Oblivion

What would you like to be remembered by?
The tune you hummed late into the night,
The perfume you wore every time,
Your favorite chocochip ice cream on a summer’s eve,
Or a picture of you buried beneath a pile of books that you left behind?

What would you like to be remembered by?
The prizes you won and the medals you donned,
The game you lost by that one dreadful shot,
A card you made for a friend in fourth grade,
Or that painting you love, hanging on your bedroom wall?

What would you like to be remembered by?
That day when you forgot your lines on stage,
The applause you received for trying nonetheless,
A meal you prepared that everyone enjoyed,
Or that old blue sweater you wore on chilly winter nights?

What would you like to be remembered by?
The name given to you when you came into this world,
An identity you acquired by being related to your loved ones,
The title with which you retired on your last day of work,
Or as a fond memory in the hearts of your near and dear ones?

The desire to be remembered is seldom met,
The love you receive during your lifetime is the greatest reward you can ever get,
Once an important piece in the lives of people who remembered your name,
The bitter truth is that you matter only as long as you are still in the game.

The tune may be forgotten, the perfume may fade,
The ice cream may melt away, and that picture of you buried deeper into the shelves.
Neither your victories nor your losses may matter anymore.
The card you made will probably be lost, and perhaps the painting you loved, given away.

That play may become a distant memory, and the meal forgotten by the very next day.
The old blue yarn unravelled into a fuzzy little bundle for children to play.
Your name and your titles may all slip away one by one,
And you may live a little longer only as memories in the hearts of your loved ones, before they too fall into oblivion.

Imposter

For the longest time now, I have had these two voices in my head:

One that celebrates my joys with me, that pushes me to be the best version of myself.
One that believes in me and helps me be at peace with the life I have managed to build for myself.
One that sticks with me when things don’t go as I had planned,
One that is proud of me for being who I am.

The other one, a bit louder than the one before, has always shown up uninvited to ask the same question for a long time now:

“Do I belong here after all?
Have I really earned this, or has it always been a happy accident, a fluke, luck by chance?
Have I worked hard enough to be where I am, or am I just another imposter trying to belong with the ones around?”

This is a voice so strong that it makes itself heard even admist all the reassurances and all the applause.
One that feels like a heavy weight tugging at my feet, as if trying to save me from being too happy at all costs.
One that makes even the tiniest of celebrations feel like a sham,
One that makes me doubt who I am.

I do not have an answer to the question, maybe I never will.
Perhaps the other voice in my head is louder only because I favour it?
Maybe I have surprised my younger self with who I have become,
Maybe the voice is a remnant of that younger doubtful self that has always been uncertain of what she will become.

Pieces

The Human heart yearns permanence.
The idea of holding on to something tangible,
The idea of being surrounded by and living in a world of constants.
Constants that we have placed so carefully in our lives, like the pieces of a chessboard that defend the king.
We find solace and security among these very pieces.
Pieces that we keep losing with every fleeting moment. 
Pieces that were meant to hold our lives together,                                                                             
Not leave behind a crumbling fortress.
We fail to see that each one of them are also donning a crown in their respective spaces.
Surrounded by pieces they believe are placed just right, to bring a smile on their faces.
The many pieces in our world have worlds of their own.
With goals and challenges, ambitions and insecurities just like our own.
We can not place the burden of our expectations on the people who surround us.
We can not expect them to help us hold our forts while they are struggling to keep their pieces together.
So the next time you find someone drifting away from your life,                                                                
Remember that you too were once an important piece in another person’s life.
Life is temporary and the pieces never constant.
Some old and others new, but every time that the board is set, you will find yourself complete in the company of all your required pieces.

Promises

Do not be there for me, just because you had promised to.
It is sad when promises are not fulfilled, but sadder still that you found them necessary to be bound to.

What is a promise if not a crutch to the one you make it to.
A crutch to hold on to, a hope that you will definitely make it.

What is a promise if not a whip that forces you to do something.
A whip that will make sure you do the work, even when you would clearly not have the will to.

