chaiNboli

 Sometimes, I think Blue is not a color but a sentence. And Grey?A waiting room where the light used to be. I don’t remember when exactly I first heard Blue & Grey. But I remember where I was: on the floor. Not physically. Metaphorically.  Curled up beside a window that let in too much sky. And too little hope. And then Taehyung said it— “Where is my angel?” something broke. Because he wasn't performing. He was asking. A silent sigh. And it felt like he was asking for me too. Taehyung asks this like a boy who no longer believes in wings— but still looks up, just in case. Like a  prayer whispered into the cold side of the pillow, half-embarrassed, half-desperate. “I just wanna be happier.” He says it softly. Like someone who doesn’t believe he deserves it, but still plants the wish like a seed under winter.  Isn’t that the cruelty of it? Wanting joy while cradling your sorrow like your favorite child.... I don’t know how a group of people who don’t know me managed...

 “ Phir nahi baste woh dil jo ek bar ujar jaate hain, Qabrein jitni bhi saja lo par zinda koi nahi hota." "The hearts that have once been destroyed… they are never rebuilt again. Even if you adorn graves with flowers, no one ever truly comes back to life ." A heart that has collapsed  under the weight of departure  doesn’t ask for tenants again. I t becomes a monument instead.  Still standing,  but hollow.  Still beautiful,  but echoing with absence. Like the love t hat moved out  but left all the light switches on.  Like wounds that never closed, only learned how to sing. Some devastations are final. You may try to decorate the remains, romanticize the loss, speak kindly of what was— but what was destroyed, never truly returns. A heart once ruined never learns the shape of shelter again. That even grief, when decorated with flowers, still smells like death. You can decorate grief in white— call it a wedding, call it forgivene...

PROLOGUE: THE FIRST TIME GRIEF SANG I don’t remember the first time I heard Ali Sethi. I remember what I lost when I did. Something inside me— the part that kept sorrow folded beneath my tongue— opened its eyes. It wasn’t music. It was recognition. A voice that didn’t arrive like thunder, but like memory—slow, precise, mercifully cruel. It sang in the key of ache I inherited but never named. This is not about songs. It’s about the ruins they left glowing. It begins, always, with silence. And then: Ali. 1 TO THE VOICE THAT ARRIVED BEFORE STORM Some nights, I don’t know if it’s rain, or your voice pressing its forehead against my window. Ali, you don’t sing— you stitch. Each word, a needle pulling centuries through my skin. I keep your ragas in my wrists— they flutter when grief walks in, asking for tea and permission to stay. Who gave you the right to know what longing sounds like before I could name it? Who taught your throat to echo the ache I buried beneath my mother tongue? Sometime...

Your lungs have started to grow tender wings, like a bird, hollow and soft. You cough feathers in your sleep— each one shaped like a word you couldn’t say in time. Your chest becomes a ribbed aviary where mourning doves nest in the space grief made. You try to speak but language flutters out as birdsong bruised in mid-air. Like apologies stitched in ash. You know molting when you feel it— the ache of leaving your own skin behind just to keep flying toward a light you never believed in. And somewhere in that ascent, you name pain with a softness sharp enough to be mistaken for prayer. But  You are becoming a cathedral made of soft machinery. Half-flight, half-failure. The kind of thing God doesn’t notice until it begins to curse. And even then, He only listens because the metal inside you starts to sing. Because somewhere between flesh and forgiveness, you grew a throat not made for mercy— but for memory. And isn’t that what flying is? Leaving louder than you ever lived.

Once, I tried to hang my sadness on a nail in the kitchen. But it kept crawling back, wearing my perfume, asking for breakfast. It sat in my chair, spooned honey into its mouth like memory, then bled it out onto the floral tablecloth. The bees came. They thought it was spring. They swarmed my teacup, drowned in the porcelain hush. The sadness laughed, lipsticked in my shade. It fried the eggs. It salted them with my name. It told me, This is how mourning sweetens itself so no one leaves the table. I said nothing. The fork trembled. The eggs went cold. I watched it pour milk into the ghost of your coffee cup. Watched the steam rise like something escaping without apology. Sadness whispered : "He never left. He just changed rooms. Now he lives between your shoulder blades." I laughed. I couldn’t stop. It sounded like  glass being taught to pray. I pressed my palm to the stove  until something hissed. Not to hurt— just to prove I still had a name. Sadness licked the butter knife...

Mother said I was born January because I love things that start with hope and then die beautifully. My heart is the blue lick of fire abandoned in a winter— a woman’s sigh dressed as a flame, a boy’s cry sewn into the throat of God. I keep it hidden beneath my ribs like a scandal— each beat a matchstick I strike against memory. There are nights I wear my grief like silk stockings, run my fingers through the static of your name, still humming on the pillowcase. The saints won’t touch me now. They smell smoke and think sin. But really, it’s just the ghost of warmth asking for a body. I once kissed a man who tasted like  Sunday and funeral. He held me like  a broken vase someone still couldn’t throw away. I wrote poems in the  shape of his spine, but he read them like warnings. Now every time the wind opens its mouth, I flinch. It sounds too much like him leaving again. So, I talk to the knife I don’t use. Call her Darling and feed her sugar. This is my love language.