as i move through

Yellow tungsten lights, squishy pillows, a dash of mint lemonade, the comfort of warm cocoa - does it sound a little okay yet? Okay. Now, let's add in a bunch of people - some you are meeting for the first time, some for the first time in a long time. Is this a little different now? Okay. Now, let's add something to talk about - something that you love doing, something you want to practice and evolve in in the long run, something that you make time for as you lose countless hours of sleep. What does that sound like now? This was Art Pulse Volume 1, today November 27th for me. I put up a story on Instagram weeks back asking people if they wanted to come in and talk about art. A bunch of people reached out to me saying they wanted to come in. A week or two in, more people wanted to join in and I started getting more and more anxious about it. A week before the meetup, I wrote an email to the possible attendees with a little postscript note that I quote - ...

Someone told me that it's the winter nights that are scary, that they trigger sadness, that they make you want to feel needy. Being alone in winter nights was painted as a scary thought.  But what about the mornings? The ones where you switch outfits thinking- "The day will be warmer, should I not wear this jacket?". The ones where you make a list of things you want to do. The ones where you think you'll feel warm enough but your heart is weary and your body is sore. But then on some mornings like that maybe you will get up thinking- "There's a possibility for today to be better."  But winter mornings are colder and darker. Not many houses are awake, the city sleeps in a blanket of fog and there you are waiting on a highway with no streetlight hoping that a bright blue bus will drag you out of your misery. Today I gave in to a cheap thrill based on a whim, a pang of sadness and a full dose of loneliness. That's what a winter morning did to me....

The you before me and the me after you,  are puzzle pieces. From different boxes. One that fit in perfectly and one that fit and also make sense. The you before me and the me after you, are like the sky. From different times. One right before dawn and one that's right after dusk prevails. The you before me and the me after you, are like our songs. From different playlists. One that we hum to sleep and one that keeps us warm. The you before me and the me after you, are like paper cups. From different days. One rich in tea stains and one that we never want to throw away. The you before me and the me after you, are like our favorite flowers. From different memories. One that we keep sheltered between pages and one that we never understood. The you before me and the me after you, are like soft whispers. From different time zones. One that we giggle to and one that we repeat to our skins as we touch. But we are both us. You and me. Like we've always been. People from then and now...

After multiple weeks spent outdoors in the wild, trying to lose parts of her and scar new skin, she has now weakened. Now, the sun is too harsh on her eyes and her feet hurt from walking too much everyday. But there's a deeper pain than that. Her mind has been wheezing with ideas and thoughts that ache her heart so much that she can't look away from it. It's a mess of all things she thought she could fix, things she thought she could build. But now she has been in bed for over 12 hours straight and she doesn't even feel rested. Hey, but wait, her heart isn't just a mess - it's her. It's her yesterday, her today, her tomorrow that she carries around in the 4 chambers. She doubts that they know that. Maybe this is the price she has to pay for trying to hard to do too much at once without ever really sparing a breath for herself. Maybe this is what it will cost her for clinging on to feelings, to people who are distant, whom she can't really approach,...

There are three pages missing in the book she gave me. The shark tooth remnants of those pages are sharp and rigid - like wine stains that don't wash off the white shirt she gifted me. Both of these gifts, now they make me think of us. Days we spent in the chaos of togetherness, days when we let go of the ache of yesterday, days we couldn't tie together with the string lights, days we spent soothing each other's heartbeats. Our aisle of memory was stained, like the shirt. Sturdy tea stains in our tea set, coffee marks on table cloths, wine stains on our fuzzy carpet, mismatched stitches on a broken heart, lead marks on greeting cards, footprints on cement. You name it, we had it all.  But we never whitewashed our walls, never dry cleaned our dirty laundry. Every now and then, we would bring in new friends and take out brand new tea sets, and let them add colors to our walls not to cover our stains but to envelope them enough to keep us sane. Our bridges were woven with s...

This year is dying on me. The days are wearing me out. The hours pop like my like right knee. The minutes slip by like yesterday didn't exist and tomorrow is never to come. This is an ache that burns a hole in parts of me that I thought were numb. 

