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. 

Are you human?

Some times,

Some things, 

don’t have meaning,

and that’s okay,

for ‘the whence’ and ‘the hence’ are sometimes mere thieves looking for hearts within us all. 

And I’m sure, they don’t find many, 

as we have evolved habits that keep our hearts safe from thieves.

We have made lockers of our own veins, they camouflage.

But I’ve seen cages loose their disguise,

as why, when you step out of your home and walk among strangers to get to a place that you hate, you feel all the strangers around you are doing the same.

Why, you can’t help a limping old lady because you’re getting late for office, but then you smile at the stranger who stops and helps her.

Why, the old lady will never know of you but she’d smile at you anyway.

Why, you’d smile too while screaming inside your head “take care of yourself”

Why, smiles are essentially hearts talking in codes.

Why, some situations demand a thousand words to describe when they could be detailed in just three or less.

Why, you can remember the exactness of the curves of someone’s smile but not the colour of their t-shirt.

Why, homes made of flesh and bones never suffocate,

‘cause some humans were only meant to be felt.

Boy, I’ve seen cages break their veins,

so every time you’d keep yourself from saying ‘I love you’ to the people you love, I hope they’d understand. 

Why, some people write,

while some choose to read. 

Why, a cigarette in one hand and a pen in another provides enough numbness to write down poetry about what was it like exactly at this hour last year.

Why, putting words to moments feels just as good as reading them from books.

Why, Bukowski failed well and thus wrote well.

I’ve seen the glance shared by two people reading the same book in a book store, so I’ve seen the wreck they can do to our cages.

Some times,

Some things, 

don’t have meaning,

and that’s okay.

So, keep searching for the meaningless,

that’s exactly where the humans are.

Let’s know how all of it feels like

Staring at the walls, 

we've laughed on each other enough.

Now, let's speak out loud instead.

Let's not look into poems and songs anymore. They speak of old drunk men and women, too high to be us.

Let's speak out loud instead,

Of what our brains know,

and what our eyes have believed,

Of bad faces and good quotes

and white rocks and red leaves. 

With sound waves carrying such words,

we'd do better than the drunkards did.

Staring at the walls, 

we've laughed on each other enough.

Let's speak out loud instead.

Tell me about the place where you go each time you read a metaphor.

Tell me about the black outs on watching the morning light.

Tell me about that word whose literal definition just doesn't seem right. For when that word drops by in sentences, you always tend to grab a different meaning. 

And I'll tell you that your interpretation is much more beautiful.

Tell me what you don't want to know.

Tell me about that regretful Yes and that guilty No.

Tell me how you'd feel when you'll see a little child smiling on your face with cannula on his hands and tubes around his body? Will you smile back at the child or look sympathetically at his mother's tear-filled eyes? Or do both? 

And I'll tell you that we would do none at all.

Tell me how villains have been more inspiring for you than superheroes.

Tell me how 'good' is defined and how 'bad' is ignored.

Tell me how you'd feel to hear bullets nearby and know some men are dead.

And I'll tell you 'dead men' is supposed to be nothing if they're enemy and to abide this isn't a sin either.

Staring at the walls, 

we've laughed on each other enough.

Let's speak out loud instead.

I'll tell you how it feels to be loved by everyone but the one you choose.

How the shadow lingers among every true flesh confessing love.

How it stabs you and yell 'You lucky girl'

You'll tell me how it feels to be loved by the one you love.

Tell me how good it was.

Tell me how bad it was when it finished.

Tell me how you're still haunted by the memories.

Tell me why sips of your whiskey alternates between someone's memories and your future.

Let's know how all of it feels like.

Let's close our eyes, stretch our legs, loosen our wrists and feel. Feel it together.

You and me.

No one else.

Let's sit together with a white flag hoisted on the table.

And let's explain it well.

In the end, I'll stare your eyes,

you'll be staring mine

and we'll laugh on us.

Wet-eyed Contemplations

It feels like I am a Wednesday - present in the middle of every week, existing, breathing, contributing equal minutes to sapiens as Mondays and Saturdays do, but am never talked about.

I am that odd kid in the classroom who's always quiet and whose absence weighs just equal to the weight of an 'A' written in front of her name in the attendance register. I know nothing of young bloods claiming to be Saturday nights, which is to say that I don't know about people who feel themselves as Mondays either.

But then I do know of throat lumps and how many gulps, on an average, it takes to shoot their heads off to not let tears win the war. 

I shoot my throat lumps in afternoons when everyone's around me. Nights are covered all alone in my room, so I let them live and let tears fall like confetti on my pillow. Sometimes this leads to insomnia, which is to say that sometimes my wet eyes get tired of staying shut while I'm not able to sleep, so I open them instead and stare at the walls of my room, which is to say - I think a lot at night.

Sometimes I wonder whether insomnia could ever be kind enough to wish for getting itself diagnosed. But then insomnia is (as I am) a Wednesday too.

Here, but still not.

Perhaps insomnia is a novice that's trying to stay and evolve into cancer, which is to say that everydamnthing in this world has someone to get inspired from, which is to say that everydamnthing includes me as well and this whole wet-eyed contemplation has bucked me enough to make people born on Wednesdays as my inspiration.

There’s more to us

Don’t just tell me you love music.

It’s not enough.

You don’t simply love anything until it does something to yourself.

So, tell me what music does to your mind.

When listening your favourite song, does relief creeps in your veins and makes you close your eyes sometimes? Or suddenly opens them wide instead?

Does it make you travel time?

Does your mind keep music and weed in the same category?

Do mountains give you rhythm? Or do they provide you peace? Are rhythm and peace even different things in your mind?

Tell me how often you keep your headphones with you. 

If your answer is “all the time”,

is it because you like zoning out from the crowd ?or do you love to watch the world around yourself with a background music all along the while?

How often do you realise you had been humming tunes? 

Humming are like dreams, you see!

you’d never know when they started. Sometimes, you’d not even recall that they existed.

Don’t bring me hefty music instruments,

Tap on the table and show me you know rhythm.

Sing me the truest lyrics you know of,

I’ll understand.

So yeah,

the favourite colour is blue.

Nothing can replace Chicken tikka masala and pizza and tunde kebab. 

With no better reason, I love Harry Potter.

God just might be there. Or maybe not!

Hills over beaches. 

DNA is the secret. 

World peace is a myth.

But do they matter?