~ the last question.

will i find myself 
at your doorstep again?
will i drag myself
always almost falling asleep
smell the daffodils growing
in spurts and silly shrubs
next to your sunny sidewalk
no honeybees here - 
just the way i've liked it
and just the way you have, too?
will i slow time
to spend a few more moments with you?
i should, and i must;
will we hum our favourite songs
turn the dial up on the radio
listen to the crackling sounds?
now, will we
laugh perhaps rather derisively
because both of us know
all this will never happen - 
let us retreat to our caves
spill ink and stain our fingers
writing late into the dark 
and dreary night,
separated by distance;
united by our words.

~ vruta gupte, october 2017.

~ the distance between stars.

Let me walk to someplace quiet
Where there are no streetlights,
No lamps to obstruct my shifting gaze
My meandering meditations
I do not know much of constellations
It is only the inky blackness
Between the flaming orbs of the night
That matters;
Because yesterday I thought
That darkness is much like
The distance between us -
One star is brighter than the other,
Yesterday I thought
About how if both of us
Were standing still in a crowd
Of unsmiling, unfamiliar faces,
Maybe we would notice each other.
Maybe the starts would come closer
And closer
And burn brighter
And brighter
Then maybe there would be a blinding flash
Of brilliant white light -
A collision, of sorts.
If stars can collide, why can't we?
For the darkness is impermanent, my darling.
Our lives are not filled by it
It does not encase us, envelope, or suffocate.
Let us walk to someplace quiet
So that I can look at you.

Vanished.

Sometimes I feel like disappearing.

Sometimes I feel like going away from everything, probably to an abandoned treehouse in the jungles of tomorrow, where I will be at peace, away from all the sharing and over-sharing. It would be good to be disconnected for a while. Ironically enough, I am writing this on a post that will reach a lot of people, and that, sadly enough, a lot of people might be able to relate to.
You see, the side of yourself you share out here, where everyone can see you, is only a fraction of who you really are. You can't distill a whole person into just a particular number of likes they got, or something they've posted, or something they didn't post but that you thought they should. The risk of sharing too much of yourself with people is that after a while, they will come to expect it; but they won't notice if you disappear.

At least I think they wouldn't notice if I disappear.

Sure, they would wonder where I have gone, for a little while, but then they will return to their everyday lives and troubles and problems; people have too many of those anyway. Here I talk only of the part of myself that is a slightly sassier - and some might say cheekier - version of myself: the version that is the most opposite to who I really am, and not the version that stays up at night binge-watching harmonium concerts and my friend's classical music compositions on YouTube, or reading, or writing poetry. Only a few friends of mine know that side of me. Of course, this is assuming that people have only two sides, the good and the bad, the people-pleasing and the cold-hearted, the has-it-all-together and the slowly-falling-apart.

All my life I have struggled with balancing connection and disconnection. Connection eats into my life, while disconnection keeps me awake at night. Connection is necessary for relationships to grow, but too much of it will poison your friendships, and suffocate your friends. Too much disconnection, on the other hand, will suffocate you, and make you feel like you have no friends at all; a feeling I have felt enough times to never let anyone else think the way I once did, which is probably why I, oftentimes, share, and over-share, and never stop, really. (I seldom leave people alone. My friends will testify to that.) The endeavour to balance these scales is a confusing, draining, severely exhausting one. And so I have always been scared to even attempt to balance these two sides of the same (albeit virtual) coin.

I think it would be good to try, though.

Rubber Bands.

I keep
All my rubber bands
Wrapped around
My shampoo bottle
I tie my ponytail with one of them
Every day
Sometimes I use the blue one
Other times the green one
That reminds me of pistachios
There's another that looks 
Like blue and pink cotton candy
Except with whipped cream
A few months later
The rubber bands will be looser
Someday
I won't use them to tie my hair
Anymore.

~Vruta Gupte, 2017.

Separation.

A differential distance slyly separates 

The dark day from the nimble night

The ocean from the sky

The shivering sun from the monstrous moon

The nest from the branch

The writer from the pen

The nocturne from the canvas

The black bracelet from the wrist

The henna from the palm

The dancer from the stage

The musician from the flute

And me from you.

