Thinkle

[Image source:  AI-generated with DALL·E] Some of the most remarkable experiences in life aren't necessarily 'fun'. They're deep as poetry, moving as the ocean waves and layered with intermixing emotions.  With this piece I wanted to highlight how joy shouldn't be compulsive, or how 'fun' isn't 'fun' if fun needs to be chased. ~~~ You must assemble near the Ferris wheel,  and we’ll play a game of deception We’ll sprint after ‘fun’ on broken glass, and catch only its reflection We must ride the Ferris wheel at sunset, and we’ll smile no matter how tired we’ve been We’ll smile for the strangers, the cameras, the aesthetic, we’ll smile because our ‘fun’ needs to be seen Dizzy as we may be, we’ll keep the wheel turning, unease building as we reach the top But if the social script demands we ride, What’s a little nausea to make us stop? We’ll ascend with rehearsed glee, screams buckled in for more Convinced the view will be different, though we’ve see...

 

(Image source: Wix Image Creator)

From the window, she could see the rain pelting down. She was an artist, a songwriter, a grandmother, a brave woman. She was so many things- but in that moment as she followed her gaze along the tracks in mud left by the pouring rain, she felt suspended between the realms of life and death.  She checked the wall clock out of habit, the minute hand not having shifted an inch since she last checked. Within an hour, she would know for sure the results of her PET scan report. In the upcoming sixty minutes of her life, she would know at last if she was cancer-free. The time gap was analogous to a journey of miles and all she had was a bullock-cart. One would expect the mind to crumple down with anxiety under similar conditions but she was known to be an exceptionally calm woman. Her approach towards an organized life had her so prepared, that her retirement life was sorted by her twenties. Having lost her parents at the tender age of eight, death was no stranger to her. Her only concern...

Allow me to walk you through a day in class 12th F. Students are expected to report after every other class from the coaching is dispersed. Class 12th F shares its schedule with no other batch, so the rusted iron entry gates are closed shut way before their session begins. That, however, is not their greatest concern. They consider themselves lucky if they don't have to struggle studying in candle-lit rooms due to power outages.  After you jump past the iron gate, you will have to climb a flight of slippery stairs till you reach the third floor. Towards your right will be a dimly illuminated hallway. Keep walking and the last classroom should be your 12th F. Careful, silence your phone before you enter. These students tolerate no distractions. If you wait for someone to answer the door, you might probably wait there forever. These students' ears are receptive to nothing beyond their syllabus- not even a knock at the door.  Once you are in, you realize what I meant when I said ...

  You used to be a kid who made the world with clay, you thought you could do anything if you tried You used to wake up with so many ideas,  your walls were filled with your doodles You used to be a kid who built empires with lego, you knew no geometry, no centre of gravity you tried to create barbie houses, that stood on a single sheet of cardboard  Later you learnt there are three dimensions, and that you can't live in that palace you drew You learnt it takes more than your imagination, to make some things come true Somewhere along the way, you abruptly stopped dreaming, to doodle, to create, to learn  You were told it's for the experts, "Only artists doodle, engineers create, scholars learn" Someone told you, you don't have what it takes At what point exactly, Did you start taking them so seriously? When will you realize that "someone" is your mind? You used to be a kid you thought you could do anything if you tried Eventually, you became an adult you...

  December 31st, Sunday I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath of fresh air. When I exhaled, I could feel strands of my hair flying with the wind as every last trace of tension left my body. My feet felt relaxed against the calm of river water. My son was splashing some on me, giggling so much my chest ached at not bringing him out for picnics more often.  The gushing of water brought my buzzing thoughts to a standstill. In that moment I wasn’t bound by the baggage from my past, nor was the uncertainty of the future holding me back. In that moment, as I focused on the rhythm of my heart- I was living.  The thought made me calm. I opened my eyes to see my son still playing with water. It was five minutes to sunset which I so eagerly brought my son to show. From the riverside, it looked delicious at the backdrop of a pinkish blue sky. The view was clear without any obstruction of skyscrapers.  It was only a few blocks away and I was visiting it after fifteen y...

