Andromeda

She/Her

[yourliterarywasteland]

It irks me when people say they don't see colour. Really, why ? Ya blind ? Of course not. There are so many colours with so many shades and there are 7 billion of us around, of course you see colour. You want to be an ally, you want to support body positivity, you want to show you aren't colourist ? Then you have to see colour. You need to acknowledge the fact that we are all shades of the spectrum and that we're different. I don't need you to tell me that I'm a little "less dark" or a "little wheatish" because that's colourist. You're implying your passive judgment through your subtle placation that fair is somehow better than dark and I don't need that. No one does. No one is superior or inferior because of the colour of their skin. I need you to see that. And I need you to acknowledge the colour of my skin because I DO.

[yourliterarywasteland]

Verse

There was a verse , lying here somewhere .

I think I left it on the balcony or maybe under the mattress .

It could be under the coaster or crumpled on the seat ,

I might have kept it in the kitchen inside the old box of tea .

It could be in the laundry , beneath the dirty sheets .

Or Maybe I left it hanging on the sill right besides the keys .

The last that I remember I was sitting on the patio ,

sipping some apple cider and watching the moving shadows .

Just when I relaxed, the phone inside abuzzed .

I left the verse along with my half empty cup .

Rushing to the call of something all but unimportant ,

I left the verse alone thinking all but forgotten .

And just when I returned to my half sipped cider ,

I reached for my verse beloved but I couldn't seem to find her .

I've been looking since forever , searching inside out .

I finally make my way back to the patio somehow .

I sit at last sighing, a beleaguered a mess ,

my eyes pop out and my spine's all erect .

There's my pretty verse being recited and read .

The stars look so wooed and the moon smiles at rest ,

he smirks a little slyly at the stolen address .

The verse being recited by this contended thief ,

I look aghast , bewildered unable to believe .

The pirate in the sky sold my words to the stars ,

and Alas as I sat watching them from afar .

The poet in me sat forlorn and gazing , but it was better in the sky instead of sitting here and waiting .

For now the sky looked at peace and the moon so smug and cool ,

my verse must've left me , for the pretty bastard and I , a fool .

[yourliterarywasteland]

Being good is a conscious human effort that needs to be made at every second of every day. The first instinct that kicks in is usually the conditioning that makes you petty and hateful but the second voice of reason that follows which scolds you is our hard earned wisdom. Sometimes you give in and sometimes you persevere. But despite the anxiety and the mistrust you choose to be better. You choose to let go of the control you never had on someone's life. You choose to not be the person that you once were. You choose to not be hateful. You choose happiness and most of all you choose the progress that you've made. I'm not saying you're done learning or that you won't have one of these fails anymore. I'm just saying the next time you have a bad day you're going to do your best to remind yourself that you're better than that. You can always do better than that.

[yourliterarywasteland]

Everytime I look at a child sitting brazenly on the sofa not giving a crap about the covers or the dirt she's getting on the very expensive Pashmina, giggling with her mouth and legs wide open and knowing she's not going to get away with it, I am reminded of the joylessness around me. The child is told to sit properly, legs and mouth closed with only the appropriate amount of sound a person should make. And I know why. The adults get jealous and scared. They get so jilted and broken that they forget how to do those things and eventually project all of it on people who actually can. The joylessness gets scared of the joy these tiny creatures emanate so we want to squash it like a bug before it festers.

[yourliterarywasteland]

Because of the lockdown all our businesses have taken a huge hit financially. To restart, we've created Haus of Shakti to spread love and awareness through yoga.

We're bring you joy through all aspects of creativity and a healthy lifestyle. Join us in our journey virtually and all the people of delhi can sign up for personal consultation and classes.

Help us navigate through these tough times while we try to make your lives a little bit more pleasant and enjoyable. 🌼

[yourliterarywasteland]

We don't realise just how much trauma we carry inside. We think we're okay because the moment's gone and we haven't fallen apart so we're doing well, we're doing okay. But then time passes and every action, every decision, every move that we make stems from the place where that trauma stayed. We don't know for sure where or how it stayed but it does. We're over cautious, sensitive and obsessively careful. Every step now has you over analysing even the tiny irrelevant parts. And just when someone tells you to slow done, to relax, to not be anxious, you realise just how much it affected you and just how much of it you have inside.

