Mortal Grief

Shall I grieve for what is mortal?

Shall I hold on to what is temporary?

Death is a necessary distraction

A signpost

Not the destination

No one becomes great in death

No one can be argued with posthumously

Living makes everyone great
Life is the only touchstone of greatness


(In memory of Sumegha Gulati who passed on to the other side of necessary distraction sooner than me)

Old Lover Is Hard To Resist

It’s hard to resist an old lover

What she can do in a wink of an eye

Others can’t imagine getting a whiff of that

An old lover is like the old song

You remember it from all ends

From the start

The middle

Even the end note

(especially the end note)

When I saw her

I felt terribly incomplete

As if the part of self I left with her

Is still missing

And all the pleasures of the world

And all the affairs till now

Never could fill the hollow

Old lover is hard to resist

Whether she sees you or not

You end up in bed with her anyway

Frozen

Don’t mistake them for breasts

Those are not breasts you can fondle with

They are two frozen teardrops

On every woman’s chest in Kashmir

She beats them with both fists

To unfreeze them

Every time she finds Kashmir

Starving out of life

Art of living Alone

Fall in love with someone

Who doesn’t love you back

Be devoted to the idea of romantic unraveling

Invest in your work obsessively

And pretend that it makes you valuable

Get a pet to make believe

That your family puzzle is solved

Talk to people online

Share with them everything

And have them delude you they actually care

Go to the malls

Roam aimlessly

Buy meaningless things

And feel connected to the world

Through things you buy

Live in a house

Surrounded by neighbors you never talk to

But do greet them every time

With fake smiles whenever you bump into them

Judge others for their lack of freedom compared to yours

And praise in your heart secretly 

Your meaningless lack of restrictions

Read novels of love and togetherness

Hoping one day your life will be like it too

But in the name of falsely perceived logics like

“no-one-understands-me”

“she-is-not-my-type”

Or else the best one

“I-don’t-think-she’ll-be-happy-with-me”

Never let anyone in your life

Do all this repeatedly enough

Till it becomes your permanent life style

 And lo, you have mastered

The art of living miserably alone

Who’s Eid is it tomorrow?

Who sights the crescent

And not see the bloodspots on the moon?

Where is the joy for celebration coming from?

Whose guts are still hungry for the delicacies?

Why is my heart bleeding like the mother’s heart

Who lost her son

Then another son

Then another son

Then her daughters too?

Who stays up whole night to console her?

How many fathers have lost their appetite for life?

How many families lost their hope?

Who is counting the days of Ramadhan

And not the number of dead bodies everywhere?

How many dead bodies make up for a joyful Eid?

How many parents lie shamelessly to their children

And tell them it’s alright to celebrate?

Oh God of Ramadhan!

Give me wings right now

So I can fly

From Baghdad to Madina

To count all the graves freshly watered

And if I finish by morning Azaan

I’ll declare Eid for myself unequivocally

Without any shame

Even Love Can Bloom In A Therapy Room

It grows harder

It becomes softer

It turns into a nightmare

It feels unreal at times

All the force in the universe

And all the stars in galaxy

Watched it happening

The walls of my therapy room

Stood witness to it

The couch

The chair

The distance between two minds

Is all what it needed

Love can bloom in unexpected places

Of all the places I searched for it

Of all the eyes I looked into

Love bloomed in my therapy room

By the time I could realize it

The couch was empty

The session was unwantedly over