Kamna's Blog

I inhale slow and deep Imagining the oxygen in the air grow heavy Heavy enough to dampen like a single lonely rain cloud Then lay a generous drop on my parched tongue Making waves with my arms every time I decide it's too cold  Or too hot Or when my own pulse is too loud in my ears Thinking about counting how long it would have been since I last saw sand Felt it beneath greedy soles succumbing into the gravity of the low tide 158 days  If my math is right  Since I wore shoes with socks Or heels with straps Held my hair to my ears during a windy morning auto rickshaw ride Sipped cheap, overly sweet tea from styrofoam cups Out of a whim From just finding a 10 rupee note from the bum pocket Rode an elevator with perfume and body odour both wafting Scents I can never place but were familiar as the wind itself Walked on a busy footpath on the side of incoming traffic Just for the thrill of it And get much more than I would like to seek 158 days since I crossed any road Seen th...

Where with a sea view and vows we started our nuptials full of joy and plenty of pale ale Now we slither into separate tiny cots in an oldage home forgotten with faceless nurses, the fabric of our skin, breadlike and stale Where once we would play online chess through bites of cheddar sandwiches, our unwashed selves hidden through the internet's comfortable veil Now we stand too close in this infirmary bath sharing soap, sliced through the middle, all thanks to your weirdly sharp big toenail Where being puzzled and brainstorming in the middle of an airport terminal: was it egg or chicken that came first and why the chicken crossed the road or was it rail Now we samba with fingers on the shared bedside table, my phalange chubbiness against your papery thumbs, until our eyes give unto sleep, surrender to fail Where it started sixty seven years ago with me checking you out and began to end fifty nine years later when you checked us into this jail Now every day is a Sunday repeated in ...

Abuzz and alight  Listening to the night  Tired but alive and so I decide to write Shall I suggest that you please mind my thought canopy Where ideas are microwaved rather than slow roasted, maybe not your fancy Where the imagination has an amazing line of credit with no extra fee Obsessive tongue cleaning, brushing with soft bristles while trying to be quiet The act of teeth brushing always significant, luxurious, full of bite It's the hours after dark when morning tasks somehow feel quite right Busied by nocturnal loveliness at the edge of the bed where I'm sat Watching the papaya tree, her branches distressed by the clutches of an awkwardly tiny baby bat Just how much damage could the little one do? I attempt to work out the math What's this life for, if not for questions that probe deep, that dare to seek? Contemplating the cons of a templatized week Amidst a depraved world with pouring news in varying degrees of bleak What a small existence is mine, castled in with all...

When was the last time you allowed your own mind to think for itself? Should you? The mind is like a petri dish Delicate like the glass it's made from See through (at least to you) like it's transparent It's also completely open Until you choose to culture bacteria But in this case, your thoughts Your thoughts are like bacteria Some good for you, some bad enough to infect the good ones But it's up to you to mind that petri dish So no, you shouldn't. This morning I woke up at 5.41 AM  The first day of June  I woke to the ever sweet smell  of Petrichor Seeing puddles and very insistent drops falling steadfastly into them  The first rain of the year is the very first rain for so many baby birds Bird moms and dads talk about the first rain with gushes of excitement  Baby bird minds imagine delighting at pretty clear droplets falling down before ever seeing it I saw a video about how if you give an egg to a dog, they would be very careful not to crack or drop it Orph...

I thought I saw a piece of chocolate on the ground "That's poop, no doubt" said my good old hound When he was a little 4 month old puppy, abandoned, he lay in a dirt mound My little Winnie, in a white plastic bag, with unimaginable cruelty was he bound If it wasn't for his plea, if it wasn't for that extraordinary sound  The words "Help me" would have been lost, in the city hubbub, they'd have drowned A happy day that was, for a forever home Winnie finally found I named him so, because he won our hearts, and was thus rightly crowned Talking dog or not, I couldn't have imagined a cooler, more loving family member around His best talent, however, went beyond his vocab, it's the speed at which food he downed After fourteen years of gorging mouthfuls of meat by the pound I trust his sense of smell and walk past that chocolate coloured poop, during our breezy afternoon round

I drew him a diagram Explaining the value I derived from being active on Instagram He said it was a total sham That so much of my time be devoted to content created by a phone's cam But I'm not in it for the glam  Whiningly I expressed, aching for a pop of diazepam 

Do you remember? Words were the first friend you made When you were on your own as a child of nine When reading time at boarding school was once a week in that Hogwarts-like library Your journey with words has been long and enduring From being a passive reader of them To a voracious writer of them Writing is embedded like a video on a page in your soul It’s up to you keep that video on autoplay, or mute, or to comment it out You can’t erase it though, try as you might It’s your burden to bear and prize to ply The desire to turn away from the ambiguity of authorship, or to wish for your vocabulary to shrink, these are all very escapist No one ever warns you or prepares you for the tsunami of words coming at you, coming from you You think you can be absolved of your art, But it’s that very art that keeps your head on your shoulders You know you can’t resist the seduction of it So go ahead, I’ve just filled up your Faber Castell with the blackest black ink that you lov...