To revolts, revolutions and revolutionaries.

I pity my belly fats, my overgrown chin. I wish I had a body like that of some Bollywood star. But today I have cried. I have cried for that nameless girl, those nameless women who have died because of rapes. Rape. A word I knew of nothing until I realized why mothers wished daughters weren’t born, why my father wanted me home before a certain time, why it was “not right” for me to wear anything that showed my knees, why it was wrong to laugh too loud, or walk too upright with pride. I thought it was because my parents loved my older brother more.

I was wrong after all. They didn’t love my brother more; they loved the world a little less. They didn’t trust me less, they “un-trusted” the world more. But after all who is to blame I ask. And I find the answer in me. I am to blame. And so is everyone. I read about the gang rape case in India but what struck me the most was the way the couple laid naked on the ground till the hotel sheets wrapped them. We are fighting for humanity right? Or are we fighting for righteousness? Or maybe we are fighting for justice? No, I guess we fight merely for fighting.

I learnt about that in my psychology class, about the bystander’s effect. The people watched them with cruelty, with pity, with judgment, with indignation, with indifference. I wish someone had watched them with compassion. The victim (though I referred to her as a victim here, I wont hereafter, she was no less than a martyr to me) suffered injuries that doctors know of better than me, the trauma that psychiatrists know better than me, human rights violations that social workers know better than me, and injustice that people know better than me. But what about the suffering of a simple human being (irrespective of sex, gender, race or class) that she faced? No one really cares.

It is not India alone. India is only a geographic place on the earth. I am an Indian, no more than I am a consumer of some respected brand. That’s what I feel about belonging to a nationality. It feels like I am obliged to feel respectful if I am granted a scholarship to study abroad in another country, or to be forced to not share my opinion because I don’t “invest” in India. No, I don’t feel Indian because for me that feeling is as strange as a Sitruti (a Himalayan flower that belongs to your India that you might have known nothing of until you used your favorite weapon Google, just like me). My point is that being an Indian or American or African doesn’t assure you that you wont face challenges related to oppression. But then on the other hand I was born there and so I have to follow the sanskriti (culture) that I grew up with. Yes, culture. India has a beautiful culture. Women eat last. Women serve the men. Women don’t show their faces. Women don’t go to temples when they are menstruating. Women should not speak loudly. Women shouldn’t wear anything too revealing. Women should not roam around late. India has a beautiful culture. We celebrate festivals, we have family unions, we don’t believe in divorces, we don’t believe in individual voices and we definitely don’t believe in political change. We believe the martyr who was gang raped should not be named hence, supporting the idea of shame attached to it. This might have been aggressive but each and every word was a reflection of my observation of the Indian culture.

I am addressing issues that are probably looked over again and again, only to be ignited by another incident in the near future that will outrage the country. A teenage committing suicide, a girl rope-tied to a tree to be raped by men, gang rape on a moving bus are all signs of something equivalent to animalistic behavior. Killing these men, castration, making laws that gives women the right to kill their offenders, or making laws that will ensure safety are practical methods that I completely approve of. But what I fear, and every woman or man, old or young, one ethnicity or other should fear is “what if the animalistic behavior comes back?” Very few among us are looking for long term solutions. Yes, short sighted solutions are faster in application, quicker in results and are readily observable. Long term solutions are often overlooked and not carefully thought out.

One of the long term solutions could be directed towards media. Media, that is undoubtedly India’s face to the world, needs to refocus their attention on the kind of movies that are being made. As I am talking more specifically about women here (who could have guessed?) the issues are also pertaining to women. A woman half clothed dancing in front of drunk men, a not so very rare sight seen in typical “item songs”. Its not about her clothing, or about the men being drunk, or she dancing solo, it is all the factors put together that makes me wonder about the ideal image of a woman. The culture that we brag about portrays women as objects (because they for certain don’t qualify for humans) and men as animals, and this is readily accepted (if not appreciated) by the society through such movies and songs. The popular hits are the songs where women are completely disrespected and readily enjoying it (alcohol being poured on their body, wearing handcuffs, being touched by “men” as in plural). One might think that I am being hypocritical by including the issue of clothing, but it is important to understand that my claims are far from the issue of clothing. My claim is not about what a woman wears, but how she is perceived after she wears it. My claim being that women’s clothing becomes an issue when we make it one. The good old story of two monks, where one experienced monk helps a woman to cross a river by holding her in his arms was asked by the inexperienced monk that how he could go against his own beliefs as a monk and touch that woman. And the monks reply, “I left her on the riverside but you have carried her in your thoughts until this moment.” It is the mentality attached to the clothing that is the issue, not the clothing itself.

