नदी के उस पार – Story of an Old City

नदी के उस पार

पुल से चलके,
नदी के उस पार गए हो कभी ?

जहां गालियाँ थोड़ी सकरी हैं,
और सब भोले भाले रहते हैं।
जिसको जो सब पढ़े लिखे हैं,
शहर पुराना कहते हैं।

जहां दादाजी के कुछ,
दोस्त रहा करते हैं।
जो हर बात पे,
“वो भी क्या दिन थे” कहा करते हैं।

कुछ कहती हैं वो दीवारें,
जो हो चली है पुरानी।
और हरी-सफ़ैद वो मीनारें,
है उनपे भी कुछ कहानी।

माँ जहाँ अब भी कुछ,
मसाले लाने जाती है।
जिनकी खुशबू कुछ,
अलग अलग सी ही आती है।

वो मस्जिद जिसकी पीठ,
सटी हुई है एक मंदिर से।
और दुकाने पुरानी सब,
जो अब भी नई हैं अंदर से।

दीदी कहती है वहाँ का,
कपड़ा खूब ही चलता है।
चौराहे वाले रंगरे का,
रंग ही नहीं निकलता है।

जो नान वहां पे मिलती है,
वो स्वाद कितनी होती है।
प्लेट थोड़ी मैली सी,
पर परवाह किसको होती है ।

जो एक बार भी वहां,
जी लगा आ जायेगा।
यही कहेगा वो सबसे,
सबको यही बताएगा।

नदी के इस पार,
जो ये नया वाला शहर है।
वो नदी के उस पार सा,
शहर नहीं बन पाएगा।

नदी के इस पार

– Ashish Choudhary & Srishti Arya

Congratulations again to Sankalp Arya

You make me proud bro! :*

Dov Stekel's Laboratory

Congratulations again to Sankalp Arya for obtaining another scholarship. He has received a Travel Award to present his work at the 4^th International Symposium on the Environmental Dimension of Antibiotic Resistance (EDAR4). EDAR3 was fantastic – and EDAR4 will no doubt be much more widely attended. This is going to be a great opportunity for Sankalp to present his work (we are not yet sure whether this will be oral or poster) and hear from the best in the field.

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Exist Loudly Today.

Sometimes we just sort of just exist, not live, just exist. Don’t we?
But what I ask of you today is to exist loudly.
I know some days it’s just tough and it’s okay.
The world is so rough after all.
It isn’t sad, it isn’t happy, it’s just numb.
You just exist there silently.
In your own world, breathing heavily.
But I ask you today, to exist loudly.
I ask you to speak whatever you feel.
Even if it is nothing at all.
Share it with someone you want to
Or seek a therapist maybe?
Tell your parents about it.
Or if you think they won’t understand,
tell them to take you to someone who will.
Siblings, friends, relatives, lover.
Until it gets over.
Find help.
Or write it out.
Talk. Please.
Depression is not sadness or loneliness.
It’s the yearning to be left alone.
It’s the tiredness that makes you sleep all day.
It’s feeling colourless.
No anger. No frustration. No tears. No smile.
It’s a body without soul.
It’s blankness. Emptiness.
You know you are loved.
You know you are cared for.
And most importantly, you know you haven’t done anything wrong.
I know you feel helpless.
You sometimes want to kill yourself.
Death will only transfer this depression to someone else.
Let’s not accumulate these thoughts and suffocate them in our minds.
Shout.
Cry.
Speak.
Write.
Or run.
Let it all out.
Go to your terrace and feel the breeze flow.
The sound of air, deafening your ears.
And making your eyes go smaller.
Give your soul another chance.
Until your breathing stops on its own,
listen to the life’s music and dance?
All I ask you is to exist loudly today.
Just today.
Go out, and sip a cup of coffee with someone.
It’s been a long time, since you’ve won.
Let’s fight another battle today.
Trust me, you are not in love with your bed.
All you need today, is smile as a med.
Just today.
Even if you don’t know what to say.
Exist loudly today.

