Excerpt from my novel Apricity

CHAPTER ? - BALCONY SCENE

Pari opened the curtains. She pushed the thicker satin ones first and then the sheer white ones. She was in a pale lilac salwar kameez that the twins had gifted her, the dupatta was draped along her head.
There it was. A full moon, hanging in the dark night sky like a white, glowing orb.
“Wow.” Pari breathed, her hands clutching the edges of the balcony.
“Pari.” Zac’s voice was quiet as he walked to stand beside her.
Pari did not turn her face to say anything and continued to stare at the moon. She wanted to take the dupatta off. Wearing it on her head like this seemed so fanciful.
Zac followed her line of sight before muttering, ‘Ya amar.”
“What does that mean?” Pari closed her eyes, letting the summer breeze ripple through her body.
“Nothing.” Zac smirked, brushing off a stray flower petal from her plait.
“I wish I could stay longer.” Pari’s eyes were still shut, and now she was smiling.
“Do you finally enjoy hanging out with me?” Zac teased. He proceeded to sit down on the iron chair.
Pari suddenly opened her eyes, gazing at him. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if we actually did get married.”
“Why do you wonder when we literally have 3 months left of the bet?” Zac scoffed, folding his arms.
“That’s true.” Pari turned her attention back to looking at the night sky.
“I’m just trying to be realistic, Pari.” Zac pinched the bridge of his nose, giving a long sigh. “You know how hard I have tried.”
“What if I annoy you after we get married?” Pari asked.
“You already do, so that’s not a hard feat.” Zac chuckled at her severe expression. “In small amounts.”
“I see the world differently from you.” Pari said.
“It’s not a point of contention, darling.” Zac said smoothly.
Pari’s ears prickled with heat at the mention of that particular endearing nickname.
“Don’t call me that.” Pari said in a hushed voice.
“Here I am trying to enjoy the moon and the stars,” Zac murmured, “And you are talking about the bet still.”
“The bet is what brought us together.” Pari said wistfully.
“Pari.” Zac croaked.
“Is that all you care about?” Pari huffed. She started pacing up and down the balcony. “This stupid bet?
“You really think that is all I care about?” Zac’s voice became tighter, and he stood up.
“Often.” Pari giggled and turned her body to lean against the edge. The night air was so calming, and here Zac looked even more devastatingly handsome.
Zac walked over to stand by the edge, turning his face away. “You say such dangerous things and yet, you’re so unaware of it.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Pari cried.
“I mean that I wish to live in your mind for a while – just to see your way of seeing things.” Zac explained as he started to get up. “I should think that it must be very fascinating.”
“Stay for a while.” Pari pleaded. “I just want to enjoy this.”
Zac looked at her, gazing upon her stunning face, her brown eyes shining with tears. He walked over to her.
“Don’t cry.” Zac leant forward, taking her hand in his. “I won’t go. I promise.”
“Really?” Pari whispered, blinking back the tears.
“Really.” Zac repeated.
Whenever they stood in silence, it did not feel uncomfortable or odd.
Pari looked at him, and said softly, “Can I have a hug?”
“A hug?” Zac replied in surprise.
“You won’t hug me?” Pari folded her arms, her eyes were now wary.
“Of course I can hug you.” Zac stepped forward, embracing her now.
The summer air was balmy and enticing, and as Zac pulled his arms around her body, the whiff of her perfume hit him. Honey, white florals and jasmine.
Pari let out a sigh of relief, burying her head into his chest.
Zac wondered how many times she had considered asking him that and not acting upon it. Of course they could hug. The bet would be over in a few months, and then he would have to propose. He knew he would keep to his word, he had to. He had made that promise, and he never broke promises He didn’t care if his family or friends thought it was something ridiculous, they could accept it. He had all this time to get to know Pari and hat kind of person she was anyway.
Pari did not know why she asked Zac for a hug in that moment. She guessed that it just felt right. She knew she wasn’t supposed to do things like that as he was supposed to be her mentor, the man trying to help her get married. But she wanted to hug him, she wanted to feel the warmth of his body and she wanted to hear his heartbeat as it would speed up rapidly.

She knew what effect she had on him; it was obvious. He already showed her that he desperately cared for her and looked out for her. She knew asking for a hug was overstepping what hypothetical boundary he had set at the beginning of the bet but everything around the two of them had faded away in that moment.

The moon was blurry, the garden was awash with light and all she wanted for him to be do was tremble and confess.