~ Vruta Gupte, 2017.

I can't write a poem.

I can’t write a poem tonight,

I went outside and took some pictures,

And my right shoulder is aching.

I can’t write a poem tonight,

My brain is too full: I’d rather

Write something really really (really) long,

So that people know what I’m thinking about—

Not that that’s interesting; who I’m thinking about

Would be more enticing to read

And to know, quite frankly.

I can’t write a poem tonight

Because pouring myself out would be so much easier

Than freezing myself into short lines

(They read like stubble, not a long, flowing beard.)

You should know that you’re the one

Who made me want to capture in prose again

You’re almost like a plucked marigold flower—

It hurts a lot, but you still love helping people;

And sometimes it hurts me that you’re hurting.

I can’t write a poem tonight,

I’m thinking about you:

Not that I mind.

~Vruta Gupte.

Caffeine On A Screen.

Many times over the past week I have thought of writing about certain moments of the last few months that have come to hold a certain meaning for me.  I save draft after draft--all of them empty, and soon these memories would most likely fade away too, much like my (ever dwindling) motivation to sit down and finish four posts in one day.

I've wanted to write about how on a cloudy, noisy (as is quite uncommon within the confines of our college) Saturday evening I went with two of my friends (insofar as walking less than a kilometre to near the chemistry lab to spend thirty minutes detailing memes of days past can be termed as 'went') for a cup of coffee and to discuss the sorry states of our lives before a quiz.  I went into sorriness overdrive, then, and ended up drinking two cups of coffee.  (After that I went into caffeine overdrive and became a pretentious pale-faced pixie who believed she could still sing well.)  My friend subsequently called up at least five people frenziedly to ask if they were bunking German class (they weren't, much to his dismay and annoyance--he did, anyway). 

I've also wanted to write about how three of us sat under the tree behind the girls' lobby (known to most of us first years primarily as 'The Tree'), made weird faces, and Snapchatted them to every batchmate of ours within a Snapchatting radius.  Or how as I walked along the road beside our mess hall, at midnight, while reading a presentation about meiosis, then went inside (my fingers were frozen; I was scared my arteries would burst, quite frankly) to find people I see solemnly entering class every morning--to their own credit, and to that of their roommates'--dancing and clapping their arses off (bad imagery?) because it was someone's birthday.  
Birthday celebrations here deface the cake more than the person whose (un)lucky day it is, contrary to vox populi.  A sad wastage of delicious, sumptuous, luxurious chocolate and vanilla frosting, if you ask me.  Not that I don't deface the cake myself, sometimes, when everybody else pastes frosting onto the person's face, like rouge, except here, the purpose is seldom beautification.

Occasionally I have felt like detailing the impact a single pizza box had at around eight at night, when I was (as far as I remember) starving and about to treat (read relegate) myself to an extraordinary amount of paneer and butter-less tandoori roti, while my roommate would look on with increasing doses of wistful nonchalance (at the paneer, not the pizza--I shared the pizza, I'm not a jerk) while she finished her masala dosa and rolled her eyes at a friend who said she wasted food.  Pizza is love, pizza is life.  Pizza is elixir.  With soda (in particular, Sprite--my dad introduced me to Sprite when I was seven and just beginning to explore the legendary and much-lauded world of cold drinks) and a bit of that yellow garlic sauce you get at Papa John's, pizza and I would be a match made in heaven.

Writing about these lone (or not) incidences is quite an arduous task, however--not in that one does not find the right words to describe them, but because how do you distill all this into words on a page?  It seems almost as if you are disregarding the sanctity of what happened; you expect that, through a series of not-so-finely divided letters and spaces, you will convey adequately to a reader what those happenings mean to you and your cronies.  After thinking about all this, the question that might bug your entrails the most is: why do we write at all?  

Do we write as a method of self-actualization?  To stand out from the pack?  If everyone wants to stand out of 'the pack' (what is the pack?), would not the action itself become meaningless?  Do we write to be remembered, and if yes, why do we think that people will remember something they read on a random blog post ten years ago, and who wrote it?  Memories become hazy over time, and truth and perspectives are too relative.  Do we write for the others in our lives or for ourselves?  Do we write as selfish skunks try to spray mercaptans all over our beautiful gardens, or do we write to serve?

