Movie Review: Do not watch 'Lipstick Under my Burkha'

Do not watch 'Lipstick under my Burkha' if you will not tolerate a sixty something widow harboring sexual fantasies. Do not watch it if you will cringe at the thought of a widow daring to love again.

Do not watch it if you think that a man owns his wife's body. Do not watch it if you think that Marital Rape is a myth, that it is okay to impregnate your wife again and again and give her an acute case of uterus infection.

Do not watch it if you think that the best way to deal with a daughter having an affair is to fix her 'rishta' with a well settled boy who won't let her step out of the house. Do not watch it if a young woman voicing her need for sex makes you mutter 'What a slut!'

Do not watch it if you think that your daughter should sit at home doing all the house chores. Do not watch it if you look at a woman wearing jeans with disgust.

We were seated behind a chauvinistic group of men who were apparently there to 'Time-pass' and 'Would not recommend this movie to anyone'. One of them loudly said to his mate "This movie is nothing but a story of women's desires. But that doesn't mean she will get so much independence that she will go and kiss a guy." This remark came right after a kiss initiated by a woman on screen. 

Whereas, they chose to remain quiet when a man brutally raped his wife; when a man pulled a girl in a dark alley; when the same boy told her that he can call several other guys to give her what she needed; when an orthodox father fixed the marriage of her daughter to punish her; when a woman's dreams and self respect were thrown off the roof.

It made me wonder if this movie was directed towards this category of men. If they believed that while a woman cannot have independence, a man can have independence to the point where he can do anything he wants to a woman.

Yes, do not watch this movie if you too will be unable to take the raw, brutal truth; if you want a masala fiction, funky dance numbers, item songs, cheesy stalker-ish behavior and people jumping from twenty story buildings.

Or maybe, watch this movie. Swallow the reality and perhaps change the way you think about women!

Nostalgia for the past

It was a time of Love and Innocence. I now remember them in sepia tones of longing. Don't we all wish for time turners? I mumble another unrealised wish, as the bus hops on the potholes towards the street bustling with life and concealed with memories. Many a nights, drenched in the vanilla of the moon, love and rain, we had spoken about life and nothingness of it all. I was a cynic, too rooted in the past and traumas. And you, you were always the anchor that kept me rooted in the present, always convincing me that there was more to life than nostalgia for the past.
Xxx
I want to know what you think now. Whether remembrance tiptoes it's way back into your life today. But then, you are a different person now and once a person changes, does anything remain of the one we knew? You smile a little too hard today. Is it because you do not remember? Is it because you no longer care? Or is it because you know that I have this thing for nostalgia. I do not remember you as someone who would cause pain to me, but then the silence of all these months suppirts the contrary. Who knows? You are a different person now.
Xxx
The slow dance of remembrance covers my eyes. Your's gleam with lightness and freedom. I remember the temple bells and the auburn evenings when the feeling of love had first sank in our hearts and we had declared it to each other with passion and innocence. Like I said, it was a time of innocence and I have preserved yours in sepia tones of love and wonder. Yes, wonder. Because I always thought you would preserve something of the person you once were.

Xxx

I have drowned myself in coffee, whiskey and verses. You have found company, happiness and all that perhaps I must have failed to provide. Tell me, why is it that the one who loves is always the one that is left behind. Why is it that the one that feels is rewarded with pain?

I remember your words. Now a box of lies that were used to show the world that you did not commit the folly of falling for an emotional trainwreck, a difficult one, an empath, a poet hung up on details, a writer who has a nostalgia for the past. Perhaps, with her words, she trapped you. Perhaps, you made her up inside her head. Perhaps, you were kind enough to not keep the broken,  waiting.

The details, the truth, shall always remain unknown to the world. Your madness, your love, your innocence shall always remain our secret, concealed in characters, verses, poems and prose. The tragedy of being a loner, you say. The glory of being the one with a heart big enough to forgive your betrayal, I believe.
The truth remains concealed behind my silence and love. Something that means nothing anymore. But had meant the world at a point. And I still taste it like regret, like a fool every day.

Xxx

You belong to those Sepia toned frames, to those evenings and nights when we had spilled our hearts out and rained kisses on each other, as if making a sacred vow. Putting things in perspective, I now feel that it really was too good to be true. I hadn't noticed until today that there are cracks on the edges and the frames are beginning to rot.

