High

I’ve never lived in homes with ceilings low,

breathing on me

like the open windows don’t belong

within the walls;

they’re too stumped,

buckling,

falling,

pressing.

I live now in an old apartment

and it seems like yesteryears were full of people like me

who didn’t want buckling walls ,

let tall lovers graze their homes with no apprehension,

believing in the power and beauty of them high ceilings:

untouchable bases of everyday living,

a space that lets you move.

It lets you explore.

It lets you jump.

Jump because I jump sometimes

in joy,

I shoot up when someone tickles me

an involuntary happiness that I can’t contain

it just spills and reaches out of my body.

I shoot.

Shoots, yes.

I want a lot of them, green from the top

hanging from my indoor skies,

vines filling for the veins of the walls,

pots and plants scaling my thoughts,

upright striving

and a safe space for their flowers to bloom.

I love high ceilings and I can’t lie,

not in houses alone

nor at work or that breakfast diner on my street

but at the psychiatrist’s office

or that bar that was once a bank

and in funeral homes.

The soul needs space to leave that body,

an outworn piece of clothing

the music needs to bounce,

it needs to echo, to want to dance in the presumed void;

it lets me dance with my beloved I bring home

and should he want to carry me high up

straddle my soul on his hips,

breasts at his lips

I want nothing to touch, no ceiling to hold on to

except the high cheekbones of his face.

I can’t be put in places with low ceilings,

they make me seems bigger than I am,

a giant,

an illusion of being free to accomplish goals

and I am not sure that is me.

The high ceilings are a friend

long lost

walls holding them up for me.

They meet me with open, blank slates

my art has the space to breathe,

the poems are up on my walls

living in sprouting light,

shadows incarnated.

When I’m head flat, water in my ears

in the bathtub

naked and suspended of social intrusions

I like looking at the light playing with the blinds

behind my back;

a fresh canvas

not breathing down on me or pressing me,

coercing me to be big

but a tender look that allows my insignificance to manifest.

The crown moulding looks at me like a lover,

the walls let me touch them

slow, I write in the air.

I once read this story about a man who filled his walls

with art, poetry and words,

ceiling resplendent with the words of others

until he hung himself from the fan

and I can’t help but think

how high his ceiling was

because these words can float,

they need no tethering,

they are little free lives in themselves

and if you put them in a box

and throw a person like me in it

I can never make peace with those words

and art, arrogantly mine.

I need the volume to love and it’s important that I love

because that is when I

and the colours

and the words I string

are most beautiful

and should you come to my funeral when I am gone,

I don’t want these words haunting you:

making you cry, kissing you against your will

but makes you rise and pluck words from my space

creating your poems from mine already dead,

streak it with colours

to later tell people about me

with a smile:

That funeral was hauntingly beautiful

and then,

Remember to look up

because

I am probably still there. 

I do not own this image. Collected from Pinterest.

Hemu 

Why I'm Not on Tinder

A friend of mine recently asked me why I am not on Tinder.

I paused for a second, a wild stream of visual cues flowing in my head

but no words at that moment to exactly answer that question.

There lies no judgment in me for people for whom it works

but in my own twisted mind full of second-hand books that smell like tea

and library stamps as old as me,

a digital imprint as that struggles at the borders of my comfort zone.

I haven’t yet grasped the idea of swiping left or right.

People say I have to go after what I want but this doesn’t quite seem like seeking love yet

but squeezing possibilities out of the hope and dreaminess

uncertainty has latent in it in such a way that the tiniest thread persists in you

when you call quits.

No, I don’t think I quite fit in that narrative.

You see,

before and when I go out with you, I don’t want to have a safety net of what you do

or the weighing insecurity of who you did.

I don’t care if you’re 6’2” or the next fraction of measurement and

neither do I want unsolicited dick pictures in my inbox floating next to blank ‘Hi’s’

that were thrown in like bait in the sea.

No. That’s not what I believe in.

I believe in first dates where you can tell me more about what you do for passion instead of profession.

I don’t want small talk.

I don’t want to know where you’re from or who’s in your family but

how you feel when I say the word ‘home’ and what that means to you.

Would there be kitchen stools, pajamas, little legs and hot chocolate

or a glass of bourbon mixed in parts with fear and dread?

Tell me about your childhood dreams.

Tell me what you wanted to be when you were little and why you never became them.

Tell me why you believed all those people who said that superheroes weren’t real or that fish whisperer wasn’t on the hot job market.

Tell me what a fish whisperer meant in your little head and bright eyes, in the first place.

No, I don’t really want to know which school you went to but what you learnt,

un-learnt and re-learned.

Did you smile in your high school year book or were you afraid your braces would haunt

that beautiful broad grin of yours?

I want to know how you talk to your mother

and if she adjusted your tie on your prom night before you left into your version of adulthood?

Did you dance that night?