[yourliterarywasteland]

Growing up, I heard about guilt multiple times. In a religious household, it's quite common. Books or movies, I've seen quite a few characters lashing themselves for things they felt guilty about. Humans constantly find a way to pacify the guilt they carry because it gets heavy after a point. That's the kind of burden no one wants to carry.

Guilt weighs so heavily on the conscience that you might easily lose your sleep over and your peace of mind. I've know it, seen it, felt it a little too closely. And I believe that's where redemption stems from. Some guilty hearts look for ways to punish themselves physically because the pain might wash their crimes away and some look for ways to do good to compensate for their actions as if that's going to cancel their deeds out. But do they really ? At what point do you start feeling better about the things you've done ? At what point do you make peace with the fact that you made a mistake, a mistake you can't ever change ? Do you ever forget ? Does that ever go away ?

[yourliterarywasteland]

I remember my grandma's last days when she suddenly started recalling everything about her childhood home and her family. Given her situation, she was hopped up on Alzheimer's meds. She used to recall this huge white "Haveli" she lived in, she used to call out to her "Dadda" ( father) to go for a ride with her, she called out to her younger siblings to stop bantering and sit for dinner together. Some days I sat with her trying my best to communicate. It wasn't possible but I still used to tell her that we should go and visit her home once. She had forgotten who she was now, a mother and a grandmother . She was just a girl missing her family so badly. But despite her disease, she could still remember the fact that she has no home, no family, no siblings. She could tell that all of them were gone. She could tell her childhood home was gone. And before slipping back into her delirium she would always say, "I don't have a home anymore."

Reality was different, she did have a family_ the one she had built all these 90 long years of her life but when the end came, all she felt was loneliness and longing. Longing for those good times when she was young and carefree and most of all happy. When she didn't had anything weighing her down. It always felt like a punch to my gut because I was a granddaughter watching her slowly slip away but I realised that this wasn't about me. We spend our whole lives looking forward to that supposed future that never comes but meanwhile life keeps slipping away and when it does come to an end, we forget what we've built, instead all we want is to look back, just once. All those faces that are no longer there, all those places we've left behind and we don't realise it until we know we're losing it forever. And how sad is that ?

[yourliterarywasteland]

The sun will shine and we will try again 🌼

This year has been tumultuous to say the least. I've had some pretty good days and some really bad days. But after a very long time, I'm proud to say, I fared pretty well.

May we all find the strength to keep standing despite what life throws at us, may we all wait for it all to pass, may we realise how strong we are and may we keep loving ourselves the way we deserve to be loved.

[yourliterarywasteland]

[yourliterarywasteland]

Every human is such a well written story complied into several different books. Some stories end sooner than the others but are just as intricate and fascinating. There's shades and murals in every story, there the good and the bad then there's several crossovers into each story which amplifies it's beauty. That's why when one life ends, we hope another's beginning. We hope because we never want the story to end. Sometimes the endings are abrupt and other times they are beautifully executed but each time, like every book it leaves you with something to think about. So I hope when one story ends we don't just remember the good parts. I hope we remember the heroes and the villans, may we remember the greatness and the pettiness just as much as we celebrate the beginning and the end. May we never forget how to look at stories the way they are supposed to be, whole.

[yourliterarywasteland]

Does it look weird ?

[yourliterarywasteland]

Honey I want em all 🌼

[yourliterarywasteland]

The roses are red , the violets all blue . I know it's hard but you'll make it through.

The roses are still red and the violets still blue . They'll be here for a while and so should YOU !

[yourliterarywasteland]

The moment you get a headache or you're burnt somewhere or it could be the tiredness or plain sadness and you find a cold hard surface to just lay on it face down and for a moment all your wounds are soothened , the head's not bursting anymore , your mind's numb and that pleasant coolness just washes over you . Those few seconds of blissful numbness , that's how it feels like listening to Hozier .

[yourliterarywasteland]

Poe's Poetry and Hozier's lyrics feels the same when the heart is heavy.

[yourliterarywasteland]

To survive a pandemic is itself an achievement. Don't let capitalism bully you into believing that you aren't productive enough. It's okay if you don't turn into a poet overnight or inspiration hasn't struck you to become picasso. You don't have to read 20 books or write a journal or bake a cake from scratch. Quarantine is nature's way of telling you to sit back, let go and relax. Otherwise trying to monetize your time will only lead to anxiety. The pandemic is hard enough, don't be hard on yourself too.