LIVE. LOVE.

 My friend says my hate for people who pluck flowers

and my love for eating meat 

is contradictory.

Maybe this explains how 'the survival of the fittest' rule 

was never supposed to concern with nature love.

The Darwinian evolutionary theory could never sound beautiful

to a nature lover!

Standing on the fitter side of the species

and in the process of making sense of his surroundings,

Darwin's call wasn't about how you're supposed to love nature.

It was, in turn, how you were supposed to live in it.

So when we say we can do great things 

in the name of love,

let's sit back and think again of how to live with it. 

Mediocrity

 Mediocrity says "love me, love my dog", 

and I agree with this stipulation,

not because it's common sense,

but because I had my match made in heaven already.

Brilliance has had the audacity to ask me for a dance 

a couple of time by now,

and every time that I've refused,

I see him dancing with girls who refused the state of denial.

But denial is the safe zone,

as 'reaching up to my full potential'

will not be

'living the only life I've got',

which does not mean that I don't believe in my religion

that boasts about reincarnation,

but it means my religion allows me to question anything.

I've tried to question my relationship with mediocrity 

and often I've met denial 

along with certain lame appearances of fear and laziness,

which means that the answer to my rightful question is

'safe zone is denial'.

Mediocrity makes me think in my mother tongue 

and write in a foreign language.

It makes me go to poetry slams without learning my poems.

It makes me understand how morality between good and bad doesn't exist.

It makes me feel 'almost happy' all the time.

I face mediocrity as I face life -

one day it will end, but not today. 

How often do you change cities?

 Do you change cities often?

How long does it take you to familiarise with a new city?

Every city has it’s own walk, you see.

They talk different. 

People stand at a different distance from you. 

How long does it take you to call the lane outside your rented room as ‘my road?’

Will it ever be?

How long does it take you to call it a home?

How far do you go to make it one?

Or do you even try?

Or have you already tried and failed? And now you’re looking for humans whom you can call home.

Did you find one?

Or two?

Three, maybe?

Do you know them all?

Yes? Are you really sure? You guys don’t share genes, you see. Comprehensions wouldn’t coordinate. 

Are you guys sipping tea every morning? 

Sharing a cigarette, perhaps? 

Or are your week offs spent drunk, high on weed, contemplating on beliefs that won’t be remembered again?

Do you know the difference between how they speak to their family and how they pretend themselves to the world? Or is it the other way round?

They might be crying right now. Yeah, right now, 

over a text 

or an emotional movie 

or their boss’s harangue, 

or their parents not talking anymore,

or someone they’ve recently lost,

or had lost years ago but remember as if it were just yesterday,

or a lost watch maybe

but mainly because of a text.

So do you really know them?

Oh wait, do you let them know yourself?

Are your walls high 

or do you crave for human connection?

Or does it work both ways for you?

Or did you once believe that humans could actually connect but now you’ve given up?

You still got hope?

Or has your idea of life become pretty practical that involves saying ‘fuck it’ a million times in 36 hours? 

Do you think this is lame?

Or are you simply drunk?

Stoned?

Confused?

Yet confident about yourself?

Do you even know yourself?

Can you ever?

We change, ma’am. We change a lot.

Every city that you live in, is change.

You’ll understand so much about the city but you won’t know anything.

New city is a new you.

How long does it take you to familiarise with a new city? How long to know your newer self?

So tell me,

do you change cities often?

My room's stopped clock

 'Human-ness' and 'Natural-ness' of every soul on this planet continues to baffle me.

Is being human, natural?

Or once you acquire the state of staying natural, you don't remain human anymore?

Being human is a two-second smile,

an awkward hug,

a sandcastle waiting for the waves.

It is the word 'always' that means 'whenever you feel like it'

Being human is to hold your own pen in your hand,

while letting other sapiens write your story 

and hating every paragraph of it.

It is to first appreciate every life, 

every object, 

every feeling,

and then to put them into toys and play war.

Being human is to think.

To think that you're the one with a good heart and no one else.

To think 'life's fair' and to shed tears every time it's not.

To think of how I AM and WILL BE and STILL AM.

To think every human has a heart and how it's every beat has been overrated.

Being human is to do mistakes and seek validation instead of rectification.

It is to make memories that were always meant to be forgotten.

It is to listen to songs that you can't relate to and then to laugh at human stupidity.

It is to be kind, generous, caring, and nice 

just because these words have been written under 'good traits' in our books. 

I've realized that if I say "I am human",

I'm actually saying "I don't belong to this planet anymore."

I say this because when my room's clock stopped,

the trees outside my window were swaying anyway.

There's Poetry in Science

 Of all the confusion it offers, 

Science has been sane enough to teach me this one little but intriguing fact,

millions of tiny things have always assembled to form something huge,

and if we are able to control the tiny stuff,

the bigger stuff automatically gets in our hands -

play with the genes and the whole tissue starts behaving differently!

change the substrate given to a bunch of cells and see how the product modifies!

Electrons, protons, and neutrons make small atoms,

atoms make up molecules,

molecules combine to form compounds,

these compounds when arranged strategically make cells,

and cells make up the living.

But once a cell is made,

though we already know which tiny stuff have combined to make it,

we still are far behind on finding how these work together to perform functions that are next to miracles.

How 'the tiny' have worked together to create 'the huge' 

is forgotten every time something huge is created. 

Maybe that's how people make themselves to be.

Slowly,

in tiny bits,

one habit after another,

until they become something that they themselves can't give meaning to. 

Crest and Trough

End.

Feel the end,

of a mistake,

of a disguise,

of a time,

of sights,

smiles,

blues,

songs,

streets,

reasons, 

faith, 

and science.

Feel the end,

the end of it all.

Forgive,

it all. 

All!

Kind hearts are used sashes,

labelled ‘sensitive’,

and feathers get heavy,

if you think enough.

We lack on tales with morals.

We couldn’t keep.

We once camouflaged among shadows,

hunt us without the light.

We’ve choosen to stay quiet,

within trapped doors,

But Oh lord,

silence does feel,

and silence shall never tell.

A human body can’t do so much,

as a human brain can feel.

But we were never meant to stack,

so, dear you,

release!

Let go.

Be free.

Discover.

Feel the wind.

Find your cape.

Fly.

Begin.

24

24 is a Wednesday,

a ghost maybe,

or an unnoticed PMS.

You’d call it mid-twenties,

or the age when the next thing you’ll turn out to be is 25.

It’s a tangent on the circle of life, 

It’s like the day after your birthday,

you don’t remember what you do when you’re 24, you see!

In 10th class, my maths teacher suggested me not to keep a watch on my study table.

“Don’t keep a clock in your room either”, she said,” it makes you think about how long you should study.”

So when I removed my clock,

half an hour would sometimes feel like two hours,

while often, three hours would finish in just an hour!

That’s when I realised humans were never meant to keep a check on time.

In that empty room, with nothing but you with your books,

you start to sense the feeling of nothingness of a minute.

You start to feel how slow this life could have been if not for every tick tock tick tock tick tock (pun intended).

The moment you take your eyes off the clock,

you don’t realise how long is a “how long?”

There’s a lot of time,

loads of it left out like Sunday mornings; cherished, 

but left out! So even if there’s lots of it left, you start feeling as if it’s running out.

Maybe that’s how 24 is.

It’s a room without a clock.

Empty, yet full of thoughts.

Slow, yet running out for something.

Silent.

Something in the making.

Ready to be 25.