From the dumpbox

===================================
Toyland

Matchbox cars on ribbon road,
Concrete, and your hand to hold:
Specks of human, red and gold,
Light our midnight way
Of Northwest winds that think aloud
Of lonely star and monsoon cloud.
I spin a yarn, for you and me,
Of a passing stranger's day.
===================================

I had absolutely nothing even barely publishable left. This is my last stand. Send help.
This poem was written one of the last times I actually enjoyed eating Domino's.

My buttons got pushed

==================================================================
Your Mom

Things don't have to be new to hurt.
Things don't have to be old to matter.
Beauty and history are different things --
Shooting stars last
Barely for a minute.

My glimmer of hope;
My gales of unexpected comfort;
My struggle to keep my feet on the ground
Just how he would have liked
Because intelligent intellectual modern men
Like stable women sure of their worth,
Because intelligent intellectual modern men
Should like the woman I want to be...!
My discomfort
With who I sometimes am not
Fits nowhere.
Men of yore will stifle and ask for surrender,
Men of now will drown you in rightful care,
Men in the middle will laugh --

And I haven't hugged a woman in ages.
I haven't felt solidarity
Because we all hide vulnerability
Because vulnerability is feminine and feminine is hate.
Weak women are subhuman toys for the boys.
Strong women are superhuman machines
Whose existence is evidence that we don't need feminism.

Your mother raised you to speak your mind to men and women alike
And so the whole world must be fine now for women like me
Because equality is warped to mean we all must hide our souls.
Respected women are women who act like the men of yore
And other women,
Like the one disgusted you sometimes suspects I am,
Are your guilty muses,
To be moulded into art or sculpture or fantasy or bedclothes
Or queens or goddesses or porn
Or your mother --

And I say it should be simpler.
No rules to laugh, rules to speak,
Rules around
Who to be around,
About the right amount of fear,
Whom to let yourself be near,
Rules to hug, to shed a tear,
Rules to love.
Love
Should be allowed:
On both sides, and as it is;
On both sides, crazy or sane;
On both sides, brave and sweet --

And a man should be allowed
To be swept off his feet.
==================================================================

I wrote this a long time ago after binging on slam poetry videos. I didn't think it was any good but I kept it. Today, I wanted to post because it's been a while, and had nothing else to post, so I finally folded and posted the longest complete piece from my Google Keep.

I Would Start A Series But I Do Not Trust My Creativity

=============================================
Divergence

I picked you up, sweet test of faith,
In the vagrant days
When good old friend ruination and I
Ambled 'long our ways.
The halls of black and cowering rage
Would tremble in your wake
And I stepped off my brazen trail
For expectation's sake.

I held you close, my safest place,
When you had lost your own
And here, like branches forever twined,
Twistedly we have grown.
How much they spoke, the sightless beasts!
How much they spat and clawed!
Oh, how seethed the angered men,
And women deathly awed!

And then your hand, my solitude,
In mine I softly pressed;
Knew I, as ruination and I
Lay in bed undressed --
'Tis in faith our bravery lies,
And our encumbrance all;
And tremble will, these halls of pain,
From your inheritance tall.
=============================================

Don't you cry for me.

Edgy Foreign Title has Funny Unrelated History

As promised.

========================================
Freude

Come, O Disastrous Joy,
Bold and drenched in youth!
Come when beasts are more than men.
Come when lies are truth.

Come, O Treacherous Joy!
In laughter shy or proud,
Come, though every door and gate
Conspires to shut you out.

Come when life is new and fast
And come when life is old;
Come when blood runs boiling hot
And stay when blood runs cold.
========================================

I still write

It had been a while since I'd last written, and then suddenly I ended up writing three poems in one sleepless stretch. This is the first one.

====================================================
Survey

I live in wet country, where it rains without warning,
Where clouds arrive without wind on their tails
And leave without promising sunshine;

I live in war-torn country,
Where anticipation of disaster kills
More than disaster itself --
And more blood is shed in dreams than in reality.

