at my most beautiful

whose words are these?

2008-05-19T00:54:00.001+05:00

I have been writing, for weeks now. The words spill out onto paper, making my thoughts real - because I believe in the power of the written word - but even their reality is lost on me sometimes. The sentences are grammatically correct but they don't make sense, for this cannot be what I am thinking, what I am hoping, what I am dreaming. Are my thoughts this morose? Am I writing unbidden for the sake of it? Whose words are these? Is it true, what one of the most well-read men I know in Pakistan said to me all those years ago, that what we write is in essence what we have read and absorbed?

The clock moves slowly, my heartbeat races and slows down, if something were to happen to you unknown, I would never forgive myself and never forget it. If you could've understood, I would've tried to tell you, but even this does not make sense to me. I wish my life would've been easier. I would have stayed at home and filled my heart with discontent I deserved, not that which is created by myself.

The cold does not matter, my thoughts are swirling around and it is only when the trees whoosh that I feel that there has been a change. If you could explain this increasingly strange phenomenon to me, I would keep you awake, keep all of you awake for hours and try to explain that these words are nothing but empty rhetoric, a failed excuse of how sometimes what I am thinking just pops out. The lamps are lit around me, but not on me, because I am enveloped in my thoughts that are keeping me alive. I have been writing, for days, for weeks, for months, for years but all of this is unknown to me still.

you're forgiven / not forgotten

2008-05-18T23:29:00.002+05:00

It is
long forgotten
the pain you caused
I will
in my life
yet to come
forever vow to forget
the pain of the present

a life of responsibility

2008-03-21T01:28:00.001+05:00

Having lost the ability to cry properly,
she puts her head in her hands,
sobs quietly for ten minutes,
and gets back to solving the
more pressing problems of the world.

for all those I have loved & lost

2008-03-14T21:50:00.003+05:00

And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
- Soul meets Body, Death Cab for Cutie

2008-03-01T20:55:00.001+05:00

I'm never going to dream another dream for you, again.

2008-02-07T03:01:00.000+05:00

between songs with life bursting at the seams
laughter shared between common bonds
are someone's sinking spirits
and another's breaking heart.

i know, finally.

2008-01-29T02:03:00.000+05:00

silence.
punctuated by the thought of you walking away.

music.
with each emotion spelled out, framed in notes.

talk.
for each memory, every shared emotion, every laugh, the pain of your loss, even momentary, grows.

ghosts.
make me wonder about what i would have done had they not flitted by.

broken

2008-01-27T02:38:00.000+05:00

to you, the reason I have not collapsed, that I have survived each day of the past few weeks that have broken my spirit and changed my view on life irrevocably.

thank you for the random moment in my life where you walked in, and how how our paths have come together since then.

acceptance

2007-08-22T18:13:00.000+05:00

God,
Grant me the strength
to accept
the things I cannot change
and
to change
the things I cannot accept.

2006-08-01T18:54:00.000+05:00

hello stranger.
look at me, then look away.
like you always have.

i think i'm crazy, for saying hello.

i think you don't realize how much it hurts, to have you look away.

the invisible circles i drew around us separate me from you.

don't smile at me, please.
i want to break your jaw.
and hug you at the same time.

2006-06-16T13:35:00.000+05:00

if you knew
how much i did
to make your life easier
you'd wonder
at what had come over me

if only you knew

i know
that you
don't care
at
all

enter/exit

2006-06-14T03:52:00.000+05:00

i dream about you

sometimes

flowers bloom
in my hair

sometimes

they scatter away with the wind

sometimes

the sky smiles down on me

yet i wonder
still wonder
who will walk out the door

again

2006-05-23T18:40:00.000+05:00

and i don't think
that anything has hurt so much
than the realization that we will never be friends again
and someday
soon
i will look at you across a room
and wish we had never, ever met.

2006-04-09T03:37:00.000+05:00

flowers
make me happy
orange lilies
that match the pattern
on my dress
i smile
i want to gather
all the scattered petals
and piece them together
like i have slowly
pieced together
my life.

2006-04-04T23:43:00.000+05:00

the sadness in your voice
broke my heart.
i worry about you.
friend/nonfriend/friendagain.

