in love for the sparkle of the eyes or the kick of humour; you fall in love with the chemistry you share. You fall in love with that energy, that aura that wraps you and them. There are no proofs for a few things. All you need to have is a little faith. 
