Somedays bring it worse than other days.

Somedays are worse than other days.
Those days when it's warm in the sun and cold in the shade, when a familiar situation moves you in unexpected ways, when all it takes is a shadow on the wall cast by a tree formed by the Sun, a shampoo brand, or a memory resurfacing to make you tear up.
Pain is never bittersweet, change or nostalgia or tragedy even is never beautiful. You'd be kidding yourself if you said so. Life is not literature . But it was, it was. It used to be.

Started writing this poem the second day I moved here, which would now be a little over 2 months ago. Didn't complete it, kept waiting to write the perfect third stanza. Then I lost the notebook I had written it in. I should know this by now a piece of writing once abandoned is seldom completed again. Here goes:

This is the room I grew up in,
It no longer feels like home.
Without the collective laughter there once was,
These walls here are having a hard time standing on their own.

These are the friends I grew up with,
We don't all share the same interests.
In the pizza circle we are,
I am just a fraction of the crust.



See? A third stanza is needed.

Who am I kidding. It was home. Still is.

It's home to the point that in comparison nothing else feels like home. 

This one crossroad.

Recently my friends and I had to choose between A levels and F.sc. The choice and the move turned out to be harder than I expected. It was directly in contradiction with the spirit of my infatuations with the possibilities of the future. (I'll grow up, step into the real world, get some real education, save the planet.Bingo) This was a response to a conversation I had with a friend who had gone for F.sc while I stayed in our old school for A levels.


Is there a word for the moment you reach the top of the mountain, how even though you have surmounted the peak, achieved what you wanted, but instead of peace as you expected, you find confusion?

Is there a word for the moment you have an argument with a friend and you walk off all triumphant, how even though  have won the argument you almost wish you hadn't, because you ended up with strained communication and bitter laughter? Is there a word for it? Is there?

I wish there was. I would have used it now. Now that we've reached the point, (at least I), longed for. To be grown up enough to actually consider career paths. And now that we are finally here, I ended up with the hallways and the memories that haunt them.

And you, you ended up with the crowd and the dare-devilry that accompanies togetherness in a system that does more harm than good.

You know that night, that night when I called and you cried, I wrote this then rewrote some and scratched that and rewrote again. All because I did not want it to sound too despairing lest it left you worse than before.

Of course this is what we inherently wish as writers, don't we? To have our writings affect peoples' emotions in real time, but as a friend?
It's an entirely different story.

Jhaal

Waiting outside in the car

he brings the chali.
the salt and the warmth sears my lips
the stickiness of the lacha clings to my hands
yet it is not an entirely uncomfortable experience
unevened pathways
not streets as much as alleys
 deserted plots,mounds of earth
a recognizable face here and there
 small houses with almost too small doors
a crisscross of chaos
cloth by the meter, yarn by the yard
a hullaballoo of waving men
and bargaining women
a world within a world




*lacha is cotton candy