मेरे हाथ की छुरी

तुम्हारे हाथ का ख़ंजर

इनकी नोक टकरा रही है या छू रही?

कौन सी ज़्यादा नुकीली है?

तुम्हारा ख़ंजर पुराना, पर मेरी छुरी हठीली है

इस एक सफेद कपड़े के नीचे क्या तुम भी बख़्तर पहने आए हो?

क्या तुम भी अपने साथ दो ज़हर की गोलियां लाए हो?

अपनों में कोई रहा नहीं और इश्क़ की जगह नहीं, क्या तुम भी यही सोचे आए हो?

हज़ारों सवाल हैं मेरे, क्या तुम जवाब लेके आए हो?

कुछ नहीं है देने को, पर छीनना मुझे आता नहीं

भूखी हूँ, प्यासी हूँ, मगर धोखा मुझे भाता नहीं

मेरे दिल पे तुम्हारा ख़ंजर मैं वादे की तरह रख लूँगी

मेरी छुरी नक़ली है, वो भी तुम्हारे हसते कर दूँगी

आधा देश तुम्हारा, आधा मेरा

मैं खुद ही को तुम्हारे हवाले कर दूँगी

-स।

I’ve grown a weird habit of biting my lips till they bleed. When i look at myself in the mirror, i realise my lips have lost almost all human colour to them. No amount of vaseline or spf could fix it.

What i do know is that lip-biting is not the only form of self destruction i do. I bite my nails, i pick at my hair, my skin and i also scratch my brain from the inside out, I break my bones in front of the mirror as a punishment for not scoring good marks in my favourite subject and I gouge out my eyes when i see an extra kilogram on the scale.

I stare at my phone all day hoping for something to wake me up, i scroll on mindless short-form content and feast on slime asmrs when i know i’m this close to failing at everything i have left in my life.

I smoke and drink because it makes me feel stupid and distracted. I let myself get made fun of in front of people who i used to call my friends. I see my parents slowly lose hope in me as i slam my door in their faces. I laugh at everything and cry at everything. I let myself get completely run over by bad people and i let nice people get run over by me. I absolutely adore blaming everything on everything, everything but myself. I break people’s hearts because someone broke mine and i laugh at things that make some people cry.

I sometimes dont eat for days and sometimes eat a week’s worth in one. I scream until i cant speak and i run till i cant stand. I clench my fists until there’s crescents on my palm. I pull my hair until the pain forces me to stop thinking.

I do nothing about people’s misery simply because i think my load is greater and i try to help people who clearly dont need it. I want to see dolphins but i know i cant swim and i want to climb a tree even though i’m deathly afraid of heights.

I am my biggest enemy. My only strength lies in destroying myself. My body is slowly tearing itself apart because it knows that it is bound for nothing but doom. Anything and everything i touch rots, and i act like everything rotten touches me.

So how do you stop biting your lips?

I do not know

I will never know.

I will never stop biting my lips.

And nor will you.

Why did i pretend my misery was worse than anyone else in the world, why did it even matter?

I like my blanket of gloom, it’s soft.

I looked like a fawn under it.

It was easy to pity me when the blanket was around.

If i got up, they would’ve seen me as lazy and not sick.

I had to keep the act up.

I spoke of that unnamed anguish without a prescience to millions,

like they would drop a penny of sympathy to my jar of daily bread.

I was a raindrop of water in the sea of squalor—worthless.

I am a drunkard, i am an addict—a pretentious derelict.

I begged of you to leave me be.

I watched the crowd slowly disappear into the nothingness because i stopped performing,

But you still stayed

some stuck around, laughed at my state and then walked away without a care.

The threads of my blanket then came loose

You taught me to pull on them like a game

Until nothing was left and i was bare

The crowd came back, then all to stare

I had to get up for i was naked

I had to find something

Until i saw a piece of my dream rotting away in the corner

Then another,

Then another,

Then another.

