The age of letting time take its
own, slow course is gone, perhaps
For every hour is rush hour,
Every meal is a quick-bite,
That cup of coffee always instant,
Honking even before the signal goes
from yellow to green, the rule

The age of savouring the moment
to its delicious limit is gone, perhaps
For every flaw is now a breaking point,
Every argument cause for a split-up
Every mismatch provocateur of second thoughts

In the age of waiting being obsolete,
Patience becoming a virtue redundant,
The plain, small joys of life becoming insignificant,
The material replacing the abstract,
The direction of the swipe on a touchscreen
Becoming the decider of the fate of love stories,
I'll never find you, perhaps,
If this world continues to function
Like a real-life dating app

Reluctant subject,
I nervously peered at
your kind lens as you clicked
I must have shut my eyes
The sun is so harsh anyway, I thought,
or given that crooked, half-hearted smile
that I usually end up with

Helpless photo-ruiner,
I gazed in surprise at the beauty
staring back at me,
And saw what you see in me
and fall in love with, everyday,
Looking at myself through your eyes,
I quietly realised,
It was your photograph's grace

Slow cooked over a simmering flame
is how I'd like our love to be
Full of earthy fragrances and soft
crackling of fire fuelling our chemistry

Wafts of aroma will float through,
with the gradual deepening of the flavour
Impatient bubbles will form and burst,
Heightening the temptation to savour-

That delightful melange of emotions,
But we'll hold back and let there be
A deeper hue, a thicker consistency
To our painstaking alchemy

For the dish of love will be best served
When conceived with patient devotion,
So lend me a hand darling; let's slow-stir
together, our delectable concoction

No mistress of metaphor
No star of sonnets
No heroine of haiku
No queen of quatrain,
Merely in touch with the -
Language of longing,
Sanctity of sin,
Din of desolation,
Poetry of pain.

Travel!

Pick up a bag,
Pack it light,
Venture off into the night!

Spot the silent ones,
Strike up a conversation,
Closed souls hold the most precious stories,
Let them open up to you, ever so gently.

Find a painting, a photograph, a sculpture!
There's a tale behind every hue,
every curve, every stroke, every frame,
Art is a window to the mind of the creator,
Get inside there, explore it, immerse yourself deeper!

And read. Wade through romantic sagas,
Edgy thrillers, flights of fantasies, and mythology,
Float through ages and places and people,
Let words in black and white teach you
the meaning of existence; let the silence of reading
sing to you the hymn of living

And then, my friend, go on,
go on and Write!
Write about your travels to mountain peaks
and fiery seas,
Into strangers' eyes, into your lovers' souls,
Scribble into your travelogue the meaning of
that graffiti at the corner of the street,
And your journey into books!- write, as
you hop from universe to universe,
To places,
Through pages,
Inside minds,
Ahead of time,
And watch how your experiences
Smoothly fall into place and
Effortlessly rhyme

Trail of hickeys
On veiled skin-
Speaker of stories
Of storms and sins

When your conscience's clear like crystal
You set them off-balance,
For when they see you, and try
ever so hard to find faults in you,
All they see is themselves.
Because you are clean fresh dew!
Pure like sunlight; you act as a mirror
for the soul of the onlooker,
And so, as they peer into you looking
for deceit and dirt,
their own face stares right back at them,
ugly truth gloriously unfurled.
Your open goodness
irks them, agitates them, provokes them
to claw at you, use their might, to
destroy you and all that's right,
but little do they know that you-
are Invincible. Beautiful. Resilient.
Birthed from struggle.
Tempered by truth.
Chiseled by principles.
Challenged by adversities galore,
haven't you always conquered them all?
So shine! Shine with all your brilliance,
and no one can break you,
for your conscience is your greatest wealth,
for your conscience is your Kohinoor.

Medicine has no room for arrogance.
We don't just cure disease,
We cure humans.
The human body does always not go
by the books we've read or
the algorithms we've memorised,
The human body does not know
how famous we are, how much we earn.
The human body presents to us,
and places in our hands its life,
and trusts us with all it has,
to solve its puzzles.
Bizarre puzzles, really,
Sometimes so easy to piece together,
Sometimes turning more puzzling with
our attempts at deciphering
the meaning of the riddles it throws at us,
Sometimes a novice may solve them,
Irritating our egos but medicine
has no room for ego, either.

One can't be a doctor without
Selflessness, one can't be a healer
Without having one's feet planted
firmly on the ground, and the strength to
know that one can be wrong, and the
ability to question one's own reasoning,
And it isn't something we're taught,
It's something we build everyday by
Failing, fumbling, blundering, finally learning,
that's how the art of healing we acquire,
which is why, medicine isn't just a job-
It is a way of life.

Cities aren't cities,
The people are the cities,
she'd say, and I didn't understand
what she meant until I realised

That Hauz Khas was our first stroll ever,
Khan Market- our best cup of coffee,
Humayun Tomb- our first stolen kiss,
Dilli Haat- our first quarrel,
The Lodhi Gardens- our biggest quarrel!
The Jama Masjid was where we'd always make up.

Now I know which market sells her favourite
bags, which gully keeps the anklets
she loves most, which discrete stall in the
by-lanes of Old Delhi is her best chaat-wallah ever,
Every nook, I know by the fragrance of her memory,
I try forget, I try erase,
But oh, I remember,
For she is my Delhi

Delhi is her, only her,
The city of first love, first dreams,
a million rights, a devastating wrong,
The city that now stings with the thorns
That make my feet bleed when I try to enter,
Even with my back turned,
The city hurls
Stones at my fragile heart and screams at me
to never return.
*I'll never return.

She's been blooming ever since
She set foot on this earth,
With cheeks that people found akin
to cupcakes and a cackle that'd
make even the harshest ones swoon,
She'd bloom.

When she grew- she grew a tad bit awkward,
Beauty doesn't follow roadmaps,
So her eyebrows did a little mischief,
And her weight didn't really obey,
A pimple or two popped out too,
of its own accord,
Yet, with that fire in her heart
and the spark that it reflected her eyes,
though she didn't recognise,
she was making the world her own,
Yes, she was in bloom.

As she walks down her office corridor,
Sharp and chiselled,
Confident and aware
of every look, every stare
falling on her frame, she remembers the days
when she wasn't so much of a charmer,
and thanks her lucky stars that she did in the end
turn out to be a late bloomer.
I wish I'd tell her,
Oh if she'd listen, I'd tell her-
My dear, never once did your sheen waver,
Never once did your glory falter,
Through your clumsiness and your flaws
Through your missteps and your doubts,
You remained a stunner,
And will stay so, in your life and beyond,
For you are a perennial bloomer.