Ankit Kulshrestha

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Misfortunate are those who have never been misfortunate.

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Male ego

Once there stood a mortal laden with a mountain size ego. Needless to specify the gender since “wise men don’t state the obvious” my father often says. The mountain kept growing over the years as did the mortal’s ego. Mountain didn’t shy to flash it’s one and only strength. Once a canary was spiralling above the mountain. The giant was lured to the canary’s unprecedented beauty. A hole was dug, leaves were laid out for the bedding and loads of food was gathered enough to feed the canary for next two hundred years. Mountain offered the canary a dream house with a powerful guard. The nest was as beautiful as a castle. But for the bird, it was sky that was at stake. There was no choice to make. It was easy picking. Sky is bigger than the castle. The bird spoke her heart out to the mountain. But giant was adamant . There was no choice for the bird but to shoot for the sky. The agony swept the surrounding and Mountain wept day and night. For Villagers , the tears were rain drops. A hot summer drizzle was blessing from the god. They danced to the roar of the mountain and swayed & swirl to the groaning. As the festivities continue, dark smoke covered the sky and no one could see nothing. No one could hear nothing. Only the next day, the sunlight brought the clarity with it and it was revealed mountain was nothing more than a pile of heap. It was washed away with its own tears. And the villagers were still singing “Skyscrapers , male ego, palm trees and everything in nature ; Height is an empty stature.”

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Miss reality

Words filled with jaggeries

Hearing you once makes me inebriated.

Delicate as dove

You are the definition of love.

I won’t say it

You won’t get it

How to say it

I asked on Reddit

“You don’t dare”

Says blue streak in your hair.

There’s a city of mermaids

And you are it’s mayor

I have carved your name on my heart

You are the provenance of my relief

You are the concoction of duality and singularity

Your name is Ms. Reality.

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I despise women. I hate their mere existence. I even hate boys with long hair. Anything that resembles even slightly with a women I destroy it. It all started when I was trying to push my limits and get expertise in one area that I have been bestowed upon by my great grandfather. Magic that’s been in my blood for two generations. But like every business it has to be expanded and it’s more so now than ever because now tricks like pulling a pigeon out of my sleeves or sticking pencil on palm had become obsolete. I tried cutting a lady in half but I had to split the profit in half too. There was an urgent need for an overhaul and I was determined to expand boundaries. I went to this foreign land - Magic arena. I heard even a potter can make you fly here. But I just needed a handful of them. I had only two days before my next mega magic fair in village that lies in mathura district. As I returned from the short voyage, I found my wife mounting on a stone chowki in the porch. Only silhouette of me was enough to make her eyes glint and she scurried towards me. She wished to see a glimpse of my newly acquired skill. I asked for a pot full of water and she came back after five minutes. She seemed so restless like always tripping over her own toe that she almost spilled the water but she successfully handed me over the pot. I swirled my hands in two horizontal eights and recited the mantra in a hushed voice. Wifey was rubbing hands in exhilaration and her eyes were glimmering. I told her that the water will neutralise and nullify the magic. Then my body was wobbling on toes and I fluttered my fingers and created a big O. I recited an incantation that had never been enchanted on this land. My body started to shrink and tiny brown furs erupted from my body and I could chant no more. As I tried to speak only a screeching sound came out. Wifey could see her blood in my incisors and my crooked nails. That was enough to startle her and she took a step back. The Pot got kicked and water splashed onto my legs. It wasn’t a mammoth task but she failed. I was half human and half monkey. That made me furious and my body was ablaze with orange light. I strived forward and took a plunge and extract a piece of meat from her neck.Since that day I loathe women. But why do all women have to suffer the consequence of my wife's blunder. I know it's not fair. No logical human in all his senses would do that. But I am not human. Am I ??

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Yearn for adventures, not me

Jump off the cliff and dive into the sea

Take your ship , sail and flee

shore is getting crowded

It’s a new morning, don’t get shrouded

Ice is warm and fire is cold

Life is living and death is dying

Boat is rowing and river is flowing

Truth is happy and lie is crying

Mountains are bending and adventures are trending

Oh sweet dove! You do seek love

do not stay here. Go ahead

Coz your life is pending.

