Quotes and poetry by aaditya

often, when i am trying to write and
i am drunk enough on melancholy and
i have written enough poetries and
used enough metaphors and sorrow and
cried thrice. first time for my heartbreaks,
second to repent my grief and
third for no reason, in particular, my heart falls into oblivion.
it swings back and forth like a rope
tied to the fan, carrying the weight of a deadbody.

maybe sometimes it's things we don't write
which saves us.

©aaditya

aaditya 6w

it's time to choose sides now.
the stitches or the devouring mouth?

i stand in front of your photo-frame
after a long time.
i don’t know when love became an illusion.
all i know is that no one ever had it
for a long time.
my fathers' arms don’t hold my mother’s hand
like they did thirty years ago.
i always leave my door half-opened
when your thoughts are in my mind, and
keep it open until blood with your taste
comes in my mouth. because your love
has now become too stale to swallow.

i think of lovers as paintings.
coming together as one even if the shade was different.
but you, you don’t have any colour, shape or face now.
i am practising nearness just with the hue of the past.
this is all i know now. grieving my sorrow
until i start looking like one.

i walk away from your photo frame and realise
i never said to you goodbye before.
kind of goodbye where-
earth stops rotating, the air burns your skin
and two hearts start beating in the same rhythm
like they are trying to hug each other after
breaking the ribcage.
my goodbye to you has been silent.
a poor attempt to save my soul with a forced smile
and trying to forget how gently you held my hand
on the walk back home.

so this time i kiss you goodbye.
you kiss me back so quickly like
it was sitting on your lips.
you taste like someone else.
our hearts try to beat in the same rhythm
but yours is made of stone.
i cry on your shoulders, you look at me with a smile.

i let you leave this time. putting all-stars to death.
we were together. and i forget the rest.

©aaditya

aaditya 8w

जिन्होंने जल्दीबाजी में पहन लिए पैर में उल्टी चप्पल उन्होंने कहा -
"प्रेम ज़्यादा दूर तक चलने नहीं देता।"

कभी-कभी किसी को खो देने से ज़्यादा
दुःख इस बात को स्वीकारने में होता है
कि हम उस इंसान को खो चुके हैं।
हमारे मनपसंद पेड़ की वो कमजोर शाख़,
जो तुमसे विरह पर थोड़ी झुक गयी थी
अभी तक टूटी नहीं है।
मानो वो भी शून्य में कहीं,
तुम्हारे इंतिज़ार में रुकी हुई है।
रेडीओ पर बजता गाना अभी भी
तुम्हारे इर्द-गिर्द तैरता रहता है।
मेरी उदासी के सुर नुसरत साहब के अलाप से
ज़्यादा भारी मालूम होते हैं।
तुम्हारी विरह इतना मधुर है यह तब पता चला
जब कोई और धुन मेरे कान पर नहीं रेंग पायी।

शायद मृत्यु और विरह अंतिम सच्चाई हैं।
ईश्वर से भी बड़ी।
ईश्वर को किसी ने नहीं देखा, पर इन दोनों से
हम सब कभी ना कभी मिलते हैं।
और इन दोनों के दरमियान जो रिश्ते बच भी जाते हैं
वह हमेशा एक से नहीं रहते।
मुझे मेरी बहन में उसकी शादी के बाद
मेरी बहन से ज़्यादा, किसी की पत्नी नज़र आती है।
वैसे ही मेरी पिता की मृत्यु के बाद मुझे मेरी माँ में,
मेरी बेटी नज़र आने लगी है।
उनसे डाँट सुनने से ज़्यादा डर अब इस बात का रहता है
कि कहीं दवाई समय से ना लेने पर मैं आवाज़ ना ऊपर कर दूँ।

जीवन शायद सबसे अनोखी कविता है।
हम अपने ख़ालीपन को किसी से तुकबंदी
मिला कर भरने में लगे रहते हैं और यह बीतता जाता है।
मेरे चेहरे की झुर्रियाँ अख़बार की तारीख़ों जैसे
बदलती रहती हैं।
और उदासी की पीर मेरे शब्दों में नज़र आती है।

जानती हो
प्रेम ही ऐसा रिश्ता है जिस में प्रेमी बदलते हैं
पर उसके मायने नहीं।
मेरे आसमान में नीला रंग तुम्हारे होने से था।
अब सब ब्लैक एंड व्हाइट है।
तुम्हारी बातें ‘वी’ शेप वाली चिड़िया के रूप में
आज भी इसी आसमान में उड़ती रहती हैं।
शायद प्रेमियों का अंत होता है, प्रेम का नहीं।
लव इज़ लाइक थानोस।
‘इनएविटेबल’

यू नो!