Tell me who that least popular kid in school was and if you ever gave them company

so that they didn’t feel shunned in the cruelty that some school lives can be…

….or wait,

tell me, were you that kid?

I’d like it known that I would rather have you turning up at my doorstep

with nothing more than a smile and enough meaningful conversation.

I fall in love with the small, important things.

Do you like cats or dogs?

If you have one of them divine beings, did you buy or adopt them?

Do you like tea or coffee?

Tell me, I need to know exactly what you take in it, how many cubes of sugar and all

and where you best like to drink it.

What do you first think of when I say the word ‘fuck’ or how weird ‘lovemaking’ sounds to you?

We’re still both strangers here and I don’t judge 

and so,  I’d like to know if you think drunken nights with nakedness are more intimate than

sharing a morning breakfast together still clothed in the modesty clinging to

our carnal expressions of the previous night.

I want to know everything I can

from how you smile when you blush or if you have deep dimples I’d want to kiss

in a three-dimensional world.

I want to see how you talk about your favourite fictional character

and if gym means making an impression or fitness.

I want to know what ice-cream flavours you like and

how you walk on the crosswalk as cars wait for you to pass

and if you ever gesture them thanks for stopping.

I have to know how your grandparents kissed you as a child and

how they looked at each other

and if you ever think you can ever have that with someone.

You see,

I want to know when you last sent a postcard to someone

and if you ever wrote a love letter.

No, something would seem amiss if I swiped you right on the best pictures of yourself.

No.

Until I know the rhythm with which you walk, the hand you wear your watch on,

how you treat a waiter or a child

and what tune you may whistle on a sunny day,

I can’t swipe you right.

In my little twisted mind full of second-hand books that smell like tea

and library stamps as old as me,

that just

won’t

be

right.

Image Source: http://www.mostbeautifulrussianwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Dating-Couple-Laughing.jpg

Hello From the Other Side: America Diaries

17th December 2015 | Columbus | Ohio

My good people,

It's been a good 133 days since I relocated for my Masters to the United States. One hundred and thirty three days. It has taken me as long to get back to writing here as well. There are those loose, shaggy scribbles in a little poetry book that takes the beating of my ambivalent being that I can't quite share here for it's not the most understood pieces I have ever written, even to myself. I'll get there in a bit and resume that side of writing but tonight, for some strange reason, I thought I'd tell you about the little things of my life here. The little things because they are always the most important.

This country is beautiful in many ways. I have a great bunch of department friends who have been nothing short of lovely and helpful. I'm biting into this new dessert of independence and as incredible as it is, sometimes I take a step back and stare at the sweet cake for a while because too much of it makes me delirious in confusing ways. This tryst with earning one's own bread, making one's own bed, home, academics and thoughts is overwhelming. I'm making friends across different age-groups and it's absolutely engaging to see how differently they think, design, draw and formulate their thoughts. It's interesting to see their priorities, their opinions and their life goals. For someone in her mid-twenties, it pushes me a step back to rehearse and look through my own life, shuffle through my memories and throw away unnecessary ones and concentrating on my life ahead. I have been advised on how to network, the kind of boots to buy, to get home early and suggested the restaurants with good food. I have people who help me by telling me how many layers of clothes I should wear in the winter because well, coming from Madras, one is clearly incapable of making a rational choice in the face of the deadly cold.

There are the little intriguingly alluring things about my own self reflecting off of my ethnicity that I hadn't realised is beautiful until now. I had two cops asking me where my accent is from when I was making peace with a personal pizza place down my street. As stupid as it sounds, I didn't think I had an accent when I spoke English in India even as we could make out the state from which a person is from based on their 'accent'. Now, I represent a whole. My downstairs neighbour on the first night that we met on the porch of our apartment, cracked up at the way I pronounced some words (in a good way). He'd type a word on his phone and ask me to pronounce it. And then he'd laugh and I'd laugh at the way he'd laugh. That was a very good introductory night with no airs or complexities.

A lot of my American friends found it weird that you can make tea with ginger in it and asked me what it was called, the beverage itself. I would say it's tea and they'd go on to ask what chai is. It makes me grin when they say chai-tea, the redundancy tickling me and the great cultural and linguistic exchanges we have had over the last three months is nothing short of adorable, learning cultures off each other and rubbing off each other's minds with so many conversations. I sometimes hit the nearby bar that has a great number of same-sex couple turnout and I've had some very happy and freeing conversations with some of them. There are so many new sights, sounds and happenings! Some mornings, there is a bagpiper on my university grounds playing his music as I rush to my department. He just stands in the middle of the large central grounds called 'The Oval' and plays it in no rush, no hurry and in so much momentousness of an ordinary day. On that note, there is something very liberating about dancing to soul music between 1960-1973 at a bank-turned-club too. Dancing with a random stranger that night, it took me almost fifteen minutes to explain my name to him and you know what? They find the name and its meaning beautiful, fully. I can't remember the last time I felt a new sense of indulgence in my own name.

