chaiNboli

  Jalte hain jiske liye.... Talat Mohammad's voice is filling my room in this lazy sunday afternoon. The world is sleepy.. may be because of the summer madness that drains your energy.  My shadow morphs into a memory . A calmness, stillness, a strange courage.  That's my curse- I remember everything...  Words that fell from tour drunken mouth 3 years ago.  The colour of my best friend's nail polish on a random Thursday 6 years ago. The flavour of icecream my roommate bought 5 moons back.  A starnger's eye flicker towards the door: fear...  A name mentioned once, twice, three times in a conversationwe had 7 weeks ago.  A leg bounce, finger tap, nervousness of a woman who shares seat with me in a bus ride. Fast forward. The song is still playing. My eyes then water because I know. I know that the love in my heart will only dull, but never disappear. I know because I’ve been here before. I know how this works... for I have loved and lost.....

 To bleed heavenly in your thoughts........ I don't know when I first thought of him. Perhaps it was not a thought at all. Perhaps it was one of those strange things that happen when the mind is half-awake—when a teacher's voice begins to drift somewhere beyond the walls of the classroom, when words lose their edges and the afternoon becomes soft around them, when the room itself seems to exist somewhere between memory and dream. A man walking through a city that had never once learned the meaning of silence, beneath a sky that might have forgotten the colour of stars. I knew almost nothing about him. I did not know his name. I did not know what language he spoke when he was angry, whether he drank his coffee too sweet, whether he preferred the window seat on trains, or whether he had ever stood on a railway platform waiting for someone who had promised to come and never did. Yet somehow, impossibly, I knew his thoughts. They were quiet. That was the first thing I knew about hi...

  Dear reader, Coffee or tea? ☕️🍵 Which one is your preference? And, more importantly—what does your favourite cup say about you? I am asking this very serious question after having a cup of tea from our hostel mess hall. To be frank, it was very not-so-good tea. 😂 But then, at least some of us are lucky enough to enjoy an evening tea with some “tea.” 👀 You know what I mean. The kind that comes with stories, gossip, laughter, and a little “Did you hear what happened?” 😌☕️ Anyway, today’s discussion was: What’s your type? I mean, in a man. Oh, this is a women’s hostel. Please note that, if you were not smart enough to understand that from my “tea” wordplay. No misogyny and no cultural confirmation here. Go girlies! 💅🏻 So, what’s your type? One said Michele Morrone. (Lord, I understand.) Another said Sidharth Malhotra. (Too cute. According to me.) Yash. (After KGF? Hmmmmmmm. Y.e.s.) Dhanush. Arjun Rampal. This and that. And then came the lists. And lis...

  Dear reader, So yesterday, my hostel roommate went home. She has three days of leave. Now, obviously, why spend three days—aka 72 hours—aka some ridiculously long number of minutes, aka  unnecessarily large number of seconds  (I’m very bad at maths, apologies to my ancestors) in this  little room, sweating under a half-dead fan? So yes. She took her backpack and left. Not before I reminded her to come back with a packet of homemade pickle or chips to help me survive the unforeseen future, obviously. Anyway. I was alone. And then, suddenly— POW. The power went off. And as always, my hyper-independence took charge. With great confidence and determination, I walked towards the adjacent room. Only to fall flat on my face in the hostel verandah. Well. It was dark. And most people clearly possessed common sense and were safely inside their own rooms. So, naturally, my first concern was not the injury. It was first-hand embarrassment. Because imagine f...

  Dear reader, Have you ever received a bouquet? Or a flower? Maybe from your lover. Or a friend. Or perhaps from some kind soul. Or, I don’t know, a TikToker for a video? Because I have never received one. Yep. Not even a single flower. Forget a bouquet. You may find it hilarious that I feel bad about never getting a bouquet. Yes, I feel sad thinking about it. Maybe even a little jealous when I see those romantic reels and cute relationships where someone casually shows up with flowers because “I saw these and thought of you.” And please, don’t tell me to preach what Miley Cyrus said: “I can buy myself flowers.” I can. But I don’t want to. I mean, look—I can buy myself flowers. I have money. I have hands. I know where the flower shops are. I am perfectly capable of walking into one and saying, “One bouquet, please.” And it’s not because I’m a stingy one. (Well… that’s questionable. Anyway.) It’s because… don’t you see how intimate it is when a person sees a flower and...

 Memento mori. Remember that you must die. The orange peel left curling on the kitchen table. The old man feeding pigeons outside the railway station as though he had all afternoon. A cup of tea cooling beside an unopened book. Your mother's voice calling you from another room and you answering, “Coming,” though you are not. A shirt still hanging behind the door because no one has needed to move it yet. The photograph you almost threw away because you thought there would always be another. Memento mori. The light changes on the wall. Someone laughs in the next apartment. A train leaves without you. The blue candle slowly sleeps.  And somewhere a child is learning the word for forever. You know better now. There is no forever. There is only this orange peel, this afternoon, this hand reaching for another hand before it disappears. Memento mori. Remember. Not the dying. The having been here.