AMEETHYST

I was asleep. Not the gentle kind. The kind where the body shuts down because it has argued enough with the mind. That’s when he arrived. He came quietly. Slipped in beside me like he had every right to be there. I say ‘he’ because I am one. Whatever comes out of you usually carries your gender and your sins. He held me close. Too close. I didn’t notice how tight until I woke up and felt that familiar pressure, the kind that never leaves fingerprints. Hello , I said. Long time no see. I smiled because that’s what I do when I’m cornered. I was always around, my friend , he said, almost amused. I got up and walked to the kitchen. My feet knew the way even if I didn’t. I started making coffee. Black. Dark enough to absorb light. Something felt off. I never drink this kind of coffee awake. I am a “Ginger Tea” man. If it’s coffee, it’s filter coffee. Anything darker feels like an agreement with something I don’t trust. Because when you consume something that dark, sometimes it...

Good memories are weak little bastards. They get slaughtered by trauma before they ever hit puberty. I don’t remember the last time my father pulled me into his arms. Or the last time I pressed my face against his chest and felt safe. Same for my mother. We were a family of strangers sharing a roof, pretending it was a home. When I was small, I followed my mother everywhere like a ghost with no place to haunt. My sister was away at boarding school, so I was the leftover child, nobody knew what to do with. I don’t have a single damn fond memory to hang on my wall and say, " Look, this was happiness. " But I do remember the belt. I remember the way the leather swooshed in the air before it split my skin, because I was too sick and too scared to take an injection. That memory burned into my brain like a crime scene photograph. Does that mean my father didn’t love me? Hell no. He loved me so much that it turned into rage when he couldn’t fix me. I only understood this decades lat...

I follow a very basic rule of the hand... and the stomach. Consume what’s good where you are. Simple. Honest. No philosophy degree required. See, my old man’s the stubborn type. Built like an ancient stone, brain wired like a transistor radio that still picks up 1970s frequencies. If he likes idli-vada, that’s it. Life begins and ends with fermented rice and deep-fried comfort. So one day, he drags us to Baroda: me, my mother, my wife and his ego. Morning train, rough sleep, a city still yawning awake. And before we could even rub the sleep from our eyes, he declares, “ Let’s find a South Indian hotel. ” I thought maybe he was kidding. He wasn’t. We walked like almost five bloody kilometres in that dry March sun. Five. For one plate of idli-vada. Mom’s knees gave up first. My wife, the silent warrior, looked at me like she was mentally Googling divorce lawyers. Dad kept marching, like Frodo on some weird pilgrimage, except instead of the ring, it was breakfast. At some point, I snapped...

People in my friends and family circle have, on multiple occasions, called me out for my randomness. And honestly, they have a point. Every morning, as we sip on our tea and talk about the most grounded things like, what’s for breakfast, whether we have enough groceries, or if we need anything for the month, I suddenly derail the conversation with, “ Is there an RCB match today? ” That’s the thing. My brain often operates like 20 tabs open on incognito mode, and none of them are related. Occasionally, there’s a vague connection between what I say and what we’re discussing... but more often than not, my train of thought has no tracks. It just takes off like a rogue rocket. Now here’s the best way I can describe it: Whether it is a personal experience or a universal one, I am not sure, but poetry is something I like doing. If I do not write poems at least once a week, I am diabetic and I need to take my medicines after every meal, but my salary is not much, and I like going on a Northeas...

The story of how I met my wife is my favourite story to tell. I tell it like people tell folklore, with pride, drama and a little exaggeration. On some days, I feel it deserves its own series. Something like How I Met Your Mother . But then I stop myself. This story does not feel like a series yet. Right now, it only feels like a beautiful pilot episode. The year was 2005. I had just started my first job in Pune. I was young, single and ambitious. I wanted to live alone in a hostel. With friends who had questionable habits, ate at ungodly hours and did horrible things. I had dreams. My father had other plans. He decided I would stay with his sister in Pune. End of discussion. For a couple of months, I was treated like their own son. Then something shifted. Conversations became whispers. The rooms felt quieter when I entered. I started hearing things about myself that I was never meant to hear. My heart lost interest in Pune. My body followed suit. It broke out in protest. Literally...

My son asked me this out of nowhere. And I froze. Blank. Staring at the wall like it had all the answers. It was such a simple question. But it hit me like a ton of bricks in my head. I wasn’t prepared, not for the question, and definitely not for the storm it stirred inside me. He wasn’t asking for some poetry from his "Writer-Dad." He just wanted a meaning. A definition. But my brain started spinning, flashing through years, people, memories, ghosts. People I’ve lost. Moments that slipped away. The version of me I don’t recognize anymore. I wanted to dodge. Give him something stupid like, “It means you like someone a lot.” But then I thought, if I mess this up, this kid will grow up giving stupid answers to real questions. And that’s not what I want him to remember about his father.  So I paused. Let the silence sit heavy between us. Then I looked him in the eye and said - "It means… you had something, or someone. And now you don’t. And now you want it back badly. That...

I once read somewhere that “ Consistency is key. ” It sounded like the usual fluff. The kind people quote on Instagram or overpriced diaries. But oddly, it stuck. So I decided to test it. Not the motivational-poster version. Not the morning routines and meal-prep kind. I’m talking about the brutal kind of consistency. The kind you drag through grief, exhaustion, and decades of silence. The kind that leaves scars. I started showing up. At work, even when my body screamed no. Back home, where responsibility sat heavier than the rest. When my wife nervously made her first-ever dish, I didn’t critique. I honoured it. Because trying deserves more than applause. It deserves presence. I showed up when our son went on his first school sleepover. He slept like a baby. We didn’t. My wife and I kept staring at our phones, waiting for a message that never came, inventing reasons to worry. Because when you grow up with absence, love becomes vigilance. I showed up for his first school trip. His flu ...

Friendships were never meant to be a math problem. When we were kids, nobody taught us how to measure people. No scales for class, colour, caste or any of that holy bullshit adults bow down to later. We chose our people instinctively. The ones who laughed when we laughed. The ones who walked home with us. The ones who listened to our nonsense and trusted us with theirs. Life was simple. Parents didn’t curate our circles or stalk play areas. They just hoped we wouldn’t swallow stones or lick mud off the ground. That was the bar. And somehow, we cleared it. Now look at us. Friendships are curated. Kids are curated. Everything is a performance. We want our children to look good. Behave better. Fit neatly into frames we once kicked and broke. We want obedience dressed up as discipline. We want them to do all the things we hated doing, then call it character building. Yes, we suffered. In quiet ways. In ugly ways. In ways that left bruises no one photographed. We swore we won’t pass that po...

I remember a time when time-travel films meant everything to me. They were my hiding place. My oxygen. I would sink into those stories like a man slipping under water on purpose, letting the noise of the world fade. I believed in those futures. I believed in what the world could become. Somehow, those films intoxicated me. They pulled me into a strange high where hope felt real and the future felt forgiving. Then the lights would come back on. The credits would roll. Reality would crash in like a hangover that punches you in the ribs. And I would sit there feeling hollow, aching, quietly broken. Today I do not watch those films anymore. It is not only because I am tired or sad. That is part of it, yes. But the bigger truth is that the stories no longer convince me. They no longer feel honest. I know something now. Deep in my bones, I know that 2089 will not look like our fantasies. There will be no flying cars slicing through the sky. No robots rising up with shiny metal souls. No a...