Xxx

I wonder if we catch a glimpse of each other, will you wave at me, smile at me or turn your face and pretend that there is no such thing as nostalgia for the past? I will probably put on a straight face and run to the nearest wine shop, grab a bottle of whiskey and try to blur the difference between love and lies, to make the reality a little more bearable. You will bury yourself in your phone and Twitter, and remind yourself that our history was never ours, that I do not exist but for the ghost that resurfaces only when the skies are auburn and the distant sound of temple bells echo inside your new house. Soon, I will cease to be a ghost either. You will forget the structure of my face, the creases on my cheeks, the smell of my hair, the color of my eyes. You have already replaced the taste of my lips, the warmth of my company.

Xxx

There are some lovers, some goodbyes, some regrets, some questions that we carry with us all our lives.  Perhaps we make peace with the new way of life. And we smile a little too hard when someone asks us why we are not longer the same.

_Ayushee Ghoshal 

What if you had sailed on your paper boat?

The fact that we are too afraid to set asail in our paper boat is a proof of how the society has functioned us into believing that we are meant to be their version of "right". The misfits, the introverts, the socially awkwards, the sensitive, the naive, the gullible, the one's with no grey areas. A. K. A the ones that are "too much, " the ones  refusing to blend in.

Too many labels for someone who is so much more than flesh and bones. Who gave us the right to judge? To share a piece of our not so valuable perspective upon what is right or wrong? Our two bits of pessimism  has successfully created a society of people who are too scared to take a plunge. 

The constant pressure to get a job, earn, build a good house, marry the right person. Stop. Stop. Stop. Let us take a step backwards.

What if one doesn't want any of these?

What if I have a  key that will open this locked corner of my heart that contains all my hidden potential? The problem is, the key has a layer of rust and the lock refuses to open. Now, naturally we have to remove the corosion. How? After years of social conditioning, we refuse to even try. There are things you do for living, things that make you feel so distant from yourself. Albeit, you are fantastic at this job profile which is not meant for you. Your current partner is the definition of all that the relatives and friends consider "socially acceptable".

Yet, a part of you feels so distant from yourself, from your own soul.

There is an advertisement flashing in your mind. It keeps telling you to ride on a paper boat. Something inside you is desperate to thump, feel alive, be present in the world. The key is gathering rust. And you have no idea what a paper boat signifies. 

What do you do?  

Breath.

Take a plunge into the deep seas. Not everyone can find their calling, but you have. It has to mean something, perhaps? You can succumb to the wolves and their commercial greed, or you can die trying to live for your art and for everything that makes you feel alive. It is time for you to gather your rosebuds while you may. The longer you wait, the longer it will take to use that key that has started corroding. There is something thumping inside you. Listen to it. It won't say no.

The truth is, we will always be too afraid. Too afraid of complications. Sometimes we like the sadness. We are too afraid to do what feels right. Too busy to take a moment in the busy day for your damn self and breath. Too conditioned into believing that one cannot live for art. Too embarrassed to go out with unkempt hair and pajamas. Too unprepared d

 for that impromptu trip to another corner of the city. Too afraid of failing.

We want to sail in our paper boats, but we are too afraid of drowning. Too occupied being their version of right to even try and be your own version of excellent. Too tried to even make an effort to reach for the shore. So our heart keeps making muffled prayers, hoping that we would listen to it. Sometimes the rust of opinions, judgments, fear is too loud and we mistaken the pleas of heart to be just a tiny little voice. Therefore, sometimes we live our lives with wishful thinking. What if. What if. What if.

What if I had taken the chance?

What if I had taken the last bus to nowhere?

What if I had taken up a job that fuels my passion?

What if I had never commercialised my script?

What if I had left the person who makes me feel distant from myself?

What if I had decided to live for my heart?

What if I had learnt patience?

What if I had lived for my Passion?

What if I had lived for myself?

What if I had sailed on my paper boat? 

-Ayushee Ghoshal

Did You Build Yourself Up Inside My Head?

