Midnight.

It is either the dimly lit room or he has actually started working out. His outline is more pronounced than the last time he was here.
There is a hickey just above his collar bone.
“Marking territory, are you?”, He had asked playfully.
“No”, I had said.

It would fade away in a few days.

“You know, you look like the only upright pillar in a city in the wake of a war, whenever you say No.”
“Ruined, you mean?”, My gaze fixed on him.
“Strong, I mean.”

I want to tell him that endurance isn’t really a choice you make. It is what you stamp across your heart when the alternative is too terrifying. When you’re not an apartment or a school, but a god-damned monument that either stays chipped or is bound to lose some intangible part of itself during the restoration.

Instead, I just look at him close his eyes and lie on his back, pouting, the way he goes to sleep after sex. I wish we would do it again.
The darkness outside the bedroom has grown a little more silent, except for the wall clock. It keeps ticking like forever and perfection aren’t both jokes.
I want to caress his beautiful face and kiss him everywhere, starting from his lips.

Instead, I pull out my pillow from under his arm and walk out, half naked, to the threshold of the balcony.

-Deepti Nair

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You can also find me on Instagram.

Much love ❤

Ruth

A cold December night.
Her eyes were only getting accustomed to the dark as her body let the stillness of their sweet home sink in.
Ruth climbed the stairs to the attic, almost mechanically. When she reached the door-less entrance, her eyes did not waver once. She switched on the lights and walked straight towards the cupboard.
A cardboard box full of old newspaper cuttings.

She never understood why she wanted to keep them at all, let alone the time span. Ten years, is a long, long time.
She took out the cuttings, which were arranged chronologically, and read only the headings. The story was etched on her mind and body forever.
She wanted to go inside those cuttings, hold her sixteen year old self and tell her that it was not her mistake that she was raped. She wanted to plaster the mouths that were hungry for a little girl’s agony put into words.
People had politicised the matter because the offender was a politician’s son. Neighbours had sympathised with disgust lurking in their eyes and had talked behind their closed doors that her “life is destroyed and her family is left with no honour and dignity”.
She could not understand what is to be given the most and the immediate attention – her collapsing honour or her aching body?

Years later, she learnt to ‘live with it’. She seldom opened up to people about it and when she did, they wanted to know how her parents and people around treated her ever since the incident, if she was afraid of men or hoped to marry a good man, and if she’d tell him in case it’s the latter. Unless four years ago, when she met Reyva.

The only thing Reyva had ever asked her was if her body still hurt.
Ruth told her that some days, it did; that sometimes, she’d wake up in the middle of the night, screaming, not knowing which part of her body hurt the most. Reyva had held her and told her that it will stop hurting one day and she will be there to hold her till and after it does.
That was the turning point in her life. Soon after, they unlocked chambers inside and peeled off layers covering each other, until they discovered they were one, underneath. For the first time in her life, Ruth felt fearless.
They spent nights in each other’s arms. Reyva’s touch felt soft even against her faded wounds and she was no more scared and ashamed of her own orgasms, the way she was since the day it was forced from her. She had told her that there was nothing to be ashamed of in the fact that she had felt it when she was raped; that our bodies have a language of their own which sometimes our minds fail to understand.

Ruth smiled at the thought of her beautiful face. She went down to the bedroom, switched on the lights and climbed onto the bed. Putting on some soft music on her phone, she closed her eyes and waited patiently, for the warmth of her beloved woman to fill the other side of the bed.

-Deepti Nair

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You can also find me on Instagram.

Much love ❤

Silhouette

It’s raining outside. I look at the clock in my bedroom. It’s 11:50PM. Somehow, the sixty degrees between the hour hand and the minute hand are making me uncomfortable. I hope they meet soon.
I shift in my bed and find him observing me keenly.

“What happened?”
“We could’ve had more such nights if I weren’t in the Navy.”
I can only smile in response. Not something I hadn’t thought a hundred times.
“But you do know how much I love you, don’t you?”
And the smile on my lips escapes me.