©आदित्य

aaditya 11w

you speak of love like it’s a threat.
you hold it to my throat and i flinch against it.

tonight, there is not a single
bloodstain on my pillow.
not a single dream was murdered
tonight in my sleep. i sit
on my bed
and pinch my arms like a child
to check
whether i am really awake.

i walk into another room
and watch my mother in pain.
i am in her womb.
after being 14 hours in labour,
she is trying to convince
the doctor
to push me out naturally.

i see her
dissecting love for me
through her flesh with my eyes.
‘have you ever been guilty
by the magnitude of pain was borne
to bring you in life
but now you’re just in your 20s
and feel already dead?’

i swallow my guilt like thirst and
blink my eyes.
i watch my mother caressing my face.
i am 12 now.
she is not as beautiful as i watched her
a decade ago.
she has got freckles, her smile seems ferocious,
her hair is thin, and her thighs got fat now.
her stomach is now always half-filled
and her shoulders seem too fragile
to carry all the baggage.

i hear people saying that
i look exactly like her.
my mother hates herself,
but at this moment she tries
that her hatred doesn’t transfer
to me as, an ancestral heritage.

my hands are skinnier than
my friends.
she feeds me from her hand
three times a day.
i spill little food like
childhood on my trousers,
making little extra space for grief
in my stomach.

i have started thinking
my grief as a child is the same as
her grief as a mother.
she never unlearned
to be tender. and i saw
her hatred transcend in my mouth
through every bite she fed
like a blind man reaching quicksand.

my sorrow has been generational.
my grief was of my mother’s
and deformity in my heart to not be
able to love someone
was two hundred years old.

now i am 34
and all my grief is anger now.
my mother is in bed, skinny.
her hands are as thin as mine were
twenty years ago.
all the fat she had, has been shed
as the baggage of her past.

i see her love for me decaying slowly,
i want to save her
but her soul is melting.

i feed her food, showing i still care.
maybe i was trying to tell her
i can love her better than she loved me.
her stomach is half-filled now
and she chokes up on food.

‘let me clean your mess.’ i whisper.
she looks at my face like i looked her
34 years ago, after a bloodless night.
her pain in labour haunted me.
her eyes are pleading as my mouth did,
‘to not bring me to life.
to stop tearing her flesh.
to run away.’

i wanted myself to
scream that night
she’d not be able to love me
like i wished her to.
and tonight
she is pleading the same
with her helpless eyes.

i cleaned her mess
like she used to clean my trouser
to tell me
despite all her hatred, grief and anger
she will always love me.
my skinny hands will be always hers to hold first.
and her fragile shoulders will always
carry me
as someone to love.

i am 50 now
and my mother is dead.
i remember myself carrying all her instincts
and realise
you can’t be someone your mother was not.
you always share her grief
like a birth-partner.
you can never save your mother.
you mock her manners just to realise
after fifty-years
you’re everything your mother was.
and then you hate yourself more
like she used to hate herself
in return.

you want to
give her all the love you wished
but dead never read your obituary
and hear you mourn.
now all the love you had for her
is taking space in your heart as grief,
weighing your spine down.
you got anger, love, hatred
but nowhere to put it.

your bones crack, your
mouth bleeds, and
your heartaches.
your anger and grief was
ancestral.
you knew
how to put on armour and
fight the world
but never how to love with one’s inside.
with someone’s heart and stomach.
you were never loved without anger

and you’d never know how to do.

©aaditya

aaditya 11w

you say i killed you — haunt me, then.

we were sitting
by a lake feeling
wind as a burden.
the sunset was beautiful, but, sombre.

she looked into my eyes
with her tears looking like
white pearls concealed in a black cup.

