What Hope Looks Like

I once knew a girl whose favorite color was the shimmery shade of silver linings. You know the kind of person who would always somehow see the good in bad. It pissed everyone off, but we all knew we were envious of her guts, not mad.

She studied hard but couldn’t get her dream branch. She lost the love of her life to five years of fighting and trying. Her heels broke down while anchoring the college event, and even her cat ran off with some random pretty cat.

So when one fine day, on a trip to nowhere—I say nowhere because we had missed our train—and while the entire group was cursing in unison, loathing their fate, she stood four feet away at the station bookstore, cruising through Faiz with samosa crumbles on her mouth.

I couldn’t resist, it was killing me, so I finally asked her secret: how she is never sad, how the worst things in life didn’t affect her cleft-chinned smile. She looked at me in surprise, like I’d asked her to give her Littmann stethoscope in exchange for a candy.

She wiped her mouth with her pretty beige sleeve and began to say, “I’ve had my share of sadness. Things failed, opportunities went, people left. Fuck it, even my cat ran away. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. I gave my 100%, and I know things didn’t curve exactly how I wanted, but I’m content in my career. I have a boy who loves me for who I am. Crocs are better than heels, you know, and by the way, my cat is a mother of four now.”

She stopped and waved the book in her hand. “See, I swear by Faiz and he once said,

‘Dil na umeed to nahi nakaam hi toh hai,  

Lambi hai gham ki shaam magar shaam hi toh hai.’

(I processed that line in my mind, in awe.)

“Also, I talked to that guy. The next train is in four hours, and I think I have an idea. Chal, let’s have another samosa.”

I looked up at the pretty sunset and mumbled under my breath,

“Lambi hai gham ki shaam, magar shaam hi toh hai.”

The Gamble of Love

I cut down on love to sound more intelligent. I cut some slack here and there to sound more rational and logical and not too sentimental. I try to act as if I don't wear my heart on my sleeves. I try to act as if I'm not a sentimental bitch. I try to save my love like you save money for a big trip you're excited for. I try not to spend all my love on the wrong person. I try to save my love for the right person as if I'm going to run out of it. I wish I could freeze my love for the right person. I wish I could put my love in a bank and cash it out when I know the time is right. But unlike money, the love saved is just the love lost. 

But, who the fuck am I kidding, right? There is no way to know who is the right person or when is the right time. 

Love is the biggest gamble we know of and the only way through is to bet it all. 

Love's Final Crossing: The Tragic Tale of Soni and Mahiwal

You wouldn't have read something so beautiful and so heartbreaking at the same time. 

I'm still listening to Par Chanaa De, let me tell you the story behind it. 

There is a girl called Soni, who lives on one side of river Chanaa(Chenab river) and the Mahiwal, a herder, lives on the other side of the river. Soni belongs to a family of potters. Mahiwal and Soni end up falling in love but Soni's father gets her married to another family of potters. 

Soni still continues to meet Mahiwal.

Every night she uses an Earthen pot, a matkaa/ghada to cross the Chenab river. Soon enough rumours start spreading in the village. One night, Soni's sister-in-law changes her 'ghada' with an unbaked one. Soni uses it to cross the river and she perishes into it. Mahiwal who was seeing this from the other side of the river jumped in the river to try and save his Soni. Alas both drowned and died only to be united after death. 

And the song goes like, "Yaar nu milegi aaj laash yaar di"- my lover would be greeted by my corpse, and as Klaus Mikaleson in The Originals said, "What worth dying, if not love?"

Ink and Obsession

If only I could write as I think;

With an obsession,

Relentlessly,

Driven by an insatiable hunger.

I would write until breath became elusive,

Until words spun me into the depths of madness. 

Pages would unfurl like tendrils, reaching into the void,

Into the abyss where thoughts dissolve. 

And I would write of you,  

Far more than I ever should.

I would paint my soul across the canvas of words,

Bleeding ink to capture every fleeting emotion,

Tangled in the web of my own creation,  

Where silence speaks louder than the noise of my mind.

And in those quiet moments,

I would find you,

In every line, in every pause,

A haunting presence, a whisper I can never escape.