Definition: I'd rather you see my shoes.

Have you ever felt this way?
This way where you want to walk barefoot on grass and you want it to tickle your feet?
The way where you want to hide away, but  you still want the world to find you.
The way you want to feel someone's skin against yours.
The way you want to stir someone's soul but a certain part of you feels like it already has done that.
The way where you want to control how you let it go?
The way you want to refrain from communication because you want to see who really cares about you?
The way you want to find an answer to this plaguing, unformed question in the pit of your stomach?
The way you wish you could erase your past?
The way you wish, to hide, hide away all your guilt?
The way you wish this white cloth hid away each bit of you but left only your shoes out?

Slice of you

There is a limit-less sea, between your lips. It is endless and it is beautiful. Every time you laugh during speech, this sea seems more overpowering to me, gaping at me, swallowing everything around it. I hope you catch me staring, and probably realize the magic that you hold, between the one part of your body that you categorize as completely non-monumental.
The boundaries to that space, I want to run a finger across them. Make that walk. I want my finger to trace where the pink of your lip dissolves into the wheat of your skin.
You are ostensibly unaware about my affection, about how I feel that the space between your lips, might be by the panacea to the poison that the bile in my liver fills me up with.
Nirvana might lie just there in that darkness, but this struggle is miserable. I analyze each action and reaction that you make, expecting so much and yet so little. With each accidental eye contact, I catch myself wishing for you to be entrapped by the depth of my eyes in the same innocent way in which the infinite expanse between your jaws has me reduced to a limb-less spectator.

Tomorrow morning, I might have forgotten this paradise of sensation and feeling that you have, unknowingly taken me to, today.
Tomorrow I might just find faults in your teeth structure, but today I wish to roll around in the gloriousness of your mouth.

LSF

I have this unbelievably queasy feeling in my gut. The existence of this feeling has been brought about by the fact that I have not written in over a month. Every attempt at writing has been as successful as a drunkards’ attempt at walking on the straight divider line. Absolutely wasteful and disastrous.

I write a document and then I discard the document, it is becoming a visible loop of sorts.

So I decided to write about what has been troubling me.

1.     I have noticed a huge flurry of “amateur writers” using a certain typewriter application (curses upon you, oh social media!), stringing words together and pretending that this string of misused words, conveys some greater meaning and a higher sense of depth which can not be interpreted by people who do, actually possess some literary sense. These quotes, one-liners or whatever we might call them next sonnets, love poems, intriguing write-ups, or as I like to call them, lessons in sentence formation (LSF)  are ruining my life. Instagram poets are great! They are wondrous and they can transport anyone sitting behind a screen to a world of anguish and misery brought on by real, romantic love or by the pain and struggle of retaining your individuality but these LSFs are not the same.

Can we please take a moment and serve them a healthy dose of criticism?
No! Your attempt at romanticizing the darkness of my soul, is not working! You use the word misandry to try and explain her hate for men because one of them hurt her. Open a dictionary and see the letter in the parenthesis next to the word, does it say v? If it doesn’t then explain to me why would you use it as a verb? Now lets come to the part where plagiarizing concepts, is not an admirable thing either. Can you stop throwing a pity party, each time you write a new post?

I am certainly not against throwing one but can you not copy that famous party’s theme if you do decide to throw one, anyway?

The part that exasperates me the most, the part that feels like an attempt at someone acupuncturing the part of my mind that holds my menial writing capacities is the appreciation.

Either people are not exactly mindful about how writing prowess manifests itself or they are being supportive out of pity or admiration for the valor associated with posting such ginormous amounts of ridiculousness; whichever the case, it is wrong, it is incorrect.

Whatever little I have learnt in writing, is because of the blunt criticism I have received not because of the sugar candies of compliments. If you indeed want to be supportive, criticize these LSF creators if you know any.

Let us, please rid the world of these pusedo-philosphers who wish to convert us all to mediocre standards of literature appreciation by dulling our brains with their work.

We can see.

This is an open letter to every man, living in this country who fails to realise that he isn't staring in a way that is obscure enough because news flash: we have eyes. We can see. And we do see.

You think that you are molesting us with your eyes and we are not realising it. You think that each time you look at us, we do not realise how with each blink of your eyes, you've removed another piece of clothing off our bodies in your head.
You think just because we look the other way we are oblivious to your lecherous, rascally smile which by the way just conveys the joy your inner sexual pervert and voyeur is experiencing.

Whatever your thoughts, don't think them. They are as much of a lie as the 'respect' you have for us.

The part where you presume that we dress to please you, purge it out of your system because we certainly don't. That girl whose legs made you salivate more than Pavlov's dog, is wearing that pair of shorts because Mumbai is a really humid city. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CATERING TO YOUR ENTERTAINMENT.

