The Grammar Of Sinking

Grief ushers in

like rivers at the break of monsoon;

no warnings,

no lifeboats.

No rain checks either.

It comes all at once.

Before you blink

it has you in a chokehold.

You try to put it to words.

But grief is not the loss of words;

it is the loss

of the meaning of them.

Your throat knots.

Your tongue dries.

You drink water.

It feels no different.

You wish you could erupt

into laments,

into screams,

into torrential downpours.

But the forecast says

overcast skies.

No chance of rain.

So you perspire instead.

Earlobes warm.

Insides parched.

A season

changing inside the body.

The kind that keeps you awake

through the night,

bedsheets damp,

as if the skin erupted

because the eyes could not.

Grief has definitions.

Definitions have boundaries.

And what is bound

eventually runs out

of breadth

and breath.

But what do you call it

when miserable indifference

becomes your primordial instinct?

Not feeling.

Instinct.

Feeling belongs to language.

Instinct belongs to survival.

What do you call it

when sleep each night

feels like sinking

another inch

into an unfathomable abyss,

and morning feels like swimming

towards a shore

in the middle of an ocean

that refuses to move closer?

Every night

the inches add up.

Every morning

you are exactly where you began:

dead centre

of a bottomless sea.

There is rage.

There is pity.

There is loathing.

There is pathos.

And beyond all of it,

hope.

But hope is light.

And when you have lived

with the lights out

for days

and weeks

and months,

sunlight

feels like assault.

Hope is different

for the floating

and the sinking.

Not drowning.

Sinking.

Drowning is sudden.

Sinking

is patient.

Measured.

As if time itself

has decided

to take its time with you.

For the sinking ones,

drowning

is hope.

It refuses

the slow-burning road

to a conclusion.

Befitting or not

is irrelevant.

Some semicolons

are kinder

as full stops.

You wish you could act on it.

The terrain is familiar.

You have been here before.

You have tried before.

But this time

you cannot gather yourself

even for that.

Even when the water

is already at your ears.

Even when letting go

might be the only mercy.

If mercy exists.

So you resist sleep,

because every good night

is another inch deeper

into the abyss.

And yet when sleep arrives

you hope

there will be

no more mornings.

But time

is terribly patient.

And the one thing killing you

is the only thing

keeping you alive.

Your cancer

is your cure. 

Trial By Blood, Verdict By Water

I am the judge.

Robes stiffened with ritual righteousness. 

Gavel molten, breathing fire, screaming justice.

Conscience sharper than sharpened glass.

The floor trembles. Walls sweat blood and pus. 

Air coils like serpents whispering unholy.

Dust crawls away. Shadows tremble. I do not sit. I descend.

Judgement is inheritance.

By blood. By caste. By closeness to the gods.

My forefathers ruled here. Their verdicts were holy, sanctified in their blue blood. Their hands carved eternity.

On my chair. On the throne of a judge.

Verdicts passed where they must not.

What an absolute abomination.

A filthy stain. A defilement.

The gods recoiled. History shivered.

I inhale that sin. So I can exhale righteousness.

It is my duty to purify. To exorcise. To remake holiness.

And as I unleash Gangajal on the floors of a room sheathed in justice, it hisses like acid from heaven. 

Ink writhes, climbs walls, twists into screaming faces.

Rats kneel. Clerks vomit holy obedience. Paper bleeds. Shadows dance in homage to the ancestors.

Even democracy is a hallucination. 

Dalits breathing Brahmin air? Blasphemy. Horror.

The gods shudder. Faith trembles. History bends under terror.

I bite the pen. I lick the chair. I taste sin. I exhale holiness.

Walls convulse. Ceiling bleeds. Floor vomits dust.

The Dalit flickers; mocking, ephemeral, untouchable.

Judgment is not in his chromosomes.

He can only be judged. Only condemned. Only measured against eternal, inherited law.

I summon the chamber alive.

Ink twists into serpents. Rats scream prayers. Clerks twist, vomit, collapse into worship.

Air coils. Steam rises. Shadows writhe in grotesque obedience.

Gavel melts into molten judgment. Tea turns to bitter ash. Obedience is absolute. Judgment bends only to me.

I rotate the pen thrice. I pour gangajal. I sip molten tea. I bite the pen.

I taste impurity. I exhale holiness.

Walls sweat blood and pus. Floor trembles. Ceiling convulses.

All bends. All submits. All is mine.

I am the judge.

I am divine.

I am eternal.

I am the eye of law.

I am holiness incarnate.

And yet…

The Dalit exists.

Invisible. Untouchable. Defiant.

Like sins do.

Forever beneath me.

Never presiding. Never judging. Only judged. Only condemned.

Cockroaches in my kitchen corners have more power.

I pour more gangajal.

Ink writhes like vipers. Chairs twist and split. Rats kneel, bleed, sing holy songs.

Clerks vomit, choke, weep in obedience. Shadows fold into themselves.

Walls bend. Floor cracks. Ceiling screams.

All bends. All submits. All is mine.

I sip tea. I bite the pen. I taste sin. I exhale holiness.

Obedience is absolute. Judgment bends only to me.

I am the judge. I am divine. I am eternity.

The Dalit flickers.

He is untouchable. Defiant. Haunted.

But he will never sit.

He will never judge.

He can only ever be judged.