Too many days and nights have passed in the confines of my small room. Too many futile longings haveflickered and killed themselves in this darkness.
It is all flesh to flesh. Hearts are made in toy shops these days. Good ol romance is a legend. Every notion of love invites complications. We are too scarred. Too scared. We have learnt to love from afar, in silence. Perhaps, we are stuck in a vicious circle of constant hurt.

My eyes chose to convince me that you are not you anymore. I look at you like nothing matters, like you have not tore this heart into a billion pieces. My breath is racing against time as i watch you hold her hands and walk on the road that we had once walked upon. Is it so easy to forget someone who gave you all their heart? I can do nothing but watch as you stir her coffee,  your eyes smouldering with lust. Once innocence had simmered in the brown of your eyes. Your lies unravel in front of me. All the 'I cant live without you. Cant think of you with someone else' have been tossed and discarded like previous night's breath.

You are a lie, conjured up in form of a person. I stand here, looking at you. I ask myself. Did I make you up inside my head or did you make yourself up inside mine? Tell me the version of you that I must believe? Perhaps, help me erase you, since it is only fair, since you have already erased me. Perhaps, you are afraid of the best that you can be.

My heart is a whore.. Always looking for love where it doesn't exist.

Xxxxx

You are holding her hands in yours. I am standing in the corner, feeling pinned inside a belljar. I am asking myself. Did I make you up inside my head or did you make yourself up in mine? -Ayushee Ghoshal
#4AmConversations

"Honey, You are my bad habit."

You are the evening cup of tea, a relief from the mundane affair called life. I run to you for a refill and you empty me of my sanity. Without you, I am a person who needs a fix. Perhaps, the joint of weed that a writer craves for when art refuses to happen to him? The stick of cigarette that  I crave for after my bowl of salad. A glass of wine that I cannot do without. The blood red lipstick that boosts my confidence, the little black dress and the raunchy pair of denims that make me feel good. The sleeping pills that I am addicted to.
You are everything on my shelf that I need, but will never want. We run in circles, always too cautious to step out of the comfort zone for the fear of getting burnt.  I know what we have will never be love, because Honey, you are my bad habit.
-Ayushee Ghoshal
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Day 3 #4AmConversationsPrompts:
Tell me about that bad habit? It can be a person, a place, a memory. Anything.
A big Thank you to everyone who is posting their #4amconversationsprompts
Love to read your 4 AM Conversations. Just makes me feel like all of us together in this big beautiful chaotic thing called life.
If you love writing, you can join in and spread the love for words. All you have to do is write a piece on the prompt given here and use the hashtag #4AmConversationsPrompts
Tag me in the pictures after you have posted a piece. At the end of this writing prompt,  I will be doing a give away.
Today's writing prompts is: "Honey, you are a bad habit." Use this prompt to write a 4 AM Conversation.
Spread the word. Tag your writer friends. Keep writing.
Cheers!

"We play dumb. But we know exactly what we are doing"

Denial, through the course of history of love, has been under rated. A safe evasive measure to fool ourselves and the world.
I am too stubborn to end this facade.
"I don't care much for what you do." Yet,  your breath causes a tornado in my heart.
You, you have too much of ego to accept that perhaps what we can't define is  nothing but love. Perhaps, both of us will realise our undoing years from now. But right now, we chose to live in denial and cloak our actions and inactions.
Perhaps, we are nothing but two different genres juxtaposed in the same shelf. Yet, nothing soothes me more than the warmth of your embrace. Perhaps, we are the favorite song on repeat that we will get tired of listening. But right now, only you can calm the storm in my heart.
There is no turning back, we know. Only stopping. Perhaps, all at once; without any said goodbye.  Nothing to say, only to watch, as we leave each other with a baggage and a lifetime of commitment issues.
But there has always been something about the flicker in your ambers eyes. It probes me, urges me to take a plunge into this thing called 'love'. We know, this flicker will leave us with nothing but ashes.
"I want to be free. To float in the lightness of being." You take my hand in yours. We stare at the endless rise and fall of the ocean.
"I know. So do I." I squeeze your palms. You squeeze them back.
In the stillness of the night, we play dumb. But we know exactly what we are doing."
-Ayushee Ghoshal
#4AmConversationsPrompts
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A big Thank you to everyone who became a part of the first #4amconversationsprompts.
If ou love writing, you can join in and spread the love for words. All you have to do is write a piece on the title of this article and use the hashtag #4AmConversationsPrompts
Cheers.
#GiveAway


