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Unbearable Fantasies

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My fantasy had collapsed onto itself. As he held me tightly in his arms, I didn't know if he was real, if he had materialized out of nowhere, only to disappear again. Encounters with him have a garish beginning. It's not romantic at all! It is not the romance I want, I need, I imagined, I could make sense of. It was transactional. Before meeting him, I would already be upset about him leaving. I wanted him to hold me, to tell me that he cares for me and that he will care for me. But, despite knowing what I wanted him to say, he wouldn't. Maybe it was his way of holding onto some power when clearly the transactional nature of us meeting warranted that I was the one holding it.  Several months back, I was out and about in a familiar city with a few friends. A city that gets you so drunk that you forget about the awful people who live in it. After a long day, much of which I spent with a long forgotten old friend - who used to be a lover - turned stranger now - turned friend a...

There's something about Cox Town

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I forget what year it was when we both found each other in that inconspicuous kitchen corner in Ejipura. I forget why I was visiting Bangalore/Bengaluru that night. My first job was shitty and barely paid me. So my only visits to Blore were when upper castes paid me to come tell them that upper castes are violent but the ones that paid for me to come to your city were not. Anyway, back to the kitchen corner. This time too, I had to pretend that I wasn't into you. Tiring, really. I was in a horrible relationship and was too afraid of being lonely. Took me years to realize that my loneliness had nothing to do with being lonely. And even more years to learn that I would rather be lonely alone than with a failed poet. Ok! Kitchen corner! I keep getting distracted. I was tired of my life, my job, my (then) boyfriend. You were with a boy who I think was in love with you? (Honestly, when are your lovers not!) Or atleast on his way to fall in love with you? Or maybe you were in love and he...

Starving Towns

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Sadooj wandered around aimlessly in the small town he chose to live in. "You know....I don't really have a choice....I need to look after my family...", he would say often, to men and boys who visited his town and asked him why wouldn't he leave with them. He would visit the same street every day in his car. Always in his car. Never on foot. No one walked in this town. Everyone drove. Well...atleast who could afford not to walk. When you did walk, women and men who came to this town to build the roads Sadooj drove on, accompanied you. They would look at you strangely....as if asking you if you knew where those roads ended. And where their road would begin. Sadooj dreamt small dreams. Small dreams in Sadooj's big house. And his big car. "But everyone has big houses in this town", he would point out often, to men and boys who gawked at sprawling mansions. You think you know Sadooj, but you don't.   "You know, it's really hard to meet 'dece...

The blue-eyed Stranger and the Strange Blonde

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I was dreaming about being touched. Being caressed. Someone feeling me up like they would feel themself - without any inhibition and stopping at spots they were very familiar with. You know those dreams which always stay with you? The ones that come so unexpectedly that they leave you puzzled....they leave you hungry. Hungry not for wanting more but to be able to live the exact same dream all over again. I remember I was with him in a beach. It wasn't sunny. I remember chaotic weather.....shifting skies like his shifting hands....I remember only us on the beach. I remember the intensity with which his fingers dug inside my back. Even with all the chaos around, waves crashing, his blue eyes stood out the most. But I barely remember his face. His face was blurry. I was surprised by that color - the blueness in his eyes. You see, where I grew up I never saw people who didn't look like me. My own hair color, my own eye color. And I wondered....does this mean that I'll get to ...

Jalandhar, Punjab - II

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I visited Jalandhar in August 2019 almost 13 years after having left it in 2007. Jalandhar, a city in the State of Punjab in northern India, with a population of around 1 million, is where I was born and grew up for the first 15 years of my life. The reason for my visit (and return) to a city which I had desperately been trying to forget, and yet hold on to, was because my (paternal) grandfather’s health was slowly collapsing and everyone in the family knew that his days were numbered. My relationship with my grandfather, to put it mildly, was (is?) complicated. My kinship ties with him are closely related, not to love, but to violence, abuse, neglect, loss and trauma. Over the years, when I had been avoiding ever visiting the city and choosing any possible excuse to avoid social gatherings that might lead me into the city, I realized that the city itself had become my grandfather. I didn’t know at what point I had started relating every experience that I had in my hometown to him. E...

Do Smells have Names?

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Few days back I realized that I often try to remember my experiences as if they occurred in a linear trajectory. When in fact different timelines keep messing with each other. I am trying to put jumbled thoughts together. I don't know what beginnings to give, and what endings to expect... *** I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought I smelled him. They say you can't 'feel' smell but I felt it heavy on my skin. I felt him  on my skin. It travelled from my nose to the back of my head, slowly caressing its way down my spine and then suddenly - that feeling, that smell vanished just as quickly as it had arrived. Few days later I smelled him again. It hit me at an odd moment. Standing in the moving subway. Somewhere between 51 St Station and Astor Pl on the 6 Train. Even after almost two years of living here, I am still surprised by how carefully, strangers inside NY subway avoid touching each other. Even in crowded moments, even when you are carrying he...

An intense love letter to Delhi

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I was traveling in the metro the other day. Taking the violet line, in between Mandi House and Nehru Place. Traveling along the route that I have taken many times when I lived around that area few years ago. I would never take a seat to sit because I loved standing next to the door and looking outside of it. When the metro shifted its route above ground after Jangpura and towards Lajpat Nagar metro station, I would feel like I was emerging out into the crowded world from dark lonely caves. The moment metro compartment I would be standing in would see the light, I would imagine my skin beginning to glow. I would imagine that light running all around, dancing across strange faces and loud phones. The way the world passed below me, after the Greater Kailash metro station, made me feel like I was part of something big. Something much bigger than me or anyone. Recently while I was taking the same route, standing the way I always used to, I hated that it had become about you and not about ...