Living with The Ghosts

It was a long time ago
I was probably a ten-year old

The blunt lead of the half-chewed graphite
The meek overtone of the frail scribbles
The inexpensive pages of the hard-bound notebook

They had all witnessed a new beginning
The first signs of an original
The morning to a thousand possibilities
The first ever of a poetic journey
My first ever poetry

The ten-year old me drowned in the loud laughs and ill smirks
The poetry found freedom in the flight of a paper plane

I was too young to make sense of words apparently
I have lived with the ghost of sense ever since.




It was a long time ago
I was probably thirteen or fourteen
Tagore and Neruda and Wordsworth were too far-fetched for my humble height
But, my grandfather wasn't

And so, I read him
I read him every day
I read him every night
Years after he was gone, I could still see him look at me and smile
He smiled at me every time I read him
He smiled at me every time I pulled out my diary and scribbled a little something
He smiled at me every time we sat down to some poetry, some more of it

And then one day, I wrote
I wrote like I thought he would
I wrote like I thought he would want me to

This time though, it wasn't nonsense
This time around, it was theft
A nobody had stolen from a somebody
A grandson had stolen from a grandfather

I was too naive to even think of writing like him apparently
I have lived with the ghost of my grandfather ever since.



It was a long time ago
I was probably sixteen or so

A raunchy rebel who swore by Shakespeare
Bloodshed, betrayals and death made so much more sense
Blooming flowers and chirping birds have always been for the faint-hearted
But then, what was a rebel without a rebellion?
What was a rebel without his armour?

And so, I sat down to write one more time

The tales of everyday wars
The tales of unseen assaults
The tales of lust in the times of love
The tales you had wished were tales

My father was a revered man
What else could he do but burn such poetry and wait till the last of the ashes were gone?

I was too obscene to write poetry apparently
I have lived with the ghost of poetry ever since.



It was a long time ago
If six years were a long time

Heartbreaks have seen the mute sing songs and the cripple write poems
I thought I was different
If only thoughts were half as real as reality itself

I would write
I would write every day
I would write every night
I would wake off a midnight tremor and bleed on the paper
I would wake off an afternoon slumber and the pen would hear my tears

I could write till the end of time
I could write till it was all gone
Every last bit of it washed away in the breath of monsoons

I could write till my hands bled
I could write till the novels ran out of pages

But then, what was the point?

I would still not make enough sense
I would still be naive to write of adulthood
I would still be obscene, unworthy of being called a poet
I would still be fighting the ghosts inside my head

But then, poetry is a disease
And I have been diseased for as long as I remember


I still write
I still write poetry

It's just that I don't write to make sense anymore
It's just that I don't write to appease the grown-ups
It's just that I don't write to be called a poet
It's just that I don't write for any of it anymore.



I have made peace with the ghosts; I call them my home
I have made peace with the oddities and absurdities of sanity; I call them poetry.