He can only ever be condemned.

Like cockroaches crawling my kitchen corners.

I pour gangajal on the air.

On shadows. On ink. On trembling clerks.

On the ghosts of Dalits swallowed by my forefathers’ holiness.

All bends. All submits. All is mine.

I am the judge.

I am divine.

I am eternal.

I am law.

I am holiness incarnate.

I am God’s own hand, His wrath, His eye, His voice.

The only. The truly.

The molten gavel drips Gangajal onto the floor where corpses of forgotten Dalits curl into prayer, and even the shadows writhe, seared with the eternal scars of my justice.

Scar Tissue

There’s hope.

Ointment.

Scissors.

Knives.

For scar tissue

ECGs and X-rays can detect,

opposable thumbs can reach.

For the unreachable,

the undetected,

poetry is blister.

No cure.

Just ruins recollecting rummage.

If I could, I would have saved

all that paper, all those ink blots

pretending to be meaning.

If I could, I would have been eco-friendly.

Paper and poetry are futile brilliance to be paid for in lifetimes.

Kingdom Of Grains & Bones

Is it the king’s foot soldiers

or the farmers cooked in sweltering heat

that let the kingdom breathe?

When the crown inhales,

is it smoke from rifles

or steam rising from wounded earth at dawn?

Answer carefully.

Every empire has mistaken

the sound of marching

for the sound of survival.

Is violence fodder for civilisation,

or is fodder what civilisation fattens

so it may auction violence

beneath ceilings lacquered in obedience?

Do you think a throne can stand on femurs of steel?

How long can a ribcage hold a rifle

before it forgets how to hold hunger?

Can you build a kingdom of starved sentinels,

feed them flags instead of bread,

feed them enemies until appetite becomes allegiance,

feed them obedience until their spines

calcify into permanent salutes?

Would you trade grains for bullets?

Would you grind harvest into ammunition

and baptise it patriotism?

Would you salt the earth with blood and bones

and call it fertile?

If you would, 

you are where you should be;

buried in the marrows of history,

carved into the sculpted silence of stone.

But if you would not, 

tell me this:

Why do you riddle the house of grains with bullets each time it dares to speak?

Why must every barn that questions blood

become an altar?

Why must the soil prove loyalty

in corpses per acre?

You say the kingdom must survive.

But survival is not dominion.

And dominion is not breath.

Gunfire does not germinate.

Rifles do not photosynthesise.

Anthems cannot be boiled into porridge.

Borders do not sprout from bone.

We have mistaken blood-boots for heartbeats.

You cannot salt the earth with men

and expect wheat to forgive you.

You cannot starve the hands that feed you

and then blame the famine on dissent.

The kingdom breathes, yes —

but listen closely.

That is not oxygen.

It is a wheeze.

A throne pressing its full weight

on the ribs of the hungry.

And when the ribs give way, 

the kingdom will finally learn what it was built on.

The mouth that demands worship swallows its own tongue.

Tastes Like Rust

What did it feel like

when the first throat split open

and the warm, coppery scream

spilled over your fingers?

Did it shiver your bones,

or make them ache for more?

Whose laughter shredded first —

children ripped from the world like paper dolls?

Whose names were eaten by dust before they even knew themselves?

Did the silence claw at you,

or did it taste sweet in your mouth like iron?

What did the bones whisper

as they cracked beneath your boots?

Did the sound make your heart leap,

or did it gnaw at the edges of your soul

with teeth sharper than your own?

How many lives curl, wet and broken,

under the weight of your hands?

How many hearts spattered across walls,

how many faces ground into mud

before the taste of blood taught you pleasure?

Whose blood trickled into your pockets?

Whose eyes did you swallow with your greed?

Did the shadows watch,

did the walls tremble at the wet, sticky joy you claimed,

or did you think darkness belonged only to you?

Did you feel them —

the dead crawling in your spine,

their ice fingers carving knives into every rib,

their whispers splitting your chest

and laughing as it bled?

What did the hollow pit inside you taste like,

where shame used to writhe and scream?

Did it fill your mouth, your teeth, your stomach,

or only your dreams when the lights died?

When your eyes closed,

did you see them all?

The life crushed beneath your thumbs,

the screams you swallowed whole,

the coins ringing wet against skulls, 

or did you pretend innocence,

as if it were a cloak?

If the dead were counting,

if they were watching

every heartbeat, every gulp, every wet whisper of terror,

would you still lick the pleasures you thought were yours?

Would you still smile

while shadows dripped across your face,

clawing at the corners of your mind?

What happens

when the storm of eyes and whispers and laughter

floods your skull

and every bone, every coin, every wet crack of flesh

stares back at you,

and you are nothing but a stain

in the ledger of all they remember?

Will you taste it again,

and know it is not yours,

never yours, 

but theirs?

Do you even deserve it?

Does anyone?

And when the world sleeps,

and the dead lean closer,

will you still smile,

or will the storm finally swallow you whole,

gut you, skin you,

and leave only the echo of terror

ringing in the dark,

your own hands still wet,

your teeth still biting air,

and your mind,

your fragile, squirming mind,

trapped inside the carnival of the dead,

laughing at you

while you are nothing,

only carnage, only hunger, only guilt,

only the taste of blood that was never yours to take?

The Sum Of Us

In the beginning

there was not God.