I live in a land that is awake in what it knows
And asleep in what it does;
Certain in what it wants, yet wavering
In who it wants from, or for.

Loyal as I am to all that is familiar,
I return to history that I trust to repeat itself.
I track the whims of weather, scars of conflict, trails of truth.
I become a broken map
Of my imperfect home.
====================================================

This Could Well Be The Limit

=================================================
Convergence

A tiny spirit lurked
Where you used to be
Not entirely you, and yet
Not quite a part of me.

Sometimes, the wispy ghost
Laughed the way you did --
Head thrown back, eyes closed in mirth,
As would a gleeful kid;

Many a starry restful night
A shyly prodding finger
Of a smoky form touched my heart,
Resembling yours, dead ringer.

It whispered in my ears at times
And played your games with me
And with your voice, just like you did,
The ghost begged to be free.

Tonight, the apparition
Decided it was through
And I said I was done pretending
That the wisp was you;

And so into the artist's night
The spirit sang and flew --
I said farewell, and watched my love
Slowly grow untrue.
=================================================

Bijoya

Maa, it has been a while since the lights went off. The people have packed, and last night will be over soon. Not much happens -- yet, every time it does, it leaves a gaping hole inside me. You are supposed to inspire strength -- and yet you leave me so weak. I, they say, was given life by you -- yet all I feel is my life leaving slowly.

Did I waste our precious fortnight on being happy, Maa? Should I have been angry instead? Should I have been pure, unwavering, unafraid; and would it have got me all I want?

Maa, this year too, I have failed to be the slightest shadow of you. I have feared. I have loved. I have cried. I have lost, to your cosmos and your plans. Who am I fighting against, Maa, and for who? Where are my demons, and do my Gods even know that I exist?

Your way might, after all, not be mine, Maa. The collected patience, the inspired courage, the flawless adherence to the essence of yourself -- it all could be too much for me. And yet, a change of path is not an option -- because you, because me, and because who else will?

I will try again next year -- there will be another swing at inspired strength and other such malarkey from your collection. You can sit on my head and inspire me, and I will try not to cry.

Shorts 4

After a spell of being extremely partial to verse, I have, with the necessary discomfort of familiar change, returned to prose for a while, via another edition of the primarily crowdsourced cue-word based Shorts series. I went through the topics suggested by readers, and have written on two of them  -- these make the first and the third pieces in this post. The second piece in this post is, again, a cue-word I picked myself (Valor and Mystic may or may not follow).

Now, as per tradition, I introduce the contributors of, respectively, the first and third cue-words:

• Aditya, an undergraduate student in CMI, a year my junior. A nondescript man from the nondescript town of Akola, Maharashtra, not much is known of this newcomer except for his unhealthy obsessions with certain (at least three) seniors. In the sphere of mundane details, one can confirm that he enjoys sports (like Volleyball!), likes certain foods (Domino's, Choco Pie, Milano, Amul Kool), and indulges in the mental and pseudo-physical challenges of, respectively, AoPS and Counterstrike.
• Shriyank, of For Shark and Nushki fame, an important friend (and unpaid basketball coach) from my Hem Sheela days. An intelligent man who fought convention to study Humanities, Shriyank was my partner and/or opponent in many a debate, elocution, and schoolyard skirmish -- a tradition we now continue in keyboard wars. Shriyank has a keen taste in culture, literature, rhetoric and humour. He now enjoys growing success in MUNs, and in other Humanities things that the puny Mathematical mind struggles to comprehend.

The third piece is not short in the strictest sense, but I hope that the extra shortness of the first two will compensate.

---------------------

Almost

Your wins are no match for Providence. You would think that a step in the right direction would be worth something, but no. You would think that pretending to be strong, over and over and over again, would finally make you invincible, but no!

There were some who were supposed to live, over and over and over again, and inspire the disciples of metal and grease -- and yet, there they were, left laughing at how ironic the circumstances were. To think that death would come in the form of known loves, to think that the end would be in metal and grease, to think that that is how Paul would go...!

