A Bag of Thoughts

What exactly is home?  I keep finding myself bumping into this question. It’s a simple question with deep implications and different ones for different people.  What is home? Is it just the house that provides one shelter? Can it only be the social definition of ‘home’? Do people from the same family, living in the same house always have the same home?  I sit in my room with the relentless sounds of hoarse drilling, deliberate hammering and constant sawing float around the house, reaching my ears. The day I returned from Sahyadri, I was surprised by how different circumstances were now. I could see the shift in the mood in the two floors and it was almost like I could feel the house echoing with anticipation and eagerness. When I returned I didn’t eat in front of the television like I used to. Instead I sat facing the midnight blue velvet of the bed in my parents’ room, chewing monotonously on rice and rajma. It was weird.  It felt different. Even a...

It always hurts. I always hurt. Myself, that too. It goes around in this exaggerated parabola of a chain, hits me in the stomach and  my feet give out under me each time. Each time, I want to escape it,  this feeling that something is amiss,  that I’m in the wrong place.  And each time,  I’m blind-folded,  my vulnerability ticks away from showing up in full swing,  my heart a reckless beast that  I try to hide  in futile rags.  Always,  I’m reaching out,  stumbling over unseen rocks  and feelings,  I’m calling out.  I’m screaming.  Loud,  wailing.  No, but  between us, all there is,  is space.  Particles floating between us, that’s all.  I turn on a torch,  they’re stars to me.  But nevertheless, space.  Space it is.  Never blank, never empty.  Always space.  Between this word and t...

The breeze sweeps the forest away, The night swallows my heart whole, My head, it rests against the pillow, And my ear pressed against the soft fabric, Listening to the emptiness beyond.  Eyes close and it’s a dream that I meet, And I see me and them  And me.  And the garden full of  Orange explosions that have been  Paused, Made to stand still and bloom, Bloom as flowers. And a window in the airplane, My sight covered by majestic clouds, As we descend from the stratosphere, Clouds and clouds Like cotton-candy  and cotton  and a thought.  The plane ventures into a cloud  as big as it can get, and the blinding whiteness,  envelops us,  some hygroscopic nuclei and  turbulences later,  we emerge. And a rainbow, That isn’t all curves, But the tip of a cylinder, Pointed toward me,  And it  Expands, expands Like a warm feeling in the stomach Or...

The flow in my head has  Been interrupted The voices in my ears have grown weary My heart, a tired compulsion.  The flow in my head has  Been cut off Abruptly  The voices in my ears have Taken to the dark The urge and tears Bring words I comprehend not. Color has changed shades And change is a flashing bandanna  I would only take off to Obscure the rest of my  Identity, behind an opaque  Curtain of a shallow Everything.  Then when a foghorn blows  In the distance So much  Has happened Is happening Should be happening For my w ords are fractured   My chamber of insecurities Been broken into, And yet, Flaming, gasping, reaching out, I look for words. It makes no sense, Pranks, And ‘arguments’, And grudges, And misunderstandings, And short-comings, And inabilities, And obligations,  And pain. And hoping for them to see (not look), And giv...

And I was shoved face into nondescript, green garments, Just another sign of another shedding token of my normality, Sitting on a wheelchair, A victim of bitter perception, Silent glances and boisterous objections. It perhaps, was a dream, Titled ‘A Day At Its Absolute Worst’, Fraught with thousands of unfamiliar, strange faces, Unmeant empathy and, Unsolicited painkillers. Then post-sleep, comes anticipation, Of it, Of that, Of alas- that-mustn’t-be-named, Of the tenure under concentrated lights And painstaking crafting of my mindless vessel of a body, Of finally waking up to a blinding, spinning room, Of curious crimson stains and cotton-white bandages, Of reaching out for familiar faces against the odd backdrop, Against the struggling explosion somewhere inside. It echoes, A loud, resonating feeling, A constant threat, A relentless grip around my throat. Did time stop? (Or did I?) A day, Not an eternity, I was told, W...