Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast
(If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this).
-Amir Khusrau

dilli, the most beautiful, the most wondrous. dilli, my love, my soul. dilli, the ugliest, the most bloodied. my punishment. my oppressor, my hater, my salvation. dilli, my eternal love.

you, with your wise eyes, you’ve seen it all haven’t you? a cigarette in your mouth, a defiance in your smile, you’ve done it all, haven’t you? dilli, my city haunted by her cities, my home that homes her ghosts more lovingly. pandava’s delhi, chauhan’s delhi, delhi of the sultans and the dervishes, the crows and the jackals, the mughals, the lions, the british, then the symbols and the fanatics. delhi of the monuments of gold turned monuments of ruin. of the lutyens and the connaughts, of the havers and the cannots. no one’s dilli.
they tried to conquer you, you the supreme conqueror. but they could never reach you.

Hunooz dilli door ast
(Dilli is still far away)
-Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya

dilli i learned to walk in your red-bricked walls of blood, atop the graves of your lovers. dilli you’ve clipped my wings with your murderous air, dilli you’ve set my thoughts free, like the masakalis still thriving in your chandni chowk skies. i hate you sometimes, i love you always. dilli you’ve cried with me, and have made me cry. they think you’re theirs, my dilli. fools, the lot. no one’s dilli.

will you ever be mine?

dilli my heart sings your name with every beat. dilli, every time i inhale you i kill myself. i’m dead. i’m the ghosts slumbering in your womb, i’m the lovers who longed to be loved back. i’m the dreams walking in your skies with falling wings. i’m the rotten corpses of the rats pecked by your crows. i’m your silky beautiful roads that diverge into spotty smaller ones with squatters shitting on their corners. dilli, i’m the sweet wine on the lips of every poet who thought they had you because they had dared to capture your soul. and i’m the prayers they whispered when you took their words away.

Both my heart and Dilli lie in desolation
Yet I find solace in this forsaken city.
-Mir Taqi Mir

you’re the monster under my bed, my dilli. you are my fairy godmother. i scream to the world! i say you’re so shitty! full of shit and squatters and litter and fascists with the ugliest faces! i say you’re a hypocrite a FUCKING know-it-all who knows nothing at all! but when they say “I AGREE” dilli- i beat them to a pulp I SCREAM HOW DARE YOU! WHO ARE YOU! FULL OF SHIT AND LITTER, FASCISTS WITH UGLY FACES! no one is allowed to hate you but me, dilli, because i love you undyingly. i will love you dyingly. i will be the lover buried in your grounds with my eyes wide open, still drinking my fill of you. i will never be quenched. i will never die.

i’m your servant, my dilli. fuck you, my dilli. i’m so fucked, my dilli.

dilli, i long to leave you.
dilli, you’re the only home i’ve ever known. and now there’s no other that would take me.
there’s no other i want.

Indraprastha, Lal Kot, Siri,
Tughlukabad, Firozabad,
and Shahjahanabad,
they’ve called you.

I have known you only as one:
dil-li,
the home of my heart.

-Jiyaa

I did manage to have a heartfelt rendezvous with a charcoal poem anthology lying in the middle of corner, but this rendezvous was interrupted by my awareness of The Gaze on me and so in straightening my bag, patting down my frenzy hair, and tracing my nails around my lips to fix any possible lipstick smudging, I had lost my Charcoal. It refused to speak to me thereafter. I felt like a dirty rain puddle on the street: so shallow. Sacrificing my new friend for The Gaze! The shallowest of them all. Not beautiful. Ugly. Smudged lipstick ugly. Kajal at the corner of my eyes ugly. Ugly-ly fake Ug-

I found Roro talking to the gallery manager so feigned a quiet absorption of my own except all of the other pieces in the room had turned away from me. All I could do was wait for him to be free so we could whisk off to another gallery. Another attempt, or perhaps a trial?

Our next stops were beautiful (quite good, but not master) too. We made 3 friends on the hop: an engineer intern in Noida, a 2nd year liberal arts student, and an artist who had spent 1.5 years on perhaps one of the most incredible paintings I’ve ever seen, but lost me as quickly as he had me when he answered, “yeah I’m cool” with no light whatsoever in his eyes, to my question, “does it (the painting) feel complete to you? are you fully satisfied?”. Dear reader, you may find this ridiculous but truly think for a second and tell me if any artist is ever satisfied with their art once it’s complete. The right to creation comes with the great consequence of never being loyal to what you create.
I’m a fully formed individual and my parents aren’t satisfied with me. I’m never satisfied with my fully-formed poems and essays and paintings and games. Why else would all the great artists in the world leave their supposedly greater works in these odd-looking rooms instead of holding them as close as possible to their hearts in hopes that their arteries would swallow them whole so they will never be apart again?
All of these pieces were quite good indeed, but not master. I, too, had always been quite good. But a rain puddle could never be master.