We do not belong to you. Our bodies do not belong to any of you, so stop looking at us with that sense of ownership.

This non-consensual undressing that you carry out in your head, is nothing short of a rape. It is nothing short of a crime. In case you didn't realise, we do not want it. And we are definitely refusing it.

Imagine living in a world where every move you make, every step you take is not only observed but ends up being next to pornographic material in somebody else's mind. Imagine that feeling of being caparisoned in a world where the thoughts of the opposite sex, about your outfit, determine what you will wear.
Imagine a life where you are nothing but a sexual object, no matter what you wear.

Yes. That's what I thought, sounds frustrating, doesn't it?
That's been our story, for decades.
And it is in your hands, to change how this story ends.
Don't take it to the level where the woman who ignores your stares, is forced to gorge your eyeballs out because trust me, most of us, are right around that alley.

Reconstruct your psyche. It is high time.
And thank you, if you DO end up doing the same.

*On a side note, I do realise men are hormonally hard wired to look at other women and vice-versa but what I'm referring to here, is the uncalled for staring and lewd/obscene looks.

As straight as an arrow

I do not like how humans always consider body language as the most subtle parameter for assessing a person. I probably do not like it because of the accuracy this particular way of judgement exhibits or partially because I find it unfair to judge anyone by their subconscious decisions. While people like me, live with a paranoid fear of not putting their best foot forward when meeting some one new, the prospect of being judged on basis of my body language or rather on basis of what I choose to do unknowingly seems absolutely annoying. The mere thought of being judged because I unknowingly touch my hair too much and dubbing it as affection seems unfair because someone who I just met does not even deserve to know so much about me.

In the recent years, my mother has been obsessed with making me keep my back straight. Everywhere I go, she keeps droning on "keep your back straight." To the extent where sometimes she ends up poking me or prodding me publicly. Earlier, this was absolutely fine. Now it is starting to veer along the lines of annoyance.
Her reasoning is, that if I'm confident of myself my back will magically be straight?
To that theory, how about no?

Confidence and straight backs seem absurd if linked together. Models battle self esteem issues and still have straight backs. Likewise, I can have a slouchy back and be supremely confident.

I do not seem to belong to the category of people with an appetite for "how to detect a liar by their body language." In fact that is just another way of misjudging people's subconscious actions.

Point is, dear mother and people like her, it is unfair and heartbreaking to watch you judge people over what their involuntary actions give away. I'm touching my hair because it is soft, not because I like you. My back is hunched because my bag is too heavy and I'm touching my face too much because I can feel a pimple come up, not because I'm lying. Stop reading people's actions and instead focus on what they choose to show you, find the hidden poetry in them, later.

Inspiration

I recently joined a summer school in my city for want of a better way to spend my vacation. I'm being honest in admitting that I partially expected this course to be an unmitigated disaster of sorts (I feared the course would be miles above sub normal levels and I'd end up feeling like a fish in a lake, staring at the trees on the banks, trying to figure  how the process of climbing works.)
This post is actually an adulation for the most brilliant teacher I've got a chance to learn from.
It is not entirely about how he made, the most complex concepts easily graspable but about how his affection for each one of us seemed devoid of any partiality (Indian education system, I hope you're listening), how his level of informality and approachability made the class feel like it belonged to our individual comfort zones.
Right from taking efforts to memorising our names to relating Fordism with a Charlie Chaplin clip he just made International Political Economy seem not even vaguely as intimidating as it really is.
10 days in this class and I've never been more sure of pursuing IPE in my future.

Despite being the daughter of a teacher, I've never entirely respected the profession (I've dutifully respected the professionals involved though, no matter what.)
I would actually want to thank him for lifting the veil off the absolute beauty of teaching.
For making me realise that imparting knowledge is noble and joyous. For making me feel that if tomorrow, I end up teaching, it would probably be one of the best things that could happen to me.
Thank you Gonzo.
PS brownie points for the "shant ho jaye."

MH370 taught me.

As the mystery of the missing plain MH370 deepens, the only people whose absence (death probably) struck me really hard is of the two Iranians using the fake passports.
I don't, in any way, intend to sound insensitive towards the souls or the grief of the loved one's of the others aboard that unfortunate plane.
A chance reading of an article about the last status update by those two Iranians made me break down into convulsive sobs. (http://time.com/20592/mh370-nourmohammadi-iran-malaysia/)
It makes me miserable to think of the irony of the post which has the man saying no when asked are they ever coming back.
It makes me feel thankful for being blessed but more than gratitude there is a strong surge of guilt gripping my body and mind.
Guilty of living a life that they were running away for. Guilty of how having everything they must have spent nights yearning for and despite having all of this, complaining about the most minor elements of discord in my otherwise seemingly perfect life. Guilty of how despite, the younger one being as old as me, won't live to see a glorious future. Guilty of having been chosen to be blessed.
I have never really prayed for a stranger but this is the purest form of gratitude and askance of peace for their souls. For everybody who was there on that doomed plane. For their loved ones and anybody who has ever died before having a shot at life.

