Khanabadosh

I walk on down this road

With my heart on my sleeve

What I say, I say for me

What I do, I do for me

I walk on down this road

Alone but not lonely

The universe is my guide,

Every experience, my companion

I walk on down this road

I have a long way ahead

Every step I take is home

Every fellow traveler, family.

Nuclear

The center of all I am

Far from the center I'd hoped to be 

My repositioned axis

The end of 'me' 

You're the chains I hadn't built

The fortress I was trying to escape 

I seeked

You destroyed

Nuclear, in every way. 

Dear London

With
Your bright lights,
Your cobblestone paths,
Your busy streets,
Inspire me, please.


With
Mulled wine and old friends,
Longs walks and numb feet,
His guitar, the rain and its song,
Inspire me, please.


I'll wait


(This was after the most beautiful night at Covent Garden, that I hoped would help shatter my writer's block)

One

(This is a small something I wrote for someone. I was asked to write on 'Homophobia'. Here's how it went.)

I see you walk with him. I see you walk hand in hand.

He steals a kiss; your face lights up.

I see you stop in the distance. You stop just to look at him.

You can’t believe you had found him.

I see him hold you. He holds you in that ‘forever’ embrace.

Life, as you knew it, would never be the same.

You see me look at you from the corner of your eye

You see my look of adulation

You see the joy on my face, just to see you that happy.

And I don’t even know you.

You see me walk with him. You see us walk hand in hand.

He steals a kiss; my face lights up.

You see us stop in the distance. I stop just to look at him.

I can’t believe I had found him.

You see him hold me. He holds me in that ‘forever’ embrace.

Life, as we knew it, would never be the same.

But I see you look at us from the corner of my eye

I see that look of disdain

I see the fear splashed all over your face.

I can feel you wanting to ‘cure’ me,

Wanting to rid me of my ‘disease’

And you don’t even know me.

His hand was tailor made for mine

Just like his was for you

My lover’s embrace is my force field

Just like your lover’s is yours

We dream our dream house together

Just like you dream yours

We are unapologetically, irrevocably in love

Just like you say you are 

Our love can’t be explained

Just like yours

Why  then, must I question myself?

Why then, must I live in shame?

Why then, must I give you answers?

Why then, must I succumb to your irrationalities?

Why then, don’t I deserve to be happy?

You choose to see differences,

I see perfect similarities

You look for ways to make me disappear

I just want to coexist

You try and make me more like you

I say, what’s the fun in that?

Writer's Block

I haven't been able to write for a while now. I blame the current lack of inspiration in my life. Lack of excitement and novelty.
Looking through poetry for some inspiration, I rediscovered one of the works of art that attracted me to poetry amidst the pools of rubbish my literature teacher in college laid out before us. 
I melt into a puddle every time i read it.. 


I Carry Your Heart With Me
- E. E. Cummings


i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                   i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and  you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Faith knows no species. 

It's a shame..

It’s a shame that we know how things go down in circumstances like this. We know how the phones and the traffic and the media will behave. It’s almost like a drill that we’ve all learnt how to follow.

It’s such a shame.

It’s a shame that while there are people in the city offering complete strangers shelter, food, conveyance and any other help possible, the information that’s being spread instead is about Kasab’s birthday (that he shouldn’t have been alive for anyway)

It’s such a shame.

It’s a shame that today we’ll panic, tomorrow we’ll celebrate the spirit of Mumbai and soon all this will be just another date.

It’s such a shame.

It’s a shame that in no time people will begin candle marches, and truly believe that their solidarity will make a difference (just like it has all the 11 million times they’ve had candle marches before)

It’s such a shame.

It’s a shame how immune we’ve become, how a smaller numbers of casualties is reason to breathe a sigh of relief, how we can sit and watch this news over dinner and how a text message to a 100 people who are okay gives us the peace of mind to carry on with life.

It’s such a shame.

It’s a shame that a country that fought tooth and nail, blood and sweat, life and death at one point is now a passive blob of disconnect. If we’re safe in our bubble, we don’t care. There’s no rebellion, no drive, no fire!

It’s scary.

It’s upsetting.

It’s infuriating.

It’s just such a fucking shame!

You and Me

" Wanna pack your bags, Something small 
Take what you need and we disappear 
Without a trace we'll be gone, gone 
The moon and the stars can follow the car 
and then when we get to the ocean 
We gonna take a boat to the end of the world 
All the way to the end of the world "

Neglect

Old blog

Writing in general 

Weight - watching

Singing 

Photographs

Relationships (well, some!)

Discovery

Exploration

Life

Love

I'll find you all again. 

Sooner than you can say "Neglect"

In with the new (The old ain't goin' nowhere!)

New thing I'm trying out..
Let me know what you think..

http://kanikanikanika.blogspot.com/

"I let my music take me where my heart wants to go..."

I do?

You rejoice at the rich brown once you peel off the dry.

What you miss is the apprehension in my curled toes.

You dote over the crimson on my lips and cheeks.

What you miss is the look in my eyes.

You marvel at the intricacies of my attire.