You helped me stitch them together

There it was, my robe of dreams

Soon, i was no longer in confines

I still see your face in it sometimes

If only you had stuck around

Now you and my blanket of gloom

Lay in pieces on the ground

The comfort of not needing or knowing how to think rationally and believe you are safe within the four walls of your home and school is something I all lost a long time ago. I used to be so sure on who i was and what i wanted to be, it was all so doable. But now that i see how much i’ve destroyed myself with selfish acts for dopamine little by little, i know its over. I’m not beyond repair or unfixable but i do not wish to get up anymore. I wish i could call it laziness or just being exhausted, but it is not that. I am a pedestal that collapsed and i can no longer hold a significance without something to put on it. I have lost all patience and i have lost all hunger. I’m sitting in the stench of a skin i thought i’d get out soon enough.

Every time i lose someone or something in my life, i lose a piece of my identity with it. And having lost so much, i have become the ship of Theseus trying to piece myself back together. I have never claimed that anything external has had a bad impact on me causing me to end up this way, because there is nothing that will be seen as bad enough. So i will just say that this is what i am, this is who i grew up to be.

There is nothing original in my mind anymore, nothing i can put out and call art. Nothing i can be proud of for creating. Everything that comes out of my mouth is rotten and recycled of what i have already consumed before. It is that rectangle box i keep with me all the time, i let it ruin my life. I let it consume me. It let it take my soul in exchange of a promise of connection and knowledge.

I am terrified of the yesterday, today and tomorrow and i constantly live in the dark. I like to think i’m smart sometimes, but what use is it of when i cannot get myself up from my bed. I’m slowly losing excuses for the supposed well-wishers’ questions on why i didnt do what i said i’d do. I do not live on the streets, miss a leg or hand. What reason must i give?

I will retch at my reflection and question everyone who pursues me because there is no reason that i make a someone who should be deserving of any sort of consideration by another human being. My thoughts are so loud i’m scared sometimes you might hear them. My head was going to be my only permanent home till the day i die, and now i want to leave this one too.

We’re two slow dancers

Last ones out

But your hand is floating mid-air

Pretending its my waist

And All you’re holding is a fist of air

Because I was buried seven years ago

There wasnt a prom for us because of the years in between

But id like to think im up there with you

In a made up school gymnasium

My head against yours

But the ground pulls me back down

Do you see it on my skin?

How naive of us

To think that we could stay the same

If only i never said it, we’d be dancing without a truth

Without a weight on our heads to not let go

Its funny how i always remember that we’ve done this a hundred times before

If i was there, young again

It wouldve been easier

But as it is

And it is

We’re two slow dancers last ones out

Thinking we could stay the same

Thinking we could stay the same.

My mouth is a prison for the secrets that i keep

Behind which my confessions beg to be let out

Scratching, tearing; from the inside they scream and shout

Sometimes they almost seep through the gaps

But i’m swift to lock them back up right where they belong

At night they climb down to my heart, chewing on its walls so hard that it bleeds

So i suggest you stay away for they go mad at your sight

Eating me from the inside

The last thing i wish is for them to make it out and to your ear

So i will keep myself from having you near

‎ ‎ ‎

From the past few weeks, my days have been going pretty blurry. I don’t remember the last time I liked a painting I made, a song I sang, a night I’ve slept and a sentence I’ve written.

It is like there is something under my skin that is quite not me. I have been trying to mask it but it keeps slipping through.

My acquaintances have stopped reaching out, my family lets me stay locked in my bedroom and I have stopped trying.

I have never in my life been suicidal (maybe eager to die, but not suicidal).

There are some things eating at me from inside my brain, things that I cannot put into words. There is this hunger for something that changes this greyscale of my life. The hunger used to be loud and vigorous, now only dying out and flickering. It is as though I have shed my skin. The skin that I had woven out of plastic and kept on for so long.

If someone tells me that this is a common “phase” in life and that it is simply just passing by, I would nod in agreement and bury myself right then there.

There is this uncanny disgust I feel in my skin when I look in the mirror; I want to break it. It is not as though I dislike the way I look (that is a different story to tell), but the person I am. I haven’t done anything inherently wrong or criminal for me to have such contempt for myself, but it is the betrayal I bring every morning. A betrayal of the promises I’ve made to myself and everyone who’s around me. It is not a could’ve been but a would’ve been. I always had mere hopes, never aims or goals.

I am so awfully desperate for someone to see me; it’s embarrassing. I strip myself fully in my writing, then go back to that plastic skin when it’s done.

