My grandma is an old woman
With shiny silver hair
Like the queen's hat
I go to visit her on Sundays
Her face lights up like
Night sky from the old moon
She smiles the most gorgeous smile
Her teeth make a little window
To her heart
Love finding its way back
My grandma prepares
All the dishes that make my mouth water
She begins at Saturday morning
And finishes by evening
Slowly, bit by bit
My grandma is aged but
her love is like wine;
The older, the more intense
She feeds me with her fragile, shaky hands
The paneer tastes creamy
The jalebis are like her skin,
Brown and sleak
It has been 6 weeks
Since I have been meeting her
Every Sunday
Today when I checked my weight
The machine pointed at
Sixty four point five
From fifty eight point seven
It is her love that has found home
Within me.
Apr 2, 2019
Apr 2, 2019 at 12:18 PM UTC
I loved to paint.
The walls of my little room, thus
Were dolled up with an exhibition of my art work
My mother tells me that I spent
Hours at the stationery shops,
Buying paints, brushes,
And every other pretty looking material
To create my own little gallery of colour blotches.
From stick figures to trees and birds
It moved on to pretty, cheerful woman and flowers.
Ten years and a few days later,
I still visit my childhood fascination
And see the brush kissing the white paper in broad daylight.
It leaves behind
a trail of red;
Imitating us.
Paper turned out to be a better absorber of my sorrow
Than human beings.
So when nights became sleepless,
Days lonelier,
And I, unhappier,
I took to my friends and painted my distress,
an orange sunset and love birds heading back home.
The blue of the sky was amiss
Because it was on my skin
So when my blue body turned purple
And your hand hardened,
I held the brush in between my fingers
That stung with cherry sweet pain,
And painted
The walls, the sketch pad, whatever could soak in
My sorrow.
Now when it has been seventeen days since
You went missing,
The walls make up for your absence
For whose blood would have been redder
To grace the reddish sunrise on the wall, dear husband?
- Kavya Mukhija
Mar 26, 2019
Mar 26, 2019 at 9:38 AM UTC
It is your childhood bestie on Facebook,
Miles away,
Yet just a tap away.
It's the sun shining from behind the clouds
On December mornings
While you work your *** off on your laptop
In bed in your 4-BHK apartment.
It is the soap bubble that bursts
Just with your one glance
Because memories are fragile.
They aren't made of hearts of stone
And kinetic sand.
They're made of soft toys
And fur animals.
Nostalgia is the balloon-seller you whizz by
At the traffic signal
Every morning.
It is the sweetness of strawberries
That falls drop by drop,
on your tongue,
That has forgotten to taste.
It is a subtle symphony that coffee plays
That only you can smell
Every evening.
It is the obedient smile that dances on your lips for a while
But fades away
As the smoke of dead habits take over.
It the closed window behind the curtains,
The forgotten post-its on the fridge,
The giggles trapped shut in between the pages of ******
It is the withered rose on the tombstone
And the eulogy never spoken.
It is a teary-eyed laughter
In vacuum.
It is happy faces
In a photo frame.
It is the dictionary in a sentence,
Not something that can fit into a stance.
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 16, 2018 at 8:34 AM UTC
Opposites attract.
I had learnt the year in which I learnt to tie my shoelaces
And differentiate between the left and the right
But still not between the wrong and the right.
And may be, that is why on nights
When I pulled the blanket of pin-drop silence over myself,
My mind swayed back to my past,
And
As the night darkened and the silence deepened,
So did my thoughts; become
Vicious.
Fluid flows from high potential to low potential.
I had learnt the year in which I understood
The difference between the right and the wrong,
And may be
This is why my mind drifted back to my past
On sunny days and sparkling evenings.
And
Today, when I sit across the table with my hand in yours and sip the freshly brewed latte,
I am happy that
The past that haunted me was the 'low'
And
The place I'm in right now is the 'right'.
- Kavya Mukhija, 2018.
Nov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 at 5:16 AM UTC
With the disease spreading like wildfire,
You really don't know who's clean and who's not,
About who doesn't have a black dot
And who's past is an entangled knot.
But I wanted to give it a clear shot
And make this relationship work topknot
Because you looked handsome and hot
And you had in my heart, a soft spot
So I ditched my parents who cradled me to sleep in that apricot cot
Shoved in tight the values they had taught
Stayed out all night yet didn't get caught
But their daughter was one in a lot.
They trusted her at the sound of a gunshot
That night, I sent them a snapshot
Of us in the parking lot
wearing yellow shirts with Polka dot
They finally lent a free thought
And understood that I had for him a soft spot.