Insomnia

Why can't I never go back to bed?
Whose voice is it, ringing in my head?
Where is the satisfaction in those desperate eyes that are red?
How can I sleep, when I'm already half past dead?

have you ever taken apart a necklace?

watched the pearls roll across the table and realized you’d never looked at them separately before?
funny how something can rest against your skin for years, catch your breath, collect your tears, and still remain a stranger somehow.

you know its weight before its name, where it rests before from where it came.
you know the click of the clasp, the cold of the chain, the way every pearl finds its place again.
you know every curve, every tether.
you just never asked
who strung them together.

so i started pulling.
thread through pearl, pearl through thought, thought through everything i was told and taught.
faith. fate. love. hate.
what makes a man. what makes him great.
politics. purpose. profit. pride.
what deserves my voice, what stays inside.
success dressed in somebody else’s skin, a race i learned to run before asking where i’d win.
some pearls came from family, some from culture, some from rooms that quietly corrected my posture.
sit like this.
think like this.
speak this way.
dream enough to rise,
but never enough to stray.

belonging taught me bending before becoming, until the breaking started feeling like belonging.
the world whispered its wishes until wishes became mine, drew me a road, then called walking it a sign.
some things were inherited differently.
like being handed a child you never expected to raise.
you never chose their arrival or prepared for their weight. you opened your arms and suddenly a whole life was asking you to stay.

strangely, some weights become blessings.
they teach your hands tenderness, give your heart something to defend, turn accidents of circumstance into things you would choose again.
inheritance is complicated that way.
some pearls crossed borders before borders crossed me, crossed tongues, crossed seas, crossed branches of a family tree.
through mothers and fathers, famine and feast, homes turned ghosts and years without peace.
through doors long gone whose keys somehow stayed, through hands now buried whose fingerprints never fade.

so how could i call them worthless because they are old?

but how could i call them mine because that’s what i was told?

so i sit like a jeweler, my history spilled with everything broken, borrowed, built.

i lift every pearl and interrogate its shine.
were you given to me?
or are you actually mine?
my religion. my convictions.
my contradictions and conditioned decisions.
my politics. my purpose. the career that gets my years while i ask whether the salary was worth the purchase.
the causes that get my voice.
the silence that gets my shame.
the dreams i keep chasing
without knowing who named the game.

i turn every pearl, learn every pearl, hold every pearl to the burn of the light.
some truths look different when inherited sight meets chosen sight.
nothing gets buried simply for being old.
nothing gets carried simply because i was told.
sometimes the pearl i doubted longest survives every question and somehow shines strongest.

so i choose it again.
same pearl. new reason.
same truth. new season.
because becoming yourself isn’t always escape.
sometimes you break the frame
and still love the shape.
sometimes freedom is returning to what you knew,
except this time,
you chose it too.
so i keep pulling.
pearl after pearl, world after world, until everything certain comes unfurled.

some i keep. some i release. some roll away and disappear into peace.
then one pearl remains.
i reach.
the chain catches.
a tiny metallic snap.
suddenly, something snaps back.
a scent.
soft. familiar.
caught in the chain
like memory caught in rain.
my fingers freeze.
the room shifts.
the rhyme slips.
i look down.
this chain never rested against my chest.
this clasp never knew the back of my neck.
these pearls never belonged
to the man sitting here.
suddenly the answer
becomes painfully clear.

this necklace
was never mine.
it was hers.
my mother’s.
every pearl i questioned as mine had spent years against her skin before reaching my mind.
she was thrown into life before life taught her to land, given a world full of weight and two already full hands.
before she could ask what she wanted to be, life answered,
whatever they need.
before dreams could bloom, there were mouths, rooms, doors closing early and responsibilities looming.
she inherited a necklace already complete, pearls at her throat, expectations at her feet.

some beautiful. some brutal.
some blessing. some bruise.
some things she inherited.
some she never got to choose.
and she wore them.
through borders and orders, sorrow and tomorrow, homes becoming memories, borrowed hope and swallowed sorrow.
through years that took, shook, asked for everything she had, then asked her for grace.

she never had a table to scatter each pearl.
life never stopped to ask what she wanted from the world.
she couldn’t sit and question the thread.
she was busy making sure,
the people she loved were clothed and fed.
then somewhere between surviving and striving, losing and living, leaving and arriving,
life placed something else
in her hands.
me.
another mouth. another name.
another heart. another flame.
another weight when her arms already ached.
but this weight,
she held differently.
this weight she kissed.
this burden she blessed.
this pearl she pressed against her chest.
and suddenly, i understand the necklace.

i spent years asking who i am because she spent hers making sure i would have the chance.
i get to question.
she had to carry.
i get to choose.
she had to bury.
i get to scatter the pearls.
she had to wear them.
i get to inspect the wounds.
she had to bear them.
i get to ask whether the road is mine.
she walked whatever road
kept me alive.