2006-01-22T22:08:00.000+05:00

He laughed at her.
She laughed at him.
She turned away, laughing
while tears slid down her face.
He kept laughing.
Because the
laughter
was all he could hear.

2006-01-21T21:50:00.000+05:00

i am falling in love
with the world
around me.
i smiled
at my reflection
last night.
i wish
i could share this
with you.

2006-01-03T21:56:00.000+05:00

the space between

2006-01-02T21:46:00.000+05:00

i look away
because i find myself
unable to tell you
how i feel
and i dont want you
to read it
in my eyes.

you still surprise me.
i still surprise myself.

thankyou
for that.

question / answer

2005-12-19T00:33:00.000+05:00

asking myself questions
the answers to which
appear
like a flashing neon sign
i want to cry
i am too scared of what
answers
i will come to then.

2005-12-14T22:24:00.000+05:00

sometimes
i surprise myself
by how
i become
such a better person
just by being with you.

for aapa

2005-12-06T16:26:00.000+05:00

secret smiles
sighing together
at the sight of
someone who takes your breath away
you thank the stars, sparkling bright tonight,
for the moment
your friend
walked into your life.

i have found a way, a way, to make you smile

2005-11-29T04:02:00.000+05:00

she whispers
'i love you'
to herself.

she doesn't know
if she loves him
or the feeling
of being able
to feel
again.

2005-11-27T22:44:00.000+05:00

Don't tell me I will be happy.
Don't make false promises.
Don't say the things I want to hear.
Don't try to change the way you feel.
(even though I don't want you to)
Don't make an effort
To change this feeling
of being
mutually misunderstood.

2005-09-29T21:11:00.000+05:00

you live
amongst clouds of smoke
unsaid thoughts
that i understand
somehow
when you look at me
i wonder
if my unspoken adoration
betrays
the unsmiling mask
i wear
for you
now.

2005-09-25T23:14:00.000+05:00

in the midst of all the madness
a shadow of a smile appears
she is retreating into someone
she doesn't want to be.

dear mom.

2005-09-23T11:43:00.000+05:00

i would exchange
all this praise
the congratulatory e-mails
my name in big block letters
the fame
everything
just to know
if you're proud
of the person
i am
today.

are you happy?

(if you are

- maybe i can be happy too. )

2005-09-11T15:45:00.000+05:00

i turn around

i don't look
at the past

i keep smiling

i walk away

i look at the glass door

i can see
my future
sparkling bright
in front of me

i love this alter ego

the great beyond

2005-09-07T00:47:00.000+05:00

if happiness is just a few words away
why is it so difficult
to write
to 'add a new contact'
to pick up the phone
to say something.
(anything)

2005-09-06T18:46:00.000+05:00

the sheer excitement
of bumping into newfound crushes
at 5:30 am
is a feeling
i want to lock up
and open
on a rainy day.

2005-08-29T18:38:00.000+05:00

in a strange city
i learn more
about myself
i fall more in love
with life
life is beautiful
(for now)

i don't want to fall in love..with you

2005-07-19T11:13:00.000+05:00

She looks at the cigarette
Curling paper
burning at the edges
wasting away
She wants
for smoke
to envelop
everything.

She doesn't pick it up,
(because she never
wants to hold her child
for the last time)
Even though
no one has ever
fallen
in love
with her.

my secret.

2005-07-13T19:56:00.000+05:00

My aunt
had a hysterectomy
because she hated
menstruating
I thought
she was stupid
Now,
when I cry
because my back
feels
like it will break
with this unseen pain
I am jealous
of my aunt.

High.

2005-06-25T12:41:00.000+05:00

She so rarely smiles
That when she does
Everyone wonders
What drug she took
Last night.

technology fails me, again.

2005-06-22T10:47:00.000+05:00

When the computer screen flickers
Turns to a mass of quivering pixels
I look to my cell phone
And hope fervently
That you are the one calling.

Then someone else
starts smiling
I cry.
Because.
Someone else's love
just passed me by.

a million tears. a million years.

2005-06-09T15:31:00.000+05:00

The tears,
I cried,
Over you.
Could make up
an entire sea
That would kill
whoever dared to
swim in it.

blind belief

2005-06-09T00:23:00.000+05:00

The people who were once the central focus of my life,
are now just relegated to millions of imaginary conversations
and whatifs and whatcoulds.
It is strange.
It is ironic.
It is nothing, yet is everything.

