Week-6, 7 days ago, i had my feet dipped down in the puddle. in front of the alma matter that ruined and shaped my personal dogmas in 3 years of some what decent institutionalised life. I say institutionalised because i was surrounded with the corpses of people carrying themselves with the lungs filled with tar and false words. Their mouth were covered by the lies of algorithm that helped them shape how they “should” be. Their paradigm of how they walk and the vocabulary themselves carry helped me figure out i can not bother myself fitting in, college has a devastating way to make you feel how long and scarce life will become if you keep on living on with the fingers swiping and scrolling through the escape of “feeling of missing out”.

It will find you, in the shapes of 4 limbs, 1 head and numerous faces. The same faces will keep on changing the way our attention spans out the next moment new trend swipes in how you should look in front the same faces that wont be constant when your limbs are tired and your head is spiraling. In my own personal life i have a very constant thing that has been staying with me for the past 6 years, my beloved bike.

it does not have the power nor the reputation that it has used to do before COVID-19, this bike used to be the fucking beast and every middle class boy (one myself) used to dream to endow such raw power that can be tamed with 2 limbs and 10 fingers. it is the first and the last thing i try to be on after a crying session when the world feels heavier on the shoulders of someone i no longer want to be, i say to myself everyday “am i strong and evident enough to be Sahil?’’. i have been running away from this feeling for awhile since a part of me is somewhere floundered in the breezes i used to feel between my hair when i used to overspeed between the curves that was assured that one small mistake, one small miscalculation around the corner and i will lose my life admist the rocks i was roughly riding on. Well it would not have been a total lost since river Ganga was just right beside the corner and instead of ashes it would have consumed the psoriasis induced body that has been fighting for its own cells for 24 years now.

3 years passed by without dying, devastatingly. it was time to finish my life between those mountains that shaped my hair and these beautiful eyebrows (I'm not sorry ladies, mine are just better). it was time to move forward to the concrete jungle to finally start a career that is exciting yet scary, funny thing was out of all concrete jungles - i am sitting between the mirages. Shaped by failed government and social media reciting the life is here is exciting (only if you spend 1k+ every night to be relevant). it has been 3 months since i started this job which is helping me not to lose my hair because i like the job and my life has worked out in a silly way. So it was time to bring the beloved bike to this walls of mirage, 2 days ago my bike arrived in the parcel office of New Delhi, i went the day after to pick it up from the parcel office. i arrived around 7pm, took me 5 minutes to reach the warehouse where it was beautifully wrapped between air bubble wraps and i could see it shine between the gaps. It was calling me seductively to touch her the way i have touched my lovers (AHEM), i paid a small fee and went out to get petrol, silly me i forgot i cant not fill my tank with E20 petrol since it is not compatible i only go for the power petrol it makes my bike growl like a cat once provoked.

i had it filled up with full capacity and mind you i have not started my bike since it had no fuel (you can not parcel your bike via railway unless your tank is empty from the starting destination). i tried starting it.. it did not start, i tried for 30minutes and it was evident the battery is completely drained because the battery has gotten old and used up. it was almost 9pm with the office attire on i was sweating like Jordan peele all over my body. i dragged my bike for almost 5kms in order to find a mechanic and i did not find a single one since it was almost 10pm and everything got closed. i remembered they have websites for calling instant mechanic for such situations so i contacted one, a lady picked up and i was already exhausted so i explained my situation to her and she said her company only serve to the people who has their car broken down… by then i lost all hopes, i already planned to stay over a hotel and take a leave from the office tomorrow morning. i dragged my bike 2kms more then a guy passed by me and stopped to help me, by then it was 10:15pm. He tried jump starting my bike but for both of us, it was a lost cause since my bike for the second time in my life has given up on me (first time was bit romantical because i had this girl i had a crush on she was taking a tour with me and my bike broke down in the middle of the forest, then a person pulled by helped us like a hero and i never stopped thinking about it because that one incident changed my life with that one woman. She has risen my standards to the point i would rather stay single for 20 more years just to cross my paths with her again).

The guy bought me water and food because he witnessed how exhausted i seemed, without asking or whatsoever he treated me like a guest in the middle of random road. He called some of his friends to help me (3 more guys) till then we shared a cigarette and we wet on making conversations about our lives, he told me his name and it was a beautiful name. the name itself was evident enough we both have different faith in Gods, yet i saw god in him. As a disguise on a stranger smiling and helping me like i am no subject of Sins that i have committed and no subject of saint that i have accumulated. When his friends reached by our location it was almost 11pm, we both got tired starting the bike but my sweet lady would not just start it was like she’s just angry with the words i wield because words have power and we should wield them wisely and it was her own way her showing me i may have crossed a boundary leaving her alone for 2 months, my fingers were letters to the rhythm i used to spark her through the tress and the song of the river we crossed together (mind you i have NEVER crashed my bike in 6 years #TouchWood).

