My Dear Child,

The way you hold on to my every word,

The way your eyes follow mine for the tiniest bit of approval,

is unnerving my child.

One day you will learn,

That I only pretended to have all the answers.

For you and for myself.

All I had, all I have

is prayer and intent.

And the day you do,

I hope…

I will have your approval, then.

Imperfection

What can I say,

that hasn`t already been said,

about what bonds me to you.

Parent and child. Mother and son.

All I know is that on most days it feels like

that the body that once held all of you,

is no match for the emotions

that come along with mothering you.

It doesn’t come easy to me,

this complete surrender, this sentimentality.

I rail against it,

and yet mostly, I fail against it.

Even on my worst days as a mother,

when I hate everything about being one,

(and yes, there are many)

my love for you is deep,

undone.

And I have learned to separate,

the mothering from the ”motherhood”.

(I am mom, not Mother Teresa)

the reality from the expectations,

the self from the judgement,

the truth from the clichés.

Know that I cannot offer you perfection;

rather I WILL NOT offer you perfection.

But I will offer you a love as faulty as myself.

My whole self.

For the rest of my days.

You and Me

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If there was a way to miss you,
lesser and lesser,
with every day,
If there was a way to feel,
whole-er, happier, okay-er
in every way…
I still don’t think I could
go through with it…
Missing you, loving you, YOU!
are as much a part of me, as my own self.
I could never walk away, I could never walk away…

हिंदी दिवस पर!

हिंदी मेरी मातृ भाषा है
राष्ट्र भाषा नहीं,
क्योंकि माँ को अपनाते हैं,
माँ से प्यार करते है, राजनीति नहीं|
इस देश में अक्सर, बूढी माँ का कोई नहीं रहता,
राष्ट्र के ठेकेदार तो बहुत बैठे हैं,
और हमेशा रहेंगे|

Poets!!

Poets aren’t a necessity in this world,
but they are everything that is right about it.

Grief’s daily timetable

Random triggers, overwhelmed moments,
Holding back then pushing forth,
“Letting go”… but failing miserably.
Rinse. Repeat.
Daily.
For the rest of your life.

A Lifer’s Block

What do you do when you are fresh out of ideas,
with a blank page staring at you?
You take a long walk,
preferably bare feet, in the grass still wet from morning dew.
And if it is night, you breathe in the subtle yet unmistakeable
scent of the Queen of the Night.
Or you cut open a juicy, ripe mango
oozing of sweetness and pulp,
and relish it to the very last drop.
Or you look into your son’s eyes,
as he rattles on his usual gibber-gabber,
and think how much you will miss it,
when he is all grown up.
Or you open an album full of old photos,
look at the faces of your childhood friends,
and wonder why you lost touch?
Or you dig out old family heirlooms,
precious not because of what they are,
but because of what memories they hold.
What do you do when you are fresh out of ideas,
and your whole life ahead of you?
You live in these tiny moments of joy
strewn all around you,
And sooner or later, you will find the inspiration,
to help you fill that blank page, that future life anew.

Me Vs I: The Eternal Struggle

Inside all of us, there is a ME.
A ME that none of us understand clearly.
A complicated, jumbled mass within,
of confused thoughts and emotions transitory,
that sometimes run with, and sometimes against each other.
The clash continuing; the peace temporary.

A relentless struggle with a life of its own.
A momentous journey, the end unknown.
The ME can be tamed, the ME should be tamed,
claim the ringmasters of the outer world.
Channel each thought, command each emotion.
Who is the master though, that is the real question.

For in a fight against one’s own self;
few can claim victory.
Though the ME stays within,
it gnaws beyond its periphery.
And the I loses out often,
To this faceless, shapeless entity.

Do you have an almost-realized dream?

Do you have an “almost-realized” dream?
A dream which turned out so perfect
in “almost” every way,
that no one but you notices,
that this isn’t how you had hoped for things to turn out to be,
A simultaneous “almost” and a “not quite”.
Do you?
And if so, for the rest of your life,
will you be thankful for the “almost”?
or feel resentful for everything the “not quite” robbed you off?