Roro and I saw some of our college batchmates and tried our best to steer our paths away. We mostly succeeded. I saw my favorite ex’s ex-talking stage (the girl he was talking to while also talking to me) and thought, as I had the first time I had seen her near DU, that she was insanely beautiful. We made eye contact. I felt like a voyeur. Did not look away. Wondered if she thought I was beautiful too. Wondered if all of the people at the gallery thought I was beautiful too. Felt like a shallow rainwater puddle. Tadpoles learn how to swim in me, I thought. People wince when passing cars push me towards them, I thought. I’m dirty and muddy and too goddamn small, the ugliest in this room filled with oceans, I thought.

Not beautiful. Ugly. SO shallow, stop it please. Beauti- stop it. Please!
Except I couldn’t. Couldn’t stop. Not anymore. I found myself staring at a moving miniature casket titled ‘Punishment’. Yet again, I couldn’t look away. The casket kept swinging
back and forth,
like a
pendulum.
I couldn’t look away. My eyes moved back and forth. I was under a spell. The casket was rusted, but it had holes in it. Not quite big, not very small.
I thought would I escape The Gaze if I could fit myself inside it? If I could be not quite big, not very small. If I could make myself barely visible swingingly. If I could see it all without being seen. If I could become The Gaze. If-I couldn’t breathe. The room had contracted, morphed into a rusty casket. It had very few holes. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. The whole world was swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Held onto empty air for balance. Unmoored.

A girl walked into the edges of my vision. She was wearing a long skirt, a halter top, a secretly-artsy-statement-piece bag, large hoops and had wild bangs. I thought she was beautiful. A Masterpiece. She caught my gaze and held it. I sent her a smile, she sent one back. I wanted to sit on the bench of the world and keep looking at her looking at me but she looked away, towards the casket. Her eyes moved back and forth. She was under a spell. I would know.

I wondered how miniature caskets could float on rain puddles on the street.

We hadn’t ever met before. His first introduction to me was me patting my very emotional massi’s back and telling her she’s the greatest aunt in the universe. I was also intensely blind. When I saw a silhouette of black walking in our direction, I waved frantically, said “hey! it’s me! im jiyaa! you must be HB!” and immediately returned to consoling massi.

I was very excited to meet him but the events of the night hadn’t been the most ideal for a first date. Still, instead of cancelling directly, I had issued a few warnings to him beforehand:
a) everyone’s quite drunk (so you don’t have to meet me today)
b) you and i are definitely not sexing (if that’s why you want to meet me today) c) my aunt’s having a breakdown (let’s not meet today?)

His answers to all of these warnings were incredibly satisfying:
a) that’s okay with me if it’s okay with y’all!
b) no no omg im just really giddy to meet you, my intentions are innocent!
c) darling, i’ll drop you to your bnb at the very least. please don’t overthink.

He was a nice looking man with a really sweet smile. Massi trusted him instantly, I did too. As soon as he sat down beside me, he had been roped into her crisis and was a willing calmer. Massi shared her life story with him in her extremely drunken state, and he responded enthusiastically with questions that got her to talk. I’d chime in with the occasional “hey I’m so sorry about this, you can genuinely leave whenever” and he’d follow all of these up with a calming shoulder rub, many “darling”s (not nearly enough), and “shh all’s good! I’m glad I’m here”.

We have the same weakness, massi and I—you give us a nice smile and a kind listener and we’re liquid on the floor.

Eventually, we found our way to his car. I called shotgun, massi’s boyfriend opened the windows to smoke a cig (after asking HB for permission), and my lovely massi’s crisis continued. We had to make a pitstop on the way because she needed to puke. With utmost sincerity, HB offered her a spare shirt he had in the car and also some water.

I was gobsmacked. I was gaping at him with my jaw on the floor and my eyes as wide as UFOs. He was laughing and saying the right things and my brain was losing it. Who is this man? This strangely lovely exception of his… species?? How could any man be this intuitive and calm in the face of utmost chaos??? When’s he going to show me his true colors? For a second I considered the possibility that perhaps I was too blind and he was actually a woman.

HB asked us what song we’d want to listen to. Between sniffles, massi said, “Who the Fuck is Alice”. He looked at her, as gobsmacked as me, and showed me his top search on Spotify: “Who the Fuck is Alice”.
That was my introduction to Smokie.