So firstly, educating boys and girls together by talking openly about pornography, sex, and sexual intercourse and related safety measures is a necessity. (How about making a movie on that, include all your amazing actors.) By attaching a taboo to things that are only natural to human life we make them appear as if they are wrong. Secondly, making the women appear weaker in comparison to men in the movies or making them look meeker (the ones always in search of one true love) is not helping either. There are two categories of women in movies, the first that silently suffers, the other that inflicts suffering. There is a third category, the one that forms a bridge between these two seemingly extreme categories (people who are real). How about repeatedly making movies that alarm people about their behavior (not only focusing on women issues here but issues related to human attitude)? Of course movies and media can do only so much. Taking that into consideration it is important to be creative, looking at absolutely everything, even slightest of comments that degrade human value. I totally agree with the quote, “But again, truth be told...if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.”(V for Vendetta)

It is important for the parents themselves to be educated. Coming from my personal experience, because supporting “wearing-short-clothes” is not a sign of “western thinking” or adapting western ideas. My issue with clothing is that it represents and subtly puts sign out there for everybody to see that “women” are objects, especially in Indian culture. Sadly I can back this up with an example that happened only a few months back in my home. My mother screamed at me when I was getting out of my house in “shorts” to a shop that was probably 30 steps away from my door. She threatened to not let me in if I step out. I could have called it her way of showing me she cares and her idea of protection. But that was not it, it was the locality, it was the society that she’d have to face, it was the men who would glance at her daughter slyly who she was afraid of. It was all of it, and even more. She was afraid for me but not as a mother alone. In that moment she was a “citizen” (representation of what society believes), face of the middle class (and I am sorry I didn’t bring this earlier as it is a major point to be noted), a woman who has at some point been ridiculed and put down for being a woman (maybe her personal insecurities) and as a daughter herself. I wish in that moment instead of shouting back at her I would have taken time and talked to her instead. Maybe talking would have completely helped. Or maybe not. Parents need to support their daughters and sons equally. In order to be able to provide for them they need be educated (not literate) as individuals and more open minded. My mother supports me wholeheartedly, and even though she might not readily accept my behavior as a rebel, she for certain finds herself, just as I do sometimes, in me.  

India is diverse in its varied lifestyles. However, seeing the culture in Chennai and Pune, and to find the comparison yielding similarities makes me question that claim about diversity after all. We all are responsible for our actions equally. At one point or another we have all degraded human value on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender etc. But it doesn’t mean that thoughts can’t transform. To start one needs to take a step, INDIVIDUALLY. As a man or as a woman, one needs to address one’s own weaknesses. For instance, the animalistic behavior the men showed when they raped these women and girls could have been stopped earlier, only if they were taught the meaning of valuing human beings (especially themselves) ‘prior to that moment’. They were animals not because they were drunk, but because they thought it was their right, because they thought it was ok, because they didn’t see the difference between a woman as a slave and woman who gave them birth, because they didn’t see the difference between being human and being an animal. Education (REDEFINE THIS), media (REDEFINE THIS), politics (REDEFINE THIS), compassion (REDEFINE THIS) and fighting for a cause (REDEFINE THIS) put together might lead to some change.

Hope is not lost.

The girl who was gang-raped in Delhi died on my 19^th birthday. When I was celebrating being born, she was mourning for not having lived. I wrote this for her. For everyone who died before her.
I will be too much of an optimist if I say that all the gang rapes or rapes will stop immediately in India. So instead I will be hopeful that each of us realizes our individual/unique responsibility in this struggle and ask ourselves ‘why rape’. I want to quote a man who changed my anger into finding-solutions, my fears into resolves, my negligence into appreciation and my disheartened attitude into hope. “A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.” ― Daisaku Ikeda, The Human Revolution.  I realize it more than ever that it starts with each and every one of us, absolutely every day and every minute.  