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You spend a day with a couple and you'll realize how it is full of bubbles of emotions bursting each moment. Sometimes words start to melt in their mouth before speaking and sometimes they are so deep that they start trickling down from their eyes. This a time when people do marriages to clear their head.

That's how I make myself feel good when almost all my friends are getting married 😔

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Melting in the fire

I am sitting in room in paradise. Your sweat is falling on my shoulders and you are pressing them hard. I feel ablaze. Mercury is on the rise. Then I witnessed a drop of liquid trickling down your cheeks and dripping from your sharp blade chin. I open my mouth and acknowledge its savoury taste. Capturing that moment seems necessary as it is our last meeting but cameras has their limitations. So I’ll use my eyes instead. You open your hair and now they lay carefully around your neck. But I still see a shiny bobby pin entangled in your hair, your luminous face and glistening hands. A moment passes only to observe your torn dress and sweat on your back. Around all this mess there are two major objectives for me to pursue - one is this body and other is a caress. And then we burn together - two intertwined skeletons over the pyre. Now we can’t move from each other. I feel an intangible wire pulling us together. The only option we are left with is to melt in this fire.

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Prarabdha and My understanding of nirvana

My friend and I were taking a walk around our hostel and as we returned to gate of hostel , he said “oh look ! We are at our prarabdha”. Unable to curb my curiosity I asked him what are you talking about and I know about it but that’s not what it is. And then we took few more circles around the hostel and discussed about it at length but our discussion amounted to nothing concrete. I went back to my room , browsed on the Internet and search through library books. Prarabdha which can closely relate to an English word inception or conception. If our life is a circle, it’s perhaps the start point of it. How we all are closing the circle of our life. How we are becoming what we hated about our life the most. I remember when I was learning bicycle and it was 6th day, I was passing by a gigantic pothole which was a usual site back then if you live in Agra. I started hundred metre from the pothole and then braced my shoulders before bicycle tyres rolled on that ten inch space beside the pothole. But I was not content so I turned around and took another chance. This time as tyres reached that ten inch space , my hands trembled and my legs stopped paddling. Perhaps my whole nervous system got corrupted and the next moment I found myself inside this puddle of muddy water. Luckily, pothole was not that deep and I could stand on feet but my left calf got rubbed with the side of pothole but I jumped up to my feet and picked up my bicycle and went to home. Soon I realised a trickle of blood was also finding its way through my forehead to my cheeks and then dripping from my chin. I went to my parents and first they got shocked and worried but when I told them what happened they seemed awfully relieved. Deep furrowed lines on my father’s forehead faded away. My mom said ‘oh finally you’ve learnt bicycle’ I said ‘no, I failed mom. Perhaps you didn’t listen.’ My father “but that’s how learn son.” That was the time I was not familiar with the concept of how you have to go through hell fire before reaching heaven. But still I hated that how they believed that learning pattern for everyone is same and I hated how confident and condescending they were about it. They saw patterns in every thing in my life and theirs. And now I see myself how I’ve become the same person as my parents used to be. The ideas that I rejected so outrightly that i called a bundle of napkins not even worthy of wiping my ass. But that’s what I was taught in my childhood and partially believed in the cosmic way universe works without knowing the philosophy of it. now too as the circle of life is closing , I’m getting to believe everything and become all those things that I hated about my parents. l’m starting to see pattern in everything that happens with me.

