Ruchira's Ramblings

I write a poem. Scratch it out. I write it because I am angry. I scratch it out because it is futile. I see the fissure on the earth, but I don’t know the magic words to close it. Every word that is said, mine, yours, his, hers, theirs, ours seem to widen and widen the gap. I am angry because I don’t have the right words. I am angry because I don’t matter. I am angry because we seem to be all tumbling down together, clawing and lashing and bleeding to a point of no return. An old acquaintance says we ought to listen. Learn why they hate. Try not to convert. Does it help? If I know I am right and they know they are right and if everybody is right and if we understand why they hate but if my words don’t reach far enough if my words don’t mean enough are not strong enough if their words only tell me I do not belong if I do not conform- what good does listening do? Someone I really like says both sides- there should be both sides of the views. No more fake news or biased views, see it a...

If you know me on social media - Instagram or Facebook  , you probably know I've had a busy, eventful April. And the reason is NaPoWriMo - National Poetry Writing Month. I guess they should start calling these things 'international' or 'global' (I mean I do think GloNoWriMo sounds just as catchy and will roll off the tongue just as easily come November,) but a hashtag is difficult to get rid off, and perhaps it's not really such a bad thing if all it takes is poetry or fiction to bring Lennon's dream come true, even if it's only for one month in the year. But I digress. The point is, I participated in NaPoWriMo and I had no idea, no prior plans to do it. I just fell into it. I saw a friend posting poems for weekly prompts by someone called The Airplane Poetry Movement , loved their poems so much that I joined up, and then I found out it was April so it was going to be daily rather than weekly prompts. And I somehow managed to finish the challenge. I...

There’s this word, or idea that I like. Journey. Odyssey. We are travelers in time and space, all seeking, knowingly, or unknowingly our purpose in life. Pilgrimage. That’s another word. Draupadi and her five husbands knew this when they embarked on the final journey of their lives (perhaps a lifelong path of wandering homelessness taught them that) – the one we call the ‘Mahaprasthan’- the Great Exit. And that’s true too. We journey to a purpose while also moving onwards towards the final leave-taking. Estragon and Vladimir were travelers too, even if all they did was wait beneath a dead tree. But what if our paths are ellipses, an Ouroboros circling Godot? What if we were all just lonely planets lost in our own orbits of individual, inexplicable sorrows? And the hope of meaning and purpose, like the sun, gives us light and life-sustaining warmth, but we can never really touch it, and getting too close would burn and blind us, and so it’s much, much safer to remain content with...

            “LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS?” - Terry Pratchett ,  Death and What Comes Next Sometimes I walk on edges, weighing my words, considering, rethinking, then not using them at all. There are rules we follow inside our heads- what to say, what not to say, who to speak to, what not to hear. When to smile and bury the anger. When to go off-stage so no one hears you. Relationships are built on silences, on things unsaid- for words are like that wisp of wind that tangles the curtain and breaks the glass menagerie into a billion thousand shards that you can no longer piece together, so sharp that they will cut you. Language is beauty. Language is art. Language is a lie, a tool that sometimes works by not working at all. So many words that w...