*These are my personal views and they could be subject to complete objection by another person provided they support it with their beliefs and valid evidence/experiences. I hope you bring them to my notice, so that I can improve and broaden my way of looking at issues such as these.  Please let me know if there are certain things that you find irrelevant and unobvious. I have attached some personal experiences and opinions because I am not a critique or even a writer who writes to differentiate between right and wrong. I wrote this in order to support my views against any form of oppression that devalues human beings. I took rape as only an example here. 

Separation

Seeing the moon in the clear
reflection of the sea in my eyes
I thought of solidification that derived
at the point from where I looked at the sky

The painting that flowed in my eyes
was rapidly getting darker

there are images from my past
and from my future that blend
in a sour tasting coffee that wakes me up each day

Tilting earth causes those shapes in the moon
the rotation, the revolution, the separation
causes the distinction, they said.

The distance between the separated fragments of the moon on the waves
to the distanced half shape of its imaginary twin on the sky
reminds me
of my mother waving goodbye to me on the airport

I wish she knew that we both shared that single moon in
each of our glimpses
as we sighed and drank from our respective cups of coffee
from different universes.

Lets not greet tonight, lets grieve instead. 

You complete me?

She fell from the top of the 23^rd floor

Down into the flowery bed of his arms

And she said “you caught me?”

He nodded.  He had fallen in love

It was too loud, the screaming and the hate

The spiteful words wouldn’t stop

She forsook the feeling that happy ends are possible.

He gave up on that hope too.

And the parting was bitter

She no longer scribbled his name on the book he gave

He no longer needed sugar in his coffee

Tomorrow they both would open their own doors

Pick up the phone and do all their daily errands

It was oblivious, the pain.

Holding the pillow and crying on her bed

Abusing the mirror after he is drunk

I miss your smell though

I haven’t never smelled that fragrance ever

And I miss something that I never saw or lived with

Its beautiful, the pain, that love embosses on our hearts

I can feel it, and so can you I guess. And it’s the same isn’t it?

I see you are smiling, I understand that you get

What I have been trying to say all this while.

And its not that I have to write a poem to explain it

But I wrote it nonetheless.

So simple the words that I hesitate before I say them to you

They said “I am sorry” to each other

And they forgave each other.

But that’s not what either of them wanted to hear

Yes those werent the words, they were

“you complete me”.

My circle that holds me still inside.

Like a cage, like the bars of the jail

But the freedom I taste is sweeter than I can explain.

And you are all I wish I had, a part of you within me.

But you don’t see it. Or do you?