Sally called, when she got the word
She said, “I suppose you’ve heard”
“About Alice”

The rest of the ride, I wondered who Alice was. Was she your girl next door? Or was she so much more? Was she the woman you fantasize about your entire life and her idea becomes so real that she ceases to matter? Who is Alice to HB? Who is Alice to massi? She must be something to them, I thought as the song rolled to an end, because she certainly had become something to me.

We reached our BNB. I invited HB upstairs. What followed was a little more emotional caretaking, massi’s bf taking her to their bedroom to sleep, and me taking HB to my bedroom to… talk. Massi’s bf offered us condoms, massi looked at HB and said, “no matter how drunk I am and how nice I think you are, you lay one finger on my daughter and I will find you”. He responded with a laugh and I responded with a “one finger hardly does the trick anyways!”.

In my room, he said, “okay so in my head we’re totally engaged” because he was surely the first guy in a non-platonic equation with me who had met her! I burst his bubble by revealing that my massi had met all of my exes. He sighed dramatically. I shook my head and asked “but if that really is the case, where is my ring?”. He made a great show of looking inside his pockets, then took my hand, removed the ring I was already wearing on my middle finger, put it on my ring finger and smiled triumphantly. I responded with a gag face.

We talked a lot. We made out a bit. Shared our views on relationships and non-serious sex. I told him I’ve always felt relief after my relationships have ended (the pain and the sadness, yes, but oh the relief). He seconded that. We made out a lot. He asked me if I’m fucked up.
I said: aren’t you?

After some moments of cozy quiet, he told me he had never actually opened up about so many things with anyone else. I just smiled and thought about my friends, sisters, and the woman snoring in the other room.

HB left around 5am. I didn’t ask him if he’d like to stay. After seeing him off, I opened the curtains a bit and listened to ‘Who the fuck is Alice’ on repeat. He texted me when he had reached and thanked me for an epic day. I thanked him back. I thought about Alice some more.

Massi came to my room around 8am with a loud “DID YOU HAVE SEX”, a steaming mug of chai, and some namkeen. I said, “NO WHAT IS SEX!!!” and we laughed forever. The chai was really good, the namkeen even tastier. After a quick recap of the night, we realized both of us were wildly blind and our specs were missing. Squinting, we looked everywhere— under the sofas, beds, inside the refrigerator, on the toilet seat, in the dustbins. We napped and then resumed our search. I called HB, he checked his car and couldn’t find them there. We called the pub and they told us their glasses weren’t for sale.

I had never before lost my specs, I told massi. There’s always a first for everything, she chimed back.

On our way back home, we cracked some spec-tacular jokes:
a) were you ex-spec-ting this????
b) our speculation has led us nowhere!
c) we MUST in-spect this whole thing when we’re sober!

I asked her what she thought about Alice. She looked at me, giggled, and said, “who the FUCK is alice????”. We put on our serious faces. She said all of us are Alice in some way or the other. Maybe that’s why we cozy up to her so quickly. We’re all wondering who she is. I suggested that maybe we’re wondering how much of her we are. Wouldn’t we all like to be desired/thought of in our absence, in memory? She hmmed. I hmmed.

We talked about her boyfriend, HB and if I’d like to see him again, her colleagues, the food we had, our drunk senorita duet on the dance floor, the man who was trying to dance with me until she stepped on his toes and stifled his chances with a “glary oops sorry!”, our family, and our dear dear specs. I told her she should caption her trip dump, “best weekend ever! couldn’t see shit!”.

We spoke and spoke and spoke as delhi wrapped her smokey arms around us. We were squinting at the world, had no idea where we were, and if we’d get home safely because our gmaps were just colored lines. We still didn’t know where our specs had run off to (we were sure that they had planned it together, I still think there’s immense merit to this theory), or where life was taking us.

