A Vintage Print

देख वह तो आलम ही कुछ ऐसा था,⁣ कि बातें या तो तुझसे होती थीं, या फिर तेरी,⁣ देख समय अब बदल सा रहा है,⁣ जो गुज़र गया वह अपना था,⁣ जो आने को है वह तेरा।⁣ ⁣ देख बात बस इतनी सी है,⁣ कि अब भी कुछ कहना था तुझसे,⁣ कुछ पूछना था,⁣ पर जाने दे अब,⁣ मैं अब पूछ सकता नहीं,⁣ और तू है कि बताना नहीं चाहती।⁣ ⁣ अच्छा सुन, बात बस इतनी सी है कि,⁣ इन दिनों याद बहुत आती है तेरी,⁣ कभी वक्त हो तो इक दफा मुड कर तो देख, समय बेशक बदल गया हो मगर यादें आज भी,⁣ या तो तुझसे हैं, या फिर तेरी।

Why don't we just kill ourselves and call it a night? We don't have to talk about our problems. We don't have to pretend we're okay. We don't have to tell each other about how our day was. We don't have to love ourselves. We don't even have to hate ourselves. We don't have to lie awake on our sides, crying beside each other with our backs turned. We don't have to ask what's wrong. We don't have to look at our phones for hours for nothing. We don't have to have friends. We don't have to maintain friendships. We don't have to have fake friends. We don't have to wash our hands. We don't have to look in the mirrors. We don't have to comb our hair. We don't have to dress fancy. We don't have to sell ourselves up. We don't have to smile all the time. We don't have to cry. We don't have to have the energy to deal. We don't have to convince ourselves. We don't have to compel ourselves. W...

The light switch doesn’t go on on its own. But you’re too tired of getting up and trying now. It is too far away and you would rather stay on your bed and cry about it. It isn’t getting any closer to you with your whining but that’s the only thing you learnt to do to deal. You cry and you deal. Except this time, the dealing is a little too habitual and the machine in your head is too rusty. You’re in this house since two years doing the same thing every day and not expecting anything new. It keeps getting darker everyday. You don’t know the windows behind the curtains. You only know to peek. You like the comfort of the dark. You don’t have to look at the bruises on your face. You smashed the mirrors anyway. You let your anger out in quiet screams in the pillow, sometimes just nothing but heavy breathing which the walls absorb inside them and dull their colours. They’re sad with you. Four walls where your hurt is tangible, where it makes sense. So you stay there. That’s why the walls s...

I wish I'd not almost-known you.  Or, lost you.  In the mountains I never went, in the bonfire where we never sat across  I guess, when you lose someone from your life, you cannot really fit the image of your life-without-the-person in the beginning.  But you become accustomed to that image, in some time.  Suddenly, you want to test yourself.  And then, it hurts.  To see a new image of the-other-person's-life without you.  Truth is, it hurts to see a familiar face in an unfamiliar background.  It hurts to see a changed-version, almost like a new human being.  It's as if the person you had known has suddenly disappeared from the world, completely vanished.  It's almost like an illusion, same countenance but different characteristics.  It makes you feel empty, numb as if you'd whispered your secrets in the thin air and suddenly there was a storm. There are certain moments in our life which become a memory and become flagged in ...

  I know you want to talk to me too. I know you’re desperate to say something to me when I talk to you about how my day was. Or how the people in my life are treating me. I somehow blamed it all on you but it’s not your fault. I still tell you about my feelings. These bare feelings without any stains on them. No distractions from them. All these bare feelings pointing straight towards you.  I talk to you like you’re in front of me. I’m exhausted by the one-sided conversations and the smell of your house still stuck on my nose. I’m exhausted by your smile on my lips and your words eating away at my brain. I want it to end. I want the voices in my head to stop asking me about you. I need the roads leading home to stop reminding me of you. I need the stories to stop somehow making their way to yours. All my stories lead to you. All my words are yours. All my acts claim to be your result. All the bare feelings convincing people that I’m vulnerable, they’re all because of you. I’m...

I stroll around outside my house and look at the trees standing. It’s raining and I don’t bother because it reminds me of when I went on the terrace while it was raining on my birthday and on the day I was upset and on the last day of school. I spend a lot of time on the terrace and look a lot of time at the sky. I like how it changes colours every minute and people still love it. Apparently humans who do that are chameleons but chameleons are fascinating. And so is this rain. I don’t like going out in the rain but today I just feel like getting wet and smiling through it. I’ll smile through almost everything, make a joke about everything even when it gets worse. I don’t like to but then I’m not about to be looked at as some pitiful men who’s afraid to be sad. I’m not. I’m fine with it. Infact, I am always a little sad on the inside. That’s not an after-effect of some tragedy that happened, even though I’d like to think so. I have always been like this. “Some people are not built hap...

Tonight things are different. You recognize my breath for the first time in 2 years. "soo gaye kay?", you question. Tonight, I don't wait for you to disconnect the call. As you realize, it's me on the other side, I wonder what you think, what you must have thought all these days every year about these calls where I never spoke and you stopped at "hello". Tonight, I finally figure out that you knew it was me, that it had always been me for the last 2 years for never once did you miss my call let alone blocking my number. Your hello sounded a little worried tonight and I wonder, if he's not there beside you, listening to the silence on the other side of the phone. I wonder if you have saved my number as "mannu" or "chiku". Tonight, you whisper "chiku" and I sense nostalgia in your voice. Tonight, you finally believe that we, you and I rather, could've made it work. Tonight, you're sorry and I know that you really a...