  Oh hush, don’t read this aloud, it’s a story no one knows She was covering her tan with long sleeves, when he held out a black rose Oh pain, how it shot under her skin, like icicles her broken heart froze Her frail body shivered as she wondered, “was all I deserved a black rose?” She wondered if it’d be any different, if she changed the colour of her hair Would she still get a black rose, if she were a tad bit more fair? Her insecurities convinced her, the flower was some sick joke She should’ve seen the boy’s eyes, at length his nervousness spoke Oh pain, how it shot under his skin, as embarrassment clouded her mind  She walked away, repulsed, totally missing he was colourblind  He knew she loved dark red, the florist heard him wrong   But nothing he could’ve said, would change this sad song For it was never about colour,  neither of her skin nor flower It was her blindness that ruined their ‘could’ve-been’, to the essence of his gestures, that she’d never s...

Avoiding- I’ve mastered that art by now. I can do it with my eyes closed but moreover, I can nail it with my eyes open. I can see things with the empty stare of not having seen them. I can hear words with the sheer surprise of never having heard them, and I can avoid situations like they never presented themselves. It’s as easy as shoving back an unpleasant memory. A dismissing head-shake and it’s gone. That’s all it took until she stood tall in front of me, head up, chin up, looking me in the eye as though challenging me with her daunting gaze.  “Why don’t you love me?”  I immediately break eye contact as if the slightest of eye movement would make her disappear. Unlike all the things I have been avoiding, she doesn’t go away simply after blinking. Her pinning look demands answers and I am nothing if not a questionnaire myself.  I want to ask her why she hates me, why she avoids me, what part of me disgusts her. I have so many questions for her but firstly, does she real...

1. Maybe  I stared at the dead rabbit on my lawn for a bit too long. It had fresh deep cuts shaped by sharp, savage teeth. Blood poured over to the cement floor and reached below my shell-shocked body.  In my reflection in the blood, I could see it again. Unshakable, undeniable, tangible regret looking at me in the eye.  Maybe if I had reached a few minutes early, I would have been able to save a life. Maybe if I hadn’t just spent an hour on the bed, crying, I’d have reached downstairs in time.  Maybe. My life has been a lot about ‘maybe’s lately. Maybe if I visited my mother on her birthday for once, she might think of me as a  lesser awful daughter. Maybe if I left early for work, I wouldn’t break traffic rules. Maybe if I wasn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time… It just went on and on.  I cycled through my lawn, making sure I didn’t crush the rabbit. I then went past the neighbourhood, towards the city side.  The sun was like a dab of blush on t...

  2.Did you know? “How did it go?” Cam asked.  “Not an ideal first day of college” “Oh” I gave him a sad smile. He returned it too. In that moment, we said everything without words. Everything about how he was sorry my classmates found out, about how I knew I would never really be accepted in society, about how it felt to be illegitimate. Everything. It’s fascinating just how much a sad smile can hide.  As we were crossing the footpath beside one of those beautiful ponds in the city, he asked me pointing at the water lilies “Lara? Did you know water lilies lasted for only three to five days?”  Cam was sad. I knew it since he would throw random facts my way whenever he was. His way of coping up, I assumed.  “No, I didn’t know that.” ~~~ “Hello?!” yelled the young man in the floral shop in the North-west valley.  He seemed to have been calling my name for a while now but I didn’t realise.  “Yeah, sorry. Can I have a bouquet of blue water lilies please?”...

3.Water lilies It’s 3 a.m. and I’ve given up on trying to sleep. Because everytime I do, I hear my screams. Helpless and hopeless. Desperate cries of help that will always ring in my ears.  The whole night is basically about me shifting sides and my bed creaking beneath me every time I do.  “Cam?” I asked, to the darkness in my room.  “I miss you. I miss how you made me feel like I wasn’t a bad person. Like I had the potential to improve. And that I deserved to be treated better than being tagged as ‘illegitimate’. I miss your smile, your jokes, your presence. Everything you said, everything you didn’t. I miss you everyday, every moment. And above all…I miss us. I miss what we were together. Our talks, our time spent together. Our life after we met each other”  I didn’t hear a response. But I’m not quite sure what else I was expecting.  At around 7 a.m. I got up to leave. As I cycled towards my destination, I recalled every little detail of that day crystal clea...