All I could see was massi, all massi could see was me, and so, we were quite alright :)

“what if we could prove the existence of God?” vee asked, her voice floating in the dark room.
“i don’t think it’d make things better,” i said. “god is so powerful because it’s an abstract idea. there’s nothing more powerful than ideas, not even their tangible form.”
she thought about other ways, i waited eagerly. “what if we found out what happens after death?”
“depends on what we find out.”
“say heaven and hell are real.”
“won’t people do good things just to get to heaven?” i argued, turning to look at her. “it makes their deeds selfish.”
“what’s wrong with being selfish if it makes the world a better place?”
“fair. but we’d always remain self-serving, and that’s surely not a good thing.”
“what if we find out that we’re reincarnated?” she countered.
“life would lose value. people would just kill themselves to try again.”
we descended into a quiet silence.
“what do you think happens after death?” i asked her.

vee took a long sip from the stanley cup she had purchased recently to increase her water consumption (it was working fantastically). “hmm” she said softly, “i think there’s nothing after death”. for her, death is an endless dreamless sleep. “isn’t that scary?” i asked her. she shrugged. she likes dreamless sleep; there’s nothing quite like it. for me, death isn’t an end, but another beginning. i told her i think i’m immortal. i know realistically that my body will die one day, but i can’t imagine not thinking, and thus not being. if i’m the cosmos experiencing itself, losing my body would probably just return me to my original form.
“that sounds like a lot of work though, why not just think of it as a dreamless sleep?” she wondered. i replied- “because isn’t waking up the point of going to sleep?”

i worried that her idea of death was too lonely, she worried that mine was too latched onto the self.

i asked if she would like to be burnt or cremated. she pointed out that they’re the same. oops! she wants to be buried. when i asked why she wouldn’t prefer being cremated as per our culture, she said she likes the idea of having a place her loved ones can come to to talk to her after she’s gone.
“plus, gravestones are pretty cool.”
for someone who thinks of death as nothingness, she wants to ensure we will always have somewhere to find her.
i felt very lucky to be loved by her.

i told her i want to be a tree after i’m dead. a “fuck you” to the permanence of all of it. i’d still be alive but in a different form and i’d be able to give my loved ones shade, space, love. she pointed out that i’d die again that way, i told her i didn’t mind. we shifted into a comfortable silence. after a while, i looked over to find her asleep, her specs still on. i shook her gently, told her to take them off, and we both drifted. my sleep was restless, filled with endless dreams that kept waking me up. but every time i did, i’d find her there, asleep beside me. nothing else mattered.

if death really is like falling asleep, i hope mine is filled with endless dreams. and i hope that when i do wake up, i find her there, right beside me.

⭐⭐⭐ (-2 only out of spite)

comment:
i have a box in my hands that holds an infinite amount of love fossils and they’re all so well preserved. aren’t instagram stories deadly assassins, instagram archives their preferred battlefield? isn’t incessant documentation the death of moving on? i’m physically attached to this box because of some voodoo magic and so every night my body houses bloodshed.

first scroll
most of the faces in my archives don’t visit my days anymore, but in these stories of the past that feel so fresh, love beats loudly. almost too loudly.

i swear i was daydreaming about living with her forever when we were only 20.

second scroll
is it weird to text someone you haven’t spoken to in years just to ask about their mom? their dog? to make small talk, anything at all, stop yourself from saying “anyway, i just really miss you” until you can’t anymore.

third scroll
spotify playlist titled “summer of 2019”. songs recommended by another love fossil. so many love fossils spread across my timeline.
this is almost too much.
(i haven’t since met another van morrison listener. there’s no such thing as too many van morrison listeners. there’s no such thing as a van morrison listener who occupies space in my heart anymore.)

fourth scroll
forgetting is the most incredible form of self retention. i’m all the people i’ve ever loved. the people i’ve loved leave. as more people come in, the ones that have left are forgotten and therefore, i become something new. except, now they’re never forgotten. and i’m never something new. i’m a half-cooked dish made of every ingredient in the kitchen of my life: formless tasteless shapeless, all at once and forever so.

failed final scroll
fuck this. i know there’s no space for them in my life right now but can’t i make it? i still have their numbers. will a call be too much? how about a “hey- thinking of you”?
too cheesy?
“hey- stupid misunderstandings am i right?
-6 years should be long enough to put all that behind us”,
-3 years should be long enough to put all that behind us”,
-1 year should be long enough to put all that behind us”
…
“anyway, i just really miss you”.

another failed final scroll
it’s a futile attempt to try to hold onto versions that don’t exist anymore of people that have long since left. what i miss is lost in time. time is a social construct. what i miss is purely an illusion of my mind. what i miss was never mine.
was it not?

defeat
a lost battlefield somewhere in my chest.

anyway, i just really miss you.

-evidence 1:
Sister: when did you wear my top? i can’t find it
Me: it was on the day sahana and i went to third wave.

-evidence 2:
Other Sister: when do you have your meeting?
Me: the day i’ll meet sahana at blue tokai to prepare for it.

