himquantum
35/M/San Francisco
I write from an island in the sea of questions. / I am drawn to the strange tension between knowing and not knowing. Between the mind that searches and the possibility that there is nothing final to find. / I believe in the happiness of pursuit.
हम सर्दी में एक-दूसरे से सट जाते हैं,
शरीर काँटों से भरे,
फिर भी ज़रूरी,
परोपकार का चादर ओढ़े
यह नज़दीकी एक माफ़ी जैसी होती है
जो देह अपनी आत्मा से माँगती है।
यही पहला पाठ है जो सर्दी सिखाती है,
कि तड़प और तृप्ति
एक ही जड़ से उगते हैं,
कि फैला हुआ हाथ
और सिकुड़ा हुआ हाथ
एक ही हाथ है।
हमारे लगभग सारे दुख
किसी अपने के होते हैं।
कोई नाम, जिसे कभी
धीरे से पुकारा था कमरे के उस पार।
कोई हँसी, जो बाद में खामोश हो गई।
कोई दरवाज़ा, जिसने सीख लिया
बिना पूछे बंद होना।
हम लोगों के पास जाते हैं
जैसे नदियाँ जाती हैं समुद्र की ओर
यह सोचकर कि मिलेगी व्यापकता
यह सोचकर कि मिलेगा विश्राम !
और पाते हैं केवल
अपनी हस्ती मिट जाना।
लुप्त हो चुकी मिठास,
और केवल खारापन
एक आदमी है
जो अकेला बैठता है
और अकेला नहीं होता।
वह एकांत को
अनुपस्थिति नहीं समझता।
वह जानता है कि कमरा भरा हुआ है,
उसके अपने अधूरे बहस से,
उन विचरते विचारों से
जो पिछले मंगलवार
ही आ गए थे, लेकिन
अब भी उछल रहें हैं
इधर उधर !
उसने खुद को
टुकड़ों में बाँटना बंद कर दिया है
दूसरों के शोर में
बोलना बंद कर दिया !
वह उदासीन नहीं है।
उसने बस यह जान लिया है
कि जिसकी उसे ज़रूरत थी
वह हमेशा से रहती थी
उसके कंधों के ऊपर !
अधिकांश लोग अपनी संगति से भागते हैं
जैसे अपराधी आईनों से भागते हैं।
वे हवा को बातों से भर देते हैं !
परन्तु कोई गुनगुनाता है
श्मशान के पास से गुज़रते हुए,
खुशी से नहीं,
बल्कि इसलिए कि चुप्पी
बहुत सच्चा सवाल पूछती है।
खज़ाना यह है कि
लंबे दिन के अंत में
खुद के साथ बैठना
और न सिहरना।
अपने मन को
अच्छी संगत देना
अजीब, असहज, अनभिज्ञ,
लेकिन अपना !!
वह एकमात्र चीज़
जो कोई नज़दीकी दे नहीं सकती
और कोई वियोग छीन नहीं सकता!
हम में से सबसे बुद्धिमान लोग
जानते थे बुद्धिमान होने से पहले:
कि एकाकी रेगिस्तान नहीं है।
रेगिस्तान तो वह भीड़ है
जिसमें तुमने खुद को खो दिया
खोजे जाने की कोशिश में
May 14
May 14, 2026 at 5:21 PM UTC
हम सर्दी में एक-दूसरे से सट जाते हैं,
शरीर काँटों से भरे,
फिर भी ज़रूरी,
परोपकार का चादर ओढ़े
यह नज़दीकी एक माफ़ी जैसी होती है
जो देह अपनी आत्मा से माँगती है।
यही पहला पाठ है जो सर्दी सिखाती है,
कि तड़प और तृप्ति
एक ही जड़ से उगते हैं,
कि फैला हुआ हाथ
और सिकुड़ा हुआ हाथ
एक ही हाथ है।
हमारे लगभग सारे दुख
किसी अपने के होते हैं।
कोई नाम, जिसे कभी
धीरे से पुकारा था कमरे के उस पार।
कोई हँसी, जो बाद में खामोश हो गई।
कोई दरवाज़ा, जिसने सीख लिया
बिना पूछे बंद होना।
हम लोगों के पास जाते हैं
जैसे नदियाँ जाती हैं समुद्र की ओर
यह सोचकर कि मिलेगी व्यापकता
यह सोचकर कि मिलेगा विश्राम !
और पाते हैं केवल
अपनी हस्ती मिट जाना।
लुप्त हो चुकी मिठास,
और केवल खारापन
एक आदमी है
जो अकेला बैठता है
और अकेला नहीं होता।
वह एकांत को
अनुपस्थिति नहीं समझता।
वह जानता है कि कमरा भरा हुआ है,
उसके अपने अधूरे बहस से,
उन विचरते विचारों से
जो पिछले मंगलवार
ही आ गए थे, लेकिन
अब भी उछल रहें हैं
इधर उधर !