[To Paul Walker, 12/9/1973 - 30/11/2013]

---------------------

Instinct

In the stillness of night, O Master, the world is your picnic ground. The shade is your safe space; the wind is your blanket; and the beating of insects' wings, your music. The path of time that moves is hidden from you in the dark, and the marshland misted from your vision by the silver waters of kings. Far beyond present company, O Master, sacred ground is trodden in your name, and you know it -- and knowing it, you smile, all of ten years, you little angel, you...!

---------------------

Tampon

The time was evening, and the market streets of the small industrial town bustled under lamplight and feet. One pair of these belonged to our hero, who now shuffled along the alleyways purposefully. The streetlights occasionally illuminated his face and costume -- those of an office-goer in his late twenties, raised mundane (conservative?) and middle-class but hurled, gingerly but willingly, into liberalism and its oddities, which included his present task.

Thirty years ago, and perhaps even today to lesser (he felt) men, this task would be daunting and repulsive. He remembered his first time -- how he felt embarrassed and (this one the neo-liberal hated to admit) emasculated. But our hero had learnt that love conquers all, and fighting any residual inhibitions he had was now a labour of love.

This time, however, the task had altered just enough to be intriguing. Unlike the more old-fashioned subject (calling people objects is medieval, J.B.!) of his daily affection, this other devotee of the purple all-nighters was in the middle of attempting what she called The T-Switch -- a paradigm shift worthy of the strong independent woman that this little shit claimed to be. This infernal youngster, more than ten years junior to the girlfriend and him, had decided that she would throw off her apprehension, protest against superstition about virginity, avail herself of comfort in sport and uninhibited swimming... and all in all make both a personal journey and a political statement in her pants, once a month. Only this afternoon, this destroyer of his peace had arrived, and promptly informed the older sister of her monthly troubles (don't call them that, J.B., there's no shame in saying period!). Accordingly, the well-memorized thirty-character string was put on the way-back-home shopping list, only to be promptly removed and replaced by a whole new kind of product -- available, the older female somehow knew, at just one store in the vicinity, (conveniently?) closer to his return route than hers.

Hence our hero now strode, some ninety steps out of his usual way, past numerous shops lined with rainbows of pads, to that one store that stocked the needs of the slightly up-and-coming, in an attempt to woo the growing mall crowd back to the markets -- Hershey's syrup, Oreo cookies, mayonnaise and, in a shelf placed half-hidden in a corner (unlike the pads displayed in full view) five lonely, nondescript packs of tampons, all the same J&J-owned brand.

Now, as a man who bought pads, our hero was used to it all -- the usual vulgar provocations that his female friends knew all too well, plus off-handed comments due to his gender -- all about his perversion, the character of the woman who sent him out, and his speculated relationship with her. Yet, he thought as he walked home with 20 Regulars and 10 Supers, it had never been so much like a drug deal before. Moments after the shopkeeper had handed a pad pack in a brown bag to a woman beside him, our protagonist had walked up with practised ease and detachment, and discreetly pointed to the tampon shelf. To his surprise, the shopkeeper, all while speaking to other customers, had pushed a bag over to him and signalled him to help himself, and then to place the money on the counter and leave -- they had never exchanged a word!

For some reason, J.B., tampons are more scandalous than pads in a country that is slowly coming to terms with the naturalness of menstruation. Yes, somehow, he felt more judgement in buying them, a bigger accusation of perversion, a greater sense of dirt and wrong -- and the more he thought of it, the more he agreed with the young blot that her Switch was, if she wanted it to be, a very viable political statement. After all, you see J.B., they go inside -- and the worst thing a woman can do is put something inside. Inside, thought our hero as he walked home -- the inside we all came from, the inside to be constantly claimed by men and yet deemed tainted by the same men; the inside that allegedly changed so much under penetration that it was imperative to compare tampons and penises... he believed the brat now, actually. It was totally possible, in this country, for an 'educated' boy to have left her over tampons; believing, via an almost criminal amount of ignorance (our hero felt), that it diminished his masculinity and her 'purity' when 'his woman' puts something else up there. It was also possible, actually, for a mother to have slapped a daughter over wanting to try tampons, fearing she was 'knowing certain things' -- though this second one, he was relieved, was a story of her friend, and had not happened to the precious little sister... of his girlfriend, technically.