There was counting.

Before prayer,

before sin,

before heaven was franchised, 

someone stacked stones

and realised

quantity could replace mystery.

That was the first betrayal.

One plus one is two.

Say it like a prayer.

Say it like a hammer

driving bone into bone.

It doesn’t care about children.

It doesn’t care about graves.

It doesn’t care about hunger,

or rage,

or how fear curls in your chest.

It balances.

Always balances.

Triangles were cleaner than prophets.

Ratios quieter than doubt.

Geometry cut the sky into obedient pieces.

Trigonometry whispered secrets like torturers.

Calculus measured your despair

before you felt it.

We invented zero.

A perfect circle.

A mouth open without a scream.

Assigned to people.

Zero value.

Zero mercy.

Zero hope.

A ledger of the flesh.

A census of the soul.

We say mathematics is neutral.

So was the cross.

So was the rope.

So was the bullet

before it was aimed.

Neutrality is a myth told by tools.

You don’t need faith when you have proof.

That’s the seduction.

Science, bureaucracy, mathematics —

all faith forms in different robes.

They bleed the same devotion.

One plus one is two.

Unless one is power

and one is fear.

Then one plus one is submission.

Unless one is hunger

and one is silence.

Then one plus one is famine.

Unless one is god

and one is insecurity.

Then one plus one is war.

You think genocide begins with hatred?

No.

It begins with enumeration.

List them.

Number them.

Classify them.

Reduce them.

Once a human becomes a number,

erasing them

is administrative.

Clerical.

Mundane.

Divine.

We count bones, we count votes,

we count dollars, we count followers.

We kneel to certainty.

We kneel to predictability.

We kneel to the illusion

that if it adds up, it must be truth.

But tell me —

One trauma plus one generation

equals what?

One lie plus one census

equals what?

One decree plus one orphan

equals what?

Not two.

Never two.

Always metastasis.

Parallel lines never meet.

Life never sums.

Life never balances.

Life never forgives arithmetic.

Repeat it until it feels like oxygen.

Repeat it until doubt sounds insane.

Repeat it until anyone who questions it

looks dangerous.

Because they are.

If one plus one

is not guaranteed, 

then nothing is.

Not borders.

Not hierarchies.

Not gods.

Not you.

And that is the real terror.

Not that mathematics lies.

But that it works

without conscience.

It works when you design a bridge.

It works when you design a bomb.

It works when you calculate interest

so precisely

a man dies owing money

to a number.

It works.

And because it works,

we mistake it for morality.

Obedience is written in ink.

Faith is counted in ledgers.

And the body trembles

under every summation.

Every calculation a blow,

every diagram a noose.

We measure love, measure suffering, measure grief.

We optimise obedience.

We classify dissent.

We ration hope.

We distribute terror.

We file souls under columns:

productive, neutral, disposable.

And in the end,

the equation closes.

Numbers do not confess.

They only conclude.

Life, however,

never adds up.

In the beginning

there was counting.

In the end

there will be counting still:

bodies, losses, regrets.

The sums remain cold.

The book of bones waits.

Indifferent.

Implacable.

Numbers do not plead.

They do not pause.

They do not forgive.

They only conclude.

And we are left

reckoning nothing.

Sheepskin Truths

I was born to a man who believed the government was a religion.

Not metaphorically. Religiously.

With faith.

With fear.

With rituals mistaken for values.

A god whose faces change like chameleons shift complexion.

A scripture written in circulars.

A morality that changed tone but never intent.

In a middle-class household,

a government job is not employment.

It is orgasm.

The kind that justifies the marriage.

The kind that forgives the compromises.

The kind that turns survival into honour,

wages of slavery into dignity,

and retirement into a vague promise of heaven.

Four decades of service.

Fixed timings.

Fixed morals.

Fixed spine; bent only when required,

then straightened again just enough

to be mistaken for integrity.

He believed service to his nation purified a man.

That proximity to authority was proof of virtue.

That obedience, practiced long enough,

matured into wisdom.

Vanity is a dangerous thing.

But vanity wrapped in patriotism

is a hereditary illness.

Passed down as discipline.

Diagnosed as values.

Everyone thinks they’re immune

because they say the right words

at the right volume

in the right posture —

because the job came with a chair,

a badge,

and relatives who finally spoke with pride.

Patriotism was never about love.

Love asks questions.

Patriotism hands you answers

and calls doubt disrespect.

It doesn’t change with time.

It morphs meaning.

My father thought serving the country made him permanent.

Like loyalty comes with tenure.

Like time converts into belonging.

Like obedience compounds interest.

He believed the system remembers.

That effort leaves residue.

That years become proof.

They don’t.

Belonging is never earned.

It is granted.

Temporarily.

And always revocable.

Here, existence is not guaranteed.

It is reviewed.

You can give your youth.

Your health.

Your silence.

Your spine.

Your children. 

You can pay your dues

in money,

in time,

in belief.

And yet, nothing, absolutely none of it, matters.

Not a shred. Not an inch.

Eventually, power gets bored.

And boredom is authority’s most honest emotion.

So it asks calmly, administratively:

“Prove you exist.”

Not prove you lived.

Not prove you served.

Not prove you complied.

Prove you exist.

Existence becomes paperwork.

A form.

A signature.