Zeb and Haniya

I heard their first song in the midst of confusion and identity crisis in US, where I couldn't place myself and I had just started falling for someone who was not in my sight, more or less, proximity. The first song I heard by them was Bibi Sanam and I am sorry that I didn't understand a word of that song, instead just the 'judgmental' feeling that Indian music was now experimenting/exploiting various styles and was finally in the change of getting over this hollow and evasive bubble of loving 'Metal' and perhaps thinking other genres were less competitive.
This song was weird, and anything that was weird was definitely good. The second song Paimona was more intriguing. This time it was this mixed feeling of overflowing love and devastating emptiness because that love had no direction. I couldn't trace back the cause of that blooming feeling, I was transfixed between something that I felt for that guy and something that seemed like an internal process.
I didn't want to listen to their other compositions because they were Hindi and I wondered if, after I understood the meaning I would still love it. I judge songs, I judge the lyrics, the music, the people who write it, the people who listen to it.. In short its my favorite game. Their songs was changing something in me making me breathe a feeling I had never experienced. Or maybe their music was just another spectator watching me form, and take the shape of a person I always only assumed I was. Their music was witnessing a girl who was amazed at simplicity.. and understanding something beyond music, beyond lyricists, beyond a change that is hard to see within a circle.
Yes, there were a lot of problems that were massacring the ideal image of all the people I had in my life. The thin line between surrealism and reality was disappearing. Imogen Heap added her wonder addictive song 'Speeding cars' to top it all.
My meeting with that certain person went well. She explained me why discovering myself was important, and that there was only one way I could put myself back in my shoes and start walking after the long halt I took for almost five years and that was only by loving and nurturing that 'other me', unwilling to grow. She also told me that I could still fall in love with someone else while I was falling in love with myself. I was happy yesterday for the first time after a very long time, and no expressing that feeling wasn't necessary, or so I realized. 
I came downstairs to the library where I study and I played this different song by Zeb and Haniya. Chal Diye. And the feeling was overwhelming. I am sure what they wrote is not what I interpreted but there was something more than just music that made me crave for it. I didn't understand the lyrics. And it was frustrating.
I could fantasize myself sing that song for this guy I really liked and so I ended up posting it on his wall(Facebook) wishing that he understands what it means and explains it to me, of course with a tad bit of romance in it.
But as I stood reading the lyrics in the form of a poem I eventually made a little sense out of the song. Looking at it as a whole episode of this sky pale orange color feeling, it could be start of a new beautiful day or may be just the ceasing of a really bad one. Chal diye was different, ignoring my lack of music knowledge I still felt it was not their normal 'song'.
I was shaking terribly when I did completely feel what maybe I was meant to feel. Although I haven't confessed to him that I like him I feel compelled to stay quiet and let it all in.This feeling is probably very unique to me, or may be not. All I know is that if I could exchange anything for this feeling of completeness I would.
The song made me realize that the circle drew within itself limits and the dot stagnation, and that my whole belief (assumption) that a circle had to be viewed by everyone in exactly the same way as I did, fell apart. If I hadn't found the source of my completion, I did now. It was me and it was the song, it was the stranger who by the growing second I was falling in love with, my twin sister completing my sentences, my best friend screaming when I call her up, my ex boyfriends, my fuck ups, my mistakes, it was the warmth of that hand holding me on a cold night, little sighs of my dog before he completely fell asleep, or maybe just all the simple things.
I was happy after a long time, and I know its just a first.

A page from the diary of a Wannabe.

I was on my toes searching for a few books on music (classical) and came across these thirteen-year-old's searching for twilight posters. I smiled at them. A cynic smile. Thought to myself will they ever grow out of it? This whole scenario was quite amusing. One shouts excitedly calling the other from one end of the mall and then they saying ‘Oh god He’s so cuuuute!” together. What unity. It made me feel like telling them “Please for heaven sake, there are way better things then stupid fantasies and childish heroes. There’s life.”
While I was driving back I realized I was no different from those countless other hypocrites who put a face of being ‘matured’ and still being ‘short-sighted’ as well as ‘narrow-minded’. I did that once too. Jumping around when I was thirteen and yelling my favorite actor’s name and writing him all over my book. Then what right had I to feel the disgust when two friends did the same?
I realized a basic tendency of human mind. The feeling of ingratitude. I have forgotten how to thank. I am seventeen but I’m seventeen because all these sixteen years, life let me live and learn, explore and understand, fumble and stammer, smile and reflect. Life gave me reasons to hope but I ignored them all and chose, instead the feelings of repulse and despair, hatred and jealousy, enmity and revulsion. I forgot to thank the years that I spent. The years when picking up the chocolate from the floor and eating was not wrong, when asking about stars and their absurdity was not foolish, when choosing pink over blue was not stupid. So, what if the girls were screaming? Their style of conversing is different than mine but had I not been the same a while back? Why do I then look down onto them and say “oh they’ll grow out of it.” Did I want to grow out of that feeling? The feeling where nothing seemed to matter but excitement and joy? Of course, society teaches us to reprimand our actions and it eventually becomes the first rule of ‘growing up’. Learning self control is necessary but then so is being innocent and immature.
People, just like me, tend to forget that there’s life beyond being sophisticated and stern and mature. I wish at that moment I could smile at those girls remembering the time I spent with my friends getting super excited, instead of making the sly face that I was best at.
I guess it applies almost in every aspect of our daily lives. We look down on the people who look down on various castes, religions, cults. Are we any different then? I despise the man who criticizes black people. Does it make the situation any better? Is there any difference between me and that man (who looks down on them)? On the scale of humanity, maybe a fraction, but on the scale of individuality? We are still narrow-minded. The elders in the family always tend to say “I know better.” Sometimes it’s the need to find and know ‘the best’. Of course, I’m not taking sides here by saying that they are never wrong, all I am saying is they may not be always right. But, again, what do we do? repeat the pattern with our kids and they with theirs? will hypocrisy a.k.a. idiotism ever stop? We need to stop living in boundaries and expand. Its alright to get hurt. Didn't it hurt when we first fell of the bi-cycle? Did that stop us from riding it again? Why give up when falling down is only the validity of moving ahead!
Maybe its good from time to time to relinquish the thirst of being a prudent aristocrat (a normal person) and be someone different. Someone ready to learn, and learn to explore, and explore to wonder, and wonder to find, to find solace in the same heroes and fantasies. So much for growing up? The whole process to ‘being’ needs to go through ‘becoming’. I guess I don’t mind being a ‘wannabe’ as long as I know who I’ll end up like. Me.

