Unknown Writer

It was time to lock the house up

And set it free.

He said he could no longer 

Bear the way the writer would make a drink

Emotions being spilled from the top of the glass

Love, hatred

Attachment, detachment 

Leaving, letting go

An unbalanced taste.

He said he could no longer 

Look at the pole across the road

Trying to add their own chorus 

To a song that would sing itself.

He told the writer that

They could stay together, but

Without the overflowing drinks 

Without a song.

A poem without a picture,

A glass without the drink 

Were packed by the writer.

It was time to bottle up 

It was time to lock the house up

The house that never had a door.

Kritika Vashist

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My First Time

50 Words Story

The dead silence in the room started to fade away with darkness’s long moans. His whispering sounds stirred with my racing heartbeats. His slow steps ordered the moonlight to enter through the cracked window and cleave our shadows. My first time with my ghost unfolded the meaning of beautiful melancholy.

– Kritika Vashist

Musings

“आधे तुम
और आधे हम
चलो कोई एक काम पुरा करे”
—

“Aadhe tum
Aur aadhe hum
Chalo koi ek kaam pura kare”
—

English translation: (By Himanshu Bhatnagar)

“Unfinished halves are we sundered
Let us together be completely rendered”
—

I Wish You Had Bought The Train Ticket

Sometimes I wish
that you hadn’t had to buy the plane tickets
to go back to the city
that will make you run throughout the day
and will give you some peace only at night
that still might not be enough for you.

I wish you had bought the train ticket,
because that way you would have got more time
to recall each moment that you lived while you were here,
how you disentangled all your worries
without even speaking about them;
how that night you didn’t have to hold a pillow to sleep;
how you didn’t have to put an alarm to go to work;
how each hour you spent seemed to scamper;
and how when we sat under the sky late evening,
you could just brought few pieces of your stories,
(maybe you could have completed those in the train,
and I am sure that with your poetic soul,
you would have inked the pages you haven’t spoken to for long)
I wish you had bought the train ticket,
because while unfolding the letters
I had written to you few hours before you had to leave,
you would have known that
I picked those pieces of your stories,
to save them up for the time
when nobody would be in a hurry
to reach the airport, or anywhere.

I wish you had bought the train ticket,
because when you look through the window
while the trees and clouds pass each second,
you realize that the sun is still there
moving with you;
and while you leave everything behind,
you carry poetry and songs
written only in your head
about how the distance could never make you love someone less,
and a few questions about yourself –
questions whose answers lie in not knowing.

Now that you have boarded the plane
to fly back to the city that awaits you, but never misses you;
soon you will find yourself as
another lonely soul among the crowd;
however, the waves at night
would definitely listen to you;
and while the wet sand
offer some comfort to you,
I wish you find the answer to
how we always try to save time,
but end up having so little,
that it just slips with the thought of having some more,
and then maybe
book the plane tickets to return before winter arrives.

– Kritika Vashist

Inside You

Tonight, let the moon stay quiet
And I, let it not cast its shadow
Over my thoughts and questions.

(Turn around,
Look at yourself.)

In the silence of the room
Filled with my solitude
Let I, hear the voices
That comes from my mind
Let I, pay attention to
The calling of my heart 
And look at my hands,
That searched for answers outside
And close my eyes,
That saw only outwards
Because you find answers only
Where the questions come from.

The answers lie within me
Where the questions arise
Because it’s always inside you
Who you are,
Want you want,
And how it will be.

In the end,
It all will be quiet
It all will be fine.

– Kritika Vashist

Ambit Of Love

He waits for her at the ambit of love.

She enters in anticipation.

He latches the door.

She opens herself up.

He kisses hopes.

She keeps aside the uncertainties.

He clutches his fingers into hers.

She slips into him effortlessly.

He brushes his teeth habitually like every night.

She drinks a glass of water before sleep.

He snores lightly deep in his slumber.

She opens her mouth while sleeping.

He makes exotic coffee.

She prefers hot tea.

He roves around house bare-chested singing.

She throws her wet towel on the bed.

He walks with her along the shoreline.

She sits beside him on the moist beach sand.

He dances with another woman in the bar.