Do I know how much he loves me?
I haven’t found a scale powerful enough to measure love. May be I never really wanted to or may be there isn’t one. There’s nothing like ‘too much love’ or ‘a little love’….or is there? I don’t think so. It is there or it isn’t…shining through all our insecurities, just like sunlight filtering through leaves on a sunny morning.
I snap out of my thoughts as I feel his warmth on my ear.

“Where did you get lost?”
“Nowhere.”

As I begin to take his lips between mine, a tear rolled down my cheek.
The clock just announced that it’s midnight and the rain just got heavier outside.

I open my eyes to the dark emptiness only to realise that it is one of those nights again, as I dreamily trace the outline of his silhouette on my pillow.

-Deepti Nair

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You can also find me on Instagram.

Much love ❤

The Souvenir

As is not my routine, I went for a walk in the park this morning; a rather funny morning I’d say.
For the first time ever, I didn’t bother with fixing beforehand, the number of rounds I wanted to complete. I walked, with Sam Smith plugged in my ears and my thoughts plugged into some other-worldly television set. The strange thing was not that I was the only person walking in the anti-clockwise direction, but that the singer hit me exactly where he always does, but couldn’t render me aching as is usual.
I walked and walked till I could feel my legs no longer and then I sat down on a bench. I was tapping my fingers to some peppy number and wondering why my legs weren’t hurting, when a girl, 20-something, came up to me and asked if I would mind sharing my seat. I scooted closer to my end of the bench.
I was sure I had seen her before. She lives somewhere in the neighbourhood but I have never been social enough to know exactly where. She had this spectacularly attractive pair of eyes, always a bit distant but never too cold.
A few minutes later, as I put the headset in my pocket, not before turning it into a tangled mess, the girl turned to me all of a sudden and said, “Why do you think leaves turn yellow and then fall down?”
I won’t deny that I was taken by surprise. I didn’t even know her name.
I thought for a while but couldn’t come up with anything better than “May be because they grow old?”
“Possible. But look at those leaves on the track; the ones from that same tree”, she pointed towards the largest tree in the park, whose name I do not know. “Aren’t some of them really tiny in comparison to the others? Do you think they are too old? The tiny ones?”
She was right in a sense. You could see, the smaller leaves didn’t seem old enough to wilt. I felt like I should ask her what she thought about it, so I did.
“I think they grow wiser and so turn yellow. They learn how a certain detachment, developed willingly and by choice, is sweeter than is often anticipated. So they choose to fall down.”
I didn’t understand a thing to be honest. But I was pretty sure it will stay in my mind till and after I comprehend it. I looked down at my legs and realised they were still there after all, only numb with the cold this time. But it didn’t feel bad at all. Funny morning, I tell you.
By the time I looked up, which is no later than a minute, she had left and if it were not for the souvenir on the other side of the bench, I would have believed that I was only dreaming.
A bunch of flowers.
Two dried, one wilted.

– Deepti Nair

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You can also find me on Instagram.

Much love ❤

Meet the world. Heart?

Hush, hush. Do you hear that?
That’s my heart,
Hammering away amidst all this noise outside.
What? Do you want to meet the world outside? Heart?
I know you don’t.
But you sure want to be heard, don’t you? Heart?
That one time you couldn’t understand why it is called ‘falling’ in love.
That one time you couldn’t understand why leaving the sad home hurt so much.
How you have always been the happiest when you could string a few words together.
How you have tried to leap out a hundred times when you were nervous.
Bruised and battered a hundred times, and still beating.
I won’t let you hear what they say about you.
You’re the strongest, my sweet little heart.
But they say otherwise.
You smile, you laugh, you crinkle, you scream. You….feel.
That is what makes you strong.
That is what makes you human.
Now, do you want to meet the world outside? Heart?
I know you don’t.

-Deepti Nair

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Hope you all like it. I don’t usually do poems of this length. I just wanted to try something different this time.

You can check more of my writes on Instagram, if you’d like to!

Much love ❤

Beauty to my Being

Hey folks! 

It’s been quite a long time since I was last active on wordpress. Work kept me away. Sincere-est apologies.

However, This is me sharing a little lovesickness with you all tonight.😝

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You can check more of my writes on Instagram, if you’d like to!

Much love ❤

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Picture Courtesy : Google

A Strong Woman….?

