On language and its acquisition

I wonder often if:

the space I occupy and

the words I speak are

truly my own.

When I speak in a language

Mama cannot comfortably maneuver -

but I am uncomfortable with anything

that isn’t this.

When I am startled,

shocked even,

at how quickly the thoughts

tumble through my mouth.

Shocked,

at the point of pride that

was my prowess with these words

that were never mine-

especially because

they were never mine.

When I think back 

to days of Catholic school classrooms,

where we were told to think

in a language that didn’t belong to us,

to abandon pride in our past,

and that rush of complacency

because I did it without being told,

because I laughed when others could not,

And because, it set me on a pedestal.

It made me better.

I remember

the carefully cultivated sense of shame

nurtured by adolescent cruelty-

my face burning at Mama’s hesitance with

words that came so naturally to me,

my disregard of sacrifices,

of her embarrassment

of my privilege.

And now,

“When did you learn?” they ask.

And often, so often

I am tempted.

I am tempted to ask how,

how they learned to think,

to live,

to say.

And when they answer,

to reply

“Well, I learnt in quite the same way.”

But these words,

They are not mine

And I have no claim over them. 

or, for that matter,

over those that

were meant to be my own.

barely.

Your birthday drifted by

While my thoughts,

Occupied by you, forever you,

Wondered and wandered over

What you might be doing

(or Who)

I remember days when

Promises seemed to be forever

When love was living on purely being

Itself, and nothing more

Or less

But now it’s less, forever less.

And I am caught in a forever without you,

I too am foreverless-

 A pun of my own creation,

Staring

            S t a r i n g

 Staring

At my phone, waiting.

That I might evoke pity, love,

Even anger-

That I might evoke need in you

To reach out and ask

If I still live-

So that, my love,

I can tell you: barely.

And not enough,

That facades are tiresome,

And I am keeping them,

But,

Barely.

the end of love

What comes after
the end of love?
After you have resorted to
the superstitious and the superfluous
after you have compared
the alignments of stars
after you have looked at numbers
over and over,
until compatibilities swim
in front of your eyes

When you begin to wonder
what if, but if, and if
when you let the questions
swallow your thoughts
and
cloud your mind with
unnecessary conjectures
with remorse and
incomprehension and when
you think there should be a law

that there should be a law against
pain,
that you should sue for a broken heart,
that one heart should not, would not
turn away
when the other is still hanging on,
when it seems that 'half-hearted'
is a term coined
for the benefit of this place you are in.

What comes after
the end of love?

In less than a year I will no longer be able to list the same mailing address as I do now, a comfortable box number in Blanchard which I have taken for granted. It will soon belong to someone else, and knowing that feels very strange because I can't imagine that number written under anyone else's name but mine. There's a calendar on my wall that's been on November 2012 since November, and I haven't bothered to take it down. Thinking about time, how it's running out, how there is never enough, how there are so many things to squeeze into so little of it- that's bad enough on its own without having a calendar kindly letting me know how fast the days are running out. It started last semester. I didn't say I couldn't wait for the semester to end, my silence an acknowledgment of the limited time I have left here. What happens once the semester ends? There's two left. Then just one. Then it's over, but it feels like yesterday when I stepped off the shuttle that brought me here from Hartford Bradley International Airport. I remember feeling the awe, feeling intimidated, trying to take in my new surroundings. I remember before that, how I used to obsessively look for any pictures of campus, look at them for many minutes at a time trying to imagine what it would be like, anticipating living with my roommate, becoming best friends. We don't talk anymore, except for an uncomfortable nod when we acknowledge each other's presence in situations where the other person can't be avoided- but I always marvel at how things turn out.
Sometimes I wonder if people collect possessions because the things they own make them feel rooted, somehow more permanent. That's definitely true for me, except that no matter how many things I own, my suitcases are right there, reminding me that there is only limited space and I will have to give a lot away. I don't have a plan, because this was as far as my imagination had gotten me (even when I use the word gotten now, I realize how being here has liberated me from the stuffiness of my Convent school education, where it wasn't considered a word. A relic left behind by colonizers in the form of anglophiles.), I had just imagined going to college. I couldn't even think of anything beyond that. And now that beyond is fast approaching.

Eff I'm nearly 22.

