“Often I am ashamed to cite the reasons for my hurt.” – Nayana Nair

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I cried only because
I knew I can be easily loved
if I gave what was asked of me.
And everything asked of me was simple.
I was, after all, made to love like this,
made of love like this.
It was an easy game, that I was designed to win.
And yet tears didn’t cease to dance on my lashes.
All the easy reasonable ways of living with others
were a wound to my ideals.
I couldn’t get over the dealings and the transactions,
the sick rotten give and take.
I couldn’t get over the conditions,
the changing shallow terms of affection.
But in all my loathing
even as I held back things that hungry eyes sought from me,
I couldn’t stop my own hunger from showing.
I also tugged shamelessly at the sleeves of another’s heart
asking for something simple,
a minor sacrifice, a cheap gesture of love,
only to forget it all in the next attack of doubt,
the next demand for more.
I waited for someone’s endless sea of virtues
to change my shabby heart that refused to believe.
My heart meanwhile
counted for, waited desperately,
even prayed
for all the seas to dry up
rather than giving up
the ideals it didn’t even deserve to hold.
This is how I stand guard to the happiness that
I won’t let anyone, not even myself have.

“The Remaining Beautiful Sculpture” – Nayana Nair

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The houses are all empty, the roads deserted,
the remaining beautiful sculptures,
in the overgrown lawns of this plastic world,
have no eyes and no intent to save anyone.

Someone tells me my new lines
and I nod and wait for my voice to arrive.
Someone else opens my cage and you are also
somewhat released from your prison.
We walk the small distance of this model road,
revising the conditions of our freedom in our head.

You hold my hand and it feels like nothing.
How perfect. How hollow.
But soon the sun will rise and fill us with light.
Soon it would all be beautiful.
I almost wanted tell you,
“this emptiness is such a beautiful catalyst
for reckless beginnings”. But I guess you already knew.

As we all wait for the sun,
you tell me you have a name and I nodded.
I realized I could not say the same about myself anymore.
I realized much later that you never told what it is, your name.
A name is such a hollow thing, to be filled up by the person only later.
I don’t know the order of importance of things in this world.
So I guess this must be normal.

As the sun came out of hiding, I was filled with words again
and the words that I wrote in that first light was,
“we both could write poems that can break worlds.
we could be so much more than this. and maybe we are.
maybe we want to be something less. something simple.
something harmless. but is that even possible?“

As I wondered what your real words looked like,
I uttered the words I was told to,

“the houses are all empty, the roads deserted,
the remaining beautiful sculptures ,
in the overgrown lawns of this plastic world,
have no eyes and no intent to save anyone.
i won’t save you. i will be just like others.
i will look at you and wonder. i will smile and forget.
i will love and forget.
but i will remember you in your crudest form.
you will exist in my vocabulary like waves and perfumes
and home and roads. but you will remain.
i will make sure of it.“

And with all the conviction and gratitude you replied,

“that is enough. i can be saved just by that.“

I believed you so much in that moment
that I wanted to mean every word I spoke
and maybe that was the moment my love was born
for you.

“What I Remember(7)” – Nayana Nair

I have got something against
most words and most sentences
that proclaim that everything is achievable,
that dreams come true,
that life is perfect picture if you want it to,
that everything is in our hands,
and happiness is ours if we have to courage
to step out of the shadows of our fear.

Because I may have lived just over 20 years
but I have feel like I have lived a lot
and I think it is unfair
that I feel so old and weary already.
I feel I am disappointed in many things,
many small things,
things that I could have easily ignored,
things that I could have got used to
if I was aware of their existence
before reality crawled into my world without any warning.

So when I cross my path with these filtered picture of this world
the fun, the bright and the confident who deserve the world.
I am sad, because that is the world I have never seen,
that world doesn’t exist for me.
In the world I see not everything is achievable-
somethings are and somethings aren’t.
Dreams come true, but not always
mostly we end up changing, skipping and down-grading
till we reach the ones we can achieve.
Life is not perfect.
Yes, it is the biggest gift,
but it is not perfect and it all doesn’t depend all on me.
My life is more in the hands of others
than I would want it to be
and helplessness comes in all forms
dressed in the form of situations that no one else can see.
Helplessness is as real as our dreams.
That out of the shadows that we hide in
it is not all warm and sunny.
The rains, the storm,
the climate of life is not same for all.

So all these quotes meant to motivate
don’t mention the subtext
don’t mention the terms and conditions,
the cases where they don’t apply.

I would have coped better with these small hardships
if I expected them when I chose my dream.
I may have taken it as my grand adventure,
if I didn’t feel duped or betrayed half of the time.
Maybe then I would not feel obligated to always have an excuse
to give, for the times when I fell short of the default way of things.
It would have helped or perhaps consoled me to know
that everyone has to work hard, has to sacrifice a lot,
that many struggle for years and sometimes for their whole life
to get what to they want.

Or maybe I am just bitter cause someone else is living a better life.

“My Character” – Nayana Nair

The crowd, every crowd-
they exhaust me
and frighten me.
They take away air around me
and tell me to leave myself at the door,
if I want to come in.
They like to stare a lot,
they like to condition my mind, my eyes to look away when they stare.
Is this the point
where I am supposed to sit down with a sigh
and tell a sad story-
about how I was wronged (isn’t everyone?),
how they never apologized,
how there was nothing to apologize for,
how people find it easier to support the one in wrong,
how it is easier to hate myself that to hate so many people.
The most painful but convenient words that I can tell myself-
“maybe they were right” “i took it too personally”.
How the result of telling someone all this
are more words like these-
“you are not the only one, it happens, it is normal”
“don’t make a big deal of it”.
Is there any end to what one must hear and suffer
just to give an explanation that people want so badly to hear
and are more desperate to brush off as weakness of my own character.

“Crack in my mind” – Nayana Nair

I couldn’t look into the eyes of the people I knew all my life
or even people who never knew me.
Every morning I woke up
I felt I have left a part of me in the nightmare
of the last the day.
I was afraid that with every hello that I said
I will leave open a crack in my mind
for people to look into.
That all that I had written on paper
is printed on my skin.
I was afraid that if people knew of my condition
I would not have enough energy or excuses
to refute their point
if they put their suspicions in words.
I was afraid of lot of things
for a long time
and most of it was to be seen in a way
that I didn’t want to be seen.

“These days” – Nayana Nair

These days
I want to stay away from people,
who I once called friends,
(I think they never called me that)
and I have doubts on what I feel.

These days
I am suffering from an unexplained aversion
to human relation and condition.
My efforts are spent
in avoiding people and small talks.

These days,
I spend my days
thinking, “What is wrong with me?’,
knowing that these feeling are weird
and still not finding something wrong
where there should be soomething wrong.
In the brief moments when I am reminded
of once dear faces,
I feel an ache,
a feeling that I have been let down,
I have been betrayed by everyone,
I have been wronged.

These days,
I am no longer myself.
I am somewhere where
I have lost sense of myself and others.
Even though you miss me,
even though you love me,
please don’t try to bring me back.