“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.

“Work Hard” – Nayana Nair

We could never see each other properly
because we busy working hard,
trying day and night
to become something the other wants.
Or at least something that can’t be rejected on face
or fall short of this friendship
that we could never be sure of.
We worked equally hard
to ignore when we saw a crack in each other’s mask,
to ignore the words spoken out of character.
Somewhere we were too hollow, too materialistic, too demanding.
And we knew it was wrong.
We knew we had no right to demand.
We knew we were cruel and we knew we would be forgiven.
If not now, then someday.
Is it possible to love someone in spite of being so wrong?
Is it possible to use such pure words for a transaction gone wrong?

“It didn’t matter” – Nayana Nair

When love, friendship and family
were no big words
just words, like any other words
and it didn’t matter
which one mattered more,
which one came first,
it didn’t matter
what loyalty is , what betrayal is.

When I didn’t know these words
things didn’t hurt so much.
When I didn’t know these words
I loved my friends better,
I loved my family better.
Without looking for anything more than
simple peasure of their company
and single prayer of their well being.

But when these words
were laid out on paper,
on my heart,
along with conditions,
they seemed like an agreement,
a selfish transaction.
And I was no longer sure
whether I wanted any of it.