All 4 of them took to me to a place in New Delhi to grab something to eat and drink, after sharing a meal together all 5 of us for the last time tried to jump start my bike.. after 10mins of trying when it was striking 12:02am my bike was alive again and my destination was 1 hour away from the starting point so it was time to take my leave, before leaving i told them to stay with me for 5 more minutes so i can share my gratitude towards them to helping me out, as any human one would be shy to such say things but i cried in front of them… the way they helped me in a strange city with such kindness i never expected from anyone here. All of us shared a group hug making promises that we will sit together this weekend to share a meal again but in their own house, food made by their own kind mothers. The mothers that have raised incredible and kind men for helping a stranger such late night in the the city of soaring criminals. They made me feel like i have a home in Delhi, i have a family in Delhi.

i left, i left the place with teary eyes playing the playlist i made for myself when i ride my beautiful bike, that night’s air had something else it was so full of adversities, humility, kindness and love that i forgot how soulless i had become for past 2 weeks because of routine to maintain my social life and career.

That night i was not.. scared at all, not even alone by myself i was not scared since i have become a man of myself that i can solely protect myself with the fist that have shed blood in the early stage of developing a part of my brain when i was 17, maybe it is not my time to leave maybe it is my right to be Sahil with soles made up of random acts of universe to stand more longer in the rain, run more faster in the sand and when the time comes.. laid with the same clothes i had on when i thought i am glad i am alive.

i wish i never had curly hair - hear me out where majority and netizens tell you how curls are the indication of infidelity among the endowment of people who are starting to lose the definition and textures due to hard water in the same metro city they promised themselves to build a life around. I got everything i wanted but in the process my family fell apart and my intimacies broke down like a cracker in parrot’s peak, Tej Zubaab yet fail to keep his own words when the cage is finally open but too scared to flap the feathers of “freedom” he made for himself. i wish i never had curly hair because no amount of sharp look i will try to pull the humidity will make sure my lover will taste the appalling taste of my sweat when they kiss me.

i am ashamed the way my numbers of being intimate with people are increasing with no sense of commitment.

(Incomplete)

i type this with a heavy heart, not to make a poetry out of it but the way my injured fingers align the words on this nearly broken laptop to address how much of a coward i am. how much, my brother asked- i stutter to find the words in this labyrinth and subdued mind how defeated i feel in certain ways - the accomplishment i take pride in just vanishes when i scroll through my Instagram feed, how desperately i ran away when i picked up that injured girl in the crowd of Jantar Mantar in order to save her from goons of “democracy”, how pathetic i feel when i tell someone i have lost 6kgs of my weight ever since i moved to Delhi, how naive i feel when i write words and it pours like honey but when i open my mouth it sounds like static of radios- echoes that surrounded the protest when everyone was running, how pathetic i felt when i broke the connections of years i built upon love yet broken by propaganda and critical thinking. the beliefs i had for this one person i used to look upto has a broken spine, rather made of sugarcane grown out of the lands of unknown. Sweet, refreshing yet expensive. How expensive? my step father asked- i proceeded telling it has the same value of losing a cat, a cat? he asked, again how naive of me to compare a cat and sugarcane right? how do i make anyone understand when i found my cat 3 weeks later in a ditch she was covered by ants, a significance of sweetness when i finally had the relief of seeing her yet my baby rotted like a sweet substance i could never choose because unconditional love is expensive, is what i said. Every year its same- i open this laptop in the hopes of 15 seconds of fame, those 15 seconds are as volatile as my tears when i break down seeing a child begging me to save her when police were lathi charging her and her sister, i picked her up and held the sister by another hand. i searched for water, strangers helped those sisters as i struggle to inhale because tear gas went off Infront of me. A stranger picked my bag when i was gasping for air and he helped me like a god in disguise through the crowd when i could not see anything besides the screams of the same rights of constitution i showed up for, i still remember admiring the cartoons on every pages of NCERT books how mockery they were how full of satire and soul they were. How coward my teacher asked? in the sense i should have hit harder i should not have pull my punches back in school when i was getting bullied because i could not grasped my father’s ashes, i could not see his body when he passed away in the random morning- smiling knowing he has healed yet his giblets failed him so he went out smiling like a hero knowing a child of his, back home reading Oliver twist and playing Assassins creed 3 would be okay. Every game i have played all these years had the elements of being an heretic, a beautiful preposition of a word describing how NOT to be a coward.