In his head, though, the young feminist's J.B. (gangsta for Jamaibabu... how did she come up with this stuff?), had dropped the '-in-law' a long time ago. Next time, he thought to himself, he'd ask for the tampons, in words. That'd be fun to watch, and he'd have a story for the blighted little bleeder...

---------------------

Adulthood 7 : Compromise

Aah life.

==========================
Compromise

Perspective shifts.
The sky exchanges gifts
With those that walk the earth.

Today, I dare say,
I'll take the earth's way
Though it is not mine.

Taking life and spark,
The earth keeps my mark --
And so, freely, I give.

Absorbing all we find,
The earth, to me, will bind --
And so, freely, I live.
==========================

Adulthood 3 : Actuality

More adulthood.

==============================
Actuality

Frankly speaking, human soul,
You will never be machine --
Never precise, forever flawed,
Blurred, scarred, never pristine.

Turn you must, soft soldier mine,
Flat and squat between the cogs;
And never will you be fighting truth
Behind Barbies and Golliwogs

And yet, my sweetest, sleepless self,
Forever and ever will you be strong
For the dead are at your feet
And the dead are never wrong.
==============================

Adulthood 2 : Innovation

Continuing the series.

===============================
Innovation

I smell the rain-washed soil
Of a prehistoric earth;
My bed, a giant fern;
My fellows, giants that came before all;
My friends, microscopic masters
Of life, disease and death.
From the throbbing, pregnant earth
There rises the nascent sun
Red with original sin.

After extinction
A new faith takes birth --
You and I discover
Electricity.
===============================

I must admit, I love misleading my audience.

Shorts 3

This edition of Shorts contains two cue words from readers and one of my own. More cues for writing about are, as always, invited.

The third cue is the one I gave myself. The contributors behind the first two, in order of appearance, are:

• Bishal, an undergraduate student at CMI, a year my senior. He is also a rare male among my fellow Carmelites -- an alumnus of one of the few co-educational Carmel schools in the country. His focus of study lies in Mathematics, and he edits an online English-Assamese Science/Maths magazine called Gonit Sora. In leisure, Bishal is spotted obsessing over superheroes, movies, the occasional anime, and beautiful women.
• Arijit, the Head Boy of Hem Sheela in the term succeeding Nihal's and mine. A Xaverian and student of Commerce, Arijit has a keen taste for oratory and politics, especially political satire. He enjoys non-fiction literature, and is a steady source of world news for anyone who cares to ask. When not sending John Oliver videos and Onion articles to anyone who is online, Arijit is known to drool over Bengali, Punjabi and Mughal cuisine.

To all my readers, as always, I request feedback about my attempts.

--------------------------

Petrichor

There is beauty to the nameless. Also, there is freedom in the lack of warmth and care and love. Sometimes, I think that to be free means to be cold and icy forever. The day you didn't listen to your mother who was worried that you would get a cold -- were you not free? Did you not live that day? Did you not sail boats, did you not hide your tears in the rain, did you not let the water seep through your smile and into your guilty gullet -- rainwater should not be drunk... acid rain... death...? Who cares? Wouldn't you die, if it meant you felt? Would you not leave, if it meant you loved? Would you not cry for a year to feel pure joy for but a day? Are standards so important that we must restrict the beautiful and define the transcendental?

I know three languages, and I could name you in only one -- and so you were home, heart, freedom, memory, soul. But then they had to go and find your English name. They had to define you in the language of slavery and classism and officialdom. They had to internationalise you, make you universal, viral across the internet as another 'relatable' post. And the moment they did that, you were no longer mine.

Yes, the word we use is perfect music -- but did we have to define what we meant, petrichor? Did we have to become public property, shared information, dictionary entry, spelling-bee question? Tell me, petrichor, were we not better without a name?

