Pens and Pages

You're all words, When it is your death. For people by then Would have forgotten How to love you, again. They would remember You not, for your deeds Were forgotten too soon. You lived on the smell Of ephemeral cigarettes, On the taste of bitter beer And the whiskey that burns Your guts as it vanishes. What is it that you'll leave behind? Your beauty was forgotten When you succumbed To the wrinkles of aging. Your smile is no longer charming When you hide the gum That misses a tooth. So what is that you'll leave behind? Probably, those words, Never spoken, Only written down, On the bark of a tree To be read by strangers Who know nothing about your struggle. And when the tree dies, And the soil embraces your words, Probably it is then That your soul will rest As your words will finally leave love For the soil, That you couldn't.

It was more fearful than I imagined and I screamed my heart out... But once the hardest part of jumping off was done, it was a wonderful experience... Now I know fear is natural, so is screaming... That fear can turn you into a timid person who backs off at the last moment... But when you overcome what's pulling you back, you know you're much more than who you know you are - you're infinite. I'm the river and the mountains, The calm and the hurricane, I'm the fear and the fearless, I'm more than just enough, I'm infinite... Photos taken during Bungy Jumping at Jumpin Heights, Shivpuri

Feed my soul, Cover my skin, Save me from the grave I dug for myself. The dark deep pit, It's labyrinthine corridors, My own serpentine silhouette, Slithers around my neck. I crave for a single breath. Air, please. Feed my body, Its desires are strange. Feed my soul And cover my skin. Dirt, everywhere. Is thy soul too stale? Mercy, please. Save me from the wounds Of falling from paradise. Cover my naked skin. Save me from the grave In the pits of inferno, The grave I dug for myself.

May be I finally understand now or may be I never will... She escapes a country to find herself in another. The rummage, she knows, can never be over. Perhaps one life is not enough to find one's true home. You travel to places, you seek comfort, you travel the entire world just to find a sign of it. Perhaps this world is not enough. Another world, another life or may be just another day could be it. May be now I understand why he has given up trying to chase his dreams, why he has finally given in to mere dreaming. The world is too realistic for him to be. Dreaming is comfort. He travelled the world to find his home - not the home where his family would be, but where he could sleep peacefully. He now knows his fears aren't real and so his scars. He hides behind those scars, while in another country, she wears her scars proudly and continues her rummage. She is living her dream, albeit unhappy. But he, he knows his dreams are more real than his fears. And someday, in their ...

It’s difficult to cope up with new words being added on to our dictionaries as we grow up – some we use, some we do not, some we understand, some we ignore. It was in 2009, when I started my B.E., that a new word was added to my vocabulary – “Maal”. To reach the bus-stop, that was only around 500m away from the College building, you need to walk past the boys’ hostels lined up on the way adjacent to the building. And if you’re alone (provided, you’re a girl) or with a bunch of other girls, your ears are sure to echo with the chants of the word “maal” coming from those hostels. It was scary on the first few days, so scary that you feel like running to the bus stop as fast as you can. After a few days it became more embarrassing than scary – you feel like you’re being noticed, you feel conscious about yourself, you wonder if your clothes are revealing your contours, you cover yourself well with your dupatta and walk on. Eventually, we started taking a “Tempo” (sort...

Writers don't move on. They make love with solitude, They take sorrow in their arms. They run their fingers down grief's spine. They touch words gently And force themselves on a river of tears. They let masochism win; so when they bleed, It's Utopia for them. Writers don't move on. They stumble on memories. They recall something that was eons ago. They embrace regrets And make love with retrospection. And when they do, They make memories their concubine, And then they sleep on past's lap, Because they're writers And writers don't move on...

You're a poem, And one day, I will write you too; I'll bleed you out On the blank pages of my past, I'll read them aloud Till forever they last. But you're a poem, And you'll not last long, And one day, I'll end you too; You'll move on To another poet; I'll remember you Like the abandoned lines Of a forgotten verse. And may be then we shall meet, On the other side of those pages, On the other side of the blue ink, On the other side of someday.