Why I Philosophise

You know how once you leave home

what you miss

is 

what you cherish. 

Maybe that is how it is for them;

The freedoms once lost

missed greatly, 

But only by those that lost them. 

I will never know how it feels to spend years calling gulag home.

I will never know what to write to my mother from an Indian prison in 1976. 

I will never know the smell that comes with marching troops, falling houses and empty classrooms. 

And so I will philosophise and theorise 

I will attempt to unravel that which makes wolves out of men

I will write about morality and law and constitutions

Hoping,

To prevent little kids from the losses of my ancestors.

Using,

The reasons of the fortunate to cure the maladies of the oppressed. 

Knowing,

The futility of my pursuit. 

Being human

How is it

That we believe in magicians who walk on water

But find no truth in the carcass of the boy

Who went from chasing kites to chasing a chance to live?

How is it

That our tears respond to Will Smith’s pursuit of happiness

But see through the performance of the girl

Who sees food in every rose she sells?

How is it

That superheroes exist only in imagination?

When did

How we looked to the world become more important than

How we saw the world?

When did

Kindness and Empathy

Go out of fashion?

When did

Machines become more human.

One day at a time

Breaths shorter than the time it takes to cry for help.

Heavy, heavy:

Like sand - heavy and hard to catch. 

Heavy, heavy:

The weight of the ocean - heavy and all around. 

Heavy, heavy:

Guilt, Shame, Hopelessness - blocking the air, crowding her lungs. 

Eyes try to water the parched lips,

The beverage derails. 

The lips part

To let the light in - the oxygen at the end of the tunnel. 

Heavy from existing

The lips close,

Dragging her forehead to the ground. 

‘One day at a time’, 

says he. And like Houdini,

The breath breaks free. 

She’ll be fine. 

Peace

The house craves the night,
There is silence, she can think.

This is not the silence of a Bengali novel,
there is no battered clock, no rhythmic shuffling of feet.
The wind doesn’t rustle, no early risers bustle.
If a lover mourns for his beloved, the air conditioners muffle, 
All sound.

This is not the silence of death, 
Books - half read, earmarked - lay strewn on the table.
The mobile - like a car abandoned for a beautiful view - keeps blinking.


The silence is temporary.
Her thoughts dance on the walls,
Changing the universe, saving the world.
Silent victories echo in the halls.


And then they wake up,
Footsteps, songs.
The silence makes way for routine.
And the routine, for Peace.

The house prefers Peace.
The house, then, sleeps.

x

A world without mirrors

A world without mirrors

Four girls in a room – the quintessential makeup of a coming of age movie – scribbling

The script.

With one eyebrow raised, Nostradamus stands amused

At the pacts they’ve made over pizza.

Between the Present and the Promise, Presumption stands

Silent and brooding,

Like Adulthood.

Rules of fashion run deeper than the Rules of kindness,

The room is big enough (just about)

For the Rules of friendship to quell the tide.

Adulthood greets at the door,

The script has taken a life of its own.

The Pact surfaces,

Like a message in a bottle floating near enough (just about) for you to see.

Presumption stares out of the mirror, you don’t like what it says;

But the room isn’t big enough anymore

To run away from the reflection.

So you stay. 

Silent and brooding,

Wishing for a world without mirrors,

Objects in the mirror are farther than they appear.