How coward?.. you should have asked me, maybe then you would have known my insecurities are not mine, my shortcoming are not mine, my indifferences are not mine and how i could not be yours in this life. So yes im a coward for stepping back to run like a freedom fighter my friends used to describe how i look, i look- not ancient not modern yet sculpted from an era of rebellion, the same golden waves i was painting for you when i went how beautiful those stairs are where im making a canvas for you. Before i even choose another brush to stroke the details of an intimacy i am desperately trying to paint, the textures broke i wish i had it saved in the archives of mind where 2 of my cats live, they play and break things to make peace with the stability i have right now after you left.

when i came back after the protest, few of my peers called to check up on me- i picked up with the fingers soaked in the bloods of my youth, how small i am to be a coward and how big people make me to be a coward. push me pull me i lost my affection for my authority where equality is me getting beaten up just to feel something or make me bleed to make me feel alive. how painfully i chew food now with utterance of no words yet actions- lengthened in such alluring way even frequency of my voice would not reach but my words will.

As I pick up another book to read, I can't comprehend the burden of emotions this movie and book left me. It has been ages since he's gone and I still have his helmet in my room back in my hometown, sheltering the chess pieces me and my brother used to play.

i wish to live like Ashoke except the smoking part i wish to have a family like his to understand the subdued feelings of losing an identity while being quiet.

i wish to love like him and eventually when in deathbed and have no regrets except the fact I still have that hollow helmet sheltering the chess pieces in the room I was grown and fed. i wish my mother knew the burden of knowledge and words has taken over my mind.

i wish my brother knew the amount of love can not be measured in this life time I have for him. i wish rusty knew the amount of hairs i miss over my shoulders and arms stuck between the very fabrics i used to despise as she passed away.

I left before making a statement, it wasn't worth the contingency it would create that you have been avoiding in the past.

Present? It was evident the gifts of connection we built with those words of music we share, as your beautiful mother made us food to eat.

Past? I had my hair cut short, only if i knew id meet someone new like you, the remaining light in the filament of darkest room in the town and yet i wept for your absence.

Future? There's a future someone like us will again sit on those chairs and eat the same food with the same presence of humidity in the air which made my hair curly before i met you, hair was short but the memories are longer than the hair i deliberately chose to cut.

I do know how difficult it gets sometimes to sit with it, you can not run away from it even accepting the part of what has become is road of longevity and latency echoed around the trees we hugged each other. Like it or not i still wear the same New balance pair i walked through the crumbling paths of himachal when i was just thinking how unstable the leaves get when they part ways with the branches that bleeds green and blue.

I wish the trees know how with each mile i hugged the possibility of how this could be my last time hugging the ground, same roots i belonged to when i left my crumbling home to put on this attire of “growth” and “success”.

Ghar walo ka kehna tha, bahar jao paise kamao.

Instead i earned people and connections, bound not to leave my side when my identity collapsed in the middle of November. I put on my blue kurta as always and keep on following you in hopes of inspiration.

in the middle of this year, laying down beside the ghats of ganga staring at the stars I remembered it was the day you were born and suddenly all i can see is beautiful shooting stars heading towards to something much more profound and beautiful.

The hesitance was clear as the water i had my feet dipped in thinking, is the water green or blue? If it was green I could have just left thinking maybe i should just start walking towards the two wheeler that i take every week to my beloved Rishikesh, same place i pray for the colors i want in my life.

Stupid enough to realise the second later i have every crayons in my pocket of the grey pants i take everywhere with, the same pants that soaked the tears of guilt and hedonistic behaviour. People say to detach my expectations of you calling me your green.

Green, the color of nature and it’s disparity to eliminate everything in its way because its scared to be touched again. Call me a weak man but im the bravest among the peers who look upto me, such as green.

Andrew garfield once said, "i hope this grief stays me because it's all the unexpressed love that i didn't get to tell her" about his mothers passing is so gut wrenchingly beautiful because we rarely talk about the love we want to express but can't, not because you're not brave enough to say it out loud but because they're not here to listen to it anymore. calling grief the love you never had the chance to share makes it less of a burden and more of something you want to keep and not something terrible you want to move on from. i love love how everything about grief always comes down to "what is grief if not love persevering?"

Preserving the art you shared with me when i went speechless and almost teared up, mother said its okay, chalta hai koi or mil jayega. How do i tell her im tired, tired of constant chase of approval im as same as you are.

Scary enough I’m at west facing onto your direction as i write and embarrass myself again, i will keep embarrass myself since my capacity of me loving myself has grown to the point even if it is not reciprocated.. i will live and still loving on.

both bound by the strings attached by certainty of brittleness.

Where would we go said the dog looking up as the owl tried to hide between the rotation of his bruised neck, he turned figuratively knowing tears would travel to the wound caused by the same branch laid for the dog.

saying "Even mere clarity would have been sufficed if the stick was never broken in the first place, the same paws you used for running would have been a blanket for the flock you guard with your drooling life sweeping away"

Dog again wept away in the hopes of redemption of the same narrative he was fed since he was a pup, shifting through kennel to kennel in the hopes of foundation of a home he was never promised.

