shayandas

[shayandas]

Acrostic: The first letters of each line read vertically downwards spell out my mother's name.

[shayandas]

Mother says it's easy to fall in love but hard to love, and that they are two largely different things. She said she never fell in love with me; she just loved me, and I understood exactly why a mother's love persists in all the places where others subside. 

Shayan Das

[shayandas]

Last night I saw a group of friends laughing at the café and ended up smiling myself. The other day, there was a couple kissing under the flicker of streetlight, and I thought to be gentler with me. For when you've been alone for more than half your life, you don't expect to be included or cast your own light; rather, choose to reflect like the moon that never formed a constellation. When you've been on your own, it seems that even the wind that brushes past your skin has a purpose— like a stray dog that thinks every kind hand that offers it food is home. You make two cups of chai every evening and pretend there's someone to converse with, or keep one earphone dangling, hoping someone would care to listen. You keep your cellphone silent not because you're agitated with the numberless messages, but because it hurts less not knowing there isn't one. You mistake your heartbeats for footsteps not because someone's arriving but because you think they must have.

Shayan Das, The Solivagant

[shayandas]

"So, what of next year's resolutions?", I heard my friend ask the other day and found myself stuck in a quiet storm, stirring the ache of all the changes I'd wished for but never lived this year. New days, new weeks, new months, new years—how often I've chased the illusion of 'new', convinced that everything would start from the very beginning—only to find myself, each day, pleading for the following day—begging each week for another week. How dearly I've celebrated the turning of each year, like prophets ushering in salvation, only to discover the freshness of the same calendar fading by February, the corners dog-eared, and promises—so solemnly sworn—becoming ghosts lingering in the silence of unkempt rooms. As if the trees that shed their twigs in autumn do not grow the same leaves with the same roots in spring—as if when flipping pages in a book, the story never retains its plot—as if the mere change of a night could unshackle the chains of a lifelong sorrow.

Shayan Das, New Year's Resolutions

[shayandas]

I discovered self-love that very day when I extended my arms to embrace your delusional form and ended up embracing myself.

Shayan Das

[shayandas]

Accidentally stumbled upon your blog, but now I find myself eagerly exploring each post, savoring the beauty of your prose. The way you articulate ideas and infuse emotions into your writing is truly remarkable.

Thank you so much for the compliment. It means a lot. Wish you a great day/night ahead <3

[shayandas]

[shayandas]

"No, I won't eat," 5-year-old me would say and slam the door with vexation after being rebuked by his mother. "You eat alone," he'd cry in response to the persistent calls, knowing at the same time that mom wouldn't take a single bite, leaving him hungry. After an hour or two, mom would be back with the plate, feed him with her own hands, and home would be where it was supposed to be. The pollen grains, I learned, dare to fly, soar, and flutter in the wind only 'cause they know there will be flowers to catch them.

A bad day at school. 15-year-old me would bitterly answer a question from mom and regret the entire night for yelling at her for no reason at all. He'd sit beside her the next morning and greet her with a sorry. "I didn't mean to..." he would utter, and mom, cheerful as ever, would respond with a smile by that time. "You needn't," she'd say, and ask with uneasiness, "What happened at school yesterday?" "You could reply to me in that way," she'd add with assurance, "'cause you cannot with the world. 'Cause you trust I'm the only one who won't take it to heart". He'd already be in tears, embrace his mom tightly, and home would be where it was supposed to be. The love I sought for ages, I learned, is a mother.

Shayan Das, excerpt from 'The Love I Learned'

[shayandas]

But I've lived—thrived half my afternoons wondering whether mom would prepare my favourite dinner for the evening; put up with distances hoping it would make the brief meetings monumental; got through half my exams pondering about the things I would do the night after the last paper; fought extra hours expecting it would help me sleep better. Lord, I no longer wonder why 'tis so easy to give up when you've got nothing to hope for.