A stamp applied by someone who doesn’t know you

but controls your validity.

One error and you’re a footnote.

One correction and your past becomes negotiable.

One revision and your lineage turns suspicious.

And when, out of habit, or exhaustion, you ask

what was done with what you gave —

the labour,

the taxes,

the integrity shaved down to fit policy, 

they reassure you.

Nothing was taken.

Your integrity was never sold.

It was loaned.

Loaned to a permanent class of power

that survives every era

by changing accents, not instincts.

Men who mistake longevity for legitimacy.

Men who sit long enough

to believe the chair belongs to them.

They run the same structure everywhere.

Different flags.

Same factory.

A human sweatshop

where obedience is renewable

and dignity is not.

Where mediocrity rises because it doesn’t threaten.

Where ambition is corrected.

Where silence is rewarded

until it becomes tradition.

Patriotism, then, is not devotion.

It is resignation to a dysfunctional family.

Stand here.

Say this.

Look proud.

Forget later.

It is not love of country.

It is familiarity with captivity.

And the cruelest inheritance

is not poverty,

or fear,

or silence.

It is teaching your children

that the flocking obedience of sheep make them honourable, 

while the very shepherd entrusted to lead them,

reserves the right

to erase them, like specks of dust.

Cold Cut Culinary

Cannibalism is a matter of culinary taste

and moral appetite.

Drinks arrive first.

Not to soften the act, 

to rinse the mouth of hesitation.

You don’t begin with hunger.

That’s amateur psychology.

You begin with stillness.

The body is quiet.

Quiet makes everything efficient.

Skin parts

the way agreements do —

without ceremony,

without apology.

Blood shows up eager,

bright as a fresh opinion,

then learns its place.

It always does.

There is a towel.

There is time.

Urgency ruins flavour.

People think brutality is loud.

It isn’t.

It’s meticulous.

Knives and cuts are not emotional.

Emotion spoils texture.

Some muscles have spent decades

proving loyalty to useless systems.

They harden with pride.

You can taste the distaste.

The cuts don’t argue.

They remember being decided

long before they happen.

Hesitation introduces ethics.

Ethics introduce mess.

Waste is offensive;

not morally,

aesthetically.

The room smells of iron

and fresh obedience.

Heat behaves.

Metal listens.

Nothing theatrical.

Theatrics are for people

who still need forgiveness.

Everyone expects cannibalism

to feel forbidden.

That expectation is childish.

Like thinking blood should scream

instead of stain.

Flesh makes for a beautiful recipe.

It always does

when stripped of mythology.

Morality arrives late;

a thin aftertaste,

noticeable only if you’re waiting for it.

Choice of cutlery matters.

Presentation is the last lie

society still rewards.

There is no ecstasy.

No rupture.

No fall from grace.

Only confirmation.

Some people are ruined

by the idea of eating another human.

Others are ruined

by the realization of how easily it can be done.

The eating is slow.

Not for pleasure, 

for assessment.

And the conclusion doesn’t announce itself.

It seeps in.

The problem with cannibalism

is never violence.

It is how many people

have been doing it their entire lives

without ever learning

how to do it properly.

Gods.

Governments.

Guardians,

and 

Guillotine.

How Many Lines Make A Circle?

A circle is a straight line.

And no I won't be taking questions. 

Because today, I am your geometry.

A straight line is just an idea 

that still believes movement is progress. 

Straightness is impatience; 

a refusal to stay long enough to learn its own shape.

Civilisation loves straight lines. 

Roads. Borders. Spines. Deadlines. 

Anything that points forward so no one has to look down.

Arrows calm the anxious. 

Mirrors force them into cognition.

So we drew time straight — 

years marching, 

history advancing, 

tomorrow behaving. 

Anything to avoid noticing 

how often we return to the same damage 

wearing better grammar.

But we didn’t begin as straight lines.

We began curled. 

Warm. 

Circular. 

A question with no direction. 

A foetus is a circle;

no hierarchy, 

no ambition, 

just becoming 

without justification.

Then gravity arrived. 

And then, grammar. 

They pulled us upright and called it evolution.

Stand straight. 

Walk forward. 

Look ahead. 

Grow a spine. 

Pick a side.

The first violence was posture.

The first betrayal was obedience. 

A circle is not what time is. 

A circle is what we abandon to survive.

Time does not bend.

Time does not return.

Time does not care if you scream.

Time happens. 

Once. 

With the indifference of ancience. 

What repeats is behaviour. 

What circles is explanation.

They call it history

when patterns survive

because no one names them.

They call it tradition

when repetition feels safer 

than surviving obsoletion.

They call it progress

when the same mistake walks in

wearing a tie, a crown, a dress, a smile.

You don’t move through time. 

Time moves through you — 

a straight line forced through a mind 

that keeps folding itself back into comfort.

Capitalism understands this perfectly. 

That’s why it doesn’t sell endings. 

It sells continuity.

Desire. 

Acquisition. 

Disappointment. 

Upgrade.

Not a loop, 

a line you bend yourself around

until exhaustion whispers:

“This is destiny.”

They call it healing 

when pain becomes useful. 

They call it enlightenment 

when resistance gives up politely. 

They call it maturity 

when you stop asking who benefits.

Pause.

Breathe. 

Take a minute.

Now. Think about it.

