Nostalgia

Chilly fog, cosy sweats

A morning to remember

And a night to cherish

Amidst the breeze

We drum our strings

Dance and sing in the happy ting

Cold fingers, warm hearts

The hearth in the middle

Dancing in the wind

Sleepless with smiles wide

A morning to remember

And a night to cherish

– Ishika Kataria

Kind Hearts

Wish I could embrace you in a long hug,

I wish I could hold your hand-

As you calm down.

Look me in the eye when

You’ve cried your heart out, I’ll still be there;

Don’t mind my thumb gliding across your cheek.

Those tears are a sign you have a heart,

But it doesn’t mean you let people walk all over it.

You know, the kindest hearts have felt the most pain.

There are one too many insensitive

Persons you may come across.

Waking up everyday to feelings that shatter your will-

Battling fears and weaknesses to the point of

Breaking down to the bone of existence,

The kindness will remain.

Why would one be kind to those

Failing to show mercy and turning cold?

Why would that softness in hearts

Persist even if all they’ve experienced is cruelty?

In tender-throbbing tendons of hearts

On verge of snapping with agony,

Kindness remained still.

– Jhanavi Purohit

Home

If else where she will fear,

But there she gets the strength to bear,

The disease that is so rare,

And, she knows, there lies her cure,

For there is none other

but HOME.

– Anuradha Agarwal

In the name of God

I stand in the dark

of my room, looking out

the window,

the sky, on fire,

a stark yellow and a hellish orange,

poured scarcely inside.

Flames, red and just as orange,

burnt someone in the middle

of the road,

she was screaming,

blood curdling shrieks,

but her screams were over-shadowed,

by the clinks of,

knives and bomb blasts.

In the background of

a sky, red and thirsty for blood,

flames raining down from the clouds,

I saw,

two groups of people,

standing on either side of her,

one side, wearing Kufis and Hijab,

the other, chanting the name of Shiva.

Eccentrically different,

but they still had one thing in common,

their eyes, blazing,

hatred, pouring out of their mouths,