--------------------------

Rahul Gandhi

Isn't he cuddly?

He is fair (them Italian genes, daadi-gasm!), light-eyed, dimply and a subtle demagogue -- perfect for Prime Minister. So why did he lose?

The answer lies in what we look for in our teddy bears -- do we want a runty teddy that makes squishy noises, or a big furry one that makes gurgly ones? We want our teddies like we want our demagogues -- unashamed in what they do, which is hug and befriend everyone, in every country, at all times. We don't mind if a teddy is a bit old and torn and scary, we still like the bigger teddy. We like confident teddies who are not timid to shoo away the green-white monster under our beds. We like teddies who can coo to the dollies and gollies of other lands and bring us many, many sweets (while calling them by their first names) -- and, most importantly, we want a teddy that is ours. We want our teddy unbeholden to their own Bearclans, and we want them to have bellies big enough to hide two-thirds of HoneyLand's cubs underneath. We want them to save moo-moos and hide Barbies away from bad things -- and RaGa Bear can't do any of this! He can only smile at ladybears and tell us that things will be okay! The janta no longer maafs their teddies for being squishy! We want gurgle, we want muscle, we want prickle, we want Mudi!

Sorry RaGa, but Mudi Bear is our chief. Isn't he bearfect? *glomp*

--------------------------

Stone

Moulded beautifully in flow after flow, in a place where no man dares venture, there lives a solitary wall of stone. Millions of years ago it was soft tissue, throbbing with life, until weight and heat and time turned it hard, dark and, most importantly, potent. As a mass of living cells, the stone would never have lit the fires that it now could. It would never have conjured warmth and spark and war from nothing, like it did now. In losing the flow of life through its body, the stone gained the veneration that is due to the powerful.
As flesh that it was, it lived. As stone that it is, it is loved.

--------------------------

Shorts 2

As I requested in the previous post, my LoudSpeak Listeners have come up with more cue-words for me to write about. Admittedly, not all of these are very short, but compared to the 1500+ words of rants I come up with when left to myself, I'd say they were microscopic.

The pioneering cue-word contributors of this series are:

• Sonakshi, a Physics research scholar from my college (CMI) who also happily turned out to have been associated with an activity from my far past -- The Statesman Voices. When not Physics-ing, Sonakshi paints and takes wonderful photographs, mostly natural compositions within the CMI campus. Since my first semester at CMI, she has been one of the regular supporters of my literary adventures.
• Nihal, a recurring character in this blog, who I believe needs no introduction to regular readers. To newcomers: Nihal volunteered with the Students' Council of HSMS when I was already a member, in Class 11. In Class 12, Nihal and I earned the top posts in the Council, those of Head Boy and Head Girl respectively. Let's just say he wasn't as bad as I thought he was. Across time and space, though no longer colleagues, we remain great friends.
• Ashmita-di, who I am yet to meet in real life. I know her through her mother who, as a teacher in HSMS, was instrumental to my short student life there. Ma'am introduced me to her daughter because she thought the interaction might be fruitful -- and so it was (only to me, I'm afraid) since Ashmita-di patiently reads everything I post and leaves me advice.

The following are my attempts at expanding their cue-words, in the order in which they are named.

------------------------------

Pencil Box

Sometime in high school, I realised that if I wanted, my mother would buy me that fancy quadruple-decker that came with sharpener and eraser-case, and also magnet, compass, pinball, vacuum cleaner, AK-47. When changing schools in Class 11, she asked me to get a good pencil box for the new school, and I knew that financially, it was no big deal to ask for a properly swanky version of the utility (as long as I didn't ask too often). Yet the swanky pencil box never happened, for there was a snag -- I was way too attached to my (t)rusted free gift from Horlicks. For ages, I carried it through school years and board exams. I leaked ink into it until the stains wouldn't go, I hoarded pencil shavings and spent refills in it during my phase of making art with them; its lid was always the makeshift water holder when we 'legally bunked' class to paint charts for school events. My teachers and fellow students made fun of me for carrying it around and not getting a new one, leaving no holds barred including jabs at my socio-economic status -- and I wondered how I would have felt if I really couldn't afford a new pencil box, and how their behaviour contradicted everything we were taught in school about judging people by how fancy their things were.

