“Blue Rant” – Nayana Nair

I have heard many say
that blue is saddest color.
But what I find more sad is
how almost everyone I know
knows how to imagine/recall a sadness
at the mention of this color.

I imagine this-
all of us,
millions of us
standing in one huge room
and someone mentioning this color,
this harmless color.

I imagine our collective sadness,
our collective agony.
I imagine an innocent kid, among us,
trying to picture a clear blue sky,
but not knowing why
even the skies feel heavy on his heart today.

I feel sad for people like me,
for the child in us
who tries, puts effort
to take everything in stride,
to move forward, to see the world as it is,
while every other cell in our body wants to give up,
while every part of us is adamant to call this blue ‘sad’.

“my dying love for lemonades and other similar things” – Nayana Nair

In my wardrobe
I have hidden skeletons of you and me
from last year, from the year before,
even the year that never was (as per your memory).

When my head aches from the mention of all the light
I am supposed to see in life

(according to the countless articles on positive thinking),

when I have had enough, but can’t mention it
on the face of well-meaning people

(the handbook of gratitude tells me I should forgive
everything that is done by well meaning folks-
I mean EVERYTHING, have you heard anything more preposterous)

when all the scenarios I used to complain about
become my best case scenario

(it feels like every inch in my home
is occupied with people that I am told not to hate
phew! - you know how forgiveness is not exactly my thing)

when I fail at acting fine, as you taught me to-

I sit among those skeletons
have no care about being with the clothes
that they will never get to wear,
who don’t have a heart to be ruined by.

I try to find comfort
in the thought, in the fact
that an year from now
I will be here,
that I will be the part
that dies by the next spring.

I won’t have to live on to become the part of me
that would hate lemonades, love and laughs.

“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.

“Gray Crowd” – Nayana Nair

There is only this life,
that is made by imitation of stories.
Stories that told me
how to feel
and what to say,
told me to cry and ruin myself
if you turn away,
told me to leave my everything for your sake,
never told me how tedious all this could become
and how much frustrating it would be
to have a love that doesn’t give me back
all that I was guaranteed to get.
What to do if I am no gentle virtuous princess
or even a woman of strong heart and character
but a person not even worth a mention, let alone a heart.
What to do when I am indistinguishable from the gray crowd,
when I am not so special and not so deserving of all that I want.
What to do when my clocks have stopped in that one moment
that I let myself down
and every kind lover is separated from me
by this distance in time.

“What I Remember (1)” – Nayana Nair

the floors of the uni i went to were too slippery, too shiny, crowded with too many people whom i couldn’t look at nor understand.
i see people print the words of fond memories in the air when they are reminded of days when they had friends.
but i do not remember anyone having friends. i remember people who knew how to be friendly when it suited them.
i remember the world being as bitter as i was.
i remember the callousness in their voices that surfaced only at the mention of someone’s misfortune or someone’s flaw.
and sure they must have been entertaining to many.
maybe I should have enjoyed a gossip or two.
but i couldn’t bring myself to listen to all that was said about people i had avoided looking at.
i always thought no one wanted to looked at, no one wanted to be talked about, just like i how i didn’t want these things to happen to me.
but maybe what people expect and what people do are not exactly the same thing.
i was no lover of the social drama that entertained many.
i always felt this whole scheme of forced amusement and required bonding reeked of fakeness and pending betrayals.

“Grow a New Heart”- Nayana Nair

My voice no longer cracks
at the mention of loss,
or at the mention of love
(once they always followed each other
like ants in search for food)
I have grown a new heart,
that doesn’t want to be covered with shields,
that is capable of losing without bitterness,
that can hold your hand and trust your stride
even when it cannot trust itself.