-evidence 3:
Mom: do you even know what day it is today?????
Me: duh. it’s 3 days from when sahana and i went on a morning walk.

owing to these regular meetings, not only has sahana become my calendar, but we’re also completely synced. we bleed at the same time, our ovulation phases are besties now, we have the same amount of hairfall (we compared our lost hair strands counts recently, they were *almost* the same), and we’ve become fluent in each other’s lingo (she called someone “bitchass” the other day). when i’m talking to sahana, i can’t tell where i end and she begins. it feels like the blob of same-ness covers us both and i had grossly underestimated its range.

a day after i had met sahana most recently, i found myself in the weirdest panic bubble of my own making. i was suffocating and painfully aware that i was suffocating in a room i could very well walk out of, but i couldn’t get my legs to work. or maybe i didn’t want them to work. there’s a certain lullaby only the darkness can sing and so i closed my eyes but all i heard was silence. nothingness sat beside me, with boiling eeriness oozing out of every pore. i didn’t like any of it, i wanted to leave. leave. leave. then, my phone beeped.

Sahana: what’s up?
Me: feeling unokay
Sahana: i know. had an intuition.
Me: bro synced hearts bro
Sahana: i wish u could know how much u matter to me
Me: i know i know
Sahana: no. i could remind you all day everyday and u still won’t be able to comprehend how muchhhhh you mean to me. it can’t be put into words.

i kept my phone away and cried for a long long time. then i tried to click pictures of me crying. not a good idea.

my heart has a bluetooth that’s always turned on (modern hearts n all). given the absence of a manual, i thought it worked on proximity, and i’d have to be close to someone for them to have full access to me. so i’d always pull myself away at any hint of danger for utmost cybersecurity. it worked. i hated that. i know you relate. but there’s sahana, connected directly to it regardless of any distance whatsoever between us. my blob-partner. heart sync-er.

point is, honestly i don’t know what day it is today, except that it’s 4 days before i meet sahana again.

• I’m a poet and writer by heart, and currently working as an AI Language Trainer. The irony is not lost on me, unfortunately, and cripples me regularly. This account is an attempt at gaining some control over my life with my other childhood besties: words.

• Kiaa is a bosswoman with her own lab-grown diamond business. She’s constantly in meetings, hustling all the time, and has a trunk load of health issues that send us all into bouts of stress.

• Kartikay just completed his master’s in clinical psychology and is preparing for an entrance exam that might land him in another city, miles and miles away from us instead of the usual 6 minutes by auto and 15 minutes by walking (if I elaborate on what this makes me feel, the world will blur and so I shan’t).

• Vee is completing her BA LLB and on her way to become a corporate lawyer soon!

• Sahana is preparing for a top-notch government exam and gets moments of anxiety that turn her inside out. She pulls through always, with the help of her need to change the system caused by her strong hatred of it. And her 19732834936 billion skincare products.

• Agrima is more absent than she’s present these days, but when she’s really present, her absence ceases to exist. She’s pursuing Hotel Management, consistently busy, hangs out with people we don’t know (and thus stronglyyyy envy), and rarely ever shows up to our group hangouts. But once in a blue moon, she sends us the loveliest paragraphs detailing how much she loves and misses us and all feels okay in the world.
  
  

We aren’t any different from other infant adults. We talk about loneliness, ambitions, dreams, careers, and our future obsessively whenever we meet. We also talk about exes, parents, siblings, friends, friends’ exes (and dustbin-atom-men). We talk about religion, the consistency of our pooping, the colors of our dog’s poops, spirituality, poetry, the changing sounds of our farts, art, stretch marks on our boobs (which kartikay pretends to not hear), politics, our schoolmates, men, women, Camus vs Sartre (Vee: I prefer absurdism over existentialism, it sounds funkier to me), new bedroom fantasies (which Kartikay pretends to not hear again), our schoolmates, and everything else that enters our world in whatever form and shape. Including our schoolmates :P

Most of all, we talk about the idea of ‘meaning’, struggle with it really. Questions such as “What am I supposed to do?”, “What am I supposed to be?”, “Who am I currently?”, and “Who am I becoming?” are the subtexts of much of this grand symphilosophizing.

So really, we aren’t any different from other infant adults. But we’re infant adults figuring out this whole adulting business together, and maybe that makes all the difference.

Anyway, here are my 2 cents (subject to change, but also not really): I think there’s no meaning in this world because “existence precedes essence” (Sartre 4eva!). I think we must create our own meaning. While I’m unsure of the serious bits of it, I think an important part of my meaning is love and I love my friends very very much. So, this substack is a love letter to them.

One they won’t receive for a while.

My dearest readers, can you keep a secret for me? ;)