The weeping Owl stayed with the marks of bite wondering what he thought of a mere branch cause his neck bleeding, bleeding away the ability to look back.

A stubborn neck, caused by the uncertainty of foundation both sought for.

Stories.. all my stories from Instagram i was posting non-stop, before reels it was stories - i made friends and connections throughout the most potent years of my life as i growing up, iremember telling this to the ones i love and have loved profoundly. Every pixel of my screen has seen the tormented life i had since years, thank god my suffering was not revolved in the era of artificial intelligence or maybe then iwould not have preached about not using AI in my decision making skills. People tend to forget where to use AI and where NOT to especially in interpersonal relationship we all talk about and take unsolicited advices from influencers who somehow knows what’s the objective mirror of a relationship and not to divert the audiences into thinking many things are ephemeral and subjective in an intimacy which is shared between two people.

i am a terrible human being, rather someone who should be held accountable for the things i have said and done in between the years of covid-19. Some may differ through the eyes of prism and ears of an Owl, they have seen and heard the most unjust things i have said and done to my peers yet still i celebrated this new year with them with no sight of judgement. As someone who’s struggling to uphold the stillness of foundation of friendships i have somewhere landed in the base of love, acceptance and appreciation.

we all talk about insecurities given by the internet, to start with it was never ours - i have been called ugly on internet and i find it truly amusing how people on internet knows the part of me i did not even know, i’m going to be 23 in few weeks and instead of people i choose the rubles of the unknown road i have never travelled amidst being a person who saved me many years ago i was fighting with to save that one relationship.

I’m not going to talk about the details since every single one of you have different and subjective ending stories between the parallel line you are stuck once separated. Every single magic and every blossom you admire in the roads of Bangalore happens there, the “gap” i call it the void of air. cheesy word yet i discovered, it was between the void or being a resentful man in my twenties.

My writings are not perfect and maybe it never will be… but at least a part of my designated soul will be in equilibrium. The void of air gives you enough strength in your lungs, in-between that beating heart to breathe as you are swinging in the chains of redemption but not enough endurance to swirl and break the pair.

This is where it gets complicated for someone who is confused between being forgiven or redeemed.

The terms "redeem" and "redemption" are closely related but differ in grammatical function and nuanced usage. "Redeem" is a verb that refers to the action of saving, freeing, or improving something or someone, often by paying a price or making amends and "Redemption," on the other hand, is a noun that denotes the state or result of being saved or restored.

I was saved - by me finally but my revelation of redemption came from the fingers which kept the memories tight like sand and the stones between made enough friction to cause indifference and i finally let it go, because i finally got familiar with uncertainties and i’m in totally love with uncertainties. Yes i was uncertain how well of a partner i’m going to be in a relationship because i have destroyed many and as a man i was exhausted for not building something lucid with soul to soul.

I find it hilarious when i look back and see how things ended in a perpetuated manners yet i chased into the abyss but one of you took revenge and made a Smut between me and Harry styles… i mean who does that with such manner of resentment but i understand and i had it coming for a long time.

So yeah if you look deep enough in the internet you might just find an erotica including me and the guy whose artistic implication is rather peculiar and i’m not quite fond of.

The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.

This winter chokes us in the ideation of dichotomy: choosing sweaters on a horrendous hair day, lacking warm water to cleanse your face, or the bore of eating too many oranges.

It is elusive in nature, how it confronts us—in the way your bedsheet is cold on one side and your pillow feels puffed out with moisture.

I see the performance of beauty when Pyramid Head kills Maria and the other monsters to erase the delusions from James Sunderland’s mind and force him to remember his crime. His subconscious is trying to snap him out of illusion. (Silent Hill)

It’s how subdued food and alcohol feel once they’ve finished making you stop dancing the way you used to, and when the party ends you are burdened by the torment of cleaning up the mess you consciously created but who cares, as long as the subjective mind is satisfied when you sleep on your monthly-equated furniture.

While it kills you to pedal past the bakery where your father used to buy whole-wheat bread because the other kinds choke you. Fathers are not perfect; they are simply the embodiment of a cold breeze in a clouded sky. The warmth comes when you step into the room your father built by being in the sky.

Winters are for lovers, I think. One might beg to differ, but personally I have loved meeting my partners, letting their warm hair rest on my sweaters. Surely I caused enough stress to make their follicles break against my own cold skin.

Oh, such vanity to have no hedonism will corrode you inside out, the same way you quit swimming because you hated how you looked in the sunny morning. Your face is not ready, your lips are sealed. Yet you try to break yourself like an orange.