You put words in a kaleidoscope Each time you turn different on each side of the bed Our pillows were stuffed with so many feathers that we flew in sleep but I like it when we walked without and aim Just random guessing game Ok, from where do we see 2 moons? From over a puddle. Ok, when is the moon red? When I use up all the white to paint the snow. Have you packed a sweater? Letterbox full of letters That she could never fit in one word. So, I cover up the envelope with so many stamps I begin to resemble the hopscotch did we made when we were little And it was buzzzzzzy arguing whether it's bumblebee or bumble bee Because she never really understood it had to say stay Because in this galaxy of milky chances somehow our orbit's so -- Somehow we merge like 2 colors in a palette resting on the head of a dancer Graceless we -crawled on sticky mud endlessly Wait for what? weight of everything you can't carry with you. So, I plonked my butt on the suitcase the zip orbiting me like a planet and falls down Leaving me without a promise She was too afraid to promise instead Teasingly she says One always leaves. leaves, leaves Follow the wind, mesmerized by your song. Only... Stop. What? Remember how you used to argue with me for hours Because you thought stars were made out of wax When the seemed to melt when actually your eyes went moist from staring at them. Says the girl who thought that hiccups happened somewhere outside of her And I would look for them for hours. Ours were stories I bet you were thinking we're just making them up Who'd believe that we chased peacocks after midnight, And then next morning, not look for a feather Not knowing whether she -- a bookmark or Not if you hadn't tricked me into losing my page number Simply because you had to talk to me about I don't understand why you have to leave. Thank you. The next poem that I'm going to do is about how I've always changed houses, And no matter which house I stayed in, I always remember waking up to the same Hindustani classical music that my father plays every morning. So, this poem is just about that It's about changing houses. My family is like a bunch of packers and movers. There is always a room in every house full of cardboard and bubble wrap. Some boxes never empty, because in no time we'll have to fill them up again. Old toys, lego pieces Tired of being built into a new house each time. Confused, Not knowing exactly which door is the main door anymore. And now just waiting, Waiting to be built into a new one. Car tracks, forming that hot wheels oblong Not used for racing anymore but floating with the boundaries between time and space Forming that same hot wheels oblong, no matter where Wooden dolls and puppets, some without an arm, others just an eye Some with strings left in the corner of an old house I bet someone's found them now. Old books back since I was a kid. M-A-N man, P-A-N pan, T-A-N tan, C-A-N Can my new address not rhyme with my old one, I wonder sometimes. There are gaps in my father's postcard album. Possibly because of so many postcards being sent to the wrong doorstep. A different door, but the same furniture. A chair broke on new year's eve. A dressing table mirror cracked exactly at the point where my eyes meet my nose. The crack is still there, it's not just not so funny anymore. And then there are posters, rolled up with bits of double-sided tape, carrying bits of wall plaster that I dare not remove. And then, there is this box full of cassettes. Cassettes that I don't pack because I'm too scared They'll curl up in the bubble wrap, and so instead I stack them, Like paintbrushes in a jar, waiting to be picked out to paint on --. I play these most on rainy days. When I can curl into the space between the 2 notes, And if it doesn't stop, I just walk around the house. I walk around the house bumping into the walls that I'm yet to know, exist. And, switches, oh switches, I'm still working on Balancing them exactly between the off and then on and the off and then on and the off and the on Is what I call the space in silence. And sometimes, I'm just silent. Every congratulation on a new house spells congratulations on a truck full of new secret corners. newly broken doorknobs, new favorite drawers. Wrapped in cardboard and bubble wrap, where, this morning I found another box. Old letters, it said. Letters from the teenage me, to a younger you. I know your pin code by heart now. And mine, I just make mine up, these days. Thank you. My bed is 89 years old. Which makes it the oldest member of my family of 12 with grandma being 83 and Zimba being 3 and my tortoise seemed to never simply grow. In winters they can be used as paperweights And I know my mother has a terrible desire to put candles on them for Diwali, to have she calls slow disco lights. To add to the variety, our cook, Parish Kaka let in a pigeon the other day. to make a nest right on top of the TV cabinets. So every time we increase the volume of the TV We're scared of eggs exploding And then there is Parish Kaka's wife, Kolani Kaki and my dad's elder brother, Jaitha, the former can't hear and the latter can't stop being heard. So, all day they bicker. and bicker. and bicker. and bicker. and bicker bicker bicker bicker bicker bicker... Words sometimes aren't meant for a conversation. But to fill gaps in a room with furniture kept minimum so that Jaitha's walker doesn't collide into anything. His walker is the second loudest thing after the 89-year-old bed. The Thak that thak is a constant background tone to the evening game of scrabble that my parents play. They sometimes spell more words than they say to each other. Words sometimes aren't meant for a conversation, But to form habits that 2 people grow together as they grow separately. My father is most excited on Sunday lunches, When Bengali culture, triumphs over a Gujrati culture the latter belonging to my mother, my grandmother, and half of me which makes for an extremely challenging situation for Parish Kaka's dinner plans. because every meal would mean compliments in one line and -- abuses in the other. I grew up listening to almost as many fights as Ella Fitzgerald's songs, which taught me it's important to assert oneself be it against the imposition of healthy food; or a political opinion that need not match with mine. So most nights. I fight with a ready hand. All debates take place around the ancestral box of betel leaf or 'paan e dibbe' as we like to call it. Out of which my father prepares paan for all interested members. Most nights we'd just sit in