 

Footnote: With the death of Chester Charles Bennington on 20th July 2017, I was moved. Depression is a real thing. Definitely. We start existing and we stop living. Lets start existing loudly today. Fight our own battles and help each other through these battles.

A Place Like No Other

The clock hits 3 at night and he’s been wide awake. He has been lying supine and staring at the ceiling, with an open travel magazine resting on his chest. Page opened to his first published photograph. Proud moment indeed. Yet, he was thinking about nothing at all and thinking about everything, all at once. Sleeplessness captivates him. With the thundering sound from outside, his soul runs elsewhere. Despite of the fact that he was here, traveling in the mountains, like he always wanted to. But like each night, tonight his heart was lost, wandering somewhere entirely else.

The place where his stomach had ached laughing, for every time he remembers. Where he stood talking with his friends, late at nights. Sometimes, not just talking but shooting at each other through guns on the computer screens. The place where nights often turned to mornings just by walking around from the basketball court to the football field. Place where friends turned into brothers.

Boys Hostel at School of Planning & Architecture, Bhopal | Picture Courtesy: Umang Goyal

Yet today he lay here, peacefully in the hotel room. Controlling the talab – the invoking of his feet to get up and go out in the woods nearby. To put a cigarette between his lips and inhale the taste he had been told to forget. This urge to burn his lungs had been common now. Even though it has been 4 months since he left smoking and that place where he smoked for the first and last time. He wanted to go out and see, who would meet at this hour of the night near the city lake. Who else like him, cannot sleep in the cozy hotel bed. His stomach grumbled with hunger, so he decides to go out and eat. Then he remembers the midnight meals with the online football matches. The ink of thoughts is spilled again over his blank mind. Those four years were something nobody can take away. Those moments, have settled in his abrooh – his conscience. The endless Memories take a stroll and like every night, he falls asleep thinking about his Hostel Days.

The Concession Agreement

And just like everything ready to eat, it was neither too hot nor too cold. It was warm, you know. Just the way people like their food. I did not have to blow at it or keep it in the microwave. Perfectly warm. But I did not want that food. I did not want that thing in my life. I wanted something hot. Hot enough that the melting lava from the volcano envies the engraved depth it causes in my heart.

With these internet of thoughts, I reinvent my habits. I don’t feel stupid and frustrated sitting in one chair all day. Playing with words that mean nothing to me stopped bothering me. Copy pasting them from one page to another, so that big personalities can sign under these printed words and earn money by their signatures.

As for me, I just sit there only to realise the warmth of it. The way it is neither too cold nor too hot. The way it does not make an impact in my heart and my life. And with my final contract making in process, I sign a contract with myself –

“I won’t go back to making contracts again, until Force Majeure Clause is applicable.”

– Srishti

She is JAIPUR

Metaphorically, Jaipur – the pink city, the city showers people with love! She is ride of Joy! A person visiting her cannot come back without a smile on his face and a desire of going back again! She is unpredictably lovely!

The city has confined everyone with so much love, it’s enigmatic! 

Unfair it is, that people are allowed to leave her. Because, we know, when people leave, they take a part of you with them. When people become a part of your heart, their leaving, that hole of emptiness becomes the heaviest of burdens one has to carry. Yet, this burden is ‘trendy’. Like humans, she has the charisma to welcome this trend and befriend it before anyone can even apprehend.

Oh boy, is she naughty! She is disordered, she is mismanaged and chaotic! But the beauty remains same, the essence, the fondness, the overwhelming warmth remains fiercely unfaded and the loss, well, the loss becomes a trendy fashion! A fashion wherein, the old, the damaged turns into something new. Something new, with a sound of new love bringing a dance of new smiles.

This city makes you hopelessly romantic. The romance for the culture it endures, the romance for the creativity it beholds and the romance for gushing winds in silenced nights. And this pink coloured romance, will briskly pull you to an intimacy from which you will never recover. You will never get over her. Jaipur shall always be an incarnated part of you!

