Kathmandu knows me too well.

Kathmandu doesn’t flinch
when I openly flirt with Patan and Pokhara.
He doesn’t show any sign of envy or anger,
he pretends not to notice.
But when the night comes
and the cities are fast asleep,
Kathmandu slides into my bed and hugs me tightly.

“When I closed my door for you,
I didn’t want you to go and open your heart
to the next city you meet,”
he says,
“Instead,
I wanted you to explore the world,
experience new thing,
meet New York,
have a summer fling with San Francisco,
date Rome
have a one night stand with Istanbul
and possibly settle down with London.”

Before I could protest,
he kissed me softly,
making me change my mind.
Kathmandu knows me too well.
Kathmandu knows me too well.

Fear of death.

It’s not death I fear,
I would welcome it with an open arms,
Like an old friend I haven’t seen for forever,
Like you would welcome love.
What I am afraid is dying through suffocation
When you are in a room full of smoke,
And you realize that you only have these fumes
That burns your chest with every inhale, to breathe.
When you are choking on ether,
And you can’t really feel it because
There is nothing to choke on.
When you are in a close space
And the hot air you breathe out
is the air you need to breathe in.
When you are drowning in the sea
And you realize there is nothing you can do about it.

 

One Day.

One day we will get over people who broke us up
And people whose heart we broke up too.
One day we will love someone
Forgetting that today we are wondering
What it feels like to love or be loved.
One day we will meet someone
Who will make us love the way we are
With our crazy laugh
And our crazier mind.
One day we will fall in love
Like it’s the first time
Like we’ve never loved before
And all of the hearts that have been shattered –
Ours and theirs
And all of the questions that haunted us
3 am in the morning
And all of our craziness we hated
But we couldn’t do anything about it
And all of the time we fell in love
With wrong person and at wrong time
Somehow will make sense.

When love arrives

When love arrives,
I have no idea what to do with it –
Should I keep it in the fridge
To preserve it from rotting?
Or should I put it in the bank
To withdraw only the interests?
Should I keep it in the mantelpiece
To show it off to my guests
Or should I use it every day
Till it wears out and needs to be replaced?
So each time love comes to me
I try to figure it out but I fail
hence I always
end up giving it back
Whether it’s after 2 weeks,
Or after 5 months
And sometimes even after 3 years
Because I don’t know what to do with love
Except to push it away.

From a mother to a daughter

Dear daughter,
This poem’s for you
Because I know, just like I did,
You will also have questions for me
But unlike in my case,
I don’t want you to be unanswered.

So if you ask me what I wanted to be as a kid,
I told everyone that I wanted to be a doctor,
Just because your grandmother made me do so
But as I grew up, my aims kept on changing
With every TV series, movies or books that I was reading
Sometimes I wanted to be a nurse, other times, it was a scientist,
A princess, singer and once I even wanted to be in army.
But deep in my heart, I always knew no matter what I became
I wanted to travel and write
Go far and wide and tell stories.

If you ask me if I have always loved rain
Then the answer of course would be yes,
Rain has always calmed me down and
Made me feel alive.
I hope I still get out in the rain
And splash water all over you, every chance I get,
I hope I still have the time to stare outside the window
Counting the colorful umbrellas, with a cup of tea in my hand
And that we still get to eat tato tato jhol momo
And I get to tell you stories of how
I used to come home to the smell of those momos
During a rainy day after school.

And if you ask me about my love life,
I have my heart-broken of course,
Once by a man who was never mine
And the other time by a man who couldn’t make up his mind
About what he wanted from his life.
And both of them pained like it was the first time
I’d spend so many sleepless nights
Crying
Sobbing
Thinking
Wishing
Hoping
But nothing hurts more, that being heartbroken by a man
Who was supposed to be my superhero
I was heartbroken
Each time papa didn’t show up when he was supposed to
And I kept blaming myself for it, thinking it was all my fault
For expecting too much, for wishing too much
But baby, your grandfather, just like your mother
Is a person full of mystery
I guess it’s in our gene
To push people away
Especially those who means everything.

And I have broken hearts too,
Something I am not proud of,
But a girl had to do what a girl had to do
Put herself first
And not ruin her happiness for others.

The other thing I want you to know
Something I didn’t know back then
Is that you can fall in love with someone when you’re just 20
And still be with that person for the rest of your life
As long as you both work for it
And you will somehow find your fairytale
Maybe not happily ever after
But a rollercoaster of relationship
The key is of course not to give up
And to fight for what you want
If that’s something you want.

But the most important thing I want you to know
Is that no matter what happens, everything will make sense one day
And no matter what has happened or what will happen to me,
I, just like your grandmother, wouldn’t mind living all of these moments
Of happiness and heartbreak, again and again
If that means, I get to be your mother, again.