chaiNboli

 Days are passing quickly now. Like a bird who forgot the day of migration until the last minute. Seasons are changing. My favourite kurthi is fading. Books are yellowing. Roses in my neighbour’s garden are falling. And me… I’m thinking about everything and nothing. About the stain of turmeric on your collar. About my mother’s fingers that got cut while preparing lunch. My father’s phone which is a bit slow and crashing. The clumsy stranger who stops and stares at me sometimes: unafraid. The precise angle of a hand while pouring tea. The bent of God’s ears, if He ever listens to my prayers. A wandering grief I bottled yesterday with no address. The letter a stranger sent me two years ago. The hum of a K-pop song I can’t remember. A half-dissolved name I want to forget. The sweetness of the chocolate cake I got last Christmas. A memory diluting its colours. A martyred dream with anklets. And— The ghost of a conversation I never had. The way rain knows exactly when to arrive and when...

 A sparrow welcomes sunlight after a storm with the innocence of a girl who lives because she has to. She murders winter, strangling it inside her sweater, scratches labels of grief till the glue forgets its name. She learns how to fold silence into usable shapes, keeps her breath economical, like matches saved for power cuts. The world offers omens, she eats around them. Rain dries itself on her shoulders. Memory behaves. Hunger becomes a habit. She smiles at a dead crow, not in cruelty, but recognition. Some things finish early and still teach you how to stand.

Once, I loved a man with the fury of rivers. They told me faith was the answer, that prayer could stitch back what had torn. But I could not kneel before a defiance that never answered me. And thus my silence became the house pet — fed scraps of denial, told to sit quietly, told never to bite. It grew fat on my unsaid words, sleek with all the screams I swallowed. It learned to curl on my lap, its weight pressing my ribs shut. It slept at the foot of my bed, licking the wounds I would not name. Some nights it grew restless, pacing the dark rooms of my chest, snarling at the locked doors. And I —  I hushed it with lullabies, with the trembling hands of a girl who still mistook patience for devotion. It grew old with me, its fur heavy with dust, its ribs showing through the thinness of years. Still, I fed it with the crumbs  of forgiveness I could not give myself. And I told myself  You made me drown. But here I am, still breathing — underwater...

 I stand before the fridge, its hum a low animal in the silence. The door is ajar, enough for cold air to spill out—thin tendrils brushing bare skin. Inside: a pomegranate. I take it out. Its skin is wrinkled, the first soft kiss of death across its surface. My heartbeat stammers against my ribs—too loud, humiliating in its insistence. Each uneven thud carries a warning: something will fracture. Something unnamed is already breaking open inside my chest. An ache settles in the lungs, heavy as damp earth. And in that stillness, all I can think is this: I have only ever known how to exist when I am wanted. It is a quiet inheritance, passed down not in words but in gestures and silences. Worth measured by usefulness. Love rationed like it must be earned. Affection receding when you disobey. Love sharpening into blades when you reveal too much of yourself. The sigh of disappointment always louder than any punishment. So you learn. You learn to purchase love with caution. To shape yours...

Soon there will be a day when I sell your name so that I can wear my sanity  you ripped me off. And then Gods will admit that they were bored of fruits  served in brass plates and demand the compensation for all the acting they had to do. The sun will stretch its legs through the pool of a child's tears, just like a father who can  only spell softness and never live it. Clouds will forget their lines, thunder will stammer, and the sky will confess it envies the silence of  an old widow's bed. The mirror will finally speak, not of beauty, but of all the names I swallowed to keep peace in someone else’s house. Then maybe I will admit we were a shipwreck with no survivors, no driftwood, not even a gull to mourn us. Until then, my lentils will burn, laughing at my ashen fingers— mocking the woman who knew how to build altars but never how to leave them. And somewhere between  the hiss of the stove and the crack in my lip, you will be reborn— not as a memory, but as ...

 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...