As much as the music, sounds and noises make my day, I am also making peace with my own silence and of late, Frederic Chopin has been my most musical and emotional aide. This composition in particular has pulled me through so many nights and I have been cramming my diary with so many thoughts that this new country offers, making so much art as the first Fall brushed by and now, I can't as easily sketch in the cold as my fingers get numb too quickly but I attempt still, as my lines fail to be straight. But since the wavering has a story in itself, I let it be and let myself go ahead with the colours and the imperfect lines. I'm consciously documenting my life here and it's simply amazing to see how different everything is and how it's just as similar too. People care, people love and people are nice. My building's janitor is a lovely lady with a timid smile and it takes me back to times in school where our 'ayahs' would smile at us with so much love and a sense of responsibility. My professors are a fun bunch and I even play soccer with one of them and some other new people of late; and most often, even if I'm probably the worst one on the field, I can't stop myself from smiling simply because this experience is exhilarating and joyful.

Does all this replace home and India? No. It doesn't. I miss being back home. I miss my parents, my marvelous mongrels on the road and the roadside tea shops. I miss that Cheta and his tea, the Marwari chaat shop and the fresh juice shop at Annanagar Roundabout. I miss Ayyapan temple and my charming grandparents, my best friends' houses I barge into after they tell me specifically not to come and their families. Oddly, I miss that hot humidity too. I miss how I knew people and dogs on every street, Bhai's grocery store and my college mates who are all now in different directions. There are nights here that runs on a thin line between being alone and being in solitude. But tonight is one of those nights I'm thankful for all the newness that has found home within me. I'm glad for the experiences that is chiseling me into a stronger, hopefully better and more evolved person. The word 'home' is going through some beautiful transitions and I can't wait to see its more morphed and understandable state soon.

A belated 'Hello America!'. Life is beautiful tonight with Chopin's nocturne in the background, yellow lights warming me up even as the temperature hits below zero outside.

Until next time!
Hemu

My apartment currently :) 

Terribly Tiny Love Letters 07 | A Flaw SO Beautiful

Found the image on https://kidim2013.wordpress.com/tag/sahil/

I like those nights I make my tea perfectly.
I take a sip and realize that it's piping hot;
quite resonant
to a momentary scandal to my lips
when I drink from its deep end.
Like you and me.
Memories of you come rushing back
at the heat of that moment
and just so you know,
you come with all other things
flawed
and
beautiful.


~Hemu 

The Fucking Beautiful Woman

I'm a woman, a beautiful one.

I have no space for making mistakes.
Little peach flaws that fills the heart of a man are allowed but ugly and grossly growing up events that alter me aren't quite permitted under being beautiful.

I look beautiful if I laugh but chortling mirth isn't one of them. I look beautiful when I cry. Just glassy eyes full of tears stranded like a water droplet on a lotus leaf, waiting for me to close my eyes in a dramatic moment so that it may flow perfectly down in a single line across my immaculate cheek.
Wailing my gut out and wrenching the ache doesn't paint a pretty picture, as you know.

I look beautiful whether I just wake up from bed or whether I am going to a party. Sleep lines on my face from sleeping on my man as the general consensus go, is beautiful. Wrinkles of age, not so much.

I look beautiful whether I wear cotton panties or fancy lace ones.

I don't know if you know but no longer do mere breasts count for representing my gender. It has to be emphasized. They have to be big enough and beautiful enough or I am not woman enough.

I can't afford to 'walk like a man'.. well, because I am a woman. I can't exercise enough caution on my preferences because picky women aren't beautiful. That strand of hair that falls on my forehead needs to freeze in time till no one can see how not-so-beautiful it can get. There are no provisions for humidity, rain or a lazy day in the life of a woman.

It's beautiful when I see what my partner wants or if there are stealthy kisses abducted from me even as I am an unwilling party because He knows (best) that I love him. I'm not beautiful if I am vocal about my sexual needs. The minute sex pleasures me, I turn into a slut and we all know that that is not beautiful.

The society thinks I'm 'old enough to get married' but any knowledge I may possess on the subject of sex and reproduction is because I have a dirty mind that dwells on the carnal pleasures that shouldn't concern me. Oh, it won't be a beautiful thing to do, my dear!

I'm a beautiful woman. Intelligent, intellectual, sexual or slutty, well-read or wise, warm, funny or humourous: none of these score well in the books of the beautiful. I can't be lazy and unkempt on days of my choosing, eat like a glutton or drink like a sailor.

Because you see, I'm a woman. And I'm fucking beautiful.

Nothing less.
Nothing more either.

Image belongs to Hemalatha Venkatraman. Do not reproduce without permission 

~Hemu