Hope..

Vienna was looking at the drawer of the dusty table when the dancing rays glimmered the surface. She looked out of the window, that was placed just above the table, taking in the sun, and looking down at the bloomed lilies and carnations which had been recently planted in their garden. They seem to be smiling at her. She didnt care to smile back. She was getting tired of being dragged to the court every other day because of her parents' separation. She had come to dislike both her parents, especially her mother for not telling her the truth about the reason for the separation. She refused to stay with either of them and instead found solace in her old granny's house.She was cleaning the attic to pass time when she stumbled upon the beautiful antique lamps, potraits of ancestors, paintings on cavases, sheet music and a black wooden table in the room.

Her attention was brought to that table and she looked at it, wondering how long it had been there. She gave the room a wry look shifting her gaze back to the table. She suddenly noticed a heart shape carved on the wood in an extreme corner. She saw the initial there I and H. She smiled at the innocent love that the two people had shared, and felt happy being a part of their secret. She opened the drawer and found it dusty, and decided to clean it first. After the necessary cleaning she opened it again and saw that there was a photograph of a beautiful couple. The man lean, sharp featured and the girl innocent but stern. He resembled like someone she knew, but she couldn't remember who. Below the photograph was a letter, half torn and half worn out. She removed it and read...


"…..maybe someday she will realize the worth. But until then we can only look forward to a new dawn
that might change our misfortune. I wanted Maria to come visit me this summer, if only you could make some arr...”