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 9:40 AM UTC
At times, I wonder
if my face flashes
in front of your eyes
when you see them,
there, laughing with
their stomachs aching.
At times, I wonder
if I ever interrupt
your train of thoughts,
like the silent touch
of the cool breeze
On a hot sunny day.
At times, I wonder
if you too have a picture
on the frame of your mind,
of us, sitting
by the window sill
watching the rain drops
race down the window pane,
with a cup of hot-brewed coffee
clutched in our hands.
At times, I wonder
if you too think of me
while I'm thinking of you;
if your fingers itch
to dial my number
if your ears go numb
to hear my voice
if you ever crave
for my presence
Like I crave for yours?
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 2:37 PM UTC
Every moment spent with you etched itself
On the canvas that my mind was;
Like the elite form of calligraphy
I wanted to treasure life long
Until the pages turned yellow
And smelled of must.
So, in a bid to treasure even those moments of low-yet-high level exchanges,
I laughed until my eyes sparkled
And tears welled up to the brim,
Imitating an ocean, just as how you would say
Everytime.
So, I laughed
And I laughed until I cried.
Years down the line, today when you are oceans across,
In a land that you now call your own,
I sleep with the bubbles your memories
Safely tucked under the lids of my eyes
Until the lids feel heavy and are shut tightly
And the bubbles burst,
Gushing our memories out from the clasp of my eyelids.
They seep in through the knittings of the pillow,
Into the gateways of my mind
Slowly, drop by drop.
I dreamt of us that night
And I laughed until I cried.
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 9:28 AM UTC
She is made up of scars,
Hidden with the skin of elegance,
She is a captive,
To others' perception of her own fallacies.
She is made up of bruises,
Knitted with the yarn of invasion,
Her eyes reflect the burning agony,
She is the flowing torrent.
She is made up of blemishes,
Concealed with layers of optimism,
She is made up of bewitching beauty;
A crude exposure.
She is an enticing amalgamation of-
Rain and blizzard,
Oceans and waterfalls,
Breeze and vacuum,
She is a world of paradoxes,
Sealed with an air of rigidity.
- Kavya Mukhija
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 10:44 AM UTC
The other day when you told me that
You had ran out of the inspiration
To write anymore,
I stood holding the mirror in front of you
While you stood there,
Just blankly gazing at the shiny silver screen
Oblivious of how to search for something inspiring
In the scrapes of something so obvious.
I still stood there holding the mirror
Though the pain in my arms had now
Crawled up to the cliff of my shoulders.
I saw your riveting beauty across
The oceanic stretches of your mushy skin
The crevices that made imperfect turns and curves
The layers of hair that sat on the plateau of your shoulders,
Occasionally peeking in from behind the ears
Or even the plump lips of yours
With the tectonic cracks that flaunted the brown musk.
The inspiration sat hidden in between
The stretch marks and the stress marks
Inside the pimples or even
In between the chubby folds of your being.
My mom used to say when I stood in front of the mirror
Just like you are standing now, with a downward curve of your lips
And shoulders that are drooping at the lowest
That, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder
And now that she is long gone, I reciprocate her words to you, swapping beauty with inspiration.
The world remains the same, it's the perception that takes a leap,
Just like a story comes to life when told by a dramatic teller,
The usual springs to life when looked at with eyes searching for inspiration.
- Kavya Mukhija
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 3:19 AM UTC
i. The world is burning.
A little above the place that
Seeks the greatest blessing of the sun,
It is burning with grenades and bombs
Flying around like table tennis *****
With children sleeping to the lullaby
Of their parents'cries.
ii. The world is burning.
A little far away from my house
Around the nook of the street
A group of humans are fighting
They're burning and getting burnt
The fire consumes their body
And the ego their soul.
iii. So when I asked mom to
Go to that nook that reeks of fire crackers
To buy the ice cream blue lagoon,
She kept staring at me
The way she would whenever I'd ask for too much.
I showed her the red colour thread that she had forcefully tied around my neck
Because she had said that it would protect me all the time
I kept waiting for her to utter a word
But she didn't say anything
And I didn't go
To the place that was burning.
iv. I saw on TV the flames that hugged the top of the houses
And danced on scooters
Making them blacker than charcoal,
Near my house at the corner of the street.
There were bodies on the street,
Frozen like sleeping statues.
They had those threads
Wound around their hands and necks
Not one but tens of them.
v. It's night time now.
I sleep hugging her
As tightly as my fragile muscles permitted.
The coldness of her body tingles my fingertips
And the roughness stings.
There are noises of people arguing
In the background.
But I,
I don't care.
Because they're burning the world
And my world is already burnt.
- Kavya Mukhija
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 3:14 AM UTC