There was always one thing I was sure about, that he would be there for me.
But as we grow older and conversation runs dry, I know that my blind belief is waning. I feel sad, sadder than I was at the end of any relationship I've ever had.

I have lost it all.

nothing at all.

2005-05-25T20:55:00.000+05:00

I said I didn't love him.
I just don't know why
I die a little inside
Every time he laughs
At nothing at all.

migraines.

2005-05-08T00:03:00.000+05:00

When she said
that her head ached.
Blinding pain,
streaking through
every vein.
You should have listened
because,
she died,
in my arms,
last night.

teenage love

2005-04-29T02:05:00.000+05:00

She listened to him talk, disappointment rising within her with every word. She looked at him, and he smiled. She kept looking, for all she wanted to see was a glimmer of the long haired boy she had first been drawn to during a college seminar years ago, who with a cigarette in his hand and one of her favorite books in the other, had erased memories of every crush she'd ever had.

She turned the TV off and wondered whether he still read,
during boring speeches in the National Assembly.

2005-04-16T22:28:00.000+05:00

He loves you. He loves you not. The wicked games he plays. The million conversations you have with him in your head. The silence in the air. The unshed tears in your eyes. The unshed tears in his. You walk around in circles, hoping you'll bump into each other and won't have to say the first words. 'Perhaps, it is better off this way,' you think, as you slip a ring onto a stranger's finger and watch the world celebrate.

of friends gone by.

2005-04-15T11:21:00.000+05:00

"You remembered my birthday last year. I was feeling so down and you were the only one who remembered. And you didn't this year."

I remember, when I read that line, I felt guilty and sad. And angry - at being expected to remember everylittlething about you. Why should I? What did you ever do for me? You couldn't be bothered to remember anything about me - right down to my last name. When we met I wanted to hide because I didn't want you to know that I had changed. I was scared that it would be the end.

And it was. You couldn't deal with change. I couldn't deal with the egoistic person you had become, who just didn't care. You were my real-life storybook fantasy and you proved to me, over and over and over again, how I had been so wrong.

Goodbye friend. I won't miss you anymore.

"...calling..."

2005-04-14T20:50:00.000+05:00

"...Calling..". The shiny white light flashing, once, twice, thrice, accompanied with a monophonic rendition of Alicia Keys' How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore. She sighed and pressed the Silence key for the tenth time that day. How do you tell someone that they're not your best-est friend anymore? How do you tell someone that you've found someone else to talk to at 3 in the morning when you can't sleep? How do you tell someone that you're scared that you'll say something that will change your relationship from best friends to one-sided love? She could imagine him turning his gaze away from the mobile screen to the object of his affection, and for a second she wondered, it was alright to Silence his calls, but how would she silence his memories out of the endless monologue of her life?

She would learn later.

pastpresentfuture

2005-04-12T18:44:00.000+05:00

Darling,

I love you.

But I,

Cannot see beyond,

What has already happened,

In this wonderful world, lifetimes ago.

feel.

2005-04-10T23:39:00.000+05:00

Sometimes, when I flew high on a heady cocktail of cough syrup and whatever over-the-counter painkiller I could find lying around, I wondered why. Why I was doing this, why everyone I developed a lasting attachment for walked out of my life while I calmly looked on and encouraged them to move away because I couldn't love, didn't want to love and didn't want to be loved. A few years later, my immune system stopped reacting to pain medication and I knew, I knew that perhaps this was the only way I could feel what I had done to everyone else.

Sometimes,

you can't make it on your own.

Inspired by: U2's Sometimes and K's Choice's Not an Addict

wasted womanhood.

2005-04-04T23:18:00.000+05:00

She hugged her knees to herself, the way little kids do when they've done one too many somersault. She felt that way too, her belly churning inside, knotted with pain. Womanhood is a curse at times, she thought. She looked up and saw a couple of guys in the corner, staring at the six inch slits in her trousers. For more reasons than one, she added silently. 'If men had periods', was a guessing game she often played in her head. It was fun to imagine guys looking surreptitiously over their shoulders, avoiding wearing white trousers, running to the bathroom after a 3 hour lecture at university. Whenever someone said women were the weaker sex, she thought of women screaming in labor, all that pain going to waste, all that pain to bring such idiots into the world. She looked up again. A woman, dressed all in white.

