Ponder On The Verses

It's time I tell the truth about myself, because I've decided to revamp this blog for a while. I love writing poetry, I do, but I feel that my blog should also be exposed as a personal space where I'm able to explore my thoughts freely without any judgment. Honestly, I doubt who is even reading this blog at the moment, but it allows me to verbalise my thoughts in a free-flowing post so people (who...potentially read this blog...hahaha) can understand my sense of self too! Almost 20 days ago, I turned 18. Yes, the "big" 18, the "legal" 18. My thirteen-year-old self, watching youtube parallel to those covid zoom lessons, would've probably imagined my 18th birthday to be somewhat different. A club, with those fancy lights and a disco ball, popping a bottle of champagne because, well, 18 = alcohol, and wearing a long black dress, swaying through the music and dancing the night away, and so the list goes on. Maybe around fifty people are attending the par...

This feels like a full circle moment because this is my last ever poem in the Navarasa series! I'm quite glad I have the time to write and post a lot more because (well, I have free will), but mainly due to the journey itself - the nights I wrestled with words until they bled meaning, the moments I nearly gave up, the tiny victories when a line struck true.  People generally underappreciate or don't really read these pieces. In fact, I don't own a mailing list, or I really have no clue if I do, but if someone here is out there reading this piece, I'm so grateful for your time and effort to appreciate my writing. I started this journey at the age of 14, and now having some of my pieces published in magazines and am able to develop my blog more, I feel so surreal and happy to have reached this moment.  This final piece from the Navarasa is about bravery. Veera, they say, in Sanskrit. It seeks to capture the pulse of courage that rises in the face of fear, the quiet streng...

Here's a birthday special poem of mine! I turn 18 today, and I've reflected a lot on the past year. I honestly went through a lot (and still haven't recovered yet...haha..), but this poem holds what the year left behind, it's my attempt to sit with it - without fixing it, without softening it in any way (and somehow pray I don't just stay in someone's memory). This poem is a tribute to the eighth emotion of the Navarasa, Shanta , which depicts peace, and the slow, uncertain process of arriving there. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing this (minus the tears..oops) Afterimage I keep mistaking memory for direction. Every thought bends back to you, smoke returning to a room already emptied of fire. I called this healing, this circling. As if naming the wound might persuade it to close. My mind learned your shape too well. Every future pauses there, as though peace were a place I could only enter through you. Even hope became a negotiatio...

I hate writing intros before my poems, but it's exam season right now, and I felt this is the best depiction of my "internal regime" during this season. (So here, enjoy this repulsive fragment of me, distilled and very unapologetic) Ferment The mind curdles before it breaks, a slow souring of thought, where hours sweat and clot beneath the skull’s thin vault Stress coils like old incense overburnt, choking, its ash settling in the lungs of every intention I raise My breath tastes of iron and fatigue, as if language itself has rusted, and syllables scrape the throat when I try to name myself The body knows first. Skin tightens in quiet revolt, muscle recoils from touch, even air arrives unclean And yet, in this congestion of self, a thought of relief moves through me, unwelcome, necessary, almost merciful I despise this wanting, not to be held, but to be emptied Rasa: Bibhatsa (Disgust) - Mridini