My heart sinks every time I see people in love, not out of jealousy, but out of futile wonder of why I cannot be normal. It’s clear that it’s a long time till I become less distant from a considerable amount of misery.

I would rather choke on my own words than ask someone to love me, so i just make it terribly hard for them to even consider me.

Rejection is a nightmare to me because I am already so full of it.

My misery is not something I write so deeply about. I have been living a very mediocre and monotonous life, with nothing to blame my state upon. There is no possible way I can justify the void in my chest; every reason seems inadequate and unconvincing.

Perhaps it is the reason for my constant self-sabotage, a desperate attempt to validate myself for everything bad happens to me. The price of being able to understand my subconscious is the lack of courage to change it.

The rage you feel in your heart—the blood that rushes through your system, is crimson but it is crimson, too. Crimson is a shade of red associated with both love and anger. So, which one is it, Love or War?

Why does non-reciprocity always lead to this weird, violent surge of love?

‘Odi et Amo’ a poem written by Catullus (c. 84–54 BC) known for his raw, passionate and troubled love poems for his lover, Clodia, whom he called Lesbia.

In accordance to my research, Catullus’ inamorata—Clodia— was a woman some 10 years older than him. Towards the end of their affair, Clodia poisoned her husband. She moved on from her affair with Catullus and pursued other relationships. Catullus died 3-4 years after that, and she proceeded to Caelius, her next affair. Before his death, Catullus spent the majority of the last years of his life bleeding his rotten love out on paper. The rope being tied to both his hands, pulling him apart in both directions.

“Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?

Nescio, sed fierei sentio et excrucior.

It translates to:

I hate and I love. Why do I do that, you may ask?

I don’t know, but I feel and am tormented by it.

This familiar feeling strikes when you can’t hate someone, but you can’t not love them either. The slow blood-boil that follows when your expectations are betrayed or your trust is broken by someone you put on a pedestal.

The sudden surge makes us realise that we are clinging to someone so hard that we’re not realising it’s bruising our hands. In my belief, it is one of the most painful experiences to have. Perhaps something in relation to unrequited love. The difference between the two is that one is painfully embracing a blade and the other is chasing one.

Each time we are given less than we provide, we feel that the fault is in us. The desire to love even harder dominates our entire sense of rationality. This agony that comes with the confusion blinds our heads, it makes us bulls that run at the sight of our burning red muse.

Vivamus, mea Lesbia

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

rumoresque senum severiorum

omnes unius aestimenus assis.

Let’s live, my Lesbia—and love:

the stern opinions of the old

aren’t worth a cent to us.

Soles occidere et redire possunt:

nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,

nox est perpetua una dormienda…

Suns set and rise again: For

us, once our brief light sets,

there’s only night and an endless sleep.

He foolishly goes on and on about a thousand kisses, an eternity. While he remains absolutely devoted to her, she has proved tragically volatile to him, to be unfaithful not only to her spouse but to her adult­erous amour with the poet too.

In neuroscience, this phenomenon is called affective ambivalence. The occurence of two contradictory emotions surging in equal fervour. Neuroscientists have found that profound love and intense hatred actually light up the exact same regions of the brain. It is a psychological clash of loathing and desire. Inconsistent reward creates stronger attachment than consistent reward—it’s the same principle behind compulsive behaviour. This is why the person who gives you almost enough is far more dangerous than the one who gives you nothing.

We want to tell, but we are afraid: afraid of being seen as over-demanding or gluttonous. So, we write. We write until the parchment weeps with us, providing us with what they did not. We bury the rot inside us and our desk, expecting them to sense the smell and ask.

Why must we love at all if we cannot be at peace with what we chose to love?

Is it greed or deficit, passion or infatuation?

The smell of the constant skepticism I reek of when I read a good article on Substack is getting stronger each day. My brain has started to analyze patterns, styles, and words. The suspicion that every piece of writing I like might be written—sorry, generated—by something that does not even possess a soul.

This forces me to think, ‘Is it over for us?’ Because we can now never tell what’s real and what’s not—movie scripts, songs, books, research papers, constitutions. How do I let go of this unending dread, the fear of admiring, entertaining—following —something inhuman? If a robot can write this entire article and question its own existence better than me, why should I even bother?

