Starlight and Moonshine

  Dear Mr Henshaw A girl once asked me what my favourite book was. I told her it was 'Jane Eyre' so she wouldn't be repulsed by what I truly had to say. In all honesty, I can't remember the last time someone asked me about my favourite book and I answered the question correctly.  It's 'Dear Mr Henshaw' by Beverly Clearly. They don't make books like those anymore, those whose words are enough to drown you in its lamp of sorrow but also make you the happiest you've ever been. I re-read it every year around Christmas, not so much because I miss it, but because I'm afraid if I stop reading it, I'll forget about it. Isn't that what we're all terrified of? To forget more than to be forgotten? I often wonder if its so much about the book or the keepsakes that came with it. A little bit of both maybe.  Perhaps its the certainty of suffering an already acquainted fate. With books and people both. Beggings of a familiar grief. Better a known hu...

You're not like other girls. you're different. he says. what he won't spill is how he would relish your taste till you sucked dry like the other girls he poisoned. So you yearn for his touch and ask him if your love is too much. You beg and cry and cry and beg. You unlearn your story and carve his name instead.  You see glory in his eyes and warmth in his arms. Warmth is good till it isn't. till his skin begins to burn yours. till his mouth tastes of unfulfilled vows and things he never told you.  So you learn and unlearn. You forgive and pray. You keep his secrets muffled with cries of poisoned apples. the 'rotten ones', the 'prudes', the 'sluts'.  You laugh at his jokes and read his books. till the words you knew, you forget. till the poems, you sang look back at you and fade.  You draw blood with rusty fingers and hope it's enough to satiate him. Enough for you to dig your grave and bury yourself with the pile of his 'conquests' Yo...

 father, your warmth burns my wings. you name it humility, I call it restraint  The women in my house learnt to bury their graves with their fidelity. They smell of death and misery.  I have died a hundred deaths, my mother a thousand. Perhaps these are the deaths women die every day before they're truly dead. my mother's love faded through the ends of time, she lost herself and became a graven statuette of an ideal woman. There are times she lets me in, where her nostalgia has built its own cities and towns, where the day no longer breaks and the night never settles. I look for my mother but instead, I find only a mirror. tired and trembling. lost in uncharted destinies and beggings of belief. who were you mother before you birthed me? before your heart made mine? before your split yourself open for another? women are their mother's daughters with smiles that unfold revolutions and end wars.  ~ Who was your mother before she was your mother?  - Arshia 

~excerpts~ i. There are forgotten pasts in me whose corpse chokes my throat till my mouth tastes of iron and ash. My bones feel hollow without you breathing your name down my spine. How do you let go of someone who refuses to leave? ii. The women in my house learnt to bury their graves with their fidelity. They smell of death and misery. iii. There are pieces in me of the people I've loved and lost. I can only find them in my dreams now as I look for excuses to think about them a little more, to steal dainty moments with them. I wonder if they dream of me too; if I became the muse to their poetry or the afflatus to their songs.  iv.  On days like these when the sun refuses to shine and the cold feeds on your miseries, I hope there are people, and cities and nights that make you fall in love with life again v. I sit with a heavy heart brimming with regrets and a mind dripping in memories. Look how we've grown old friend. Are you still there? Will you still listen when I tell yo...

  Life is imperfect. Life is Scary. Life is electrifying. Life is everything you want it to be. You and your friends, drinking away the nights, smoking away the days, dreaming about the good old times are just a small part of a big chaotic universe. You have a burning rage, a heart torn apart like the pages of an old Victorian novel, roaring agony that you hold so dear. You wear facades of happy to veil the shades of gloom and despair. You tell her you talk less when you feel so timorous and sweat oceans of fear. You hold her so dear, so close, so near, you feel her love laden breath on your beating heart. But your friends warn you this is just the beginning. The quiet before the storm. The change before the norm. The rain before the hurricane. You listen, you fathom. Is this the beginning of the end? Over the bustling streets of Mumbai, the beating hearts of the Chaiwallahs, and the loud thunder of the rain, you hear your thoughts. The lights of the night fade away, the chai...

" Love runs through your blood, " they say. " But how do I force your ways of loving onto myself? " she questions.    Today was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. The smell of sugar-coated Rosh Gullas fills the house as the mashis spend their nights chattering away. The bride-to-be puts on facades of happiness to mask away from the horror and terror. She wipes away her frowns to erase days of torture, puts on the bright red saree and hides the broken pieces of herself, and strokes the raven black kajal as tears flow free like an overflowing sea. The groom has arrived. She is happy, or so everyone thinks.  Perhaps the trouble with her groom will always be that he is a man. Amma told her it was her ruin, Baba didn't care. They told her love was a phase and her truths were all childhood lies. Her love wasn't real. How violent is it to love someone with every inch of your body only to realize what you started was never meant to be whole. She questi...