– Srishti

INEVITABLE OBLIVION

This means so much! Thank You! :’)

kaagaz ke pankh

Oblivion was calling
and she feared to take a step forward.
She was subtle,
belonged on the surface.
Feared depth,
Feared height.
Hated falling too suddenly
and rising too quick.
Innocent like a pearl,
Peppy like a bubble.
Like rain in winter,
Rainbow in summer.
She was rare,
Because she glittered, brighter.
I guess She longed for a calling.
That would awaken her soul.
She decided to hitchhike
past the walls she had built around.
Break them down,
put a fire to the rubble,
and walk around the ashes
hand-in-hand with herself.
After all, death is inevitable.

Footnote: I was half-asleep in the bus when Srishti handed me her phone with a few lines written in the memo pad. She insisted for me to take it further. I had no idea about the context and who/what I was writing about. It took me more than a while to think it through…

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Her Room of Quotes

So, took me a while to gather the strength to move my feet up till her room, and I’m glad I did. Because there are 2 things which I read in her diary and I’m thankful that she had been a constant in my life! ❤ I Will like to share it! Because, these 2 quotes took my breath away! You are the sweetest person on earth (were!) and i love u no matter what! always and forever! :*

1. Everyone has a Best friend in every stage of life, only lucky ones have the same Best Friend in all stages of life.

You were and you will always be my Best Friend. ❤

2. Rain continues to fall and keeps me from you. I let the memories sweep over me.
LOVE – it is something to be cherished and held on to. Tightly. While too often it is smothered or brushed carelessly away.
It will live in your heart, long, long after the heart stops beating.

Yes! Aayushi! My Love, You will live in my Heart, long, long after yours stopped beating!! 🙂

Unconfessed Confessions!

He asked her questions and for the first time she had no answers. But, those questions were not just his questions, same were hers, too. There was something in the unanswered question, something in the nothingness she had. It was the kind of nothing which meant everything. They stared at each other and she knew from then on, what his beautiful eyes used to shriek in high volumes, were just lost conversations. Lost communications. And he knew, that she was an unblemished piece of art. And that, art was not meant to be understood, art was just meant to be observed and praised. But he also knew, that he could either decorate it, disrupt it, fix it or hold onto it and love it. Since, art was too new for him, he wouldn’t know what to do.

She was unsure of his decisions, unsure of his choices. Of course, falling in his priorities was her only wish, but he knew this not. She was ready for both, come what may. Ready to be ruined by him, for he would be the most beautiful ache she has ever known. The most beautiful tragedy. She just doesn’t want to let the sparkle of his eyes go dull. She wants to let the questions be. As she was made up of the answers. And she knew she’ll be left with less of herself if he quits. And he knew this. He knew he could break her apart, and he was ready to reconcile her in her shattered form. Despite, she wanted to feel everything that life had to bring. Every question, every emotion. She knows, her smile will still be a painful perception, a venomous charm and a colorful dynamite. Because his questions are her pain, her venom and her colors.

-Srishti

World Of Happiness

When the world is out of balance,
I’ll accidentally smile,
They’ll call me laughter,
They’ll call me Humor,
They’ll call me Strength,
When all I am,
is Chaos..
When the world will break apart,
I’ll just hide, somewhere unknown,
They’ll call me darkness,
They’ll call me loneliness,
They’ll call me tolerance,
When I’m just full of guilt..
When nothing seems important,
nothing seems true,
They’ll call me damage,
They’ll call me art,
They’ll call me poetry,
Perhaps just passion…
When nobody will care,
When nobody will be there,
They’ll call me advice,
They’ll call me innocence,
They’ll call me faith,
or just love!
When there is nothing to live for,
I’ll wing my way and start my fly,
They’ll call me freedom,
They’ll call me hope,
They’ll call me Trust,
They’ll call me wisdom..
When the world is just not enough to belong to,
They’ll call me logic,
They’ll call me time,
They’ll call me energy,
They’ll call me magic,
or, just maybe..
They’ll call me, YOU!

-Srishti