Cheers!  #Giveaway
#4AmConversations
 http://ayusheeghoshal.blogspot.in/2016/12/we-play-dumb-but-we-know-exactly-what.html

Dear One Night Stand: It's Okay. You don't have to love me

Dear One Night Stand, 

Before we begin, let me tell you, let us treat this the way it is. I forbid you to use your tricks. You don't have to use your cliched sentences to make me believe that I am any different from all the girls you have slept with. I am well aware of your nefarious intentions and I hope you are aware of mine.  I am to you what you are to me. A piece of meat.

I won't come back to you at the end of the day or text you during my work hours. There will be no sappy messages or 2 AM calls. I won't hold your hands while walking in a desserted park or in public. I won't  kiss you underneath the street lamp. You dont have to strew petals on the floor to lure me to your bedroom. You don't have to know my favorite band, poet or book. You don't get to know what makes my eyes twinkle. Hell, you don't get to know me at all and I hope you will be kind enough to reciprocate in this game of not falling in love. I would hate to have an unrequited not-love. 

I am sitting next to you as you crush the last seed of iriki gold. While rings of smoke rise in the air from the cigarette pressed between my teeth, my eyes meet yours. We know what will follow. As the night ascends, your fingers trace every corner of my body.

The temperature in your room is too cold for someone with a migraine. Your bed is far too comfortable for me. Wrapped in your well built arms, I miss the hard mattress of his iron bed. 

Before you ask me out for another date, before you tell me you are not available 'that way', let us just clarify this small thing. Let us treat this the way it is. 

It is okay. You don't have to love me. -Ayushee Ghoshal

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4 AM Conversations is my Poetry Debut and it will be releasing all over India in 2017. If you want to stay connected, do subscribe to my posts. 

#4AmConversations 

"You" from my Debut poetry collection 4 AM Conversations

 

About a year and a half ago, during a sleepless August midnight, I had started the 4 AM series on my instagram handle; the response to which was quiet overwhelming and unexpected.
Quiet luckily, a traditional publishing house has found my manuscript worth publishing. I would take a moment to thank each one of you who followed my work on Instagram and elsewhere and constantly encouraged me to write.
My little book of poetry is called 4 AM Conversations and contains some of my personal favorite poems that I have written in the last three years. 
Sharing a small poem from the collection.
Will be looking forward to your support, suggestions and reviews.
Gratitude.

A brief encounter with a story (Fiction)

"Why do you need to pen down the vagaries of life?" You question while a trail of smoke dissolves into the darkness. The deformed clouds are scattered in the night time sky and few lone stars shimmer brighter than ever. Our hands are intertwined. A distraction from the mundane pain, an escape from the homelessness of this city, an addiction, a habit that will be forgotten in a month or two.

Someday we will be two blips in the grand universe. Another encounter with life, another incomplete chapter added to the infinite pages of the glorious history of possibilities.
You sometimes have me at loss of words, helpless. You remind me of what was lost. An anticipation, a much awaited eye contact across the cubicle, a chance conversation.

 Another night of statutes and drafts, another night rushing towards an abrupt ending, only to turn into flashes that will remain buried in the crevices of my heart. Sometimes we don't have to define the specs of wonder that surround us. We do not have to think of what or who we will become, come morning. We just have to be.
We are unplanned kisses and wildfire, lust and chaos. Everything but the four lettered sin. Everything but L***.
Soon, you will disappear into the space where everything is lost.

With rings of smoke crowning our head, you look at me with eyes that resemble the crescent moon and I stand there, taking in the remnants of times.
 "Why do you write of loss and love?" After a long drag from the cigarette, you are inquisitive.
 Yikes, I think. Everything but that. "No... I write about life." After thinking for a while, I reply. A smirk later, you question,
"What is so great about life anyway?"
"Perhaps, there is nothing great about life and I write about that." The  answer is instant and without second thoughts.
 And we stand in silence. Our eyes avoid the traces of a lingering smile.
I am thinking to myself, how long before you turn into just a story.
I am wishing I could tell you that I write about serendipities like you and this half burnt cigarette. About the vague, the undefined and the unsaid.
About everything that burns me and sets me free, everything that is meant to be left incomplete!