Maybe, as is with everything, each of us writes for a different purpose.  Some of us write because we want to share our happiness, some to share their pain, yet others write because they see no reason not to.  I think I write because I fear that I'd forget these things someday; and that day would be a sad, sad day (sadder than most others, anyway).  The only thing we could do, I believe, is to keep writing, so that when we are old and about to leave our planet and universe behind, we could give the keys to a secret drawer to our children, and their children, and tell them, this is where you will find my heart when I am gone.  This is where you will find me: in my writings.  Writings never perish; as long as words live on, so do we.  And it might so happen that one day, when I am but another star amongst a million others in the night sky, someone might look up and say it was nice to have a cup of coffee.

Blue.

To write stories these days, I use an app on my phone, because I don't want to get out of bed and turn my laptop on and type that address in, because I know I will type in the wrong address. I will go somewhere I had never meant to be. I am, now, the laziest person I have ever seen. Lazier than I have ever been.

In four days I have exams. I have not studied for the past two days. I should, but I don't, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I find that I discover how I should have done something long after I have had to do it already.

The app on my phone lets me change colours. Lately all my notes have been blue. Blue because that is the colour that most intrigues me, for reasons I cannot say. Blue because blue is the colour of a picture that I see on my screen every day. Blue because my profile picture on Facebook is blue (maybe that blue has reasons too). Blue because blue is the opposite of red, and there has been too much red in my life for the last few days. Red in my journal. Red in my notebook. Red on my screen, because of Quora. Red in my room, because of my blanket and my towel. Red in my blood.

Blue because I have a blue bed-sheet that has the Wimbledon logo all over it (no, I don't watch tennis). Blue because...deep down inside, I am green and blue. Blue-green is the colour of the sea. The sea is where I would rather be. Instead of this concrete excuse for greenery, and scenery, I would much rather be real. Blue because blue is the colour of pretence. I pretend. I pretend I know where I am going. I pretend I believe in the things I used to believe. I pretend I know how to help you.

Blue because these past few days, you and I have been blue, sad. You are bluer than I am. I painted myself blue to match the opposite colour of one of your shirts. Inside I am green. Green will give you hope. Paint yourself green, and be green with me. It'll be fun. It'll be new, for you. And as much as I hate to use the word--it'll be--fresh. Fresh as the grass that you have not set foot on for more than a week. Fresh as the grass I was rolling around in just yesterday. Fresh as the grass I had to wash off my feet. It is already half past nine in the morning and I am--I am--dead beat.

You have too much red in your life, too. The scars on your heart are red. The scars on your heart have the opposite colour to my handkerchief. Maybe that's why I can't wipe them off, because I read somewhere that you have to fight fire with fire. The scars on your heart are there because your heart was broken a while ago. A while feels like a long, long time ago. A while feels like yesterday. Fire is red.

On some nights, the moon is red. On other nights, it is white. That means you can draw anything on it. What do you draw? I draw green. I draw a cabin in the woods, a cabin made of wood, with a bed and a fireplace and a chimney and cheese and potatoes. Burnt potatoes. Slightly burnt potatoes, to remind you of a distant past. When is the past distant and when is it close? I am cheesy. Am I too cheesy? Do I make you sick to your stomach or do I make you feel delicious? Am I cheesy, or am I just cheese? Do I ask too many questions?

But you said the questions are more important than the answers. Does that mean you would rather not find the answers to some questions? Do I ask too many questions?

Blue because I believe that if you paint yourself enough--or maybe--if I paint you more than enough, you will be green again. Maybe you don't want to be green. Maybe you want to be white--blank, so you can draw yourself again. White, so that you can fill in the colours again. Or colour outside the boundaries of what you have drawn. There are no rules, here, with me. But there are no rules only for you. Are you white because you want to wipe yourself off? Please don't. There will be scars on my heart if you do that. And they will be red. And I don't like red. Because I am blue now. I will stay blue until you remove your blue, even though I know that wiping colours off of yourself is not something you or I, or anybody for that matter, can do. If that is the case, then wipe the colours off me. Turn me black, because black is everywhere. That means I will never leave you. That means I will stay with you forever. How long is forever? Blue because blue is a part of black, and I would much rather be black than green, if that is what suits you. Suits are black, too.