‘can we try once again?’ she tried to speak.
her sorrow blinded her voice
like a flash blinds your face
whenever you take a picture
against the mirror in the dark.

i wanted to say yes
but my heart was becoming heavy,
and our love a burden
which i’d not want her to bear.

she reached for my guts
and puts a hand against my back.
our goodbye was going to be poetic.
it was the kind of heartbreak i wanted.
to make me write something later.

i tried to turn softly away from her mouth,
but a piece of my heart was still there,
resting unguarded, on her lips.
i wanted a kiss that leaves me mourning.
i wanted to remember this
the end. the demise.
how do people leave each other behind like this?
how lovers fear goodbyes more than death.

‘i can’t kiss you like this.’ she said.
for the very first time, my mouth became
numb and useless at the same time.
she gathered her voice whispered goodbye.
my lungs were gasping for air and couldn’t
say goodbye back.

i sat by the lake
like a hopeless sailor
in the middle of the pacific.
maybe i was tired of gathering fallen things.

after 25 minutes
finally i left the place
carving our love on the dead leaves.

love is cynical.
and my god-complex stops me
to choke a second person
with my rage and mouth.
some people can handle it,
but most become tired and they slip midway.
your love shouldn’t make anyone
bones break and hearts ache.
and if it does

relieve them of the weight.

©aaditya

aaditya 12w

जब इंसान कमज़ोर होता है तो प्रेम की तलाश में निकलता है,
और कमज़ोर होने के लिए।

तुम्हें मेरे किरदारों से ज़्यादा
मेरा मोह होना चाहिए था।
तुमने जबसे बोला है कि
तुम्हें मेरे सहूलियत भरे शब्दों से प्रेम हो जाता है
तबसे मैं खुदको मेरे किरदारों
में ढालने की कोशिश करता हूँ।
पर वो भी ठीक-ठीक नहीं कर पाता।
मैं हमारे बीच की खाई भरने के चक्कर में
सारे पुल भी जलाता जा रहा हूँ।

पर शायद एक वक्त के बाद सब कुछ
खतम हो जाना चाहिए।
कुछ लड़ाइयाँ और कहानियाँ पकड़े रहने का
कोई मतलब नहीं होता।
मेरे साथ भी कुछ ऐसा हो रहा है।
मेरे शब्द और मौन एक दूसरे में मिलते जा रहे हैं।
मेरी कविताएँ अदृश्य हो गयी हैं
और कहानियाँ बाहर तार पर टँगी हैं।
मेरा अकेलापन मुँह फेरे बैठा है
कि उससे ज़्यादा समय अब
ऐसे किरदारों के साथ निभाता हूँ
जिनकी मृत्यु हो चुकी है।

जानती हो
कभी-कभी मौन का दुःख
सबसे कठोर बोले हुए शब्दों से भी
घातक होता है।
मेरे शब्दों में भी शायद अब बस
मौन बचा रह गया है।
जिसे लोग सहूलियत के हिसाब से
थोड़ा थोड़ा काट कर निकाल लेते हैं।
मानो किसी माँ की कोंख से मृत
बच्चा निकाला जाता है।

छोटे टुकड़ों में काट कर।

©आदित्य

aaditya 12w

प्रेम कुछ को प्रेमी बनाता है , कुछ को ईश्वर।

थोड़े दिन पहले किसी ने मुझसे कहा
तुम्हारी पीढ़ी के प्रेम में यह बात अच्छी है
कि ख़त लिखने का रिवाज़ खतम हो गया है।
जब कोई छोड़ के जाता है तो यह याद नहीं रखना पड़ता
कि इन चिट्ठियों का क्या करें।
सहेज के किसी डायरी में छुपा दें
या फिर पुरानी यादों के साथ जला दें।
ये नहीं कि एक बटन दबाया, और सारी यादें डिलीट।

मुझे भी तुमसे ऐसा ही प्रेम करना था।
डी.एम. और एस.एम.एस जैसा विकृत नहीं
बल्कि चिट्ठियों जैसा सामान्य।
जहां मुझे तुम्हें सहेजने से पहले दस पर सोचना पड़ता
कि कहीं कोई और ना देख ले
और जलाने से पहले रोना
क्योंकि फिर तुमको अपने पास लाना असम्भव होता।

