Tales of a Tattler

  If we are always in the making, is any act truly final? If each misstep carves us further into who we are, can any role hold a single definition?    Daughtering captures a moment, where a daughter is unmade and remade under the gaze of her mother's constant love.

  “Smile is the curve that sets everything straight,” is a quote I have lived by since I first heard it during a school assembly on Smile Day. Since then, I have tried to embody it in spirit and action. But occasionally, I would question its nature.   This poem is one such contemplation on the nature of smiles, and the pauses between each of them. 

  We are all good people.    And... we are evil people.   What we are, or what we become, is shaped by the coalescence of our many past and present decisions.    This piece is an experiment, an interpretation of the painting 'Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581' by Ilya Repin. It is a departure from my usual style, yet a deeply personal glimpse into the shadows and sparks that flicker within the human psyche.    Behind every human — from those who have governed the highest and strongest thrones to those of us who hold onto the fourth seat of the morning train — there are stories: of love, rage, legacy, and regret;  of what we try to control, and what eventually controls us.    Here is one such story of a man, a tzar, a father, and everything he could not undo.

  We spend much of our lives searching for signs that we hold a place in the grand scheme of things.   But if, for a moment, we paused, and truly listened, we might hear the quiet whispers of the universe: in the brush of wind against your skin, in the steady pull of the tides, in the quiet persistence of waves meeting the shore.    It is in these moments, that we realize that it doesn’t matter whether we are great or small. The universe isn’t concerned with scale. There is only the experience, and the unexpected peace that comes when we stop measuring our place in it, and simply let ourselves be.    And perhaps, that’s where this poem begins...

In 2020, Mumbai: the city that never sleeps, slumbered like a child. The railway halted, the bustles dissolved, and its "spirit" softened into tranquillity. An unfamiliar silence pervaded every corner and street. And behind every closed door, a different story quietly unfolded. This is one such story. A fragment of the moments, the memories, and the stillness that lingered among you and me. It is an elegy to all that was, all that could have been, and all that remains.