Eventually, though carried to college and kept as a box for sketch pens and post-its, the old Horlicks box, now discoloured beyond recognition from the old blue-orange-silver and sports pictures, was finally too beaten up to hold its own against the most basic of travel bumps -- and, guilty of spilling all my stationery into my bag about twenty times (and being too small to hold new grown-up things like a stapler and binder clips which I'd never owned separately from my mother's stash before), the Horlicks box was replaced by a double-decker procured by Maa from Navalur -- a neutral-coloured one with an easily removable (as I promptly did) silly sticker. The new one now accompanies me on every academic trip, and is proudly set beside my pillow in ISI Kolkata, basking in glory that I know to be superficial. The old one sits somewhere in my cupboard in CMI, waiting for me to return to it, as we both know I always will.

------------------------------

Debt

debt. noun.

noun: debt; plural noun: debts.

• a sum of money that is owed or due. "Nihal paid off his debts to me for last week's Diet Chewda and juice". synonyms: bill, account, money owed, amount due.
• (in -- debt) the state of owing money. "Nihal bought me ice-cream, so now I am in his debt for ten rupees." synonyms: owing money, in arrears, overdrawn. antonyms: in credit.
• a feeling of gratitude for a service or favour. "I would like to acknowledge my debt to my friend and former colleague Nihal Singh, for being a steadfast sounding board in tumultuous times, for pushing himself to learn a new job, and succeeding spectacularly in cutting in half the phenomenal workload I had come to expect would be mine as Head Girl of HSMS. While a Head Boy did exist, sorry, buddy, but I underestimated you grossly. I underestimated you as a colleague and as a friend, despite having seen the lengths you go to when you put your mind to something (the poor Samsung Champ still weeps at times) -- jokes apart, while life in CMI and its ups and downs may put you out of my mind at times, you are remembered every time I rally a group of people to get something done, because the best times spent doing that job were as a team, with you. Lives do grow larger, with new knowledge and adventure, new achievements and pitfalls -- for that is in the nature of lives; and try as we may, friendships sometimes spread themselves a bit thin over life's ever-expanding canvas. Yet, a daub here and there via the occasional reunion is enough to prevent it from ripping altogether, given that we hold dear the insurmountable debt that comes with being comrades-in-arms and partners-in-crime, a debt that transcends all repayment, all definition, all clarification. As J.K. Rowling aptly writes (of the lead trio in Harry Potter): 'There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.' While I'd not go so far as to compare our adversaries in Council work with mountain trolls, I dare say that the daily grind and frustration of the rather thankless work we had was another of those friendship-cementing things Rowling mentions." synonyms: obligation, liability, gratitude, appreciation, thanks. "I learned much by working with you, and grew much in having you as my friend -- and so you have my lasting gratitude. As I do every year from time to sentimental time, I now wish you good luck for your life in the years to come -- and since there will be no better chance (I have probably exhausted my creative appreciation skills for the week), I wish you a happy birthday in advance. Thanks for everything, buddy! (Fist-bump)"