The problem isn’t AI; the problem is the misuse of utility man always does. Man always loves to benefit the wrong way. Technology was supposed to make human life easier, so man could visit the beach instead of working a 9-5 and spend time with fellow creatures instead of chugging down six shots of espresso to stay up at night.

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do laundry and dishes.”

The worst part is the easy availability. It’s free, one click away. Governments love that. About 75 out of 176 countries are now using AI to surveil their own citizens, and AI chatbots are just a fraction of what type they use. Companies like Meta and OpenAI are collecting work from independent artists and writers without their permission in the name of training. Over-collection of art leads AI to develop the certain patterns it has now. The writing style it currently possesses was once human.

It is true that AI cannot fully create ‘art’ on its own, but that is not the point. The point is people using it to generate something that replicates—copies—the perfect human soul. Something that claims itself to be perfectly imperfect, the embodiment of the art that has evolved to this point in time, the 21st century.

We cannot stop AI; we cannot forget that it ever came into our lives. What we can do is protect the very nature of the human race. To not allow it to gather our behaviors into algorithms and turn it into a complete mirror.

We have to understand and accept that as the human race progresses forward, the development of resources will too. We will lose our old ways one day; they will be a memory. The pages of a book will be kept in glass cases in museums and everything will be accessible with a blink of an eye.

I would thankfully say that I will not live to see those days, and I won’t object if I do.

AI is fun; it is useful, entertaining, and endless—but it is not, and can never be, an artist.

Man is always on the run. Man has to build. Man has to survive. This persistent need for simplification and utility has led to now—technology, the lifestyle we cannot get rid of. Some find their soulmate, some find a lifelong companion, some find vocation, and some find the education they never could’ve pursued in the scope of their town. If I never had access to the internet, I wouldn’t have sat down with my coffee and tried to come up with an organized collection of my smart monkey thoughts.

The search for originality will augment as we slowly lose the creativity, the heart to create by hand. We consume because someone has to, and we create because someone has to. But by dint of the current world, we are constantly kept under a task, a responsibility, a societal construct. We are forgetting to be human. We are forgetting to wish for trampolines, doll sets, new crayons, and toy trucks because we know we can just get an iPad.

The world where our feet rest is now one where our minds don’t. We are everywhere but nowhere. Oh, how beautifully tragic it is, the advancement of humans. A portion gets the fruit; a portion doesn’t. We thrive on our fantasies, looking around us and believing we’re meant for so much more, making goals for higher ground. Not once, not once—heeding the sky, we look up to pray, the grass that gives us the same, perpetual euphoria of being alive, no matter how many times we choose the shallow, vapid spoonfuls of content that our rectangle master feeds us, over it. The forgiving earth that carries the same scent we smelled when we were four, when we were free of ourselves.

Across all countries, the commonality of easily available technology is now dominating every aspect—music, writing, designing, and politics.

Not one digital footprint that lasts forever in a cold, metallic archive, but the physical mark of a hand that once held a pen, the ghastly embrace left on an unfinished poem. We have created great towers of geometry and industry, silver and glass structures that kiss the skyline, but yet we feel smaller than ever.

I always end up questioning with awe, “How does man manage to be the destroyer of himself, being convinced that he is the greatest of all?”

One thing we humans struggle to live without is faith, the need to look up and know you’re protected by the divine creator. It is a beautiful thing, how faith forms the basis of stubborn hope. To know that you are— a little—but part of this grand, limitless cosmos. To believe everything will fall into place.

To make acceptance a routine, an act of trust in the universe.

What keeps us all human is hunger.

A hunger to imprint, a hunger to overtake, a hunger to be at the top.

No amount of technology can replace the human desperation. We were made to run, to compete. We are made to fight for power, food, and status, and yet we still bear the courage to be a speck and still find the energy to love the other specks around us.

We are just a collection of cravings: the tactile hunger for a hand, the mouth’s immediate anticipation of a familiar meal, and the ache in the heart when we are not returned the love we bleed out so uncontrollably. We seek the kind of hold that threatens to break our ribs just to feel whole. Then the sun comes up with a slight hit of serotonin into a system exhausted from its own existence, the clock ticking without asking if you want to go on.

We promise eternities, yet they are broken by worms crawling through our living decay.

