I’m not quitting, I will not…
But I’m tired of visiting that market
Holding pages that show others my worth,
Constantly reminds me of my failures
In not inculcating traits of brighter mind;
Them alphabets and numbers mesmerized,
My all happiness, every dream revolved around a wooden bat
Father, always scolded me, saying;
“Time never returns, returns only regret”
My adolescent arrogance refuted it
But now, I know the price.

My life was straight
I meander it with my mistreating,
Of dreaming a dream that I couldn’t afford
Of not confining them in the periphery of the countryside,
Letting time to stroll away sitting on a pew
Not making enough efforts to catch in the middle,
Father, you were right
How I long to go back in time
And start again from the beginning,
With all the cautions and advice of your’s,
Accepting all that previously refuted;


Those afternoon walk in the heat of June
Shirt soaked in ‘rejections’
Clothing a dead Will that dies daily in Loo,
All absorbed in counting failures
I wait for a bus to come
With an unknown number
That could take me all the way to that ‘wish factory' place
I heard in childhood,
But the dust fly and settles in the eye
To awake me from delving into another dream;


“Those who take long ladders to reach 98,” the mother says
“seldom wins without bitten at 99.”
But my life turned out to be mazier
Than the game of snake & ladders,
How I abhor to go back home and confront her
Whose trust in Gods diminishing by my defeats,
Whose every prayer is going unheard
I am the victim, she a sufferer;


I remember the days of my college
With immense dreams and a never-dying spirit
And an age where everything seems possible
Where every person looks beautiful
An age with profligacy and extravagance
And complete ignorance of the world,
Later when I stepped my foot into reality;
The clock’s hands had taken so many rounds
That a fastest run could not chase them.


I’m tired of answering the same question again and again
I’m tired of waking in the morning anxious
With the fear of rejection,
That travel from bus to interview place seems infinite
With endless emotions heaving up and down
like a tree on a windy day,
I’m tired of living a life that I do not control
I know, after one hour from now
I’ll exist no more,
And this is not quitting
I just want to start it all over again…