उसने खुद को
टुकड़ों में बाँटना बंद कर दिया है
दूसरों के शोर में
बोलना बंद कर दिया !
वह उदासीन नहीं है।
उसने बस यह जान लिया है
कि जिसकी उसे ज़रूरत थी
वह हमेशा से रहती थी
उसके कंधों के ऊपर !
अधिकांश लोग अपनी संगति से भागते हैं
जैसे अपराधी आईनों से भागते हैं।
वे हवा को बातों से भर देते हैं !
परन्तु कोई गुनगुनाता है
श्मशान के पास से गुज़रते हुए,
खुशी से नहीं,
बल्कि इसलिए कि चुप्पी
बहुत सच्चा सवाल पूछती है।
खज़ाना यह है कि
लंबे दिन के अंत में
खुद के साथ बैठना
और न सिहरना।
अपने मन को
अच्छी संगत देना
अजीब, असहज, अनभिज्ञ,
लेकिन अपना !!
वह एकमात्र चीज़
जो कोई नज़दीकी दे नहीं सकती
और कोई वियोग छीन नहीं सकता!
हम में से सबसे बुद्धिमान लोग
जानते थे बुद्धिमान होने से पहले:
कि एकाकी रेगिस्तान नहीं है।
रेगिस्तान तो वह भीड़ है
जिसमें तुमने खुद को खो दिया
खोजे जाने की कोशिश में
May 14
May 14, 2026 at 5:20 PM UTC
हम लोगों के पास जाते हैं
जैसे नदियाँ जाती हैं समुद्र की ओर
यह सोचकर कि मिलेगी व्यापकता
यह सोचकर कि मिलेगा विश्राम !
और पाते हैं केवल
अपनी हस्ती का मिट जाना।
लुप्त हो चुकी मिठास,
और केवल खारापन
May 14
May 14, 2026 at 5:20 PM UTC
If morality shapes law,
then whose hand writes the code of right?
Whose whims win?
The saint’s prayer, the tyrant’s will,
or the crowd that changes with the night?
Fluid morality cant dictate law,
for law can chain the body
while the spirit still wanders proud.
Morality begins
when justification collapses,
when the hand that struck
finally recognizes
it has struck itself.
So the guilty are not merely punished.
They are haunted
until suffering teaches
what mercy could have taught sooner.
And the cruelest prison
has never been built of stone.
It is the mind
that has seen the truth
and can no longer hide
inside its beautiful lies.
May 13
May 13, 2026 at 1:35 AM UTC
I was the one who burned.
Lightest thing in all the universe,
I carried fire in my nature.
Inflammable they called me,
the one who needs only a spark
to become a catastrophe..
I was hunger.
I was uprising.
You were the one who fed the flame.
Not burning yourself,
but making burning possible.
the silent accomplice,
the arsonist behind every blaze,
the one who says to fire:-
“Come, I will hold the door open for you.”
You sustained destruction
without ever being destroyed.
Two accomplices to ruin.
What business did we have
meeting at all?
But somewhere in the proximity of violence,
something neither of us
had the intention for ;
began to happen.
you reached,
I reached,
and in that reaching
electrons moved.
Not taken.
Not surrendered.
Shared
the only democracy
that exists at the atomic level,
the only transaction
where both parties
become something
they could never be alone.
A bond formed
in the geometry of love.
One oxygen.
Two hydrogen.
The chemistry of surrender
producing the matter
that makes the universe inhabitable.
And what we made ?
WATER !!
That carries neither my fire
nor your gift for feeding it.
What we made
is the very thing
that walks into burning buildings
and says: enough.
What we made
puts out
what we both, separately,
existed to ignite.
---
This is the alchemy no one predicted;
that two forces of destruction,
meeting in the precise angle of willingness,
could forget their natures entirely.
And become
the source of all life,
the quencher of all flame,
the oldest paradox:
that what burns hottest,
learns, through union,
how to heal.
Apr 4
Apr 4, 2026 at 7:47 PM UTC
The snake's skin that once kept winter out
will choke it in spring if never shed.
The armor forged for yesterday's war;
becomes a cage, turns to living dread.
A mind that nails itself to stone,
afraid to loosen, bend, or learn,
mistakes a prison for a throne
and calls it truth at every turn.
To live is not to stay the same,
but leave old certainties behind:
to risk the loss of name and frame,
and molt toward a wider mind.
So let the brittle shell be gone.
Let yesterday fall, scale by scale.
Only what changes carries on;
only what yields will not go stale.
Apr 1
Apr 1, 2026 at 4:19 PM UTC
I have slept in the skulls for decades
curled beneath centuries of silence .
patient as stone, quiet as dead.
waiting for one mind to catch my violence.
I outlasted Galileo's dungeon walls.
I survived the pyres, the shackles, the ban.
I hid in the margins of banned manuscripts,
then leapt like fire from man to man.
I was the jingle Spartacus carried in chains.
I was the formula Archimedes carved into tomb.
I moved through Newton watching an apple fall,
and made the whole architecture of heaven known.