It has gotten me to a really poignant conclusion which is a fact that must've been hidden away from me owing to my absolute ignorance and disregard for all that is good and lovely in my world.
Life is the most precious gift.
Squandering it, should feel more devastating than ending it.

PS the painting attached, is my depiction of the above post, I'm not exactly good at it, but as one of my friends said, "All arts are about reflections. :)"

Fate and some other thing

There is a question that has been plaguing me. Can fate be controlled?
People have blind faith in gem stones, a talking parrot picking out a card that would predict your future, tarot cards that are supposed to tell you how your future will shape up but my question is that despite all these manifestations of the human obsession with wanting control over the unknown (fate), can we actually manage to do so?
The philosophy of whatever happens, happens for the best is mildly baffling me.
If it is indeed true, why are certain people beggars? Why does suffering exist?
If someone looses their parents or spouse, is it for the best?
A recent discussion opened my mind to another belief that we all get what we deserve, which explains the concept of suffering better.
There is another possibility that while we have been falsely lead into believing that our actions control our fate, our fate is probably predetermined and our actions have no implications over it.
I believe that centuries ago, when the world must've been a haven for the dark and the twisted, some man probably to lessen the mean behavior of man kind, came up with this concept to make the world a better place to live in. The fear of your present changing your future is bound to get a few people to move away from their vile ways.

My amusement park =)

Amusement park.
It's your birthday!
I don't know how on earth did I start getting so dependant on you.
Last year, same time, I used to hit on you because I found your eyes pretty. (And also because of my drummer theory.)

I still find them pretty though. Pretty like a girl.
Hahaha.
So who's amusement park?
He's just this guy, I gradually got close to. He is creepy, but he is funny too. Although I don't like the jokes he makes on me, at the end of the day, the are actually funny. Like hilarious.

He is the only person who gets away with those jokes, which by the way are made round-the-clock.

The first initial times that I spoke to him, I thought he was some really shy, 'my habitat is a cave' sort of a person.
But honestly, almost 6 months later, I can certifiably say he isn't that at all.
"Amusement park" because he is fun.
And ofcourse, he is the ONLY person with evidence about my previous embarrassing blog. (Incase you're reading this, DO NOT ever upload that picture.)

And yeah why this post?
Well because he is the only person who over-exerts his mind as much as I do. And because he is the 'fastest' best friend I made.
(Ps only I consider him that. Not the other way round. :P)
Hmm I want this to be a crisp post, so, I hope you never let go of your 'next level' sense of humour, get all that you wish for, grow up and stay the same.
Happy Birthday Douche. :)

Good Morning Wali Auntyji!

Which realms of darkness has selflessness faded into?
Or is it just that one is so involved in self that thinking away (less) from yourself seems like a rabid concept?
My personal belief of how you need to walk over people in this "cash-bling-more cash-more bling" world tends to get contradicted.
Contradicted by what I see.

Contradicted by Good Morning Wali Auntyji.

Well that does sound weird but yes I've re-christened my bus supervisor with that title.

This lady replaced our original bus supervisor.
The original one was a creep. Like really!
At 6 in the morning, she used to stare at every individual in the bus with an unfathomable expression and to this day I swear it scared me.
Like freaked me out.
She gave me negative vibes. Really polluted ones.
(Again maybe it was just a matter of perception. But yet.)

Now anyway coming back to Good Morning Wali Auntyji, on her first Monday morning, as I entered the bus, she said something which sounded like good morning. But given the fact that nobody has done that ever before I just dismissed that as my brain having over-exerted.
And then another child got in and she did say the damned words after all!

This "Good Morning" practice went on and she hasn't stopped yet!
I'm just curious to see will it last while she lasts?

This is what set me thinking, about selflessness.
Her job profile nowhere covered that she had to wish children in the morning, all she is getting paid for is sitting on a seat & supervising the children.
Some don't wish her back, some give her a confused look, some do wish her back, but none of that deters her.
It's like a small greeting such as a Good Morning with a smile, first thing in the morning, does make you happy, not so significantly but it's a positive start nevertheless.

I guess I've reached the answer to my question then; No selflessness hasn't faded into the realms of darkness,  there just isn't enough light shining over it. :)