Occam’s Razor:

Desi Dark Academia

Wears Chicken embroidery Kurtas with pants to give the perfect combination of modern and traditional

Long, long haired women who always wear a braid to keep it out of their way

Glasses. Simple glasses. Removing them makes you look like a different person. Fuck contact lenses, you say

Have read The Mahabharata, The Bhagvad Gita, The Ramayana multiple times and analysed it to the point you know it better than your grandmother.

The stories of Akbar Birbal are a vivid part of your childhood

STEM students with an intense knowledge of history

Historical monuments splayed in ALL cities with their own history and stories

Havelis with squatters living in them

Villages.

Being Bilingual since birth, sometimes even knowing three languages before you enter primary school.

Your mother sitting you down, oiling your hair on Saturdays and braiding it for you

Your mother's gold bangles, which she got from her mother and will eventually be yours.

Mehndi. Weddings and Festivals which leave but intricate Mehndi designs that linger on women's hands for a while. Or your mother putting Mehndi in her hair because fuck chemical colors.

Haldi. Haldi is everything.

Your family cures and recipes.

KADAAS. Bitter Kaadas with herbs and spices that your maa, amma/daadi or nani forces you to drink because they're good for your health

Chai is the first thing in the morning. Or the last one at night. The calm that washes over you when you're in the midst of a late night study session as you make yourself a cup of chai in the middle of the night. Quietly, because everyone else is asleep.

Ghost Children

There are moments

Bad and hard to comprehend, mismatched;

I do not know how to 

String together an entire good life

Or a person

Out of so many broken things.

What I mean is 

The Cat gets pissed

And he yells

He’ll smash the Dog’s skull

And there is so much rage in his body.

I do not know

How to tell the men 

This fury is not something to be proud of,

To carry or pass on.

There are children who have shrunk themselves 

And swallowed their own being

To fit into houses filled with so much rage:

Children who are too loud or too dumb,

Children who will never be enough,

There is no time;

Children who would rather 

Sleep on the streets

Than be here.

Children who cut out parts of themselves,

Make themselves smaller, be appropriate,

To belong here.

Children who rebel,

Grow tired of waiting, grow weary;

Grow up

And then cry for their mothers,

Gulp their own tears.

Children sitting on floors

Of good houses

And full families

And have never been more alone,

More annoyed at themselves

For not seeing all the good,

For noticing the wreckage,

For not smiling through their own slaughter.

Children who move out 

And do things they weren’t sure 

They wanted in the first place.

The Cat screams and scratches everyone

Trying to help him,

The Hamster yells of how her life was ruined;

The Parrot bites me, claws at the Cat and 

Keeps breaking things, so many things,

Screams of his entrapment.

I am small:

A rat in a big world,

    I have never been alone.

The dark abyss was enticing me, it was calling and it took everything to not go meet her mid-way; Let her swallow me whole.

Are you scared to death to live

Or are you scared to live

Because you know you will die?

If there was no one to observe the universe

Would it cease to exist as we know it?

If a tree falls in a forest but

No one is around to hear it scream,

It still thuds and the ground still rumbles,

It's just that no one feels it.

So perhaps you are so obsessed with

Letting people know you are here

Because you know you could die

And no one would see the stars of your life collapse,

Feel the rumble of your loss of life.

It is possible to go away, quietly,

Unnoticed, leave things unchanged-

No one to mourn your loss

or to question higher powers

Over the lack of your presence

Or to tell your stories.

How terrifying it is to think

The universe in my mind could go away with me.

One life people. Only one. Fucking run for it! Learn that goddamn language, read that book, draw shittily, sing off key and break some goddamn glasses. Fuck this illusion of perfection. We are here to goddamn live. Every art becomes less shitty as you work on it. Same with your life, it's all art babies. Work and get it y'all! Okay bye.

When I was little, I used to stay away from matches because I was sure I would set myself on fire. What I didn't realise was that I've been burning for a long time. You know how they say you're a sum of everyone you've met; everyone you've come across? I think I'm other people, more than I am myself. I still remember the phone number of my friend from the third grade. What do I do with the memory of that? That's the problem. I remember too much. I can never forget: numbers and people. I am a walking ache, I am a fresh scar; I am open wounds: always aching. I am hurt. My happiness is pretense and my sadness is a default. I have been hurt too many times and I can never forget it. I never remember my happiness. I remember too much of what went wrong and too much of all that hurt me; that's the problem. What do I do with all this hurt? I carry a lifetime of hurt. I think I will age backwards; I already hurt so much at so little, I am sure there can be no way this gets worse so I have to hope this will get better. As the years grow, I will grow. I will be taller when others are starting to hunch. How could I not? Where do you go from this ache? I am the ache I feel and I am the thing that hurts my heart. My happiness is always a pretense. I am always sad during the happiest moments of my life. Someone called me arrogant and I laughed at their face. I think some people are always sad. I am always other people and I have never been myself and I do not know what to do with that. I am a stranger in my head and my face is always a foreign image that surprises me. I remember too much. I don't know how to not. How do you forget? I don't hate myself, I just don't know what to do with her sometimes. She is a child and she is so grown up and strong and she is always grieving the loss of some part of herself.

Inevitable

We were a prolonged sunset,

Something beautiful

That we knew 

Would end in darkness anyways.

We were a mouthful of words

The tongue couldn't help but mess up.

We were a tiny cat

Who climbed the big tree

And forgot it had yet to learn 

How to come back down.

We went skydiving,

Up, up, up 

And the earth pulled us back down;

We free fell into our own demise

And made a mess,

We left chaos behind.

The first memory I have of this town

Is of wanting to leave-

To stand in a place and know you do not belong;

Scratch that.

I remember rain like I remember birth.

I remember puddle jumping in pristine clothes and

Trying to remember things I have long forgotten.

I forgot the light, I forgot existence.

But this? This I remember.

I remember the streets I walked all the way back home, aching;

I remember the loss of that day;

I remember feeling unbridled joy

Of the very next at the glorious win.

I remember screaming songs LOUD

With my best friend on our way to school,

Our own voices echoing in our heads

Like we were masters of a world

That did not exist just yet.

I remember the sneaking out of practice

To meet someone I hadn't seen in months;

I remember not being able to

Lift myself up from the bed

With a body so intact you'd think

I hadn't ever lived through a day.

I remember running miles

On a broken foot,

I remember swimming through all of this dread on broken toes.

I remember punching holes in walls and staring back at hands that were still hands.

Not god, not the powdered dust of my bones yet;

I remember broken knuckles but an intact heart.

I remember thinking I will never be able to get out

And I remember not wanting to leave.

I remember the solace in coming back,

Coming back after days, weeks or months.

I remember coming back.

I remember grocery store chains

And drunken new years';

I remember being 16 and staying up all night

To watch the sun rise; it rained that day.

I remember walking out of the train station,

Rubbing the drowsiness out of my eyes at age 6

And seeing the most gorgeous sky

Like it was yesterday.

I still wake up in hopes of a morning the sky looked that gorgeous.

No. I think I forgot.

I see the city change herself and she has parts I do not recognise sometimes.

I remember coming back to her like I remember birth. Not so much as a definite event

But as something that happened.

She will be here,

Smiling.

A.G.