Nupur Chaturvedi

Flipping through old albums,
I can’t seem to find
The face I thought was mine
I saw it every day
Reflected in your eyes
But lately I see a glaze in them
My face is blurred
The mirrors are broken again
So it has been a while
Since I last saw myself
I am trying to remember
But memory is leaving me
Through the tips of my fingers
So I find myself poring over
Old photographs
But not one reminds of me
Who is that girl
That gawky, bespectacled one
With her mouth open
Or that one laughing uncontrollably
Or that one looking around in constant wonderment
She looks familiar, but I don’t know her
Anyway, this is pointless
I feel someone has cut out my identity
From each picture.
If I don’t know who I was
And I don’t know who I am
I could be anyone in the future
Or no one.

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten
It’s no use.
Breathe-in-breathe-out, breathe-in-breathe-out
It’s still there, bubbling and frothing.
Calm-down, this-too-shall-pass
All empty self-platitudes.
Nothing reins in this tempest,
No soothing balm, no brow-straightening relief
Can ease the raging angst
From stomping over wind-blown glades
Or from unleashing a flood of bile
That burns your gut as it rises higher.
I feel the thunderous roar closer, I am scared
Will I stand again after this one?
Will I rise again to the same height
Or does it shed an inch off me
With every monstrous campaign?
It has passed, at last
And the doves are white again
Maybe it’s not so bad
Maybe I will conquer it some day.

Chip by chip, piece by piece an edifice crumbles
On the top floor, you think you are safe,
You think nothing can touch you so far above the ground
Never mind that giddy joy has a paranoid evil twin
Never mind that oxygen thins with every step you rise.

You feel the rumble beneath your feet
You think the earth is moving
You think you are moving the earth
All the time, the cracks climb up like spiders.

Then panic sets in and your legs tremble
Even though you know there is time
To escape from the emergency exit
But you freeze, you don’t take that route.

And then you remember:
The edifice, it has a bold foundation
The edifice, it will rise again
Until then, you must brace for the destruction of status quo.

Infantile dreams, divorced from logic,
Create pink water to sprinkle over magic dust,
Which turns serpents into gods,
And they play merry games
Making people turn their heads unnaturally.
Who poured these dreams into the receptacle of my brain?
Is this the effect of a hallucinogenic drug
Or the schizophrenic meanderings of a tired mind?
Maybe such fantastic conjurations are reasonable,
Maybe we are meant to imagine that which is so implausible
So that we can slowly inch away from reality
And create a better world
Won’t it help you sleep better at night
If you know that when you wake up,
The altered surroundings are whiter, cleaner?
I am soporose now, bring me my pillow.

Images spattered on my mind,
Like mud splashed from a puddle,
On a colourful Pollockian canvas.
Images that tell a story,
Sometimes sullied by pain.
Images that hold within,
A life lived with love.
Do you see them, these images?
Or is your eye only focused on
The banality of the obvious?
Because if that is so,
How do we create our work of art?
Even monochrome dreams will do
As long as they show up the contrast
Between our lives and theirs.
But multi-coloured ones are better
So that they throw up a bouquet
Of unbidden emotions
That create a masterpiece we can sell
To the world, and live
Off the bounty on our Paradise Island resort.

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?

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.

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?

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?

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?