Blue because blue is royal and fancy. And we are fancy; even though we may not be royal. We are simple beings, of things that look worse than stardust. We are, probably, just dust. But your dust is beautiful and poetic, and broken, and sad, and...and please tell me how to break my dust too. Then we can glue your dust back together. Your dust doesn't need surgery. It needs paint. Your dust is blue. Paint over it. Paint inside it. Paint everything with yourself so that wherever I go, you are still there. This does not mean you should wipe yourself off. Don't wipe yourself off. Okay?

Okay. Now it is time for me to go. Now it is time for me to paint. Paint with words. Paint the gloomy dark suburbs of my soul. You, you paint your sole. That needs painting too. Paint it the colour of you. Now that I think about it more--you are probably not very blue. Maybe you are black. Maybe you are who I have been looking for. Now I am awake. I was sleeping before. For twelve hours. Now I am awake enough to paint you. Don't leave before I finish. I know she has painted you blue. I will paint you green...I will paint you white. I will paint you starry. I will paint you everything. Maybe you are my paint.

I am your paint. I will always be your paint. I will never be your pain. Don't leave before I leave. I will never leave. Now I must go. You are still blue. I have to buy paint.

As You Like It.

How paradoxical it is that we are ambitious but also find anonymity appealing, my friend said to me as she gazed nonchalantly at the black ceiling, again, and again.  She had stared at the ceiling yesterday, too.  And the day before that.  And the day before the day before...

He tapped his forehead with his pen; seldom had he found it so difficult to put his thoughts into words.  Although he had observed that putting thoughts into words had become a little more cumbersome for him, of late, mostly because he was doing other things.

Thinking about other things.  And people.
Person, actually.

Was he fooling himself?  He would probably never know.

It was two in the morning, yet here he was (idly twiddling his thumbs to match the beat of the song that played in his head, as ever), imagining another life, in which anything was or could have been possible.

Possibilities--the word was as scary as it was exciting.  But isn't that what life was all about?  Scariness and excitement?  Of course, he could be wrong, but that wasn't the point.  The point was that he could be.

The past year had gone by pretty uneventfully (pretty--what an oxymoronic word to use), oh, except for one thing.  He would rather not be reminded of it.  The past month, however, had been, quite contrarily to the general trend (graph) of his life (versus time), extremely eventful.  The past month had been an enigma he was still trying to make sense of.  

She was someone he was still trying to make sense of.  How could someone who looked so small and wonder-less (but somebody would surely find her wonderful, no doubt) write something that stirred within him such unimaginable feelings of kinship, and regret, and admiration, and emptiness?  So much to feel, and so little time!  She was a rollercoaster, and he was a slow-moving horse-coach that, instead of horses, was being pulled by donkeys, of all beings.  Not a perfect match (not even to be friends, much--or so he thought.  Of course, there were other, more important things, that he held dearer to his heart, that beckoned him to talk to her every day).  

But friendship and love is seldom about matching.  Friendship is about staying even when you don't match.  Friendship is about tearing your paper heart in half, and giving one half to your friend if his heart is broken.  Friendship is about crusading silently, caped; masquerading as the Dark Knight for this one person in your life, because...because they are special.  Special, and no more, no less.  Friendship is about being the unlikely superhero for an irreplaceable person.  True friendship, and true love: both of these do not pull you down.  You grow with them.  

You might stay away from the other person for a couple of days, weeks, months, or maybe even many years, but when you see them again--it feels like you've come home.  Because you are home.  Those moments, those times you shared together--they are unforgettable, as if you only lived them yesterday.  And this is what friends are for, isn't it?

She smiled, and ran her hand through his hair.  He had fallen asleep on his diary, and his pen lay besides the window, almost invisibly, as if it held the night to be of no consequence whatsoever...again.

~

Little by little, inch by inch
We built a yard with a garden in the middle of it
It ain't much but it's a start
You got me swaying right along to the song in your heart
And a face to call home
A face to call home
You got a face to call home.

Orange.

