Need for distance

I feel so far away from you

And you never seem to have felt

The need to be close at all

Terrace farms

Perhaps there is nothing more beautiful than

Finely crafted terrace fields

Shining with ripe golden rice

At once reminiscent of

Incredible diligence

Sciene

Art

Beauty

Nature

Culture

And the ultimate comfort,

Food

Stranger effect

For the seeker of strange new things everyday

After a week among far-flung cultures

You, the man from home,

Are finally not exotic enough.

I hope this means

That you will now stop haunting me

Gifts

When i see someone

Giving a truckload of gifts

When one well chosen piece

Would suffice

I wonder if it is because

They don't know

Which little piece it is

Seasonal affective disorder

There is no doubt

That i struggle with SAD

every year

But sometimes i wonder

If it is an excuse

I use

To be lazy

So that i can be excused from making 

the eneormous effort required 

To be happy

The dream that could not be interpreted

Once i dreamt of a man with mustaches

Who was wearing a short red ghaghra

And a sexy blouse that struggled to contain

His full breasts

After i woke up, disturbed,

I could not decide for the longest time

If it was indeed a man

Or a woman who had sprouted

Luxuriant, shoe-brush mustaches.

The girl of fifteen that i was then

Knew that this was a dream

No dream interpreter could explain

For the answer to this

I would have to dip deep into my own soul

But only now

Long after gaining the confidence

To tackle the dream with ease in daylight

Can i own up

To what it means to me

Hounded by insecurities

Inadequacies

Of not being beautiful enough,

And as a result, not desirable enough

By a man,

According to the standards set by

Smooth, hairless models and heroines,

The girl that i was 

Only found expression of her fears

In dreams.

Fears

That the extra padding that

Puberty was putting on her body

Would leave her hirsute

And unable to face any man without shame
Fears compounded by  the natural hairiniess
Of her race
And the unnatural capacity
Of her brilliant peers
To get rid of this problem 
That in her social ineptitude
Seemed impossibly beyond her

Dreams often tell you
What you do not dare acknowledge

In daylight

And this one told me

How deeply 

Images foisted by the ubiquitous mass media 

Can root themselves

In a subconscious.

Images idealized so thoroughly
That they are beyond recognition

Even by the subject herself

How do i know they are deep?

After years of

Threading

Veeting and anne frenching

Wax stripping and epilating

Many variations of the image

Of a full breasted (wo)man

With a shoe-brush mustache

Still continues to haunt me 

Leaving me breathless and perspiring

In the morning,

And ultimately,

Inadequate

(Perhaps they continue to haunt me because

I am unable to stop the

Waxing anne frenching epilating

Despite knowing 

that it has been foisted upon me) 

(Who sets the standards of my beauty?

How can they take away my free wil

And squeeze my subconscious?

How can they enter my sacred space

My dreams that i share with none

And that i believe feed on my very soul?

How can they tamper with my soul, just like that?

Why can i not compete with faceless entities

That tell me how i must look?

Why can i not tell them that thy are wrong

And i, with the natural hirsutism of my race,

Am right, am perfect.

The story of my hatred for

rivers of money that 

multinational cosmetic companies

Spend on advertising

Should maybe be put aside

For some other day)

So many lives are destroyed - II

Love can backfire

In so many unexpected ways

Her quietness gave her

An almost ethereal aura of dignity

He noticed how

She demanded nothing

Of anyone

And yet was content

With her lot in life

He 

Who believed he deserved 

Everything that life could him

Believed she

Who gave without asking for anything in return

Was perfect for him

And yet,

When he was lost

Even to himself

Within wells of despair

It was her very quietness

That turned against him

For she had not the ways

To reach out to him

Having not the smile

To take away his tears

She cried along with him,

Which bound him to her all the more

But doomed them both

To a lifetime of prozac and its equivalents

If only he had chosen

Someone more effervescent

Who would have taken 

Quite a bit of him

In his happy times

And yet

Would have acquired from it

The strengrh to reach out.

Maybe his story

Would have ended differently

If only

He hadn't spurned their vivacity

When he still could

So many lives are destroyed - I

Words come to his lips

They play on the base of his tongue

On the edge of his eyes

On the tips of his drumming fingers

Many a time he tries to get them out

But every time, 

Something or the other stops him

Sometimes its the memory

Of his uncle telling him

What a fine big boy he was and

How big boys don't cry

Sometimes of the girl

Spitting out as she left

To stop crying like a girl

And most of all

Of his father

Biting back his bitter words

To let out a smooth flow

Of reassurances

And of his mother

And everyone else's mother

Admiring him

For being

The calm man who could 

Take care of everything

He wipes the half a drop of tear

Beginning to form at the edge

He curls his fingers

Into a tight fist

And the words?

He swallows them whole

The silence of a storm

That has imploded upon itself

Is often inaudible.

But once you hear it,

It is stunning

The silence

In the hunched shoulders

In the half-glance

That looks and then looks away

In those impatient, impatient fingers

That will never again stop drumming

On any flat surface they will come across

How many stories they would tell

If only they were held

Until they calmed down

The sound of that silence

Is absolutely defeaning

Once you hear it,

There is no way you can unhear it

The loudness of it makes me wonder

If men are the truly oppressed species

At least my stories

Are greeted with hugs, not jeers

This alien creature

I am what you asked me to be

What you yourself wanted to be 

And now that

I have surpassed your expectations

And become what 

You could not

You realize, too late

That you don't kno

What to do with this

Alien creatur

That it was not 

What you want me to be
After all

You understand

When you do everything right

And still don't get loved

And someone who has no care

For how anyone else feels

Is smothered with affection

The world seems grossly unfair

And then you go fall u for him

Who breaks every rule in the book

Just to see you smile

It's still not fair

But you understand