Isn't it weird and amazing that ...there are too many things that are weird and amazing. As a kid you don't really understand being human. You can't quite grasp the idea of just existing. And then as you grow up, you want to be someone because being just anyone is mediocre and terribly humiliating to your sense of self. As if the bottomless pit that is your lack of self-esteem isn't enough. Growing up, you need some ray of hope to make you believe you aren't just going to be lost in all of this, whatever this is.
Then one day it dawns on you that the getting lost part is a little bit inevitable. As inevitable as your 4 year old self tripping and falling flat your face because you didn't listen to your mother and ran away when she tried to tie your shoelaces. You start becoming used to the idea, even a little comfortable.
Hiding under a proverbial rock doesn't seem so bad anymore. They tell you to take charge of your own life and you realize that you're too scared to even try. Where to from here?
It's not like real life is some wonderful romantic comedy or even close to being a mildly entertaining sitcom (unless you're just observing, in which case, it's a total scream sometimes). Everyone keeps talking about this thing called "the grind" which sounds a little like a huge monster with really big molars waiting to chew any and everything to sawdust- and suddenly, real life seems even less appealing. The questions you ask yourself aren't about what your next move is going to be, but more about what you're going to settle for and whether doing what you love is going to be able to give you the life that you want. After all, if I'm going to be stuck in a rut, I might as well try to make it a pleasant one to live in, no?

02/03/2005

I was sitting in the balcony writing a poem, and I remember it was drizzling. At 7 am on the 1st of March 2005, Karachi looked beautiful in the surreal way it does when it's raining. That sounds pretentious, but is exactly how it was. Calm in a way that felt like a silence had descended on the otherwise loud streets around our house. I sat there with my cup of tea, the psuedo-intellectual wannabe poet at 14, trying to pen down some words that would save the day in my memory. And I won't ever forget it. Not because of the poem itself. I wrote many of those, and somehow forgot when or how or why or where I'd written them. But the time I wrote this one poem became a day that would forever stay in my life.
I didn't know what to think, because I had thought they would bring him back. He always came back. I knew he wasn't well, but I never knew how unwell he really was. So I thought it was just another day like the ones we'd been having for the past year and a half. Hospital, home, hospital, home, hospital, home. I sat there writing and thinking about what to cook for dinner, because Mama was too tired to do it after she came back from all those hours in the hospital.
She came back home for a few hours, and then returned. Her mind was somewhere else, but then again, where could it be with her husband in the hospital? She was always distracted in those days, so it wasn't out of the ordinary. She was lost more than she had been before, but I didn't see it.
At 11:30 pm S aunty called, telling me that he was asking for us. I was going to find out later that he hadn't been asking, or rather, couldn't ask anymore. But you tell a little white lie to children, because you want to spare their fragility. She came to get us, trying to make small talk awkwardly. Baita khaanay mein kya khaaya? Poora dinn kya kiya? School kaisa jaa raha hai? She seemed intent on erasing the time and the situation. Just your usual 1 am drive with a family friend four times your age, happens all the time.
I walked in and they were all there. Mama was leaning against the wall outside the CCU, crying. I didn't know what the acronym stood for, and I was too distracted watching my mother in tears. I had never seen her cry before. The moment I walked in, I saw him lying on a bed looking helpless and vulnerable; two things I had never thought Baba could or would ever be. I didn't even know the disease that was killing him. The shock of it was more for me than his imminent death. I broke down, but more out of the stress of the situation than grief. They were asking Mama to sign away his life, and I could see her battling with her heart over it. She wasn't even sure if his life was hers to give away. But they told her that it would save him pain, because he would never come back the way she knew him.
Then he was gone. The four of us stood there as they loaded him into a van. It still wouldn't hit me, not for days. Then one day it would, and I would blame myself. Mama would blame me sometimes too. I couldn't understand that she did it from a place of loss herself, because my poetry hadn't achieved the depth that had the ability to grasp those emotions yet.
I've been told there is nothing poetic about death. But the only one I knew had all the drama of death as I thought of it. The skies wept, and I couldn't muster a tear.
That night we were torn apart, and we have spent the years since trying to piece ourselves back.

Karachi, again.

I have been tired.

of your ways and the

slow toll that being part of you

takes when I try my best to

settle in

I have been tired and beaten

snd weary and nearly

broken by the way you are cruel,

the way you seem not to care

because you go on and so should i,

And there is no room for those who try

to Wait and Watch.

you have moved me to poetry

and you have moved me to tears-

almost convinced me that I would

not look back again

that I could walk away from

nostalgia strewn in the lanes of

my memory

these things have an uncanny knack

of  being utterly wrong because

what doesn’t start in my gut,

a notion that will not tug at

the strings of my heart

will hardly change what is

in my blood.

these smells, these trees,

this beauty

still alien, still unknown.

you refuse to make room

and I cannot coerce you.