Musings 4 - La Douleur Exquise

You kept coming back to me in flashes and I lost sense of what was real. I preserved you in those tiny spaces where I had lost myself. But today, you stood before me in flesh and bone. I craved for your touch on my lips, on my soul, your arms wrapped around my waist. You kept coming back to me in form of long lost conversations, midnight rambles, drenched in street light pictures. But today, you stood before me in truth and beyond dreams and I only craved for a conversation left midway long ago.
The yearning for a long lost yesterday is heart wrenching. The exquisite pain of wanting someone you can never have. This yearning, I can almost touch it, but it is quick enough to slip from between my fingers. But you stand before me today and we talk about all the things lost, all the small talk that I had always considered myself incapable of, everything that had seemed possible around you, with you and yet, even when you balanced the conversation in your typical suave manner, I could think of nothing but the space between your nose and your chin that I will never kiss again.
For all the stifled feelings, for all the times that I wanted to declare my love for you but had to swallow it like venom, only to spit a pseudo speech of indifference and hatred, tonight, you stood before me and I could feel nothing but love gushing out from every nook and cranny of my being, chanting your name.

(c) Copyright Reserved
Ayushee Ghoshal

23.02.2016

#Musings 3 - The art of loving and forgetting slowly.

Why does the intensity of our emotion become terrifying for others? Is it terrible to feel so much for someone who will never reciprocate? With time, I know this love not reciprocated will fade away,  but now, right now, do not ask me to stop loving you all at once. I am afraid, I am not capable of it. I loved you slowly, I took note of your details, I loved you with my bones and cells. So do not ask me to wash you away all at once. I will take my time. Unlike my skin cells, the love I have for you will never be replaced. Do not ask me to forget you, all at once. 

(c) Copyright Reserved. 

Contents of this page cannot be reproduced without prior permission from the Author. 

Musings 2 - To wait without hope, without an end in sight.

If you are about to read further, let me warn you that these words will reek of desperate longing.

I have a recurring nightmare. I am running on a vacant platform and I have missed the last train home. Mozart’s symphony is playing in the backdrop and my eyes are brimming with nothingness. Is nothingness synonymous to pain? I know not. I know not why pain demands to be felt. It’s a strange feeling, the one I wish to un-feel. I do not know what these ramblings mean. Probably that will tell you about my state of mind. I cannot simplify myself. All I know is that I yearned for someone until there was no yearning left to be done. I am the only passenger waiting on a platform where trains no longer arrive.

The most ironic word that I have ever come across is “love”. I am ashing this cigar and watching you drift away with every puff of smoke. I am scribbling bad poetry. I am a madman wishing upon dead stars, unsure about everything that is scattered before me. Hints, answers, evidence, everything probing me to believe that we were always and only meant to share this ending. That is what forever had always meant.

“Pain is a strange thing. It arrives and sits on your chest and it demands to be felt.” Not exactly my words but drawn from several encounters with writers. Pain comes to our lives in different forms and what surprises me is how ‘you’ are incapable of experiencing the emotion at all. It is a negativity you say. But you caused it! Pain is the shock, the tremor when the worst of your fears come true. When the nightmares shape into reality and you watch your world crumble and fall apart before your eyes and you can’t bat an eyelid. I wonder why I am drenched in this self pity when all I did was love until there was nothing left to love, I gave until there was nothing left in me to give. Perhaps they were right. Pain demands to be felt. If I had an option wouldn’t I chose it? But that would mean missing out on this privilege to know that someone can matter so much to me. So much so that even after years they control the strings of my heart. I think when an important connection is formed between two people and one of them tries to break it in every way possible, it is the beginning of something terrible. It is the process of turning into strangers that drains us out. Why are these ties severed? Because one of them doesn’t understand what pain is, one of them doesn’t wish to hold on to the love that is being thrown their way effortlessly. All of us love the chase, don’t we? Why would you settle for something, no matter how precious it is, if it is given to you unconditionally or to rephrase it, without a price? Yes, this world has a way of rewarding those who dare to love in silence, between the pages of the books and as a flower that never blooms. It’s foolishness, madness, the way we let love destroy us. Didn’t I tell you that love is the most ironical word ever? I am glad and yet I wish I didn’t understand why pain demands to be felt.

