Mercy and Mend

“But I love you." I look up and stare at the eyes that claim to love me. They're dark and empty and that unsettles me. I want to see the eyes of a broken man. I want to see shards and pain and desperation, but all I see is a solid wall I can't look beyond. "I love you," he repeats. I sigh. "Yes. Maybe you do. I don't have a better word than love, but it's not the way I've known it to be like. It's not a love that builds; it's the kind that breaks and destroys. It's fierce and with a need so burning that I'm afraid we'll exhaust ourselves in the end. We go on like a house on fire and probably will collapse like one too. No,we're not the kind that get drunk on night outs and blush when our friends comment on us. We're the kind that frown because the other said something they were not supposed to. When staying out late, we're not the cute fridge magnet messages type; we're the frantic textin

Ever been there when you're happy about something that happened. Really, really happy and it's not the jumping up and down or the grinning ear to ear happy. It's a more...sober kind. You're happy, satisfied but you also know that this is probably not gonna last forever. You're not at peace with that though and you know it'll effing break you when it comes. But okay, it's not flawless, it could still get better but trust me if it ain't perfect. So you just sit there and smile. A heavy smile, heavy with the knowledge that this might change, it might not last but then you keep smiling anyway because who knows, maybe it just might?

Death doesn't choose Between the shrewd or the saint Or between the necessary and the unnecessary. It just takes And it takes them all.

In love perfection does exist. No one person is ever perfect. He's not. She's not. But love...that's always perfect.

I was taking my 5-year-old niece to the park today and she asked me what we'd be doing. 'Accha amra park e ghurbo ar catch catch khelbo'(1) I said. She gives me that gleeful giggle of her and asks, 'Ar aloo kabli khabona?'(2) She loves aloo kabli above all worldly pleasures. 'Sure little one' Later once home, Nitu sat in my lap doodling an aloo kabli wallah while I was scrolling through my newsfeed. Up came a post about Asifa, some petition asking for justice. Nitu being the curious little tich is all, ‘Oma, bonu ta ki cute! (3) Who’s she?’ She goes back to her doodling when I don’t or rather can't answer. And suddenly it comes crashing in at that moment. I realise that somewhere, someone had seen a little pari like my Nitu and he hadn’t thought about ‘park e ghora', 'catch catch khela’ or ‘ aloo kabli khawa’, instead he’d thought about ‘rape’, ‘hatred’ and ‘violence’. Humanity was getting bleaker by the day and... ‘Mani’, she says brea