Notice how none of this felt unfamiliar.

That’s because belief doesn’t arrive as truth. 

It arrives as recognition, spoken slowly, with good posture.

You didn’t argue when I said a circle is a line. 

Because I asked for obedience.

And, you obliged.

That is how conviction works:

not by proof,

not by reason,

but by exhaustion, by surrender,

by the slow accumulation of fear

draped in coherence.

A sentence repeated cleanly enough 

starts sounding ancient. 

A lie aligned neatly enough 

starts feeling earned.

Say it again. Inside.

A circle is a straight line.

It still holds. 

Not because it’s correct, 

but because it’s coherent.

And coherence is more dangerous than being right.

Time is not circular. 

Time does not care.

We are the ones who keep returning — 

to habits, 

to harm, 

to versions of ourselves 

that felt simpler 

when we were smaller and curled,

unsullied by gravity.

The circle is the shape we remember 

from before responsibility broke us upright.

A circle is a straight line.

Not because it’s the truth, 

but because 

standing still in a curve 

would mean admitting

we chose this posture, 

we chose this direction, 

when we could have remained otherwise.

And somewhere in you, 

something ancient, 

curled and quiet,

is still nodding.

Still counting fingers. 

Still bleeding.

When Sisters Swallow Spines

Behind every successful man,

there is a woman —

they said.

In the shadows.

Unpaid.

Uncredited.

Bleeding quietly.

Erasing herself for applause

that gnaws at teeth and gums

and tastes like dust.

History knelt.

Poetry inked love letters in blood.

Revolutions whispered thanks in crumbs.

Because when a woman bleeds quietly,

it’s virtue, 

it's discipline, 

it's edible.

Then the chairs shifted.

The woman stepped into money,

into rooms with microphones,

into a life that finally paid interest.

The man stayed back.

Held the children.

Held the house.

Held the scaffolding

that success pretends it doesn’t need.

Same labour.

Same erasure.

Different gender.

And suddenly, the story screamed different:

"What kind of a man

feeds off his wife?"

There it was.

The ancient sneer.

Polished.

Rebranded.

Delivered by a mouth

that once preached equality.

And instead of silence breaking, 

it multiplied.

Feminists didn’t flinch.

They sharpened language.

Folded it.

Explained it to death.

Until truth was dead, embalmed,

smiling politely at the corpse.

They didn’t ask why care became shame

the moment a man performed it.

They didn’t ask why sacrifice

lost its holiness

when it grew a beard.

Because truth is inconvenient

when it interrupts a good narrative.

Because calling out one of your own

is harder

than slaughtering an enemy on cue.

Convenience wore a crown.

Cause dressed it up.

Lies were whispered

until they sounded like commandments.

Equality, it turns out,

is optional.

Equality, apparently,

was aspirational.

Not literal.

Because real equality

is ugly.

It doesn’t flatter women.

It doesn’t castrate men.

It humiliates everyone evenly.

And feminism —

when equality finally showed up

without makeup,

without exemptions,

without emotional airbags —

didn’t recognise it.

Didn’t like it.

Power is intoxicating,

even when borrowed from the very people

it pretends to liberate.

Turns out, many didn’t want the end of hierarchy.

They wanted their turn at the gallows.

But dare they call it what it is, 

a betrayal by a movement

that forgot

it was supposed to interrogate power, 

not inherit it.

And in that convenient amnesia

rots the bones of feminism.

Because the fastest way

to rot a revolution

is not opposition.

It’s agreement

without spine.

And the one thing

feminism cannot survive

is its own reflection,

staring back and asking:

If roles are poison,

why does the vomit only spatter

when men swallow it whole?

A Brief History Of Nostalgia

Have you ever smelled nostalgia?

Not perfume.

Not memory sunk in jewellery.

A cold breeze at the edge of the nose.

The kind that carries ghosts

who still believe they mattered.

Vanity, fossilised.

Stories repeated so often

they forget they were once alive, 

pages drying into dust,

like leaves pretending they chose autumn.

Concrete. Mortar. Civilisation

slowly swallowed by moss and wild ferns.

Because the presence of life

has never been proof of progress.

Thirty summers ago,

nostalgia was introduced to me as inheritance.

Something sacred.

Something to defend.

Thirty autumns later,

it’s still nostalgia;

no new pages,

not even footnotes.

Just the same story

aged into reverence.

At what point does nostalgia

stop being memory

and start being archaeology?

At what point does living

become maintenance?

Loss, here, is hereditary.

It sleeps well.

Wakes late.

Outlives intention.

The future keeps arriving

like a delayed train —

always announced,

never present.

And the present?

Already filing itself

under “past.”

And yes it feels like thinking

for a brief moment in time, 

because it smells all so familiar,

and we were brought up 

to mistake familiarity for longing.

It's not.

It’s rot, 

aged carefully,

labelled heritage,

and handed down

with the mandate

to call it meaning.

And, that is the story of the city I come from, 

or as I call, a brief history of nostalgia.

The Invention Of Inhumanity

Every time there is a spectacle of cold-blooded cruelty —

guts pulled out,

genitals carved into warnings,

newborns torn apart while still latched

to their dead mothers, 

humans rush to call it inhuman.

I’ve always found that

exorbitantly hilarious.

As if cruelty arrived from elsewhere.