So….apparently we have evolved past the phase of ‘nobody gets to tell a woman how they should behave/dress’ etc etc.

And now we are in the era of ‘A strong woman is the one who….’. Yeah, we have plenty of options to fill that blank.

However, I wonder why not just let women be. Whatever they wish to be, however they wish to be.

Let them cry, let them forgive and forget, let them choose their families over their careers if that is what they really want.

Ladies, you dont have to do something just because people tell you that those are the qualities of a ‘strong woman’. You are strong in your own way just as you are beautiful in your own way.

Nobody gets to define a ‘strong woman’ just as nobody gets to define a ‘beautiful woman’.

Oh and, Happy Women’s Day ❤

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You can check more of my writes on Instagram, if you’d like to!

Much love ❤

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Blue

I thought I’d try something new. So I wrote a microtale for the very first time ❤

You can check more of my writes on Instagram, if you’d like to!

Much love ❤

MYSTERY BLOGGER AWARD

Hello everyone! This is the first time I have been nominated for an award! I am so happy about it, especially because it comes from Ashutosh Gursale. He writes such wonderful stories 😍. Pay a visit to his blog if you’d like to. Thanks a tonne Ashutosh!

“The Mystery Blogger Award was created by Okoto Enigma. It is an award for amazing bloggers with ingenious posts. Their blog not only captivates; it inspires and motivates. They are one of the best out there, and they deserve every recognition they get. This award is also for bloggers who find fun and inspiration in blogging; and they do it with so much love and passion.”

The Rules:

• Display the award logo on your blog.
• List the rules.
• Thank the blogger who nominated you and also provide a link to their blog.
• Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.
• Tell your readers three things about yourself.
• Answer five questions from the nominator.
• Nominate anywhere near ten to twenty bloggers. Notify them by leaving a comment on their blogs.
• Ask your nominees any five questions of your choice, including one weird or funny question.
• Share the link to your best post.

Three things about me:

• I am currently pursuing bachelors in Maths. Writing, reading, binge-watching and playing violin are hobbies.
• I am obsessed with coffee, novels and keeping my stuff organised. I get super-mad if I don’t find my things at their “alloted” areas.
• I have zero tolerance towards hypocrites.

Answering Ashutosh’s questions:

1.Why did you start blogging?

   Honestly, because I was bored and I had nothing better to do. The one month vacation felt like ages of inactivity. Gosh!

2.When was the last time you had the heartiest laugh?(A happy memory)

    A few days back, I was telling my friends about this weird dream I had a night before, wherein I saw my dad and my little sister fighting and killing snakes that kept jumping out of a huge bucket, that too with swords and at the end of the battle, I saw my mom coming out of a jetplane. I don’t remember what I was thinking about before I fell asleep. We laughed like crazy when I told them about it (Of course, I narrated it all very dramatically 😂)

3.Where would you want to travel to?

     Anywhere and everywhere, if I could. But I think I’d like to begin with my native state, Kerala (India). I have never been to all those beautiful places there which feature on the Google Image Search page. I guess one day I will ❤.

4.Which novel or poem you hold close to your heart?

     Has to be ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini. It was a novel that made me smile, laugh, blush, and cry throughout. Plus, it taught me not to take for granted, the comfortable life I have. 

5.What would you want to change about your life? Why?

     I think I have a pretty good life…it’s not perfect but it’s good enough to be lived. So if there’s anything I want to change, it is myself. Not too much, I just want to be a little less lazy so that I can skip calculating how to get my two little siblings working for me 😂

I nominate:

thewordsmith27

Evie

Abhishek Choubey

Shaggy

Amitkhareblogs

fearlessgirldot

R.D. Maya

Swati C.

Ivy

Asna

My questions to the above:

1. What is, in your view, the best compliment you ever received?

2. Which book/movie is your favourite one?

3. If you could have any one supernatural power for a day, what would it be and why?

4. What kind of people do you find difficult to deal with?

5. What skill would you like to develop in yourself?

Link to my best post:

Of all my posts, my favourite is “Black bag? Why?”. It is the best post in my view and I hope you give it a read, if you haven’t already been through it.

“Obsession”

And one fine day, I realised that one could fall in love through mere words ❤