brown

Everyday we drink tea, resting the tea cups on round jute coasters on a large brown wood coffee table with an even larger brown tinted glass surface.

The tint makes the newspapers below look 30 years old- as if they were fished out from our storage room, but of course they bear today’s day and date- neat and crisp.

The rusk often drips into the tea as we stare into our respective screens on quiet mornings of days’ that we know entail toil. The unuttered desperation for rest adds to the silence, broken periodically by the stunted cries of stunted sparrows. The sparrrows are smaller than they used to be 20 years ago. Their plumage pathetic now, dirt-like instead of the browns that we have preserved in our eyes.

A three-some of green parrots show up at the window near the dining table, overlooking the cemetery. Always in threes, and always silent for the fear of attracting a predator who’d claw them down.

Only once have I sighted a large hawk in our skies, gawking over the cemetery as if it was its land. How would I explain to it that that land is disputed property…

-Tanmay

nightmare

These serpentine dreams of mine

latch onto me,

dragging me down

long after I’ve woken up,

it’s the incubus of epic proportions

reminding me of sins that were

the poison dilutes my blood

and I hallucinate- an extension of nightmares- a contorted scarecrow’s screaming cries

ringing in my ears

the rustling summer wind gives me cotton mouth

sweat drops like a river from my hair to my chin

and then the pounding of the earth

with no time to turn around

all I see from the corner of my eye-

vile wolves with red eyes jumping on me…

-Tanmay

free (cheap) booze

elusive is the feeling of satisfaction

when the high tide fills me up

and then recedes

so I accept: “every high has its low”

the coin of life I suppose

wherein we resign

to luck and chance

we’re not entirely wrong to do so

move your limbs enough the right manner

and you’ll earn some respect

“rest you leave to luck”

they say

so I do that

and sometimes I don’t

a zeal to be a contrarian

keeps me sane and happy

the life of mechanics and logic seems bland

hence these images in my head constructed

from images of life

Polaroid eyes printing instantly

and the brain filling in the details

so finely that the cocktail is smooth

and keeps me happy

and for a second the elusive satisfaction is in my palms. warm and lucky.

-Tanmay

buried alive; logic; reasons

Music and loneliness have a symbiotic relationship. Music doesn’t cut away the loneliness but it sure numbs the pain that arises out of it. I remember in my second semester at univeristy I had my earphones resting on my ears constantly, no matter where I went. In February 2018 I was introduced to Logic’s Under Pressure by a fellow music enthusiast and music producer. I fell in love with Logic instantly. He is revered by a lot of people for his honest take on anxiety and depression, almost as if an older brother is listening to you and your fears. I remember sitting alone for breakfast eating quickly whilst listening to Buried Alive, the memory is etched so clearly that listening to the song again now brings back images from that time and a thump in my body because of the physiological changes that anxiety brought forth were sometimes more pronounced while listening to relatable music. It was mostly a wrenching of the gut- up and down so strong that it would force my hip up if I was on my bed.

There was a dependence that I fostered on certain types of music that helped channel some of my confusion with life into energy to get up and do shit. I owe a lot to the artists whose music I listened to then. The desperation of loneliness demands prompt attachment to anything constant. People couldn’t be there in the way I needed them to be, so an only child was still the only child at steel tables, with two hundred of his peers ten meters away. It was almost necessary, the way my life unfolded then; it made me impervious.

Everything happens for a reason and the reason is made clear after the happening; almost always.

-Tanmay