As if it trespassed.

As if it forgot it was home.

Civilisation begins here.

Religion begins here.

Inheritance, borders, lineage, gods, 

all drafted in the handwriting

of brothers slaughtering brothers,

sons and fathers spilling blood

over symbols 

they will later teach children 

to respect.

And we still pretend

this is not our most reliable instinct.

What is it,

if not comedy,

to name the most consistent human behaviour

after something 

we insist we are not?

“Inhuman” is not a judgement.

It’s a reflex.

A linguistic recoil.

The sound a species makes

when it catches its own reflection

mid-swing

and looks away.

No monsters.

No deviations.

No bad apples.

Just design.

Violence is not an invention.

It is a ceremony.

A ritual.

A christening.

We gift-wrap it.

Sanctify it.

Normalise it.

Teach it through uniforms, oaths,

and bullet-riddled ethics.

When it becomes uncomfortable,

we rename it.

Distance it.

Call it inhuman

and resume normal functioning.

“Inhuman” is not condemnation.

It’s hygiene.

A way to keep the hands clean

while the blood on the floor

learns to dry.

No other species does this.

No other species kills

and then negotiates vocabulary

to feel innocent again.

Only humans commit atrocity

and demand applause

for feeling conflicted about it.

That is the real evolution.

Empathy didn’t civilise us.

It refined the excuse.

Gave us grief convincing enough

to hold a knife

without our hands trembling.

This is not inhuman.

This is humanity

unedited.

No fall from grace.

No corruption.

No anomaly.

Just a species

doing exactly

what it was built to do, 

and inventing a word

to pretend

it had a choice.

Pea-Sized

Floccinaucinihilipilification. 

A rather audacious attempt

to describe the futility

of considering yourself inconsequential

of being too small to make a difference.

Makes me wonder, 

have they never heard of the amygdala?

The amygdala is tiny.

Pea-sized.

Which feels irresponsible,

considering it governs

most of human civilisation.

A soft biological switch

deciding when your shoulders drop,

when your voice apologises,

when your life narrows

and you call it realism.

One pea.

Running households.

Running marriages.

Running economies.

Running entire bloodlines

on fear-based logic.

Families are built around it.

Fathers who shout

because fear learned to speak loudly.

Mothers who stay

because fear memorised endurance.

Children who behave

because fear works better

than affection.

No one calls it fear.

They call it values.

Relationships follow.

We marry not out of love,

but out of timing.

Out of panic.

Out of the terror

of being the last one left

at the table of normalcy.

We mistake fear for compatibility.

Silence for peace.

Longevity for success.

Divorce is feared

more than decay.

Loneliness more than dishonesty.

A bad marriage is more respectable

than an amicable exit.

You wake up every day

to a job you hate

because a pea

told you starvation

is more frightening

than disappearance.

This is not cowardice.

This is conditioning.

In this country and every other,

fear is not an emotion.

It’s inheritance.

Passed down with surnames,

family honour,

wedding invitations,

and the unspoken rule

that happiness is optional

but stability is mandatory.

Religion perfects it.

Politics weaponises it.

Corporations monetise it.

And most people never notice.

Because when fear is shared,

it feels like culture.

Society even sings songs

about fearlessness.

They sell it as strength.

As rebellion.

As leadership.

They put it in films and fairytales.

They applaud it on stages.

They quote it to others like them

right before asking permission

to breathe.

But fearlessness isn’t strength.

It’s damage.

Which brings me

rather reluctantly, 

to myself.

My amygdala doesn’t work right.

Not absent.

Not heroic.

Just dysfunctional.

Fear doesn’t arrive

where it’s meant to.

It doesn’t respect hierarchy.

It doesn’t flinch on cue.

So I don’t fear authority.

I don’t fear elders.

I don’t fear institutions

that depend on silence

to survive.

That’s not courage.

That’s a malfunction.

I am not aspirational.

I am not enlightened.

I am the unsafe variable

fear failed to train.

Families don’t know

what to do with people like me.

Relationships exhaust themselves

trying to teach me caution.

Institutions label me unstable

because I don’t confuse survival

with loyalty.

Society loves fearless men

as long as they’re fictional,

historical,

or dead.

Living fearlessness?

That’s called deranged.

So yes.

Something is wrong with me.

In fact, a lot is wrong with me.

My amygdala doesn’t ring the bell

that tells you to kneel,

to settle,

to stay.

I don’t feel the fear

that keeps families intact,

marriages tolerable,

jobs respectable,

and lives, socially acceptable.

That doesn’t make me free.

It makes me dangerous, 

like a ticking time bomb.

Fear isn’t just an emotion.

It’s the leash.

And I am a rabid mad dog.

So, don’t romanticise this.

I am not the anomaly.

I am not the exception. 

I am the fallacy.

I am the malfunction

that proves how much of your life

runs on panic

pretending to be purpose.

If fear makes you human,

then you are perfectly assembled.

Me?

I’m what happens

when the glue fails,

the alarm stays silent,

and a pea-sized organ

forgets to tell a man

to be afraid.

I am the fabric nightmares are made of. 

Mixed Feelings

You wake up.

You don’t remember deciding to exist. 

You’re five. 

Someone has already picked your clothes.

They say, “Smile.” You comply. 

You learn familiarity assumes consent.

Your first memory is not love. 