------------------------------

Apathy

There are those that are blinded by light, and those that are afraid of the dark, and then there are those whose eyes are forever closed to external stimuli -- not the physical eye, perhaps; no, there seems to be no difficulty in paying the rickshaw-puller, answering emails, fixing a meal, making the bed... and at some point paying the rickshaw-puller again -- but the eye that can find light in souls brighter than one's own, the eye that can selfishly pick out the dark souls to shun for the fear of losing one's own brightness, is glossed over in disuse.
These curiously afflicted ones are creatures of the twilight -- they have minds like empty fields, where unfounded machinations grow. They create emotion for sport and necessity (for they have forgotten how to feel them), to store and use in perfect wisdom. Warmth and touch and ice and flowers are all products of the machine that churns out existence, cog grinding on dreary cog, gliding on the vast knowledge of all that is to be felt in order to be human, in order to make others feel just enough to let you live. There is routine, rules, destinations, deadlines -- and so all can see -- but deep beneath the surface of the creature's mind, unseen to all the world, a perverse glory begins to fester. The creature that is stoic to the world swells inside, the glory of knowing all rising until the superficial joy of understanding the known no longer excites. The shoulders stay squared, the chin stays up, the eyes stay bright and the smile shines like there's no tomorrow -- for so the machine crafts the creature's skin, for so the machine knows the creature has to be -- and so the creature lives, quietly swelling with the glory of impervious nothingness.
At times, of course, there are breaches -- holes that break containment and let in frivolities like seeing, believing, liking, loving, dissecting, debating, understanding -- they are quickly filled in with wisdom, of course, for they are no match for the machine and all the things it knows.

------------------------------

Much thanks to the cue-word providers, and I hope I have done justice to your ideas. As always, more ideas are invited.

Shorts

This post is based on the idea of abstractly expanding from a single word or a short phase taken as cue. It is part writing practice, part slice-of-life commentary. For the first post of what I hope becomes a series, my cue words are 'hope', 'love' and 'hurt'. More cue words are invited from readers.

--------------------------
Hope

I hoped that these were the voices. I hoped that it meant nothing. I was sure that, on thinking rationally, I'd change my mind. But no: this was real, this was starkly true. This was happening. It wasn't the voices, it was me; and, try as I might, I wasn't about to change my mind.

--------------------------

Love

There are some people who do not always love the same. They love in bits and pieces, because they know bits and pieces so much better than they know the whole and the healthy. Their love is post-apocalyptic -- it comes in urgent bursts and goes in apathy; it is true when it is the need of the hour, and a sleeping giant otherwise.

--------------------------
Hurt

My body hurts, my mind hurts, everything I ever knew hurts. I'm not telling anyone about this and it hurts, it hurts that I'm not allowed to hurt, that if I hurt I'm going to be made fun of, that the ideas of what it means to be strong are so strong and so wrong that the strong are right and those who hurt are wrong. Wrong, because they are of no use. Wrong, because the world will not notice them gone. Wrong, because when you go to sleep, tired, your heroes stand guard -- and these heroes are never wrong, never hurt -- they are, always and forever, strong.

--------------------------

Possible Series Premiere

==================
Chennai Man

Breakfast bustle;
Cafeteria man
Straining muscle
The best he can.
Girl walks in;
She has a fan,
Flexing muscle
The best he can
(Mathematician man).
Women cleaning
Floors and plates;
Man with water
Strains his brain
On dirty plates
The best he can.
Keyboard debates,
Gamer man;
Keyboard debates,
Music man;
Math debates
What man can..!
Woman survives
(The best she can)
Chennai heat, and
Chennai Man.
==================

The Pep Talk You Wanted But Were Too Ashamed To Ask For, You're Welcome

You will never get what you want in life unless you ask for it. So what if, the last time you tried, you were mocked, betrayed, taken advantage of, and wholesomely trampled on? Does having endured all that make you weaker, or does it make you stronger than ever? At least, now you know that you are capable of being brave, and of taking big risks for the sake of minuscule rewards. So pick that book back up, and read; pick that pen/brush/whatever back up and create!

So you were called an attention seeker because you actively seek human contact; you were called desperate because you had too many friends, or unsocial because you had too few; you were called a pervert/slut because you had too many friends not of your own gender, or orthodox/closeted because you had none; you were called angry and crazy because you had causes you were passionate about; you were called unproductive because you liked to have fun. So what? Did the people who call you that ever live your life as wholly as you have? Did they feel the warmth of your friends, the fire of your passions, the happy tiredness of your feet, the midnight music of your dreams?

They did not; and hence, you are beautiful in a way that not many people other than you can see. Those who can, keep them close; those who can't, thank them for making you stronger; and, make peace with your anger, your hatred, your vengefulness. It does not mean giving in to them, but only to realize that they are normal emotions in your soft little heart that always does its best to defend itself -- and so it must.

