Hri's Reveries

In every memory, you’re always leaving. White t-shirt, messy hair, at the threshold of my door, holding it open to say a goodbye. I never ask you to stay. You always leave behind some trinket in my life that you can come back for. In this memory, it is your copy of The Picture Of Dorian Gray . Some other day, I had asked you to read this book. I take my blunt drawing pencil and scribble in soft letters a note— ‘I will always be fond of you. You represent all the sins I had the courage to commit.’ In another memory, I watch you dance with some stranger at a party while someone else runs their hands over me. We came to this party together but I watch your eyes pierce into me from over her shoulder and I know you will leave alone. You leave behind some shattered pieces of a heart, you leave in the middle of her dance. In another memory, you leave the pen your brother gave you between the pages of my notebook. I watch you walk out of the classroom in the middle of the lecture. You ne

If I had to kill myself, I would do it in October. The first time I loved was in the fall of 2017. The first time I broke my own heart was in the fall of 2023. I would start the month thinking about when I wrote a song for my first love because I did not know any other way to contain what I had felt. Then I would think about the day he left. And I would mix a drop of poison in my evening coffee. Memory by memory, drop by drop, I take in a little bit of poison every day as the month goes on. Every day, a new remembrance of an old memory. Every day, a drop of the same poison. I would think about the girl I spent five hours with, in the forbidden cemetery of our hometown. I would think about the sunset being reflected in her hazel eyes and how my heart raced when she held my hand. And I would mix another drop of poison in my evening coffee. I would think about the boy I first gave my body to and how I let him have it even after I changed my mind. I would think about the sunrises w

Love is considerate. I set his message notifications to high priority on my phone and he texts me to ask if I want anything every time he goes to get himself food. I don’t write about him the way I have about past lovers— rash, unthinking, distorted. All the words I give him are gentle even on paper. I make them so, syllable by syllable. I lose myself in lectures, doodle in my notebook, and think back to biology classes in school. Mutualism is when two species interact and benefit. Two types. Obligate or facultative. The former cannot survive without the symbiosis, the latter can. I think about how a younger me would have dreamt of a lover who shares the same breath as her but now I think of the honeybee and its favourite flower as the ideal kind of love. Hydrogen is flammable and oxygen helps it catch fire and yet, the two can combine to form something incredibly stable and life-sustaining. Even in my boring science lessons, I tie my thoughts back to him. Love is considerate. (S

All I see is darkness. I hear voices echoing all around, meshed with each other, not a single clear word. I close my eyes and think about how this is what the first few moments after waking up are like for me lately, day after day. The sun hits my face because I forgot to pull the blinds down when I fell asleep the previous night. I wake up and stare at the ceiling, vision clouded with a strange darkness despite the golden light streaming into the room. And the voices. I open my eyes and stare back into the doorway— familiar darkness. The voices disentangle themselves from each other. Phrases that feel like uneven glass edges dragging along my skin, become louder and clearer. You are not enough. You never will be. Everyone hates you. The pretence of perfection is not sufficient. Harshness echoes around me and I wonder why my mind has become the universe’s greatest weapon against me. I see a woman— someone from my past, someone I once loved and was loved by. She carries immense rag

Most babies find the single syllable ‘maa’ easier to form and hold in their tiny mouths as their first word. Mine was ‘baba’ . Spoken often and with such clarity that people would sigh at their own children’s mumbled noises. I learnt to sing almost simultaneously as I learnt to talk. My mother tells me the first song I started humming, and then singing perfectly was one of the Rabindra sangeets my father often played— one of his favourites. She tells me how overjoyed he was when I started humming it while he held me in his arms. He never tells me any of this. Growing up, I gave several adjectives to the image of my father, in my head. I thought he was strong and invincible like every other child does. Now every time I go back home, he seems to have grown older. I thought he was my best friend. Every argument we had when I was sixteen made me doubt it. I thought my father was flawless. But he is only human. Most of my family tells me I’m just like my father. I’ve grown up hearing this