Shayan Das

[shayandas]

Fall Poetry Recommendations 🍁

To Autumn by John Keats

My November Guest by Robert Frost

Fall, leaves, fall by Emily Brontë

Autumn by John Clare

End of Summer by Stanley Kunitz

Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare

Sunset to Star Rise by Christina Rossetti

First Fall by Maggie Smith

Ode to the West Wind by P.B. Shelley

Autumn Song by W.H. Auden

Tell me not here by  A.E. Houseman

The Wild Swans at Coole William Butler Yeats

Japanese Maple by Clive James

The Beautiful Changes by Richard Wilbur

Among the Rocks by Robert Browning

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Beyond the Red River by Thomas McGrath

September Midnight by Sara Teasdale

Autumn Fires by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Reminiscence by Richard O. Moore

It's September by Edgar Albert Guest

[shayandas]

Every road I abandoned is the shortest that leads home today; every star that slipped added some more nights without sleep. The things I battled for are today in battle against me; the birds I pursued are the birds I left behind. "Maybe you never had a dream, and if you did have one, you never believed in it", I heard my friends saying, and all that I remembered were the saplings that were uprooted and planted on lands where most of their kinds thrived, the mouths that were shut with examples of stomachs that dried, the legs that couldn't fold themselves to keep the heads high, and the heads that were taught to dream but never offered the chance to dream freely.

Shayan Das

[shayandas]

I stumbled upon you by accident and now, with a minute and half, I love you?

Your words are what I will look for in everyone from now on to stumble across love.

Thank you so much for writing this! This means a lot. Wish you a great day/night ahead <3 ⁠

[shayandas]

Quotes by Shayan Das. Follow my Instagram account for related posts.

[shayandas]

"Your grandfather and I've been together for 56 years", said my grandma one night while showing some tattered photographs from her shabby album. Her eyes sparkled as she went by each page, narrating their first meeting and reliving her girlhood. I picked up one and asked after some time, with a thrill of stupefaction, "What held it, what helped the love between you and Grandpa last so long? ..." "What shall hold love", she chuckled, her eyes still glued on the photographs, as if trying hard to forget about the ephemerality of young romance. "What shall hold love", she continued after a pause, "when love's supposed to hold us? At first, I thought I loved him. Well, I did, perhaps not once but countless times, in a multitude of ways. In fact, he loved me with the same sincerity. But what's more essential is that each time we loved one another, we felt we were loving ourselves. When I trusted him, I felt I was trusting myself; when he promised he would make my dreams come true, he worked all night to make his dreams come true. His pains were my pains, and my insecurities his. When I thought I'd lose him, I felt I'd lose myself; every time he found I was contented, his joys would know no bounds. Throughout our lives, we were busy saving ourselves and ended up protecting each other". 

Shayan Das

[shayandas]

We aren't afraid to suffer; we're scared of suffering alone.

Shayan Das

[shayandas]

With crestfallen eyes, the young boy then asked his father from where melancholy emanates, and the father answered: "The agonies you acquire are the children of elation. If not all, they're the nephews and nieces. 'Tis not the sun just effusing sunlight, but the same sun that draws out the elixir from the oceans and forms the clouds, and the same clouds that take the shape of storms. 'Tis not the aroma enticing the butterflies, but the same fragrance that decides which flower would be plucked first by a lover to give joyance to his cherished. 'Tis not the light just illumining your flesh to perceive yourself in the mirror, but the same light that decides the emergence of the shadow on the other side. The poor Earth has little to produce on its own. So every time you're elated, know that it is burrowed and costs someone else their own contentment, whether animate or inanimate. Every time you're enraptured, know that it's just an altered form of someone else's grief and desolation".

Shayan Das, Excerpt from Origin of Sorrow

[shayandas]

I remember the day after writing the last exam of my grade 10th finals. I was convincing my father about my ardent interest in taking creative writing for further studies and heard him say, "The seas might look the best things to romanticise, so as long as you're hydrated, but in the fullness of time, you'll find 'tis the clouds, invariably not the seas, that can quench your thirst". And I realised beyond a shadow of a doubt how people are born romantics and made realists.

Shayan Das