A Vintage Print

The last meeting was not filled with anger or dramatic farewells. Instead, it was a quiet realization that some stories are meant to end, no matter how deeply they were once written in the heart. When I saw Guffy and Panda one last time, there was no need for long explanations or desperate attempts to hold on. The past had already shaped its course, and we were merely acknowledging what we had known deep inside for a long time. Guffy smiled, but it was different this time—not the warm, familiar smile that once felt like home, but a distant one, as if carrying the weight of all that had been left unsaid. Panda, too, looked at me, not with regret, but with acceptance. It was in that moment that I realized how much we had changed, how time had molded us into people who no longer fit the way we once did. Memories of laughter, late-night conversations, and shared dreams lingered in the air, but they felt like echoes rather than something tangible. There was no resentment, no blame—just an u...

    THE SCIENCE OF LONELINESS —⠀ "It's in your head", the article reads. And ends. That's all the science one needs. A chemical imbalance and lack of serotonin levels — the editor proclaims. And I read it in Ariel Black 14, Italics; Bold. There's a basket of unwashed clothes lying under the bed and sheets of crumpled, stained blankets — reeking of memories: unkempt on a King sized bed with M sized me. A dozen emails hovering on my home screen and 6 structured messages from 7 credit card companies. Are we sad because we are lonely or are we lonely because we are sad? This is to say, I've unsent letters, written over 700 days to one person and I've a collection of reels that I cannot send and love is nothing but the idea of opening your main door to see just one happy face, smiling at your arrival. The last time I checked my best friend forgot my phone number and never tried remembering it again. There's a broken city with damaged roads and underpaid lab...

 At 11:56 PM, you lit a cigarette. You waited for 5 hours — someone will text. There's Instagram and there's Snapchat. The WhatsApp icon with it's Chris Hemsworth Jawline-like Phone symbol isn't ringing. You have stayed up this late and you have already followed all the rules that 700 self-help books and Andrew Tate told you in his Billion Dollar accent — "The trick to impress everyone". It should have worked by now. Someone should have asked you about your dinner plans and if you like to watch rains. The girl you threw a candy bar at in highschool is getting married and she hasn't invited you - but that was before you learnt to become Alpha. You are now cool. The Heath Ledger. You have checked your phone 78 times now and your mother has called you 50 times and your dad is tired of you tiring your mother who is tired because you are tired. So you light another cigarette and you stand in your balcony and watch a dusty city rusting itself under the spit of i...

To an old friend who no longers talks with me,⠀ ⠀ We were 12 when we first talked about our crushes, and 14 when we first talked about a heartbreak. Your hand cradled around my chest with the utmost honesty. There was this pain in your voice, that made me want to split open earth. I remember the way your tears rested on my shirt buttons — almost sad, almost broken. We were 6 when we would run around the society building, wearing torn capris and holed Tees. The weird games we would play — the garage walls never growing tired of our giggles as we play another game of hiding and seek at 8 p.m.⠀ ⠀ “You are too bad at hiding. I will always find you”, you'd say. I remember the taste of an afternoon lemonade being squeezed by our dusty hands after a game of cricket. You always had a way with games. You'd never lose. Your way of escaping out of the slimmest of positions — always the winning move. Perhaps, that's how you learned to run away too. ⠀ ⠀ I miss you, a lot more than I cou...

   I am not the hero of this story anymore. Sometimes none of us are. The days of an unparalleled feeling of feeling shit — keep hitting me every day. Look at me, please, will you? I am 20 or 19 or 21 — damn I can not remember how long I have been alive and for how long I lived. Look at me anyway — I have accepted defeat. There's only a burden out here inside my head that wakes up with me and then can not sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep: oh I don't remember when I slept last time; who does? My generation of broken romantics and dorks and creeps and intellectuals and whatever or whoever remains — we have outlived our grief. We text when we don't want to talk; we rant about everything that merely matters and hide about everything that greatly kills; our breakfasts are shorter than our breath cycles. Always scared; no background music to elevate our emotions — a depressed damned nation of youngsters. Don't tell me to hope and dream and whatever cluster-heck of part-time motivat...

Eye contacts are serial killers. They may take you to places where you never went. Like remains of home, Sips of wine or say literary sonnets. These are the places where a part of you is alive to exact revenge upon the wrongdoings you had in past and a part of you is dead forgiving someone because their wrath had taught you how not to die. Eye contacts are treat to your barren heart. You want to taste every slice of their being because it smells of dusk, dawn, marshmallows, half burnt cigar, you, him and probably us. They are the wonders that defines you and somewhat completes you and offer you the realisation that you've been empty all this while. Eye contacts are hourglass. They can snatch your embraces, kisses, bedsheets with creases, your smile and the love disguised as angst. The pleasure you can't put in words. They are actually the reason that cuts you off from the world or you can't end up being your saviour because the loneliness you carry broke the continuity