There was one more incident that deepens my belief in closing the circle of life. I think most us had that idea of running away from our home and never coming back. I too had thought and done it numerous times. There was one time when we four siblings were spending our summer vacations at our paternal aunt’s house and father came to visit us. My aunt served snacks and tea for him. I was gnawing at nugget sitting at one corner of the table and my sister staring at me with her bloodshot eyes reminding me my mannerism. But that really hit hard my pride and gate was at height from the ground so I took a plunge into the street and make my way to an unexplored road. Before anyone can fathom what happened I had already crossed the last familiar street and completely lost in a labyrinth. There was only one thought in my mind that is to make my family suffer more and then blame my sister for my psychotic venture. With each turn, roads were transforming into a hazy maze. But then I see a building garnished with blue tiles as its façade. I was in a street that I’ve never been before but I was completely acquainted with the sight in front of me. I saw my cousin running towards me. I looked back and forth making my face flutter like a leaf in heavy wind. I was perplexed whether to execute my long thought plan or recede to the desire of me getting another bite of that snack. Then I felt a tight grip on my shoulders. My cousin had grabbed me with both his hands and picked me up like a trophy as a sign of his victory. But I know that wasn’t his victory rather my surrender to the taste of hand made nuggets that my aunt served.

I haven’t stopped runnnig since then . Even now I find myself putting all efforts to lose and never to find myself again. Probably I’ve been partially successful. How can I stop myself ?? In childhood it was so simple to hold myself just for a little piece of nugget but now it’s really hard to find anything that can put me to halt. I guess I’ve lost all sorts of lust and found nirvana or maybe my lust has grown so big that any worldly pleasure doesn’t suffice. But I feel elated at the idea that at least the source of my lust lies outside this universe.

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Marinated in love

Full of life and a source of bliss

Reminiscence of chapped lips and a kiss.

Every syllable in her voice.

Makes my eyes dilated.

Her name is joice.

Each rule of universe seems violated.

And she is my unassailable choice.

But still I’m in the list of awaited.

In the magic of her eyes.

Soaked in her love

Waiting to get marinated.

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What are we if not a stationary tree in the transitory wind of time.

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Only truth in our life our past and future is a tinted glass.

Past is our weapon and future is the war.

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A Bubble of vanity and A treaty of peace

The sophomore year always brings more responsibility and controversies. May be they feed on each other. Looking at freshers fills you with authority but seniors are always pulling you in random puddles of controversies. One fine Sunday morning ,surrounded by many such freshmen I was preaching a lesson in how to avoid solitude in our mundane monotonous college routine.Room was teeming with such losers and wanted to get rid of that tag. But what I could not afford to tell them is I was a loser too in my freshmen year. They were listening to me because they saw me with bunch of their classmates - a girl with foxy eyes and the other with curly hair. When someone enquired about that how do I do it, I made bold claim. I pressed one guy’s shoulder and declared that I’ll set him up with the same girl I was roaming around in the morning. But somehow that news got leaked before I could even step in this adventurous venture of mine. The claimed girl came to know about my naïve statement. When she saw me next morning I saw her scurrying towards me. I braced my shoulders and cheekbones for an anticipated tight slap. But she didn’t slap , instead she hit hard on my hard earned vanity and it was shattered on the ground a second later. “I’m not yours to sell , sir” this sentence echoed in my mind till sky started to fill with clouds.And then the day followed with the persistent precipitation from the sky and constant perspiration from my body. And fusion of it ignited a fire of agony and I was drowned in a sea of shame. I was pecking at rice and curry under shade beside the canteen lost in foliage. Two girls came running towards me and first one persuaded me to talk to the other - the one who reprimanded my intrusion in her personal life. She appeared with a white flower as the first girl dissolved into molecules. She said few words that I couldn’t hear and then extended her hand and a tear dropped from her dilated eyes as she uttered a word that assuaged my pain and a word that alone could have avoided the thousands of bloody wars- “Peace”. I couldn't say no. She was too cute to turn away the treaty.