So it must, because if you don't defend yourself, no one else will. If you don't love yourself, no one else will. So give yourself a hug and a pat on the back, because you deserve it. Cry on your own shoulder, and smile back at yourself in the mirror of your mind! You are human, you are beautiful, and this too shall pass. So stay blessed, and stay badass.

...

Happy New Year.

You Will Be Taken Advantage Of, You're Welcome (Merry Christmas)

Best read after the original song or story.

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The Real Reindeer Story

Preface: human kids are weak,

Unprepared for morbid truth;

So they made this a carol

To motivate and sooth

All children who are bullied,

And it works like a charm;

And since Santa loves human kids

We're sure they're safe from harm.

Adults, on the other hand,

Are used to the gory,

So, for transparency's sake,

Here's the longer story.

When this story started,

Rudolph was really tiny

And folks began to notice

How his nose was red and shiny.

Keeping with societal rules,

Like everything unique,

Rudolph's red nose got him banned

From every deer-school clique.

So Rudolph ran to his Mum;

She said, holding him close:

"Rudolph, one day, I tell you,

They'll love you for your nose."

Strengthened by his Mother's words

Rudolph grew bigger, better;

Meanwhile, his big, shiny nose

Grew redder and redder.

When Rudolph was twenty-one

Santa came to say

"Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

We're taking you away.

My scientist elves will work on you

And find the red-nose gene

And soon enough, noses like yours

Will become routine.

Until then, Rudolph, my son,

With your nose so bright

I'd like it if, on Christmas Eve,

You acted as my light;

We'll care for your parents

So you needn't worry."

The deer-school bully added,

"And you'd better hurry."

And so, to make a story short,

Trembling in fear and pain,

Rudolph's folks bid him goodbye

And never saw him again.

Now, hundreds of years thence,

When Santa flies his sleigh

A Red-Nosed Reindeer guides him

Up, up and away.

We're sure it can't be Rudolph

(No reindeer lives that long)

So we did some research

For purposes of this song;

The Head Elf only told us,

"All deer who you see leading

Are hundred percent Red-Nosed

Via selective breeding."
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You're Not Alone, All Plans Fail, You're Welcome

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Conflict

My heart was new and tender red

And the world left it alone.

My heart was set in hard concrete

And the world sent flowers, soft;

My heart was then encased in stone

And the world hurled all things nice.

My heart was set with spikes of steel

And the world let all things slide.

Then I set it at halfway point

And the world ran swiftly by.

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Your Daily Dose Of Reality, You're Welcome

Best read after the original (full version).

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Yours Celestially

Twinkle twinkle, little star...
...why'd you have to be so far,
Smiling down from a big blue dome
At a sobbing child in a broken home:

A parent ill, and another gone
To a place that no sun shines upon?
That shameful day, could not your light
Help the toddler in that fight

'Gainst the traveller in the dark
Huffing away at childhood's spark;
Or the woman, gagged and bound
And naked, on the roadside found?

In the dark blue sky you keep
While, through windows, perverts peep.
Poor men die as rich men kill;
You stay twinkling, distant still.

But not for long, for people wake
Soon they'll know how starlight's fake --
So twinkle, twinkle, selfish star!
Now the world knows what you are.
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Light Cone

When the distance displayed on the taxi's fare-meter changes from .00 to .01, you know you are off, yet again. For an instant, you wonder how quickly your heart switches from homesickness to wanderlust and back again, but that feeling is soon overwhelmed by your love for the dynamic, the ever-changing.

Out of sight does not mean out of mind, but it sure helps -- and you are not sure that it is a good thing. Distance, like peat, absorbs the dead fronds of painful familiarity, but from time to time it drags in healthy tissue: alive and kicking and writhing in denial, the sweetest of your memories begin to take an effort to recall. You comfort yourself saying that you will be back, but immediately after, you ask yourself: where? Not when, but where -- and you don't know; because at either end of your journey lies home.