"Its time for your hysterectomy, Miss."

cry, dear child, cry.

2005-04-02T11:45:00.000+05:00

We tried to cry,
but we couldn't.

"Tsk tsk, taubah taubah, log kya kaheinge. Khuda ka waasta hai, ro lo beta." said my aunt, echoing the thoughts of every woman in the room. Pakistani women are always more concerned about what everyone's thinking. We must do as we are programmed to do, like miniscule robots running around with no feeling, no emotion.

We sat, dry eyed, laughing at the distant relative who'd drunk too much Pepsi on her first visit to the city. We gossiped about the cousin who started waxing when she was 8 and the latest movie we had seen. We remembered the yummy lunch our mother had cooked six days before she died, the last lunch she'd ever cook, the last time we would eat food laden with maa ka pyaar. I thought, as I ate the tasteless biryani on her Qul, if I had known she was going to die I'd have asked her to cook everything I liked so I could freeze it and eat it all my life.

We couldn't cry because we didn't register the shock. We had seen her coffin, we had cried even, but then we had shut up. I thought she was in the other room, at work, in the kitchen, on a long delayed vacation, and that she would magically appear around the corner and I could sit with my head on her lap as she made my hair, cut short so that it would grow better. I couldn't wait to talk to her, to tell her of everything going on. I knew she'd come back.

I never thought I'd see her ghost that night.

Wake up screaming

2005-04-01T11:00:00.000+05:00

I wrote this short story of sorts as an exercise to get myself back to writing fiction. It is inspired from a snippet from my life [ 5 minutes of solitude expanded to 547 words ] and the Faiz Ahmed Faiz poem Mujhse Pehli Si Mohabbat, sung by Madam Noorjahan.

She woke up with a scream in her throat last night.

“That’s what I get for listening to Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven till 3 in the morning,” she muttered, dazedly trying to recollect her thoughts the next morning, over a cup of steaming tea at her favorite coffee shop, a warm little haven that usually put all her brain cells speeding into action. The caffeine wasn’t working today.

Stairway to Heaven had spooked her out since she was 13 and had read about the legend that Zeppelin’s band members had sold their souls to Satan. She had crawled under the bed each night until her father made her give the tape away and read her prayers out loud in her room every night.

“Maybe I was dreaming of him again,” she thought, sighed and then rested her head on the Formica surface table. How many girls spend their days dreaming of boys who don’t love them, who love someone else, who lust after girls who are thinner, richer, nicer, et al? Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered dreaming of guys she was never destined to be with. Perhaps the raging hormones had gotten better of her.

She looked at her hands. Ink stains. Ink adorned the hands of writers, philosophers, scientists. School kids hurriedly trying to do their homework en route to school. College kids scribbling notes fast enough to put Lance Armstrong to shame. Shopkeepers slowly writing down the number of transactions in a day, the number of rupees they made, all the time wondering how many rupees away they were from repaying their loan to the sharp money lender who sat just around the corner, and seemed to have an eye on them perpetually.

She changed the channel on the radio on her mobile set. The irritating dj’s voice announced “a classic” coming up next, but in a world where Wham songs were classics and djs were idiots, she was about to switch the channel when Noorjahan’s voice filled her eras. Mujhse pehli si mohabbat. She didn’t know why, but that song always reminded her of girls in the 70s, singing the song before they rolled in the infamous tea trolleys to serve prospective in-laws seated in the drawing room, imploring them silently to not ask of her the love she had reserved for her first love, her parents, Shashi Kapoor, everyone and anyone she had ever known before them. Or of an estranged couple, trying to make up with each other and avoiding each other’s eyes.

“We’re such suckers for romance,” she thought, “That we’d believe that or eyes could give away everything we ever felt. When in the real world, words, actions and looks all turn meaningless when I turn back and see the object of my affection looking at my retreating rear rather than thinking “she’s going, and I won’t see her again for the next 24 hours”, when I turn back and see him running as fast as he can to get away from me. We live our lives hoping we don’t turn into clichés; when that’s what we really, truly feel most comfortable as.”

Maybe that utter realization was the reason she screamed last night.

“Aur bhi dukh hain zamaney mai mohabbat ke siwa”

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz.