metaphorwrites

[metaphorwrites]

Touch has a Memory

When we are little, the tactile connection with our house is perhaps the greatest. Crawling, jumping, going up and down the stairs, exploring every defect of the wall with a detective’s attention – the opportunities are endless. Perhaps my skin knows how my grandparent’s house felt, more than it knows my own. There used to be a pillar for instance right at the centre of the hall, an architectural…

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The City takes over

When did I stop admiring trees less and people more? I think it happened that September evening when I couldn’t get past a word in the poem I was writing while sitting in the park. I walked to a nearby café which wasn’t the quietest of all places, but there sitting with my iced mocha and listening to the buzz of conversation I completed the poem with metaphors I didn’t know my mind could produce.…

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Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

“The act of seeing is no small thing. To see something is to be possessed by it. Sometimes it carries off a part of you, sometimes it’s your whole soul.”Just like Takako, this book along with a mountain trip brought me back to reading. “You study English, you must be reading a lot of books right?” Books, yes a lot, but how many of them are just stories without the weight of immediate surgery, how…

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Musing After a University Lecture

They say the poet becomes a poet by tapping in moments of pregnant imagination and beauty which evades the ordinary mind. This apparent superiority of a heightened consciousness once struck a poet with the malady of paying ecstatic attention to everything which could move any of the five senses. The milk was boiling with its wave of hesitation and excitement as usual, but the flame kept low, had…

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The Dance of Fireflies: A June Evening at the Lake

“Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies,” -Robert Frost, Fireflies in the Garden Whenever I think I have seen it all, Rabindra Sarobar mocks me, then surprises me. Such an evening of surprise was June 18. After sitting glued to my desk day-long, I went for a quick run. As darkness descended on this particular windy and humid day, I thought of…

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“What’s the worst thing I’ve stolen? Probably little pieces of other people’s lives. Where I’ve either wasted their time or hurt them in some way. That’s the worst thing you can steal, the time of other people. You just can’t get that back.”

— Chester Bennington

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shame of not writing yet feeling

Dear Readers, Not writing is not living adequately. Yet we must endure those long bouts of desert heat to feel the delight of an oasis. But doesn’t the moment after we have passed an oasis feel the most painful? Leaving the comfort of quenching and walking towards an unknown? But then you might ask is it the real thirst? It is but a way to fuel our ultimate thirst which is the destination. Aah,…

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“Don’t let the concept of change scare you as much as the prospect of remaining unhappy.”

— Timber Hawkeye

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“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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THREE OF US AND PAST LIVES: THE ART OF LONGING

“But that little girl did exist. 20 years ago, I left her behind with you.” These are the words of Na Young in the movie Past Lives. But this can very well be the words of Shailaja from Three of Us. Watching the two movies within a span of one week made me realise how similarly their heart’s beat. How does it feel to return to one’s udgam? How does it feel to witness it as the third person? Both…

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thinking about jeff buckley being asked, "how do you want to be remembered?" and answering with, "as a good friend."

[metaphorwrites]

Mahmoud Darwish, from Journal of an Ordinary Grief (tr. from the Arabic by Ibrahim Muhawi)

[Text ID: A place is not only a geographical area; it's also a state of mind. And trees are not just trees; they are the ribs of childhood.]

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David Whyte in conversation with Krista Tippett, On Being [transcript in ALT]

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Richard Siken, from "On Perplexity: Chrysanthemum"

[metaphorwrites]

Self-Discovery in Irrfan Khan Movies

Puzzle (2018) and The Lunchbox (2013) are two movies starring Irrfan Khan, having broadly similar themes. Two strangers come together in a stranger way, form a brief relationship, and then go on with their individual lives to discover themselves. They are not films that can be classified into any familiar romantic trope. Love enables the individuals to have a voice and act for themselves. It is…

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Thoughts on a Rainy Evening

I hear the rain falling heavily outside. The irregular noise of the water, falling – from the sky, from the cracked pipe of the corner building, through the giant peepul tree. Reflections cannot get a scope to identify themselves, they are dancing a mad dance. The lake is filled to the brim now, and discussions of water pollution and sedimentation have gone underwater as the problem is not…