Alaska, my favourite book character, quoted “I am a deeply unhappy person.” My friends used to call me “Alaska”. They did not know the whole story. Alaska died by suicide.
Growing up, I continued losing faith. God, promises, hard-work – faith in everything slipped through the cracks. The Welsh named my melancholy as “hiraeth” ie. longing for a home that does not exist. At age 7, I felt unloved. At 14, I stopped praying. At 17, I lost my faith in life.
Then I turned 19. Wheels started rolling backwards. I found that I had friends who cared back, family that sincerely tried understanding me, a lover that is not a stealth from fate and my own self that is alright as it is – cynically.
The core issue with a poet is that everything is like everything else and as Pudge, the bestfriend of Alaska, remarked, “Metaphors have implications.” If I am a broken vase, there is a Japanese technique to glue pieces with gold in the cracks, “Kintsukuroi.” I might be average but I am badass enough to say that I am happy.
I am a person of small dreams.
My only ambition
Is to never forget
This hope.
P.S. – I wrote this one back in 2021. Life had just started getting better. It has been going good; I still haven’t lost any hope. The more days that pass, the more I end up dreaming. A lot of hopes have landed like balloons in my garden. I will try to inflate all of them. Hopefully, a good number will fly again and pass through a few layers of the atmosphere. I am happy.
Aru Shan 