She gulps down another glass squeezing her eyes.

He struggles to explain.

She lets the silence speak.

He turns on the fairy lights entangled in wine bottles.

She listens to their silhouettes’ muted conversation.

He writes about her without writing at all.

She starts her poems with him.

He moves with a gradual momentum.

She runs carelessly.

He doesn’t take the trouble to catch up.

She waits hopelessly for him beyond the ambit of love.

-Kritika Vashist

Late Night Thoughts- Wanderer

 

When I packed my bag and headed for a journey, to a place unknown, by destiny undecided, with the flow, that turned all roads and each step into an adventure, one that I am going to live till the end, one that adds meaning to the script of life I have been writing for a long time now.                                                                                                                                            Photo taken at Elephanta Caves, Maharashtra, India

 

You go from one place to another to free yourself from wearisome schedules and reasons to not hear the calling , stepping out from the confinements, which exist only until you realize that there weren’t any. Breaking the walls stifled by the fumes of burning clocks and deafening tick-tick of the time, you stuff your bag with hopes of finding a part of you in a place that awaits you and leaving behind another as a souvenir, when you only know it like a tune you heard from a distance.

The sun, even though of the same sky looks different, and so does everything else. The usual becomes unusual. A gentle stroke of the wind takes away the heaviness you had carried for long. A step on the soil turns into a memory in the heart. Unspoken words write themselves down on the smile on your face. A song at the shore, a little dance on the side of the road.

The place makes you feel more like a friend than a friend who always pretend to know you. And one day you, that place becomes an experience you waited long to live.
A journey turned into an adventure.

Never having an idea about how much of a place you will carry with yourself, you get ready to rove around another. Nostalgia for that place follows you wherever you go, and you relent in the intricate loneliness while remembering every bit of the life you lived then and there; the kind of loneliness one feels being among the people who know you as much as a man assert to know God.

While you continue to whirl in the eddy of memories, the same place embraces another wanderer in its warmth.

– Kritika Vashist

The Second Time I Called You (Part I of II)

The second time I called you, I could only hear the phone ring, longer than I heard your hello when I earlier called. And when you thought I said nothing, but I had said everything that was left with me – The Silence. That’s all left. That’s all I can share. That’s what I promised. That’s how it is going to be, for ever – An eternity of silence.

It’s been so long without you, that it already feels like a lifetime has passed, and us sharing this silence throughout. There is nothing between us now, that’s what I say before I put myself to sleep every night and whenever my heart tries to reach over yours. There is nothing between us, except this space. This space that spreads to infinity, like the moonlight in our eyes did on that evening when we sat under the starlight sky, beholding the moon. There is nothing left between us, just this space, permeating each corner of my bones, even in the thickness of the kohl at the corner of my eyes.

This silence, where I speak more than a thousand word every day, where I sing of the love that has still clasped me, as tight as before, where I dance in the madness of believing that my unrequited love would survive amidst my consciousness, where I shudder in fear of forgetting my face seeing yours between the frame of the painting inscribed with my name and face, this silence has grown so large in this space that it echoes loud, so loud that these words pull me towards themselves, and pin down all the overwhelming feelings and love I had hidden all these days, on a mere piece of paper.

When I stare outside the window, gazing at the tree whose leaves have started to fall, I constantly shift my body weight from one leg to another, like my unsettling thoughts, which don’t stop shifting from one to another. The movements of legs ache my knee, and the movements of thoughts ache my head, and everything of me. My mind has become the tape recorder, and these thoughts, the songs in it. But this tape recorder keeps on playing its melancholic songs; there is no play, there is no pause. There is no control.

My body has become a haunted house, with broken windows, cracked walls, dusted floors, empty rooms, fallen roofs and webbed memories. I don’t want you to come closer to it, I don’t want anyone else to unravel my secrets, dead pieces of me inside and beneath the soil, and unfathomable depth of you in me. The skin on my body still have your traces, like the imprints of my fingers on that book that you long ago held at nights and read, and in others as well, which you buried under all your inconsequential things. There is no way to reach back to these traces, and there is no possibility to draw more.

– Kritika Vashist