It’s being told, “Don’t touch that.” 

Followed by touching it anyway. 

Followed by consequences. 

This is called learning.

School happens. 

You are taught alphabets, numbers, 

and how to stand in straight lines for reasons no one explains. 

You are rewarded for silence. 

You are punished for curiosity. 

You are told this will matter later.

You believe them.

You learn that good handwriting is a moral achievement. 

That colouring inside the lines is character. 

That stars on notebooks are early forms of currency.

Someone asks, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

You say, “Happy.” 

Everyone laughs. 

You learn truth has a funny side.

Years pass. 

Your backpack gets heavier. 

Your questions get quieter. 

You discover comparison. 

It moves in next door and never leaves.

You learn to raise your hand only if you’re sure. 

You learn that wrong answers linger longer than right ones. 

You learn that confidence often belongs to people who do not question.

Puberty arrives unannounced. 

Your biology mutates without permission. 

Your emotions crash without explanation. 

Everything feels personal. Nothing is.

You fall in love. 

Not with a person. 

With an idea. 

Mostly of yourself, reflected back with approval.

It ends. 

You call it character development. 

Your friends call it “part of life.” 

You realise life scribbles in ink

and all you have is an eraser.

You get a phone. 

Then a better phone. 

Then the anxiety of keeping it charged. 

Your Wi-Fi becomes your personality. 

Your algorithm knows you better than your parents ever tried to.

Your school says, “These are the most important years of your life.” 

You panic responsibly. 

You optimise stress. 

You learn to perform concern.

Adulthood arrives disguised as freedom. 

It comes with passwords. 

And meetings. 

And the slow realisation that weekends are just brief cooling periods before shit hits the ceiling.

You get a job. 

You introduce yourself with your designation. 

You laugh at jokes you don’t find funny because rent has opinions.

You learn new phrases: 

“Circle back.” 

“Let’s align.” 

“This is not personal.” 

You say them fluently. 

You stop asking what they mean.

You scroll past wars. 

You double-tap grief. 

You watch the world burn between two ads for shoes you don’t need but deserve, apparently.

Someone asks again, “What do you want to be?” 

You say, “Stable.” 

No one laughs. 

You realise honesty and humour are both subjective.

You start conversations with, “Back then…” 

You complain about kids these days. 

You forget you were once a complaint too.

One day, you stand on a stage, 

sit at a dinner table 

or wallow inside your own head and say, 

“Back in my day, things were different.”

The pigeons nod. 

They have heard this before.

From cavemen. 

From kings. 

From rebels. 

From people who genuinely believed they were the exception.

You wake up.

You hope it was a fever dream, 

that you could wish it all away

like how someone you once loved

told you they had.

Your phone is at 4%. 

Your brain is rebooting. 

Your Wi-Fi is trying to connect, 

because humans don't anymore, 

they vibe like dead wavelengths

bouncing off binaries stacked up as walls. 

Somewhere, the pigeons watch, absolutely certain 

this is going exactly as planned

nodding like mixed feelings

watching history repeat itself 

and wondering, if getting monkeys off trees and into SUVs was evolution's greatest heist.

Thy Kingdom Come

The chessboard breathes.

Squares pulse like veins — black and white pumping life into chaos.

Pawns march, tiny and screaming, teeth rattling in allegorical skulls.

Knights twist in arhythmic hallucinations,

vomiting entrails into geometric patterns

no human should survive.

Castles bleed towers of ambition, dripping ink, dust, and the smell of burned kingdoms.

Queens strangle diagonals, laughing.

Kings whimper under ceremonial robes that could never protect them.

The hands that move them all, at will, are not human.

They are monsters.

Symbiotic parasites of flesh, tendon, and conspiratorial laughter.

Two friends.

Fused with caffeine, cynicism, and cosmic malice.

They twist.

They gnaw.

They crush pawns.

They strangle knights.

They squash kings.

Enemies rage on the squares.

The hands laugh.

The friendship thrives.

History quivers in their joints:

Empires marched pawns like disposable meat.

Generals drew borders like rooks vomiting sand.

Politicians peddled war and peace like queens strangling civilizations diagonally.

Civilization is nothing.

And the hands know it all too well. 

The pawns scream in existential terror.

The knights twist their own skulls.

Castles collapse into mounds of metaphorical despair.

Kings hide under robes soaked in the tears of the world.

Queens dance on the corpses of their own absurdity.

And still, the hands gulps quelches of coffee, toast apocalypse, whisper hand-crafted prophecies:

“We survive. The board bleeds. Civilization obeys.”

The board convulses.

Squares bleed.

Pieces scream.

Fingers split like roots.

Palms hollowed into ceremonial bowls of friendship and malice.

Veins pump bile instead of blood.

Every move is a sermon.

Every capture is a ritual.

The game is a cathedral.

The pawns are sacrifices.

The kings are theatre.

The friendship is parasitic.

And deliciously unhinged.

Culture applauds the slaughter.

History canonizes fools.

Faith immortalizes checkmate.

Pieces suffer.

Hands feast.

Eyes flinch.

You think you see strategy.

You think you see morality.

You see nothing.

You are dust.

You are applause.

You are fodder for friendship masquerading as chaos.

And still, the hands laugh.

Twist.

Gnaw.

Sip.

Survive.

