fledgling

Phew!  It's been a year since the word 'lockdown' entered our lives, and yet the battle continues.  The lockdown may not have been awesome for many of us. For the majority, it may have looked like endless nights of Netflix and depressed days.  But thankfully, in my case, the lockdown gave me food for thought – I wanted to seize the empty hours and make something of it that I will be proud of. I had already spent a few depressed months right before lockdown, not having the time to try out all that I wanted to. All of a sudden, my packed daily routine took a leap and now, I had all the time in the world for myself. I embarked on a transforming journey of truth and learning, with my share of successes and blows.  I'm going to share with you some skills that I picked up during the lockdown. Feel free to add some to your list too! Photo by author 1. Calligraphy Calligraphy was more of an accidental skill I learnt. I had always liked watching videos of calligraphists, and the

(Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash ) It was a still, quiet night. The air seemed untouched by the maddening chaos in my mind. I glanced at the night sky, and spotted a star glimmering in the distance. The unusually gripping sight brushed me back to a fragment of my past, a chapter sealed long before. A whiff of my past my naive self still lived in. A life I had long left. I used to enjoy observing the tiny flickers of light, while my heart filled with hope for tomorrow. They looked like little flames whose glowing tips waltzed in the gentle evening wind. Those quiet, fulfilling moments spent squinting at tiny specks of light, while savouring the crisp air with traces of floral detergent from the clothesline, were one of a kind. Something no productivity chart would ever be able to explain. It was something I was not yet accustomed to; living a new life with new people, making new memories. Those little joys and fears that would excite my younger self. It's moments like these, moments

My heart hurts with longing With a void of fresh wounds Nothing is of true joy Joy that makes me go hysterical Rather, it is a bland, trudging melody A melody robbed of its soul I feel the abyss buried in my heart  Slowly engulfing me To the very end. #50wordschallenge   

The numbing vacuum in my heart That pierces my heart like a million shards of broken dreams Gnawing at the very luminescence of my soul When tears refused to flow and instead freeze behind those kohl lines A stirring ocean of emotions, the torrents pushing the walls of my chest, threatening to explode into a million shades and hues in the sky. I lay, caked in the wet sand like a helpless mussel on the shore, Like a lost traveller with no compass, no star to gaze Like a song snatched of its melody A poet sans a word and soul Maybe this is what life feels like without you.

(Doodle by author) Those strokes hold some power over my soul. Every stroke of black ink on the paper carries my flow of zen. I feel my zen flowing through the bold lines of ink, as it seeps into the thin paper and leaves an imprint on the next page, like a faint footprint of time on a page left unwritten, a sliver of the blank pages of the future. I feel my throbbing anger, roaming curiosity and emotion trapped within drain from my veins and flow out like ink. It calms the raging storm within, liberates the compressed frustration, when emotion and doubt cloud my sight, when I cannot quite find answers to questions within. I let it take form. I let my mind and soul wander on paper, and they imprint traces of great wars fought in turmoil. I let the strokes clash into one another; some overshadow others, some lie far apart. Yet, the raw self cannot bear rules. I let the imperfections rule the paper, and that is what makes me raw, real and human. In the end, the wild strokes embrace and I