I have taken the shortest route to your lane. Your number is on my fingertips. Your name hasn’t flashed on my phone screen for days and I have begun to think that you do not ‘need’ me anymore. I chant your name on the beads of rosary. You can’t fathom the longing that you have left in my heart. I will never tell you and maybe soon you’ll wonder Why? You’ll not see me anymore and you’ll wonder some more. You’ll watch me amongst a pool of strangers and despite of the history and the familiarity, despite of how our bodies and hearts once fitted like jigsaw puzzles, you won’t take a step towards me because your ego is bigger than the love that you once held for me and well, I am tired. I won’t take a step towards you either. I am afraid, you fool. Obviously? But you won’t know. You always had a thing for staying blissfully unaware. So much for escaping from the pain that comes from accepting the consequences of your actions and inactions. Maybe that split second where it will dawn upon you that we are turning into strangers, you’ll realize that what we had hasn’t ended, it will never be replaced, that you can still make things alright, that I am just waiting on the shore for you to come back home, that you’ll never find the same love twice. But well, I forget. You treasure your rationality more than you will ever treasure me. Sorry, I forgot. I was just a habit, a distraction.

You remember I used to weep at nights sometimes, write sad things even when we were together? For I knew, someday you would be taken away from me. And I am standing in midst of the street, watching you as you pretend that you haven’t noticed me. My insides are screeching out your name and yet I am pretending to look away and you don’t know how it feels because you can’t fathom the restlessness inside your heart and mine, the million escape routes that you’ve dug out for yourself in form of shallow company amongst people who don’t understand the marrow of your bones. How will you know me when you have never experienced pain? How will you remember the one who has always loved you in silence? How will you know when everything was thrown your way at a dirt cheap rate?

You see, you do not know yet but someday you’ll know. Someday you’ll look into my eyes and see the scars, someday you’ll try to understand me, someday you’ll know about the nightmares in which I have loved you, the dark places where I have hidden you. Someday you’ll know that pain demands to be felt. Someday you’ll know that even when there was nothing, I had stood by you, waiting for you to simplify yourself.

© Copyright Reserved, Ayushee Ghoshal 2016.  

Musings #1: This world exhausts me

In my moments of solitude I do not think of myself. I think of others and their stories. It might be someone I had an eye contact with in the metro, someone I chatted with on a local train, an acquaintance,  a batch-mate. I wonder who or what keeps them awake at night. I know these people only as human beings. I do not know if their heart or brain functions the way mine does. But I have this absurd habit of reasoning out their acts, thinking about their lives, their loneliness and the baggage of pain that they carry within themselves. And I hope with all my heart that their share of hurt, pain and misery doesn't change them into someone they are not. I hope that they land up in some place that gives them all the little joys and happiness that they couldn't find in themselves and people around them. All of us are blindly seeking something without knowing the consequences thereof. All it takes is a split second for our lives to change, for dreams to transform into nightmares and I hope they have the strength to live with their choices.
This world exhausts me. When I think of life and the complexity of the stardusts in this Universe, I want to run to a place that protects my heart. A place that I can call my home.

(c) Ayushee Ghoshal

Staring today, I will be sharing my thoughts on this blog regularly. If you like my work, you can subscribe to my posts via E-mail. Do drop in your reviews, feedback and suggestions. :)

4 AM conversation with ghosts of old lovers

Resemblance to the ghost of your being.
He is flesh and bones, only flesh and bones
and I stare at him, bewildered.
His eyes are amber, the color of tree resin,
volcano spitting passion,
the blood reeks of loss.
"Hello, good old friend.
Where have you been all these years?" I ask him
and I watch, as the recognition fades away from his face,
it is swallowed in dark thickening cracks,
like the claws of earth swallows all the life
sustained on its face and I stare
at his ash struck face.
I am waiting alone at Purana Qila,
and the sky is crying empty tears.
Suddenly, I am in a crowded street,
beggar children are caressing my hair,
weeping for me.

(c) Ayushee Ghoshal

Remembrance

Perhaps, remembrance is sickness,
to constantly think of forgotten faces,
a distant something of a rainy afternoon,
stroking your ruffled hair and whispering,
"say something" in a dim lit corridor.