The letter ended there. She noticed that the handwriting was neat and curved unlike hers. She dug in deep and found another paper. It looked like an essay. Well next to it was a locket. An emerald one. She held it between her fingers and smiled.
The paper read..
“Good morning one and all. When I was walking back from school yesterday I thought my grandpa was standing against the trees waiting for me, but as I drew closer and closer to the tree I saw that there was no one but me alone. I came home and went to my room and saw a letter kept on my table. I opened it and saw my grandpa's handwriting there. He talked about things that made me cry, but he told me to be strong and walk ahead of time. I didn't quite get it. My mother told me that today at his funeral I would have to tell you all about his time with me. I was his favorite granddaughter or so he told. I called him grandpa though he always wanted me to call him Henry. It just sounded foolish and I told him that.
So my story with grandpa starts from the day he came to visit us. I think it was the Christmas holidays. He was wearing a brown suit that day and as my mother introduced me to him, he said "so you are the beautiful princess everyone keeps talking about, I am delighted to finally meet you" he extended a hand at me and I vigorously shook it, they were so hard. That was our first meeting and I thought he was like my friend Anna's grandpa, who always grumbled and shouted at her. Instead, I started liking him when proved he me wrong the next day. I went out with my younger brother to make a snow man. He came out and helped us both to complete the snow man with a scarf. He was so funny. He said that during the night the snow man would disappear and if he did not then whatever we wished in the night would come true. I wished for him to stay. And it did come true.
When my school opened after the break, I didn't quite want to attend it. I loved spending time with grandpa and his stories. I had many bitter fights with my younger brother and I remember him telling me, "always love your younger brother. He loves you too" , but I fought back retorting that he never said it. I remember sitting in the backyard during nights, and him telling me about grandma and how they met. He told me "I met your grandma when she was fifteen and we both fell in love" and I often asked him to repeat that story again and again. about how the war was just over and he had come back to their hometown and that one day he was walking back home when he met a girl who had forgotten her way. "One look at her and I knew she was mine" he used to say. He told me she was just like a fairy and I imagined her with colorful wings and long shiny hair. I asked him where she was and he used to tell me somewhere in the sky. I never believed that!
When I was 10 we attended my friend's elder sister's marriage. He sat beside me and told me how the bride and groom take vows and how they promise each other and then exchange rings. When they kissed and everyone wished them we left back for our house. After I came home I put on my favorite white dress and went down to my grandpa's room. I asked him if he could marry me and he had smiled at me and said would not that hurt your grandmother?” and I replied how "she would never know. We will keep it as a secret." And that was the day he put me on his armchair and told me a long story about a prince and a princess who fall in love and grow old together. He had said "if you marry me, how will you meet your prince? He will accuse me of taking you away" with satisfaction that I didn't quite understand I drifted off to my wonderland.
It was this winter when he first told me that he was going to die soon. I asked him what death meant and he said "it means I am going away so that I meet your grandmother and so that we both can watch over you from the sky" and he had smiled but I stayed there confused. Christmas came and it was fun time again, but no one saw how hard it was for grandpa to walk with the ladder, how hard it was for him to keep his eyes open. when I used to sneak out of my room in the night to see him I used to go unto him and wake him up and when he used to look at me I used to ask "you are not leaving me yet are you?" and he used to smile and say "no I am not". This Christmas it didn't snow much. So I made a small snow man and asked him for my grandpa to stay with me forever " I stayed awake all night and watched if anything happened to the snow man and in the morning it was still there. I was happy, that like all the other Christmas wishes this would come true too.
Last week when I started realizing that he didn't talk much, I cried and cried for him to talk to me, but mother always pulled me from his room outside. I kept telling her that he is not going anywhere because I had wished for him to stay and that my wish would certainly come true. She hugged me tight and kissed me on the cheek and told me to say my prayers and go to sleep.
That night I sneaked out again and went into grandpa's room. His eyes were open and I was beyond happy. I went unto him and asked "why don't you talk to me anymore?" and he murmured something. I looked at him angrily that he didn't reply, and then I softly asked him "are you going away because I think YOU are my prince?" and he looked at me. I looked down and tears were in my eyes too. I softly told him “I will not ask you to be my prince I know you already are grandmother's prince... but please don't go, I hate everyone here. I hate the way mother never takes me out to her parties. I hate the way father gives Ryan two chocolates and me only one. I hate that big aunt who says bad things about you. I hate all of them. But I love you, and I love you the most. but I know you love grandmother the most " after I realized that he wasnt listening, I kissed his cheek and said "I know you want me to be strong and want me to be the princess you always called me but how am I supposed to know what is wrong if you are not here? How will I know that the ice-cream is not soft enough? How will I know why my friends laugh at me? Who will tell me to be nicer to Ryan? Who will ask me to sing during the night? Who will tell me all the beautiful stories about prince and princess? Who will wipe my tears when mother shouts at me? “I looked at him and his eyes were closed. He had fallen asleep. I sat on his big chair in front of the table and kept my head on it, I got up and saw a green stone in a chain, I picked it up got down from the chair and silently put it around his neck. I kissed him again on his cheek and said "I know you won’t leave me."
The next day I was sleeping in my room when my mother hurriedly pulled me out of the bed and took me downstairs. When I reached grandpa's room he was laying the same way but there was something different, different about the way he looked, and the way he was breathing. I went close up to him and asked "grandpa are you leaving me?" he smiled. I didn't know if he was going to stay with me, that uncertainty made me cry. And it also made me cry because I had to suddenly grow up. Suddenly be a girl I didn't want to be. I would miss his smile before going off to bed, I would miss his laughter that never failed to cheer me up, I would miss his songs that he always hummed, I would miss his snow man, his dreamy eyes when he told me about grandmother, his tears when he held me and said I love you so many times.. I would miss all of it but I didn't want to accept it.