So I draw the curtains, with my window still open.  I don't want people to see inside; feels intrusive.

The curtains here are orangey.  They're green at home.  An antithesis, if I think about it more (sometimes I'm tired and I don't want to think), and each reminds me of different things.  Home reminds me of the distant past, and this room with the orange curtains reminds me of the present, if the present is something you can be reminded of.

I'm listening to a song, again.  I've been listening to a lot of songs, these days.

New ones.  Old ones.  Friendly ones.  Ones that cut you and make you think you'd rather die...these are sometimes necessary.  If you want to know a person, just listen to the songs they've sent you; it'll tell you what kind of person they are.  Or not.  This song is a bit of all of it.

In the room with the orange curtains, I spend my days doing assignments, reading books, studying for tests, and chatting with people on Messenger.  Quite a peaceful existence, really.  Sometimes I wonder if I am not much of a feeler.  Then my friend sends me a message and I remember that I am not as much of a robot as I think I am...either fortunately or unfortunately.  Robots, for one, follow algorithms in everything they do, or are told to do.  I don't.

Outside this room, I am pretty much the same, except I talk to people a little more.  Outside this room, I am quite jolly, if I may say so myself.  My friends here do not think of me as too quiet a person, insofar as people can be said to be too quiet.  Outside this room, my otherwise drab existence fills with colours I haven't seen before.  Our neighbours have made rangolis in front of their doors.  In the night, I see fairy-lights twinkling in unusual places.  Sometimes I hear music too.  At midnight, most of it dies down.  At midnight, you can hear the crickets chirping, or a boy talking on the phone with his mother.  If you listen closely enough, you can hear people laughing, too.  I think the only thing missing here is snow.  But the night is dark enough that you would not need whiteness to accentuate its silence.

It's cold in the dark.  Cold enough to take a walk, shivering incessantly (for some reason, I don't want the shivering to stop, though; keeps me awake).  And while this walking business is still going on, I meet a few people.  It is here that discussions about biology and bonds and assignments happen.  Sometimes it is small talk, with many where-are-you-goings and where-have-you-beens and what-will-you-do-afters.  Sometimes I am called back upstairs by a mysterious urge to quantify the darkness into zeroes and ones on a blank, white screen: although I believe darkness is not something that can be described (adequately and perfectly).  Most times I fight this urge and keep walking, because how will I write if I do not experience?  My imagination is a clichéd curry of random outpourings I have past regurgitated, just so.  I believe things I have read in books, and watched in movies, without once stopping to see if they were true.

And hence it is here I wish to find truth.  This place is somehow more real, even though all most of us students receive here is largely fabricated and unrepresentative of reality (you know, grades.  It's sad, really).  Here you can walk four kilometres just to find a place to eat, and traverse a considerable distance to buy a cake for your friend and classmate in the middle of the night, only to leave it in the freezer when you get back—it is not cake anymore, then, it is cake-matté.  Nevertheless, as my friends and I sing happy birthday the next day, I realize this place could not have given me more: it's quite a gift.  A present.

~

While we're wild and free

We'll skip like we're stones on the sea

We'll sing like we're birds in the tree that grows

Outside your window, while we're new and young

We'll shine like a morning sun

No matter the seasons that come and go

And which way the wind blows.

  

Of the Lost and Forgotten.

I give you parts

Of a broken self

Whose these fragments are

I do not know

They may be mine

They might be yours

I give you lost pieces

Of a jigsaw puzzle

Someone once

Threw away

Whose pieces they are

I do not know

They might be mine

They may be yours

I give you a paper

With a story of heartbreak

Whose story it is

I would not know

It may be mine

I know it's yours

I give you sunshine

I saved for the darker times

Whose sparkle this is

I cannot know

I think it is mine

Because of yours

I give you a poem

I found crumpled near

A lonely curb of thought

Whose words these are

I think I know

They were once mine

Now they are yours.

~Vruta Gupte (2016).

Her.

Her rattling rambles made their way roaringly into my resplendent reverie.