all this time, i thought i was dismantling myself.
my beliefs. my fears. my purpose. my wealth.
but every thread led backward.
every question found her.
now when i look at her, i wonder how much of my mother i have never known.
how many chapters she closed before i learned how to read her. how many storms went unnamed because surviving the rain was easier than explaining the weather.
there are parts of her she does not talk about.
words swallowed so long ago they probably stopped feeling like words. dreams folded small between duty and daybreak until even she forgot their shape.

maybe that is what the necklace gave me.
i started pulling it apart trying to understand myself,
and somehow it taught me to appreciate her.
every pearl held to the light revealed another shadow behind the woman i thought i knew.
another silence. another sacrifice. another version of her that existed before she was my mother.
now when i look at her,
i see all the women inside her
who never got introduced.
the girl she was.
the woman she wanted to be.
the woman life demanded she become.
and somewhere between all three,
my mother.

maybe some stories will never leave her lips. maybe some pearls were polished by tears she never let me see.
maybe loving her means knowing i don’t need every wound by name to recognize the weight she wore through the pain.
so now i sit quietly.
no jeweler. no philosopher. no man trying to solve himself.
just a son
with his mother’s necklace in his palm,
finally hearing how much thunder can live inside something that never made a sound.
every pearl feels heavier.
i get to question what she had to carry.
i get to loosen what she had to bury.
i call it choice.
she called it necessary.
i ask who i want to become.
she became whatever life required before she got to become anyone. and that is when it hits me.

i thought i was taking apart my own mind.
but every thread led backward.
every question found her.
every pearl held to the light carried the shadow of the woman who wore it first.
so i gather them slowly.
the bright ones. the bruised ones. the ones polished smooth by years against her skin.
i stop asking where she ends and where i begin.
because maybe a son doesn’t begin where his mother ends.
maybe he begins
where she finally gets to rest.
maybe every dream i choose is a dream she carried without a name.
maybe every road i walk freely was paid for by one she walked in pain.
she was thrown into life and somehow learned how to land, then raised me to believe i could choose where i stand.

so i look at the necklace again.
and for the first time,
i do not see jewelry.
i see years.
i see borders.
i see hunger.
i see hands that kept holding long after they should have been shaking.
i see a woman wearing an entire history around her neck and still bending down to lift me.

the necklace was never mine.
but the life it paid for was.
she carried every pearl so i would never have to carry them blind.
she wore the weight until it became light enough for me to question mine.
now i know.
i was never taking apart a necklace.
i was taking apart
the life that made me.
pearl by pearl.
wound by wound.
prayer by prayer.
until all that remained in my hands
was the woman
who carried everything
so her son
could one day carry
only what he chose.

Complimentary poem to @cest-la-vie

Heartbeat that ripple in Ink

She reads my work carefully,
Line by line as if she re walks,
The path of my thoughts.

Even the stumbling lines unwritten,
She sees the mistakes, she watches my correction with a light cheer in her heart.

Not as simple as one or two positive remarks.
She is bold to say what the heart Starks.

Dispite her title, her assiociation with "that is life"
Her observation is keen, the struggle and strife.

And yet when her words transcribe on this digital sheet of paper, words chooses to bloom.
Not scribe the constant gloom,

So many choose to bare.
Even with her An On-ymous presence I still know who she is.
And that's the power of her prayer.

Persisting a good Aura, a good omen, just enough that I can find her in a haystack of posts and despair.

Thank you for always reading my line of code,
You see what I see, just another dead heart with hope.

Drifting Memories.

No one is serious here. 😡😡😡😡

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DceUFvyxZRT/?igsi=MXY4cTJ2ZjZwODdidw==

I wrote a book about my experiences dating foreign men here—relationships that ultimately didn't work out. If you're interested in reading it, please check it out at https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=kj39EQAAQBAJ

A Garden From Ashes

They burned my trust to dust,
but I planted seeds in ashes.
Slowly, resilience grew
flowers rising where betrayal fell
I bloom brighter, colors deeper than before.
Pain became fertilizer, heartbreak became sunlight.
I am my own garden, I will never again
let weeds of false love choke me.

2am, just cleaned the kitchen, too late for chocolate so heading for my pillow. G’nite, folks.

They say those little white butterflies
Flitting in the summer sun
Can carry off your memories
Until they are all gone.

When the memories are painful
And the heart is sinking low
I wish for hundreds of them
And a strong wind to blow

So my mind is fully empty,
So my spirit finally lifts
And the burden I am carrying
Away on a current drifts.

Come, fluttering little cabbage whites.
Take away my sadness
Before the little hurts pile up
And turn my sad to madness. - TqD