What you miss is my body yelling in discomfort.

You shed a tear of pride - "All grown up", you say.

What you miss is the tear in my eyes, mourning the loss of a childhood.

You praised yourself at a job well done.

What you missed was my opinion.

One day I will dispel all your myths. 

One day I will prove you wrong.

One day I will defy you.

One day I will fly into the sunset.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

It rains through November. Winters hit some seriously low temperatures. Summers go on forever. The once colossal glaciers in Antarctica are now replaced by a lusher green than our forests (which we’ve now cut down, obviously. They took up too much space. Space that we can use for factories and buildings. It’s only fair!).

Nature has her subtle ways of chiding us. She lets us know time and again that she’s not happy but then like any forgiving mother, she lets it pass. Afterall we’re her children. We’ll listen eventually. Or so she thought!

We paid her no attention. We went on our way. Doing things as we pleased. Not bothering about what she has to say. “Mothers, they nag!” Who cares about the world as long as we’re making money, right? She’ll understand. She loves me. She’ll want what’s best for me too.

But every mother has a boiling point. Push her to it, and she will react.

We pushed. Now she’s reacting!

It’s time we stopped and listened.

She gave us birth! She deserves our love!

Ctrl + Alt + Delete

For close to a week now, my internet has been at its worst behavior in a long long time. Sulking for the first 3 days, it just refused to do anything. Then, after a lot of pleading with it (and even more yelling at the poor call centre guys at the AirTel helpline) it finally decided to work…. Well, kind of. It would decide, as per its whims and fancies what websites it does or does not wish to give me access to.

One of those that I was denied access to was my most frequented - Facebook (obviously! How else would “Revenge- The internet fights back!” be complete, right?!)

Frantically trying to get access from my kakka phone and just about being able to see what who’s up to and who has what to say, I spent the first two days logging on and off about 7 times a day! (Which seemed like a huge amount considering how otherwise I’d log in once, and log out once… 8 hours later!)

Slowly, I realized, though, that the lack of Facebook actually made me explore so much more. As stoopid as it may sound actually stating the obvious, it’s true! I started reading much more on the internet. I got further through my book. I caught up on movies I had lined up. I revamped my blog (which I think, in all modesty, looks SO cool now!) I took pictures instead of just looking through hoards of pictures of people I knew (more often than not. )

So it’s only now that I realize the problem I have. I know social networking is important, specially now when our Facebook page seems like our foremost identity (more important sometimes than our offline, real world self which may not look as good as our photoshopped profile pictures or sound as witty as our new, well thought out status messages. ) But I wonder often what it’s doing to our face to face time. I wonder if it's really as awesome as it seems.

For that matter, infact, all this fancy hi end technology and progress in communication, which is meant to bring us all closer and compress this already shrinking world even further, is actually taking away REAL relationships. I spend all day talking to you (chatting online/ sms/ bbm /facebook etc) and never really have much to say. Conversations are getting more and more inane, more and more shallow and less and less intimate.

Maybe these things work over long distances. You’re in India trying to co-ordinate a business deal in China, for a company in the US. That makes sense. Then technology is a God send! But if you’re within the same city, in a Kilometer’s radius, do you still need to constantly be connected? Is it better having a relationship with your phone (and other people as a result of that) than having one with real people?

Maybe I'll keep sending 100 text messages a day. Maybe I’ll have a Blackberry soon and become more active on my Twitter account. Maybe I’ll be “bbming” for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll never buy a phone that costs more than 3000 bucks and spend all my money doing things I want to instead of things I think I want to, and still spend all my time talking on that 3000 rupee phone. Maybe I’ll always be as addicted to Facebook.

But maybe I won’t.

Now that I’ve realized this, I’m ready for rehab.

I’m ready to see if I can make my non-cyber-space life as much fun.

I am Kanika and I am an addict!

Eternity

You and me and our ocean of nothingness...

"Please read my letter 

And promise me you'll keep

The secrets and the memories 

We cherish in the deep"

Who says you can't buy happiness?

Rs. 24.90 /-

I miss you today, Sula!

"Sea and the Rhythm"

Perched on my rock,

Just my island and me.

Staring into the horizon.

My conversations with the sea.

The sun sets. A smile takes over my face.

I know I'm in my happy place.

Far far away

from life as I know it.

Far far away 

from city dirt and grit.

Far far away from career and its rat race.

I know I'm in my happy place.

With a beer in one hand,

the music in my head, on..

No sense of time.

No dusk no dawn.

Living my life at my own pace.

I know I'm in my happy place.

Long walks on the beach,

Sand running through my feet.
So many stories to tell,

some loud, some discreet. 

Crashing waves back to the sea we chase,

I know I'm in my happy place.

Trying to capture every moment

for fear I'll forget.

Every smile, every blooper

Every Sunset.

I want to hold on to every memory like a tight embrace.

A tight embrace to my happy place.

But just as those waves must retreat

and the sun must set.

Just as every bird

Must return to its nest.

I too must head back to my home base.

But in my head I'll always have... My happy place!