He chuckled.  Yes, that would be a nice sentence to start with.  He groaned.  He was using the word nice too often.  But what could he do?  With her, everything was nice.  Everything was sunshine and rainbows; and if it were to rain now, she would drag him outside his cozy, comfortable cocoon that he had relegated his entire existence to--but how he wished she would take his hand and, with an expression of mock scorn, bring out his special sandals and plop them onto the floor--or, to be less gentle, throw them down onto the floor, in clear disdain for his habits (or lack thereof, he smiled again) and the way he forgot everything around him once he started thinking about one of his musings from the night before.

"One of?" she looked at me quizzically, "Am I not your only?"

Yes, dear, you are, but I can't tell you that, can I?  I would like to keep that to myself.
You have made me an orange--stop laughing, idiot--you have made me an orange, or I should probably say onion, because you have peeled off layers and layers of me, and with each passing day, as I tell you about something quite spinelessly stupid that I have done, or said, you say you love me more and more, and I can only wonder.

For in the past, the other one--"There was another?"--yes, darling, there was, and I am sorry I did not tell you--the other one said she hated me, after a while.  I asked her why, she told me she needed someone more.

'More what?', I asked.  Nothing, she said, her eyes blank, just more.  I was never the same again.  I tried more-ing myself, my darling, I did, but I couldn't, because I had nothing left.  All of it went away with her, and I became empty, and emptier, until.  Until what?

Oh, until you.

And you found me at my emptiest, and I had nothing to give to you, and I was so ashamed, so withdrawn, and so surprised; a dangerous trio, that is.  A troublesome trio, do you see what I did there--"I do, yes, go on, I love listening to you,"--no, she never saw anything I did.  Or maybe she did, but she stopped noticing--and I--I still cared, and I wish I could have been more, but now I have you; so I will be more for you, dear.

You don't have to be more for me.  I don't need you to be more for me.  I only need you to be enough, the way you need me to be enough for you.  There is no 'more', is there?  Even if there is, more changes, enough is constant.  And even if we are not always, let us be now.  For a certain sometime when a certain someone is there with us to gaze brightly at the twinkling stars, and watch them greet each other, in childish oblivion, the night becomes all the more young, and free.  And should we be bound?  Of course not.  Though we are made of all things that are within limits, and we are told not to dream big, we are told to reach for the moon with one hand in our pockets, to curb ambition, because they say it is a sad, sad and lonely, desperate world, and we will help this world and each other, and tell them that all is not yet lost, my love.  Things change.  We must also change.  But we will have each other.  

~

"Two-fold intoxication, obliging nearness as necessity, excuse to be each other's pillar, pillow, or prize, the whole walk home.  This beautiful love simulacrum, stumble we shall not, for even now, dear, we might already have let ourselves fall once this night."

The Aloner.

His words, I feel, are magic. You don't know where they come from, but they are always there, in the back of your mind, and they remind you of things like stardust and the aroma of coffee and cream in the morning, of fresh, warm croissants—these I have been missing of late—of dewdrops and wet earth after the rain, the almost scalding sunshine when you have no cap to shield your eyes, and that perfumed scent of the yellowed pages of a book that people have forgotten about, but you remember, and, oh, I could go on forever. For men may come and men may go; but he will always remain immortalized, past his time and life, and death, as someone who wielded words, but not as weapons.

He used words to make you exalt and suffer at the same time, as though he wanted to remind you of the maladies that most of us are, but he did not wish you drowned in your (inevitable) despair and sadness, either. Quite a paradox, he was. He buried himself, and still wanted people (me, I like to think) to understand. Amused, yet amusing. Half empty, and half full. Broken, but he would never break you. My truest friend and his own worst enemy.

Tell Me.

Tell me how

Your day was today.

Tell me how

You felt when you walked

Barefoot in the grass

After the thunderous rainfall.

Tell me how

The blades pierced your feet, but

You were still happy about

Merely being.

Tell me how you

And your friends

Played ten guitars and

Sang a song together,

Tell me whenever

You want to talk to me,

I will always be there;

Tell me how

You spent the last

Five minutes, tell me

Something about yourself

That nobody else knows,

Tell me what

Time you wake up

Every morning, tell me

Why you have been so

Quiet lately but words

Rush through you

Like drops of water

On a leaf

Tell me

Everything

And I will

Tell you.

~Vruta Gupte (2016).