He stood behind the threshold  between his new life and old Old, was bit dull but just fine and new, was all bright sunshine  He paused midway, conflicted and sad for leaving behind every experience he had  every thought which in his mind once crossed would now just become a lesson lost God read his mind, understood his concern and blessed the man with a bag for every lesson he had to learn The man was elated, he finished packing his experience  but as he moved towards the door he started missing convenience So he stuffed in his bag  his entire comfort zone  then left for the door but saw his habits sitting alone Unable to resist he packed them too and took his step towards everything new With h is bag on his back, the weight was weighing him down as before his new life had a chance to unfold he collapsed by the weight without ever reaching the threshold...

      "Parul!"   "PARUL FAST!!"   "FOR GOD'S SAKE PARUL, RUN FASTER!!!"   It takes everything in Aditi and Armita to not jump out of the moving bus, lift me to my knees and cart me back to the bus. They have to understand it's also taking everything in me to not faint right on the spot.  I'm panting so hard my lungs hurt. My whole body is aching with pain I never knew I had it in me to bear. Regardless, I find myself running at my best speed towards a bus.  And surprise! I make it to the bus.      The moment I get in, Armita and Aditi pull me into a tight hug like they almost thought they'd lost me forever. I would be lying if I said I didn't think the same too.  I inhale a deep breath and close my eyes chanting 'it's over, it's fine now, I'm fine and so are my friends. God, thank you' on loop.  No amount of I'm fines could ever make me believe that though. ' Cause I'm SO not fine.   About an hour ago m...

[This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses  schools, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.]   “ Ignorance killed the cat;          curiosity was framed!"                                                                       - Quote by C. J. Cherryh Four years ago Electromagnetism is the physical interaction among electric charges, magnetic moments, and the electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic field can be static, slowly changing, or form waves. Electromagneti...

  On one of the parapet walls on the rooftop of a deserted skyscraper stood a middle aged man. He seemed to have one of those faces with a permanent frown, huge dark circles and highly wrinkled cheeks.  He held a clear green bottle of beer in one hand and an empty one in another.    I had an urge to immediately rush his way but I had known better.  I knew for a reason that, that parapet wall gave me an electrifying sort of thrill, as though challenging me to jump. What was disturbing though, was how although I hate to admit, I liked the feeling. I feared liking the feeling, craving it and giving in to it too.   But people like this man kept coming here on this infamous rooftop occasionally, luring me towards those awaiting walls.   Within the wink of an eye, his right leg was suspended beyond the parapet over nothingness...unless of course, you count the ground fifty floors below.    This time I couldn't help but sprint towards him. I regrett...

                                               Nobody would ever believe me on this. Not my friends, not my own family, not even you.   Every single night at around 10:00 p.m. I would hear the sounds of the piano. It was feeble at first, then subtle and soft, next it was audible and gradually it reached a stage where it became unbearably deafening. I had been reporting the same in the society office for months but no actions had been taken. I even tried to ask other neighbours for help, but in vain. One day I decided that I had had enough. My board exams were approaching and the tension in the air was already enough. The disturbing music only made things worse. Determined, I got up to leave and marched up the stairs, stomping angrily at the poor floor. It didn’...

That Night One of my first and oldest memories dates back to when I was a preteen. It gives me full-body shivers to think about even today, as an adult.  It was a no moon night. As fate would have it, the entire town had a power outage. This particular night also happened to be the first time my parents let me live home alone while they were out for work. I remember shivering intensely. Tears rolled down my cheeks when I couldn’t even get myself to muster enough courage to grab a jacket. I had my head buried in my hands when my eyes caught the sight of something unfamiliar. At first, it was hard to know if it was just my sleep deprived self making up visions or something really was up.  As I inched closer to the broken wall, I figured it wasn’t broken after all.  It didn’t exist anymore! Kid you not, by this time I had lost control over my limbs. They simply felt like a few lifeless grams of flesh.  And I had a fair reason to feel that way! It’s not everyday you see...