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A Concoction of emotions and A wind of time

I remember when my sister brought her home. Her innocent eyes were training on me and as my sister moved forward bearing that tiny magic in her lap, she took a big plunge and astonished me with bouncing ability of her puffy cute legs. But not everything about her was lovely. Waking up beside her was not always a fancy sight. It wasn’t much in the beginning as her tiny body only occupied a portion of my bed. With time I found myself waking up in a swamp of white furs. It was a horrendous sight to see everything bathed in those furs. I despised her for that. But everyone in my house loved her. My mom prepared her breakfast before mine. My sister used to visit meat shop weekly to buy some mutton for her. My father dedicated a portion of his morning meditation time to take her to walk around the neighbourhood. Everything around me was changing like a chemical reaction and she was the catalyst. Once few neighbour kids visited and offered her bread, I saw how she started wagging her tail just like she did when i offered her something to eat. It didn’t feel right. It was something meant only for me. At least that’s what I thought. I can’t believe how that little creature made me so possessive of itself. I remember naming her Tera and my sister trying to distort it to Terri. We had a big fight stretching over few days before I made it clear I won’t compromise on this. I despised Tera for leaving scars on my hands with claws that were emerging out from those harmless looking paddy paws. And when she clung her incisors in a carry bag and I tried to snatch it away, she showed one more loathing quality of her being so tenacious that she was swinging in the air when I hold that bag in my hand and tried moving it vigorously. She didn’t lose the hold. It was always a mix of emotions - a concoction of love and hate that I had for her. May be there’s never a desecration line between hate and love. May be they are always invading in each other’s territory. And then there is time - ever changing slipping away 1000 miles per hour. Seems like Earth is spinning but we are not. And what we are if not a stationary tree in the transitory wind of time.

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The Caterpillar

It is slowly crawling on a leaf with its gut coming in and out. For every little step it combats with the friction on tiny vein spreading all over the leaf. It enjoys what it does no matter if all its life it will do nothing but this. A man comes closer passing by the trees. He intuitively and willingly wants to feel its sloppy skin. But It distinguishes his finger lines from its paving veins and camouflaged to conceal itself. Unable to find it the man lost his interest in the leaf and and refocus his heed to the box of glass and fibre he was holding. Then it realises that all this what it faced is just a tip and iceberg is yet to come. It wishes if it could fly away from the stranger instead of hiding like a coward. It spends all its evening praying to the god that it never have to hide again and find a way to go far from that man and never come back.

 From the next day onwards its skin becomes thicker. It feels no hunger and it becomes so plumpy that it hangs upside down from a twig because of its overweight. Darkness all around thinking if that iceberg has come or it is just a glimps. It starves inside that shell till there is no alternative other than eating its own body counting its days reaching towards the end. The next time it feels consciousness it has power to elevate from that boring green pathway it thought it'll die on. It feels that power near its shoulders and stretches them open and revealing one more dimension in space. Perhaps the prayer of that evening worked and now it is all ready to confront the man.

 Perhaps the man is also eager to test his enemy's new abilities. This time the man shows up but it doesn't hide.It reveals its beauty to the man and uses the air to flee not the leaf to hide. Little does it know its new skillset may well lift his courage to the sky but it can hardly surpass the man's cruel reach considerng the size of his greed for aesthetics. He would rather consider the butterfy seductress but not pretty. Man opens the net and catches the butterfly as you would think this was meant to be. The caterpillar replaced its life saving arrow to a more fancy one and it had to pay the price but did it had any other option?

Irresistable, irreversible and most importantly inevitable. And it still remains coward because instead of hiding now it was running and more precisely flying away.

Isnt this our story? Of course, Veins can be replaced with struggles, caterpillar's crawling with our progress,its transformation with our puberty but man  remains man in our story too. Seriously no substitute for that.

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Don't show off your feelings

Why words mean so much? Why your actions have to show what you feel? And isn't showing feelings is show off? Can't we just keep everything to ourselves and convey only things which matter to the other person. But then you are mean and careless. Maybe you just don't feel like to speak. Maybe when you can speak, you don't feel the same.

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Love is a myth. There's no love. Just lust.

Random feelings and compromise and friendship and care.

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Waiting for your message

Now there's no one

I can tell my stories to.

Now there's no one

I can share my problems with.

I look at my phone

Whenever it chimes

You took everything.

You see

My poetries now

Doesn't even rhyme.

You are there in my every tear

You forgave me

But actually you didn't.