The vitality of human connection in our diverse communities lies in our shared vulnerability. It is the strength to take a good look into the abyss of our advancements and choose to still be a person. We must go back to the everyday ground. We must realize that meaning is not just found in the “heavens” of the cloud but in the heroism of being mere.

What keeps us human is the absurdity of it all. The mist of curiosity and wonder that is thick while it’s being entertained. The yin and yang, the law and order, the war and peace. The question of ‘why are we here’ getting waved off by the plans you made for today, tomorrow, and an eternity to come.

‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’

After this long hour of thinking, I manage to type into my document.

Technology is not it, and humans are better…?

Wait.

“Hey chatGPT, what keeps us human?”

Smart monkey.

The love I crave is slightly forbidden.

It is like eating the highest berry of a tree i didn’t grow

It is like the extra mile I wasn’t allowed to cross away from home.

It is like the cigarette I promised never to smoke

The love I crave is familiar but pristine.

It is like the coffee cup I kiss every morning while you cloud my mind.

It is like something that feels nice on my teeth.

It is like my hair when it’s wet.

The love I crave is inestimable and selfish.

It is like “5 more minutes!” of a child in the playground.

It is like the “one more beer” of a derelict alcoholic.

It is like the “one last chance?” Of a teenage boy

The love I crave is quixotic and futile.

It is like the paintings I make uglier than I thought.

It is like pieces of my skin I prepare to gift.

It is like the care that rots in the cellar i call my heart.

The love I crave is imbecile and relentless.

But it must obliterate me before it continues towards you

Because i will stand in my way for your own good

I will fight, my love, for you?

I will fight my love, for you.

“Do I care too much or do they care too little?” Is a question I always treat as my ‘square one’ where I always end up after every presumably bad (and long) social affair. I’ve always (overly) idealised the concept of being an emotionally mature partner/friend, to be unconditionally kind and understanding.

The funniest part is that I'm not even close to being either of these. I was selfish. I did what I wanted, and I wanted what I wanted. Because I used to believe that I was too kind to everyone and that they were just ungrateful and unappreciative (I’m not saying that I was wrong every time; I just misunderstood that giving without being asked to means I'm a fucking god and that I can villainize the other without ever adjusting to their actual wants and expectations, which were OBVIOUSLY less than absolute devotion).

I'm slowly progressing towards convincing myself that constant reassurance, priority, and attention from others are not necessary for survival. This might seem generic, but that’s the point. I believe there are so many of us who believe that we’re unlovable, unlucky, and unworthy. But in reality, we’re just chasing the wrong things. I have done no research whatsoever (this is just a personal rant), but I do believe that there are two types of people: one, people who adapted to how they were treated in their childhood. Maybe from a parent or a friend. Two, people who quietly developed a trait based on how they observed themselves and the world.

Both these personality characteristics have one thing in common, and that is a wrong interpretation of the price of being worth it.

We believe we have to be on our best behavior, constantly showing up and offering things our own hearts are foreign to.

This, when put out for a contrasting personality—a person who’s not inherently evil but only emotionally unavailable, is equally dangerous to both parties. The giver will give and the taker will take, but there’s a significant difference in both thresholds. The giver is unlimited and unconditional, and the taker is overwhelmed and predictably unaware of whats to come. This makes them (the taker) feel grateful and fulfilled at first, of course. But slowly, the unconditional part catches on, and they realize they don’t have to put any energy into reciprocating since the giver has plenty for the both of them. At times, they might even feel intense guilt and frustration because their new mindset is dominating (suffocation and confusion) over the smaller, prior mindset (value and appreciation) from the beginning. Eventually, they’ll reach the point of repulsion and finally walk away and drown themselves in guilt.

The giver, in the middle of the relationship, is not as stupid as you might think—the giver is stubborn. This stubbornness swells only because of their primary instincts, their fear of rejection that develops into a habit of thought and at last, a behavioral pattern. They develop a routine of pleasing, jesting, and performing in exchange for some validation from the selected person. As the small chunks of validation turn to crumbs, they wave goodbye to their leftover sanity and self-esteem. The giver then gives even more abundantly until they secretly realize they didn’t have an “unlimited”—an eternity—to give.