Do not promise me anything as I would not be able to promise anything to you.
But I will be there for you whenever you need me,
Not because of a promise I made, but because I really would want to be there for you.

Speak out

I know it’s dark there and the lights have burnt out.
You are scared, you are weary, you are completely lost.
The end is far from sight and you have lost sight of where you had begun.
You find yourself plunged into a deep void from which you can never return.

You look around and find yourself completely alone.
Nobody to turn to and no ray of hope.
A silence so deafening you wish you could flee.
You look out for the stars and long to be free.

You are caged, you are trapped, you are pinned down.
Ironically by the weight of your very own thoughts.
So many stories untold and a thousand words unsaid.
Speak out your mind before there is hardly anything left to be said.

The longest break.

We had always wanted a break, didn’t we?
A break from our mundane lives, a break from the faces we see.
A break from the everyday hustle, a break from our never-ending routine.
A break from the noises around us, a break from waking up each morning only to face our insecurities.

Well that break is here, quite different than that we had wished for,
A break so abrupt, none of us would have ever thought of.
The faces are fading away and the silence is deafening,
The uncertainty around us seems frightful and deadening.

Each day begins with a new battle, each night ends in prayer.
The newspapers are masked with stories of separation and despair.
There is fear and anxiety, helplessness and chaos.
There is a looming misery of separation and loss.

Its time to count our blessings, be grateful for all that we have got today.
It’s time to stand for one another as we silently fight our battles each day.
Never knew that being normal would be so underrated until today.
How I wish I could go back to my good old normal everyday .

Dear Me,

You’ve been through lows, you’ve been through highs, and then you’ve been in times when you just didn’t want to try.

You have surprised yourself and you have let yourself down,

You have come a long way but you still have to go a long way now.

You met so many new people and made so many memories along the way,

Some sweet and others bitter but all lessons that will stay.

You should neither be sorry that you are a changed me , nor try to change if you do not want to be a new me.

So to all the me’s that I have been and to all the me’s that I will be, you may change but at the heart you will still be me.

New year’s resolution

The new year is just around the corner,
The festivities have begun.
It’s time to revisit all our unfulfilled resolutions,
and increase their deadline by yet another year.

Pick up that book, get on that flight, learn to play that guitar, or bake that cake right.
Let us not burden this new year with past guilts, let us not wait to begin something new until this year wilts.

Let not our aspirations be defined at the stroke of the midnight,
Let not our goals be defined by the years,
Let’s be true to ourselves this time and not pen down resolutions to which we are never going to return.

This new year, listen to your heart and do whatever feels right to you,
Not because there is a new calendar on the wall, but because you exactly know what’s best for you.

Stranger

There is yet another train at the station today,
yet another set of faces.
Some happy, some sad, and some aimlessly gazing into a distance.

They look through me once again today,
like I’m not there at all, like I was never there.
I stand there playing my little game, guessing where they are headed to and why they have to go there.

The twinkle in his little eyes tell me that he can not wait to see his grandmother.
The paleness of her face suggests that she might have lost someone very dear.

The family I see there is apparently shifting to a new city,
carrying suitcases in which they have managed to pack all their fond memories.

Each one is fighting their own battle in some way or the other.
They are all in the same train but their journeys, so different from each other.

This station is a destination for some and just another milestone for the others.
Their faces are all unknown to me and yet their emotions somehow so familiar.

Amidst all the noise and clutter, I stand still as the trains pass by one after the other, and wonder if anyone would ever pause for a moment to acknowledge this stranger.

Count your blessings

It’s funny how you and I, can sometimes be so pessimistic by nature.
How we cling on to our losses, our failures.
How we celebrate our happiness while it lasts, but carry the burden of our mistakes forever.
How it takes one little pain to turn our smile into a frown, but so much more effort to pull ourselves back together.
How we focus all our energy to strengthen one of our weaknesses and overlook the many other strengths within us.
How that one blot of ink on a white shirt always manages to catch our attention,
and that one person who forgets to join us in our happiness manages to ruin all our celebration.
How we waste our today worrying about the unforeseen problems of tomorrow, and spend each new day regretting about what more could have we achieved before.
Let’s not be over critical of ourselves and the world around us.
Let’s count our blessings and be more grateful for everything that belongs to us.
Let’s worry a little lesser and laugh a lot harder today.
Let’s spread some positivity and make the world a better place.