Every time I saw grandpa going to uncle's place I knew he would come back, I knew he would return and get me presents and sweets, so I knew not to feel sad, but I still cried. But this time I didn't know how far he had gone. I was afraid that grandpa would go back to grandmother and would choose to stay with her. But yesterday when I read the letter he had written I felt different. He wrote "you know sweetheart, you were just like your grandmother, ever caring and ever loving. I wish you would have met her but then again I am glad you didn't, because then I would have never been able to share you with her. You were as precious to me. I wanted to tell you so many things but then again you were filled with your beautiful dreams that I knew I would never witness. How I wish I could have been able to stay more but then your grandmother kept calling me. And I know you are so understanding, sometimes I felt you were my grandmother and me your grandson. Funny is it not, my love? I will miss you, and never forget I’m always up there watching over you." He ended it there taking away the last bit of shine from his eyes and the last bit of hope from mine. all this time when I tried to imagine him leaving me, tears gushed their way out of my eyes, but after reading I knew that this one time my grandpa did not really leave me. He would always remain with me. In my heart, in my music, in my speech, in my tears and smiles… I knew he would always remain with me.. IN ME.. forever"

She was crying at the end as she saw just a simple I written there. She glimpsed back at the small heart made on the table 'I and H' She wondered what the "I" stood for. She tried to swallow whatever was blocking her from sucking the air. And she looked at the paper again.
An old woman came up from behind her and put her hand on the girl's shoulder and asked "so you read it?"
"Who is this girl granny? God how old was she when she wrote this... it’s so... so... “She looked outside the window and suddenly the sun was no more smiling but sympathizing with her.
"So... beautiful?" the old woman asked.
"Yes... who was she?" she asked with that desperate note in her voice.
“Oh that young girl was your mother sweetheart. Henry was my father and Ivy's Grandfather. She was 14 when she wrote that" she smiled simply looking at her.
She smiled back. Suddenly everything seemed clear, she knew why her mother had told her to come to this room, and she had forced herself not to. After her mother had moved away from the house she had grown to resent her mother's actions. She had despised her thoughts and her music. But this afternoon she discovered a different side to 'her' mother and in turn herself. The ‘I’ and ‘H’ belonged to her mother and hr great grandfather. They were not the only lovers Vienna thought, but I am a part of their love too. Vienna held the locket in her fingers feeling its shape. She then looked up with a heavy heart. Her great grandfather had not given only her mother hope but also her.
She said the name aloud Ivy William Wreathrow, her mother.
Hope, yes the most beautiful feeling, lifted her upward to someplace she just kept dreaming about. Today she was there. Happy and content. She understood that love cannot be understood and that no matter how far you want to run away, it finds you in one form or the other.

Colors

Watching down that memory lane

When laughter kept me company

When songs were the hope of spring

The winter that was just dead and gone

If I’d be eyes you’d be my blindfold

If  I’d be words you’d be my sound

If  I’d be anything but me

you’d still exist beyond time

you were the color that filled my canvas

the red consumed with anger and agony

the blue with subtle passion

and the white with blissful freedom and purity

I wish I could see beyond those colors

The person who stood behind the veils

I wish I could see your pain that love wrought

For the words you spoke just never made sense

Today when I stand where you stood few years back

I see that all you saw was hollow and failure

And that all you saw was cold and hatred

I guess I was way behind or maybe just afar

You tried to reach but I saw nothing of you

How could I be so selfish and so heartless?

How could I not see what you were going through?

I blame that mist and those colors that we built

Yes, when today that light guides me

I see clarity that showed you hate and coldness

But why does it choose to show me pain

When all I can do is be blank filled with emptiness

Maybe because the colors show me truth today

The red an igniting flame of love that started that fire

The subtle blue that held onto my love like deep water

And the white that love splashed erasing the hate

I see green with its tender arms open to greet

I see golden filled within the morning lark

I wish you could see too the colors of love

But you chose black and all you saw was just that.