Nupur Chaturvedi

Fallen star

Who is to blame for a fallen star
Is shining an aspiration with conditions?
Shine, but your sheen must be pure
Shine, but then you can never hide
Shine, and the spotlight is on your flaws as on your wins
Should you even try to shine?
Can you choose how much you shine?

As you rise, you lose dimensions
You are not you, but what you achieve
Larger than life, higher than others
A hero, a leader, a saviour
But not a living, breathing person
With warps and moles and emotional warts

And then when you discover these flaws
When you realise this was just a reflection, an illusion
In your head a human face to your aspirations and dreams
You pull them down for not being true to this illusion.
So then, who is to blame for a fallen star?

I don’t want to be brave

To breathe
To walk in the sun
To soak the soothing rays of the moon
To place my hand in another’s and gaze into his eyes
To wear my favourite fineries and dance on a table
To laugh unabashedly at a joke I read as I go home in the metro
To stop my car on the side so I can help an old man cross the road
To watch a movie on a Sunday night with my boyfriend and go back home
I need to brave.
I need to be brave?
To live the life I want?
To dance in abandon?
To be consumed by joy?
To be in love?
To have a soul unstained by cynicism?
To be?

Paint

Explain to me why you would
Paint daisies black
Is that your state of mind
Or a reflection of an environment
Sullied by soot-laden adventures
Or does this portend events
Out of our control?
Was this an act of your own volition
Or did someone twist your arm
Into subjugation, forcing you to
Abandon your perceptions
And follow his (or hers)?
Is this bleak debauched print
Real or imagined
Or is it different for everyone?
I guess the question I am scared of asking is this:
This work of art—is it a manifestation of your mind or mine?

Rejection

Rejection is a powerful muse.
It forces you to look in the mirror,
But before that, it makes you embroider
Complicated illusions on a veil
That filter the image and make it seem
Diffused, multi-hued, surreal, anything but real,
And then, out come pretty phrases,
Masking the truth, clouding the mind
Spraying mists of scented lies,
That you inhale.
And then, when you look in the mirror again,
Through the mist, the cloud, the veil,
What you see is an untruth so mesmerising,
You beg for rejection again, and again,
In hope of becoming an artist.

More of the same

Creatures of habit we are
By nature tethered to our patterns
When was the last time we broke
The sameness of our thought
Of our desires
Our hopes.
It’s all one big same.
And yet,
We go forth on adventures
Challenging boundaries
Foolishly braving rollercoasters
Hoping against hope
That the train breaks out from the tracks
To chart its own course.
Oh, who are we kidding?
The fault is in the design
We are pre-programmed with flaws
Pre-programmed to sameness
Makes us easier to control.
Imagine, if controlled we wreak such havoc,
What would happen if we broke free?

Life

Another day goes by,
As a memory fades
Another is created
These overlapping thoughts
Like relay runners
Give a head-start to emotions
Stretching them out to last a marathon
Keep the pace slow, a gentle jog
The intense sprints will drain you out
There will be hurdles too, of course
When you will need to take a leap of faith
There are no other runners, though, only you
Racing against your better judgment sometimes
And other times, against circumstances
The trick is to keep the race on
Not think of the finish line
Let one moment lead to another
One day lead to another
One memory lead to another
They call this Life.

[Will miss you, Jhaldiyal uncle]

Futile

I often try to hold a tide in my hands.
The futility of it is lost on me.
Controlling the outcome of forces
Larger than me, beyond me,
Trying to mould the unmouldable
Streamline the free flowing—
Who can do that?
And yet, I try, again and again
And build myself up for a deluge
Of countless needles pricking every inch
Of my severely scabby skin.
Why do I do it? Why don’t I stop?
Because old Bhagirath brought Ganga down from the heavens.
We are foolish, but without us,
The world would be a barren, impotent, wasteland.

War

If this were war,
I would be snaking over rough earth,
My weapon in hand, elbows propelling me forward.
And when I would spot the enemy,
My crawl would turn to crouch,
And at the right time, I would get my shot.
But I wouldn’t be unscathed, no.
My shoulders are tender,
The rebound would dislocate them,
And I would wonder, who won,
The one who died,
Or the one who lives
With lifetime of pain in front of her.

This is not a war, though.
This is just everyday life,
Mundane, routine, dull.
There is no crawling nor crouching,
Nor the coarse surface scraping my stomach.

My adversaries are within me.
My weapon pointed inwards,
I still take aim.
And realise…

No one wins
No one can win.
We are in this endless shadow dance
A deceitful play of reflections,
And unless we find the light source,
Our aims are false, our enemy an illusion.
And my dislocated shoulder, a constant reminder
That pain is the only outcome of war.

Moment

In the end, my friend,
We will stand holding hands,
Gleeful twinkles and all,
Holding down hysteria,
Lest it burst out like frozen cola fizz,
Never to be reined in again.

In the end, my friend,
We would still be fooling ourselves,
Whispering fairy tales to each other
That will never come true
Holding out for that movie-like ending
Hoping life freezes at credit roll
And our perfect moment remains.

In the end, my friend,
We still won’t care
Happy to live a life of denial before and after
Because we managed to snatch something
That we never thought was ours
A pleasure so far vicarious.
In the end, my friend,
A moment is all we have
A moment is infinite.
The end.

The choice

It seems to me I have a choice,
Get overwhelmed by the tide
Or stand tall and channelize the flow
To parts parched so that they drink
The elixir of life and sprout
Designs
Songs
Stories
Embroidered dreams
Or what have you.
It seems to me the choice is clear
Just give me a second to stand up.