silence, Staring at blank walls with -pour- walls, Trying to forget the day that just went by, thinking of something significant to say but too lazy to put it into words. Words sometimes aren't meant for a conversation. But to form gaps, like holes indicating the age of a tattered muffler that my mum makes for the smiles so lost. I think she makes it for a black and white photograph. She sleeps with me. On nights when I sleep with her, we grew from inseparable molds of clay, or a damp -- stories from sleepless nights into something more formed Like two bodies, so aware of its edges Some nights, I miss her tirelessly patting hands. And her fairy tales with an unexpected feminist twist in the end. Sleeping on the bed, the 89-year-old bed, Dreaming of being a swing one day, As it keeps reducing its grip on the ground every day, sleeping was like harmonizing. With each turn waking up a bedpost, moving slightly to wake up the rest to the wind chimes my mother hung by the head post last year. Her solution to the rickety rackety bed was not to make it creak less somehow but to turn the creak into something melodious. Solutions in my house are never solutions but mechanisms invented with a story of their own. Like the basket we hung by the staircase, to avoid grandma from climbing and down, and up and down, and up and down, was soon decorated with mirrors and bangles and drawings so many, it became too heavy to work. Some solutions forget their problems. Some words forget their meanings. And some conversations have absolutely no purpose in a house like ours, where family photographs have endangered species being sniffed by curious dogs, Who's supposed to oppose by a bunch who talk simultaneously in foreign languages. Thank you. I was 6 and I grew up with Govinda's Bollywood moves, Dancing bare-chested in the snow Slow melodies in faded sunlight were being blue. I was 6 and I thought love meant a boy and a girl, Entwined fingers for only 2. I was 6 and I believed, falling meant once, Only once I'd fall in love with you. You see, I was 6 and Hellbent certain growing up was to know love was always only for 2. I'm not 6 anymore. I think I fell in love the first time in ninth grade October, with a boy who said he'd only touch me Before he left me and broke my first forever. Now, when I've loved so much, so many more grazing Octobers, Novembers, and Decembers Falling for moments hushed in whispers Fleeting eyes I forgot to remember. I've fallen in love with boys who broke me, And women whose curves and laughs are meant for these boys to touch and surrender. Today, I'm not 6, And perhaps the only thing I'm certain I learned growing up is that I don't know how to love myself anymore. Now I begin my assignments with unfinished poems that often forget to rhyme. When I was 6, Poetry always meant that rhyme would be followed by time Looking for hidden questions, All these answers I thought growing up we'd find, And heart bound textbooks, conversations overheard, letters we never meant to send Answers I've lost myself searching for So now I write poems for assignments I submit later than I'm meant to Telling you there's still everything I don't know. Thank you So, the last poem for today. I wrote this a while back It's for my brother I made you a song I found all these forgotten memories buried in Childhood fading photographs Our -- underwear, catching tadpoles in the fishpond, And the dirty puppies everywhere. Discovered Increased letters, old emails about nameless lost lives; Promises, dreams of growing up 10 years down the line you would have a house on the beach You'd ride your bike, I'd ride mine and we'd fly along the floating coastline. I opened this box of our shared secrets I had to hide away I remembered all my tears you wiped For broken hearts Boys, whose faces I forget you had faithfully promised to punch each one I said I didn't need taking care of You remained my stubborn brother proudly older by 2 months. So, the first time you fell sick It didn't make sense It was the storm before the smiles that will make the perfect dinner party stories Precise blend of pain and hope like a feel-good song you'd fought cancer after all. Now, look at your chasing life by the horns. The first time around our tears were fears but I could see you winning You ran 5 miles every day, barely out of the needles and the chemo killing all your cells. You ran, you said you were lucky you had us What about those who had none? So you ran you marathons we thought your demons were done The first time around I'd held your hand. Fed you broken crumbs of chocolate. Growing up our grown-up worlds began to separate us. Akash you were always the shooting star in our starry nights I was beginning to forget, Almost losing you was like that Wound which bled when you thought you were healing The second time, It was the numbing pain You were far away, I had to know you'd be safe but Even in your sunken eyes, Your head barren smooth and white, You had told me in a trance once that the morphine made you imagine Even in your hallucination you burnt with that eternal life So that dying was never on the table. I put you in a little corner of my mind It was just a little speedbump after all you had to be fine. I made plans for our holidays, all our road trips across the world All my boys, all your girls, all the stories we had to make They decided not to tell me You died May 12 I had that exam May 14 Amidst my Shakespeare studies, a spouse just made a deal with the devil You broke out of your box Somehow I needed to know you were fine But the phone rang for the 4th time You sit there in your heartache. you sit there in your heartache The song was on repeat every time I hear it now, even in my sleep, I remember you dying. I have found all these memories The first time we stayed up all night talking, you told me about the first girl who broke your heart and kissed you We were at your first Indian wedding You taught me that murder and video games were just so much fun And explained why Playboy would never be overdone. Caught in the chaos of our dysfunctional parent's Homophobic aunts and raging uncles all the crazy ones you made them family You were home, you were my winter sun Today, I have opened your box ALl the photographs, childhood puzzles, color, letters, Spill on to my lap So I string them together loosely Sometimes I drop the threads but words are all I've got now So I'll make you a song with our yesterdays While you'll always be my favorite melody.
Thank you.
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