“News”

We are consuming an overwhelming amount of information on a daily basis
and yet the world around us is so dynamic,
that we still fear missing out on something every minute, even now as we speak about it.

The phone, an integral part of all of us today,
makes sure that we are aware of every little story and every pointless debate.
Be it a friendship between two celebrities or a feud, we know it all.
Sometimes, even before it has actually happened.

News chanels on the other hand,
having to do a much tougher job of competing with daily soaps on the idiot box,
have mastered the art of presenting half baked truths with an icing of personal bias,
creating sensational breaking news.


It is amusing how we wake up every morning to misleading newspaper headlines,
which paint yet another version of the so called truth that we had just managed to process from the day before.
Between all this chaos and confusion, the actual information is passed on like a game of chinese whispers,
and the news which finally reaches us,
is far from any truth whatsoever.

Snakes & Ladders

My turn has come and I roll the dice.
I smile and take those steps that shall take me to greater heights.
My opponent tries out his luck, falls farther behind.
This game belongs to me, and victory is near in sight.

Last few steps and then I shall succeed.
I roll the dice once again, hoping to continue my journey towards victory. I check the number on the dice disbelievingly. There has to be something wrong! I tell myself frantically.

The game is brutal, to say the least.
I slide down to find myself among my shattered dreams.
He rolls the dice and cries out with joy.
I grumble as I see him scale new heights.

Within no time I see him reach where I was.
Will he succeed this time or fall is my only concern right now.
With a heavy heart I wait anxiously for the dice to roll, but he cheerfully gets up from his seat and says that he wants to play no more.

I remind him that the game isn’t finished yet and to give up so close to winning, is nothing short of foolishness.
He smiles and says this is where he had always wanted to reach. He is content that he has achieved his victory and was never aiming to be, where I had dreamed to be.

In that moment I realized that I was playing the game of life, where every success and every failure was going to be just mine.
Ladders are chances which I can choose to take or forfeit.
Snakes, failures that are lessons for me.

Life isn’t a competition and there is no final victory.
It is up to us to celebrate our own little accomplishments and overcome our own dreadful fears along the journey.
So the next time a dice is rolled and there’s a ladder in front of you,
It is for you to decide if you really want to climb it, or to let it go.

Growing up :(

Looking out of my window, once again I see the airplane which I used to wave at.
Only this time, it somehow fails to grab my attention.

I look up at the beautiful night sky, but now the enchantment in the twinkling of the stars, is lost somewhere between the laws of refraction.

Once again I visit the zoo, where I had spent hours together laughing incessantly at the monkey trying to imitate me,
but this time I am angered by the very thought of keeping these mute victims in such condition.

I pass by the store and see all these colorful candies, but this time I return home empty handed, counting calories.

The weather turns cloudy once again, but instead of making paper boats, I criticize the condition of the roads and anticipate the problems that the rain might cause.

I go to the science fair expecting to be spellbound as before.
Only this time I am thoroughly bored because I know the science behind it all.

Logic and reason has brought me far away from the ignorant and curious kid that I was, and I am sure when I agreed on growing up, this was definitely not what I had signed up for.

It is okay!

It is okay to not know where you want to be.
It is okay to not know what you want.
It is okay to be unsure of things.
It is okay to not know it all.

It is okay if you can not match their pace.
It is okay to be at the bottom of the ladder and not know if you will ever make it to the top.
It is okay if you spent your entire life planning an escape, only to find yourself completely lost.

Life is not a strategy, no that is not how it works.
The more you plan it, the more you get stumped.
So lay down all your cards on the table, and let the magic unfold.
Just hang in there, and someday you will be able to connect all the dots.

Taking the first step…

I was always fond of writing but could never muster the courage to put my thoughts out there for everyone to see. I have finally decided to pen them down in the form of poetry. Hope you find this relatable and hang in there with me through the course of this journey.