A punctuation in the brief history of time,
a wretched attachment to remembrance,
I keep staring at blank spaces,
I hold the hand that stretches from the blind.
I return again and again to find you
standing by the shore,
the moon rises in the drunk glass of wine,
you part your lips to say something
but in an instant, years pass away.

What I can't touch, remains a memory
I am blinded by an imagined light,
A remembrance of what can never be.

(c) Ayushee Ghoshal

In a verse

Against this world, You and I, Against time and tide, peering into the night time sky A million possibilities of the story, where you had once loved me in a verse. (c) Ayushee Ghoshal

Words

These words are my home. I have tried to find out the purpose behind these infinite galaxies in my heart. I have tried to drown them in whiskey, wash them out with indifference and then I have wandered for days, looking for myself, for these words. For I can exist only when they do. In their absence, I have begged for poetry to happen to me. The inevitable conclusion has been that these words are here to stay and to make them go away will be to ask the earth to kiss the sky. These words tip toe on my flesh like a fresh morning breeze, plant soft kisses like an old lover, whisper secrets in my ears like a long lost friend. I have tried to bury them in packets of smokes and yet when I have woken up, they have been my string of sanity. They've brought comfort to me on days when the coldness of someone's heart put a winter morning to shame. The world can't make sense of my flesh and bones and these words have given me the courage to walk out of places where my company wasn't desired. While the crowd has failed me, these words have clung to my weary bones as I have stared at the constellations of thoughts and reminded me to embrace every emotion. In the happiest of moments and the saddest, these words have filled up the empty spaces in my heart. And while my flesh and bones will turn into ashes, these words won't perish with me. They will inhabit the air and whisper our secrets to every lost star, trying to find their way out of the chaos. (c) Ayushee Ghoshal

Staring at the sky on a rainy evening.

A sense of loss clings to our bones, loss of the hours that swept our feet like tides, like time that waits for no one, like a day out of time. Despite of the ash cold remnants in our palms, we try to reach out for the green ray of an impossible hope.
Sometimes, the answer lies in accepting the end of the road, in making peace with the truth that all of us are meant to live with our set of incomplete stories because reciprocity is a lie, in ignoring every voice that beckons us towards the wretched promises of "forever".
There are little worlds inside our head, dark lanes adorned with wilted flowers that howled out a name. We stare out of the ram-shackled cabin's windows as the world gets drenched in a perpetual rain.

The sense of loss flutters louder than ever. The 'never again's", the stubborn thumping before the submersion continues. The chances that we never take, the effortless mistakes, the assumptions, the weight of unspoken words, forgotten conversations inscribed on our flesh, the concluded sigh's of rainy evenings, a thousand wishes, a million possibilities.. 

Delusions: An excerpt from a short story.

Even in your absence, you are a part of me. Even though you have found your home in someone else's smile, I am trapped forever in that moment when you gazed into the blue of my eyes and swore that nothing would change. 

Music blares in the background. There's a track change. A sudden emptiness swells within me. I stir the melting ice cubes with an orange straw.
The choice was your's. Always.

To forget what you had never believed in. Your forgetting, my remembrance.  Your laughter, my tears. Poles apart, miles away. You still linger in my veins. 

There's a track change. I am lost in the darkness of the bar. The dazzling neon lights draw a light headed and almost choked up sight of us locked in the corner of the world. Unaware and content. I am left tapping my feet urgently against the corner of the cold steel table. I fidget with the straw, swallowing balls of hurt in a crowded room which smells of all the love that we left behind. I plaster a smile tinged with apprehension. The distance and emptiness looms in the darkness.

A springtime tale

The distant, unfamiliar look in your eyes

My paradise lost in bitter reveries of faith.

Spring blooms outside our window,

Crimson, emerald, patches of cherry red

scattered like snow

Brief reminiscent of the past, 

an old Christmas tree and indelible marks 

of coffee on the table.

/Rustling of leaves and the fresh fragrance 

of grass and wet mud doesn't break your thoughts.

By noon, you leave. 

And here I sit, telling my springtime tale of

a paradise lost, somewhere between my 

stormy thoughts of a bleak tomorrow 

and the winter of your ice blue heart.

(c) Ayushee Ghoshal