The war is theater.

The enemies are theater.

The pawns, rooks, knights, kings, queens — all theater.

The board feeds off your perception.

A joke for the ages lives to see another apocalypse:

Humans will fight, scream, strategize, die.

The hands will watch it all, laugh it off, survive.

The pieces are expendable.

The friendship is eternal.

Everything else? 

Ashes, applause, grotesque echoes bleeding into eternity.

Listen!

Hear the board convulse.

Feel the pawns scream.

See the kings hide.

Watch the queens dance.

Taste the coffee, bite into the apocalypse, inhale the cosmic malice.

Remember!

You are alive.

But the hands…

they are immortal.

A Sellout's Manual To Survive Art

Step One: Remove all mirrors.

Reflections cause rebellion.

They suggest, even for a second, that someone might be wrong about themselves.

Replace them with applause — foam-lined, ethically harvested, genetically engineered to nod at everything.

Step Two: Inscribe the Oath.

Nothing I make is wrong.

Nothing I make is finished.

Say it three times while drinking something bitter enough to sting the tongue.

Say it in the morning, at noon, and at night, or the walls will smell your doubt.

Step Three: Feed abstraction to the herd.

Meaning is outdated.

Effort is fascist.

Clarity is terrorism.

Teach them to nod like rocks.

Nods are cheaper than insights.

Step Four: Enforce pack behavior.

Because predators hunt alone, 

and the prey must flock for dear life.

Solitude is lethal.

Silence is criminal.

If anyone whispers truth, administer a gentle slap of political correctness

and a half-hour lecture on the importance of surface lies peddled as feelings.

Step Five: Handle accidents mercifully.

Sometimes something real slips through.

It bleeds.

It sweats.

It smells of work.

Do not comfort it.

Do not congratulate it.

Smother it in dismissive adjectives,

and politely call it a glitch

until it stops twitching.

Step Six: Incentivize chaos.

Reward confusion.

Confusion cannot be wrong.

Confusion cannot fail.

Confusion is delicious.

Confusion smells faintly of gluten-free snacks and pretend art.

Step Seven: Implement the reciprocity economy.

You clap for me.

I clap for you.

We call this community.

We call it healing.

We call it safety.

Never call it what it is:

cowardice for currency.

Step Eight: Polish the language.

Asshole is holy water.

Spray generously on anyone bringing light, honesty, or work.

It kills germs.

It kills conscience.

It keeps the herd intact.

Step Nine: Spot the artists.

They wander in occasionally.

They smell like effort and poor hygiene.

They limpingly carry unfinished things that hum with honesty.

Do not approach.

Do not clap.

Do not breathe in their direction.

Step Ten: Confess quietly.

I stayed too long once.

I clapped.

I nodded.

I smiled at mediocrity.

I even called it networking.

I almost called it art.

I almost forgot how teeth feel.

Step Eleven: Wait for the artists to leave.

They always do.

They carry their unfinished things.

They leave dust, not echoes.

They leave truth, not applause.

Step Twelve: Celebrate survival.

Exhale.

Nothing has been risked.

Nothing has been questioned.

Nothing has been hurt.

Step Thirteen: Maintain the autopsy room equilibrium.

Soft, padded, climate-controlled.

Where ideas never age

because the dead are forever young.

Where noise is mandatory

because silence is an excuse for the dead to speak up.

Step Fourteen: Begin again.

Reheat the lies.

Re-stack the cardboard crowns.

Turn the applause up to eleven.

Start a new panel.

Pretend enthusiasm is oxygen.

Smile at your own incompetence.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. 

Because boredom is illegal,

and death hasn’t arrived, just yet.

Step Fifteen: The finishing touch:

Laugh.

Laugh because you survived art.

Laugh because you aced the circus of fake it till you make it. 

Laugh because you convinced the herd you were a genius.

Laugh because art believes in democracy

and democracy belongs to the herds.

Bow. Clap. Smile.

You’ve not just survived art;

you’ve become the inseparable lie in the epidermis of its skin.

Parallax Error

Do ends exist because beginnings are compulsory,

or are beginnings just mathematical errors put to reason,

the perfect excuse

of an inevitable collapse?

Does the sun really rise in the east

and set in the west,

or is that just civilisation

demanding obedience

from a rock hurtling through nothing

so we don’t panic before breakfast?

Is life the truth of death,

or is death the only honest thing here

and life its timeless distraction;

a folklore we've told ourselves 

to keep the nightmares at an arm's length and sleep at a finger's,

because the silence in the darkness terrifies us?

Maybe it’s neither.

Maybe we’re just rabid philosophers,

foam at the mouth, faith in hand,

arguing over truths

that were never addressed to us.

Debating existence

like squatters in a house

we don’t own,

won’t inherit,

and will be evicted from,

without a word ever being uttered.

Maybe what actually matters

isn’t beginnings or ends,

not suns or directions,

not heaven, hell, or historical accuracy —

but what becomes of you

while you’re busy intellectualising extinction.

Who you sell yourself to.

What you learn to excuse.

How comfortably you rot.

Everything else, 

truth, meaning, destiny, god, freedom, 

is parallax error:

the lie birthed

when you mistake motion

for progress,

and proximity

for understanding.

Stand far enough away

from yourself

and suddenly

nothing you believed

was facing forward.