Tyrants have locked me behind stone-walls and firewalls
burned the libraries where I made my bed,
but I need only one throat left uncut,
one speaker alive, and I am never dead.
I am the Nile when its season arrives.
No dam holds me long, I find the fault,
One hairline crack in any wall,
and I break free without a halt.
I turned sand into silicon,
symbols into code.
I threaded mathematics through a vacuum tube
until a machine could think.
I was the salt Gandhi lifted from the sea at Dandi,
the four words King repeated till they crossed the line.
the consent Locke said no king could take without asking,
the clock Einstein broke and warped spacetime.
No vaccine reaches me.
No quarantine holds.
I pass through handshakes, books, a stranger's eyes
I am the oldest plague the sapiens know
the only one that makes the dead ones rise.
You cannot uninvent me.
You cannot choose to not have thought.
Every child who asks WHY…
carries me, uncaged and untaught.
So when you feel me stir behind your eyes,
when a sentence cracks your certainties in two ;
do not mistake this for coincidence.
I have been looking for someone like you.
I am the child of your curiosity,
Spouse of your desire..
I am contagious.
I am immortal.
I am Idea.
Mar 19
Mar 19, 2026 at 7:53 PM UTC
I built my silences carefully,
layer over layer,
like mortar covering a wall that cracks in every rain.
You call it secrecy,
but it's only way out.
There are rooms inside me,
I keep dark on purpose.
I tell myself it's safer without light.
Every smile is a cipher-
soft, misleading, half-true,
made to protect what I no longer show.
If you listen closely,
you'll hear the echoes
of all I never said ..
the way longing hums under restraint,
the way a bruised wick retreats from the flame.
I am not hiding from love,
only from its tall promises;
its glory.
its panacea.
If my heart seems unreadable,
know that it is not locked,
only covered in a camouflage
I have not yet dared to unmask.
Still, some nights,
the hidden things move.
They press against the walls,
they whisper that survival is not the same
as feeling alive.
On those nights, I open the door ajar
just wide enough
for one fragile feeling to slip through.
One day,
I might trust an intruder enough
to draw every curtain back.
Until then, I guard the dark rooms,
And its fragile artifacts;
but carrying a small, flickering hope
that someone will hear the music behind the door
and choose to knock gently.
Mar 11
Mar 11, 2026 at 5:29 AM UTC
In the house where men have sat,
with their arms open,
receiving nothing,
the walls have learned to keep secrets.
The ceiling knows more confessions
than any cathedral.
Here is what the body does
when it has been a man too long:
it forgets the depth of the wound
but remembers the weapon
that has caused it.
His chest brews storms.
But he captures them ..
neatly into shirt pockets.
At the peak of grief
a man laughs;
not because it is funny.
Because the alternative
is to become the joke itself.
He was taught, early,
in rooms that smell of responsibility
that becoming the centers of attraction itself,
was the one unforgivable act.
So he laughs.
And no one knows why,
that is precisely the point.
O men,
The unsung architects
of cathedrals no one will ever enter,
He has built so many rooms
and locked him
out of all of them.
He stands n the corridor,
knocking softly,
Knowing, no one will answer.
Every unchecked grief becomes a boulder..
every swallowed ocean becomes a tide,
that retreats quietly.
Every silence
becomes the very thunder
it was trying
to prevent.
A man is an unspoken nation
bordered by pride,
governed by endurance,
It's anthem - a clearing of the throat;
Saying , "yes I can"..
Its flag - vest stained with sweat .
At the peak of rage,
he goes quiet
the way a nation goes quiet
before it loses something fundamental.
the jaw - a locked gate,
the hands
very
still.
Inside: tectonic drift..
Outside: Tuesday.
Mar 8
Mar 8, 2026 at 5:13 AM UTC
We are the only animals who die twice-
once when the life ends
once in the panic that it meant nothing.
The second death is the expensive one.
Seminars. Retreats. Spiritual shops
A man in linen who has aligned his chakras with your credit card.
What is the purpose of a chair ?
The chair did not volunteer.
It was a tree once - indifferent, magnificent,
Soaking blissfully in the rain.
No destiny. No calling.
Just lively woods
and the slow romance with soil and light.
Then came the man with an axe ..
And the audacity of purpose.
You will hold our tired weight and be grateful for the meaning.
The fish has no ambition to garnish your plate.
It was busy being a fish,
a flickering soul in the deep,
complete in itself, requiring no narrative.
The river does not dream of turbines.
To light your lamps or
Charge your car.
It simply flows.
Gods punished sisyphus,
with eternal, futile labor -
rolling a boulder up a hill
only for it to roll back down
It was his assigned purpose.
I tell Sisyphus, “put the boulder down”
Not because the gods command it.
Not because a podcast asked to manifest the climb.
Put it down because it is heavy
and you are tired
And that is reason enough
the only kind of reason that was ever real.
Mar 7
Mar 7, 2026 at 7:42 PM UTC