मगर शायद यह बात पूर्णतः सच नहीं है।
शायद प्रेम कैसा भी हो कभी विकृत नहीं होता।
जब हमें प्रेम पर भरोसा होता है तो
विरह पर भी सबसे अच्छी कविता लिख सकते हैं।
तमाम लड़ाइयों के बाद भी अंत में
‘अपना ख़याल रखना’ कहने का माध्यम
ख़त हो या मोबाइल फ़र्क़ नहीं पड़ता।
जैसे रोते वक्त झुँझलाहट में किसी से शिकायत करनी होती है
तो आप सबसे ज़रूरी इंसान का कंधा ढूँढते हैं।
वह दाहिना हो या बायाँ फ़र्क़ नहीं पड़ता।
बस एक सहारा चाहिए होता है जिस पर आप सर रखकर
खूब रो सकें जब तक नींद ना आ जाए।

जानती हो
प्रेम पुरातन और आधुनिक दोनों होना चाहिए।
मुझे तुम्हें ख़त और एस.एम.एस दोनों भेजने हैं।
मुझे इतनी सुपरपॉवर चाहिए कि जब तुम
जून की धूप में बस का इंतिज़ार कर रही हो
तो मैं फूंक मार कर तुम्हारे बाल उड़ा सकूँ।
मुझे मेरी भद्दी हैंडराइटिंग के बावजूद स्याही वाला पेन चाहिए
मगर साथ ही जियो वाला सिम भी।
सम्टायम्ज़ आइ नीड टू कॉल
जस्ट टू से ‘आइ लव यू’

यू नो!

©आदित्य

aaditya 13w

how terrible it is to love something that death can touch.

you feel the weight
of all your trauma sitting
quietly on your shoulders
going 60 miles per hour.

you stop outside the park
where your heart was broken first
and learned love can be hysterical,
like torture.

the shape of your heart
has been formed in something new
with the bones of all your past lovers.

your eyes have different colours now
more than one.

you try to define all your failures
as the infinite number of almost
wistful
warm
like childhood in your mouth.

you sit back in your car
and speed goes over 60 miles
you breathe in the hope
you never had.

you close your eyes
while taking a turn sharp
and realise death will hurt less
instead of thinking

what if i fall?

©aaditya

aaditya 13w

my whole being calls for an act of violence, but i still use velvet gloves.

something touches my decaying wound
of a few years ago.
my doctor says ‘don’t you love this?’
he is pointing at my grief and how
it keeps opening my wound.
i reply ‘if not me, then who else will.’

i return to my hometown
and try to meet strangers who were
responsible for my sorrow.
i have 102 people to meet but
i feel my feet soften and see
nothing else in my room except
a chair and a rope.

i dropped all my plans and decided
just to visit your grave alone.
i wanted to talk to your bones
and keep your skull as a relic.
that’s the saddest thing about heartbreak:
my heart is in pieces by you, and all i want to do is
share this news with you.

it’s dark now, and i bruise my forehead
while kissing your gravestone.
i feel my wounds feeling soft.
i watch the mirror in front of my bed
and watch a face which
doesn’t recognise me back.

it’s 2 am and i fall asleep.
some of my grief fades
and some i find still left
stained
with my blood

on the chair and the rope.

©aaditya

aaditya 14w

so why do you fill my sorrow
with the words you've borrowed
from the only place you've known

at midnight i wrote a poem
the size made my friends laugh,
i peeled its soul and cut your lines
and made its lifetime half.

and that poem, it made me so sad
like every things nowadays do,
the movie, the music or a shopping break
there is gloom in everything, i never knew.

i watch myself and mirror then
two ghosts appear on the wall,
one is pious, and one is you
and none of exist, in real at all.

rest of the night, i smiled on bed
did all the work on my morning’s list
i’d rather be busy, posing on couch
than think whole night why i exist.

my friends wake up and watch me smile
they look my eyes, and my gloom is gone,
that’s how you saw me, it’s all you did
but sad thing is, it never lives on.

i rewrote all lines, where erased your name
how strange to smile, while taking a fall,
i realise better to love and lose your way

than never have ever loved at all.

©aaditya