Outside, the storm raged in all dark colors enveloped in streaks of neon blue. The rain startles everyone from all sides. The walls shake at the foundation. The shutters clang and rattle. The leaves rain alongside water droplets. All colors appear darker than they really are. Outside, nothing is warm enough. Inside, our hearts ached in the pain of knowing that tomorrow, we'd disintegrate all that we had shared, practiced, and grown and dis-member. We pull out layers of our skin and rinse the wounds with salt water. We watch the blood red patches get purple and blue and soak in the burn. We push away the parts of us that behaved like opposite poles of magnets. We pull and tug at the strings, the veins that tied us in knots. We trace our fingers over the imprints of the ties we'd mended over the years. We run along the banks of the rivers we never dared to cross. We sigh at bridges we can no longer walk on. We scrape on the corners of our ceramic kitchenware that we don...

By the time that winter is gone, we'll both run out of love. The leaves will grow out green and shiny. The flowers will bloom in red, violet, yellow and pink. They will all dance as the birds sing. You will see colors in a different light as the butterflies pass by. But you and I... Oh, you and I will run out of love. By the time that winter is gone, we'll not know of love. Our friends will learn new songs to fuss about. The new paintings will become the talk of the town. There will be new poems to write in the new ink. A few more books will be added to both of our piles. But you and I... Oh, you and I will run out of love. We watch them shed their clothes layer by layer. We watch ourselves drain away with every word we tell them. "I love you"s are just a little gush of wind that vanish before we even feel it. And all the stars that aligned yesterday have fallen. We will miss the last bus that takes us home. We will forget where we misplaced our favorite book. We will...

The normalcy of things isn't always a thing that gives us the solace we need. The last time I met Maa, I wanted to ask her to tell me a random memory from her childhood. Any piece from the past that she could scrape off the past would be great. "Maa..." was the only word that escaped my mouth. I was never the granddaughter who would ask things like that. That week too, I stopped myself midway. The folds in her skin were darkened by the wounds she earned every time she visited the hospital. The brown patches had increased over the past few weeks. The afternoon sun was bouncing off her clear, pale skin. She looked luminous. The dull brown patches on her wrists and feet seemed out of place - like wrong strokes on a canvas. They didn't belong there. She didn't deserve them. A few strands on her forehead were now silver white. The recent hospital stays had been long and tiring. She had had no chance to paint them black. Three days after she was discharged,...

I couldn't understand a word that he spoke. He was here with his friends. We were all together, watching the sky change colors. I sat a feet apart from your friends and listened to you. Between you and me, there was a patch of green grass and the lake met the blue sky at the horizon ahead of us. The melody that your guitar made suited your voice perfectly. I still couldn't understand a word that escaped your lips but I listened nonetheless. Let alone what you meant to say, I couldn't even see you face. With your back turned to the audience gathered around you, you sang to the lake, without a care in the world. A kid came rushing to you and asked you for money. "Money?," he asked and lifted up his flimsy sweater, his slightly bloated stomach stuck out. He made rapid circles on his belly and nudged you a little. You stopped singing and tried to concentrate on what the kid was saying. You leaned in a little close, your shoulders shrugged. You said somet...

My city of stars is painted in a glass canvas. It has tungsten yellow light scattered with blood red glitter and snow white dust. This city of stars that I have fallen in love with, is blanketed by a cloud of smog and in every alley is a trail of dust that I have left untouched. Behind pale green shutters, two hearts beat soundly and their stomach grumbles louder than their thoughts. From hot, boiling oil, rise puffy doughnuts alongside the huffs let out by a woman who has as many wrinkles as my age. Along the streets, my Gods are all carved in stones by hands I have never seen and are covered by the flowers that my mum grows. The roads that my father held my hand and walked me through when I was 4 are now just streets that I brace through with hands deep in my pockets. The heart of my city of stars has corners filled with tea shops run by hands: some covered in wrinkles and folds and some smooth like butter churned a day before. My city of star...