A Bag of Thoughts

Nighthawks   (do tell: What was dying twice like?)  These days I  ache on the wane, I feel a tall child crying, setting with sun, crying.  I’m afraid there is not-else I can  write about for you’ve left  a bed in your shape  behind in place of warmth and Now my hands must be pressed up against me, one underneath my thigh, the other my chest   I’m still alive —   as I watch the night. Do you remember how mother’s  forehead would forever be kneaded with  fine fragments as she dreamt?  She never felt, mother never felt it, enough.  But she was so big and real enough that  I would slip my little hands to her, palms painful rough as  they travelled across us,  resting flush against her belly. But these new hands, weaker, travel against old sweater cotton, taking with my sheets,  to hold me before the scream,  because I wouldn’t want to scream - whose name would I scream? —  and yet my throat ...

  there is something to be said  about sickness stemming straight from inside  emptiness  comes from death  and while i still talk to you  before i sleep and whenever  i see your reflections,  your less-like-cloud more-like-cotton fur  is gone  bite marks on my arms  are fading  but my ears still perk up when  the fan in my room whines  so sweetly  in the mornings  (you beg to be let out)  and the metal clangs  some far away  and it is your childhood bell ringing (you shake yourself dry)  the citrus of the orange leaks out because i did not have  it in me to  visit you again  i am ill,  without the  pink and black of your paw  and  i will not believe  that the mocha of your brown is no longer spilling into your vanilla white  when i comb through it

 how to love people: a guide  i am not a people person. i don’t understand how to respond to texts on time or to ask my parents how they actually feel — hell, i barely can pick up video calls from my best friend unless she gives me two days’ notice. but there is a certain kind of people i understand; people comprised of fiction. they all have arcs for one; redemption arcs, hero arcs, arcs of their lives that usually are projectiles if they’re lucky. these people are all great conversationalist (Lane: “I resent that. I’m a witty conversationalist.”) and they are friendly with the shape of grammar, unless it must be discontinued because of factors such as dialect, cultural background, a strong character that seeps into their very dialogue. now, though i’ve spent days analyzing such people and their deals (“We commit a cruelty against existence if we do not interpret it to death.”) and this is the only difference i’ve found between real people and people in books: people in books...

 # “made it flow pretty nice i’d say, so no need to shuffle.” saturday morning, the empty caf (remember when she told you how saturday breakfast is best because of the calm walls?), and the promise of tomato omelette that gently stirs you awake. unintentional tuning out of the conversation at hand, gawking at the amount of pineapple in your plate — did i get this? i watch as people get ignored by the girl with earphones and laugh at the realization, the misunderstanding. a part of me begins to really take in my surroundings. it’s funny how we never got around to removing the theatre season board, the words of encouragement engraved in our hearts from the daily visits to the caf, waiting in line for the magical plopping of multi-coloured soap onto our eager palms. unruly lettering and half torn pages that scream “great work!” to nobody in particular.  i guess you could say i had a premonition from the very beginning of the end, i knew somehow that the promise (and curse) of one...

 fading contours recently i learned that not all silences have to be filled. one would think an introvert would be more familiar with this truth but there are some days when my ears feel like holes, not openings. the silence deafens and i feel unarmed and naked against this echoing lack of meaning.  i’ve only ever learnt to write letters of apology addressed to these silences, questioning the shadows of vulnerability that suffocate me ever so often. but not all of these silences have to be filled and the ones i do choose to fill - because it is, indeed, a choice - need not be met with words.  this is what i’m afraid of: invasion. rigid boundaries, permeable boundaries - do these really mean anything different? is it not part of being human to be made and remade? to be invaded by others’ problems, to be burdened and burden? to make space and to take up space? the other day i was reminded that SPACE — the faraway building that hangs somewhere between a classroom and a cinem...

 # asymmetry  life is continuous when it’s symmetrical. i’m talking about drawing a full circle multiple times in your life. meeting a stranger from a year ago at a new chapter of your life, a full bag of books that you can be sure to discard after a year of highlighting and makes notes of each page. like my name that catches my eye in every zoom call, “prarthana aggarwal”, the perfect balance between a’s and g’s. uniform. safe.  but i have an unsolicited love for asymmetry.  it is the opposite of uniform and safe. it’s the feeling of coming west from home and hearing my mother’s footsteps in my nocturnal roommate’s, hearing the sleep-intruding sips of chai with the sharp rustle of the annoyingly expansive newspaper, hearing my brother’s obnoxious laughter in my roommate’s sudden early morning antics. i have to remind myself, shake my head physically, clutch the phone intoxicated on a full night’s charging, remind myself what this is.  the best platform to have ...

 math is weird. i’m not referring to math classes because those are just somniferous. somniferous lunches followed by somniferous math classes. but the matter of math itself is weird. the graph in my calculator deceives me, insanely zoomed in blue lines or barely intersecting blue and red lines - make up your mind!  numbers imprisoned among grids, lines limited by arrows, and slow trickling of parabolas and asymptotes - i don’t know what math is about.  history is tragic. i feel history in my bones and i see history, not just in my textbook but outside of it, in the digital pdf- in the recurring arm sitting underneath the book;  a librarian in a crisp checked shirt scanning each page meticulously, their morning spent glancing at monotonous stories of warriors and pictures of movements that shaped the world. they don’t know the power they hold. trust and betrayal, history is drama, petty colonisers and bold under-appreciated women. they are human. movies about history...

 in the mornings i wake up wistful, missing something i don’t have. i don’t know how i know this. maybe it’s because this thought prances around in my head each time i open eyes to the subdued sunlight filtering through the grids of my bedside window. i don’t want curtains and waking up is difficult. somewhere between the slow but excruciating days of quarantine and the period after that, the week between Christmas and 31st that shouldn’t exist, i realised i’m always going to be sick. homesick, school-sick, sick of, sick with. and in these times, i remind myself of the vistas i left behind at home. it’s weird to call a city my home, especially when you live where i live. my white friends clicked a picture of the dark, smoky sky at the Delhi airport, shocked at the sight of a night sky so bright with pollution. but they’re travellers. i’m a product of this place. i will come up with all i can to justify my love for this suicidal city.              ...