The power of irrelevance
when the jaws of winter clutch your hands, you look for warmth around, don't you? i don't think being irrelevant lessens the pain of being seen, we all are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, this tree right outside my window or the pole that stands so tall i sometimes have to look up to count the wires, or the temple whose roof is wrapped in white fairiy lights, even my dog is irrelevant here, her missing leg or wagging tail as she sees food or on really good days, me, but then how do you tell your dog that the world doesn't care about her, because it's okay these days to not let the vastness of love consume you, how do you tell her that she isn't here for long and she might not make a change in the fabric of this world, might ruffle it a bit, like sand, like bones, like a good pat on her back, but there are far better dogs, how do i tell her that on the day her leg was amputated, she wasn't even aware of its absence, until she tried walking down the stairs, how do you tell the aching people that their pain is so small, so small that moon might even not make a shift in its gravity, you say we all are irrelevant here, which is a horrific way to say that none of us matter, because in grander universe, everything is something else in retrospect, my dog is the missing branch of the lonesome tree, the tree stands proud when the pole hovers towards it, even the eyes of my dog are dark moons that don't care about sun, for god's sake, she sees the world in greys and blues, but if you were to take a marigold flower in front of her, she will dance on her missing leg, lick your face and bare her teeth on getting a whiff of this beautiful flower, she will sleep with her head on its petals, because to her, even the petals matter, your scent lingers when she doesn't see you, even the winds scurrying through her fur make her yawn, and when she runs, her butterfly ears flap and god that does start a storm somewhere, i know, at least in my father's heart, a new dawn begins, he dances and sings now, can a little, imperfect, irrelevant dog do that to you? yes, yes, yes
Language as love
Father speaks to my mother in Pahari
They laugh as he drives and puts her call on speaker
My mother giggles and chatters
And father listens and hmms and agrees to what she says
Her voice dancing around in the car
Striking the windows, sometimes reverberating
Sometimes, just casually lingering before disappearing into another word
This conversation is as old as my parents are
I pretend to be asleep
And they laugh about it like always
Lonely air parts way
for my mother's voice
In Pahari, there is no word for love
In Pahari, when you speak, you remember
everyone,
Even the dead
As I prolong my act, the night around us deepens its claws into then sky
I think about the warmth of their dialect
My mother says nehra
And it still feels the same old pendulum night
My mother asks kethi pujje
And my father smiles before singing sardarniye ghra pujji ge
There is a distance that this language measures
And the inability to speak it
I hear them talk to us in Hindi
And envy a little
How our worlds are so different
How here, they are my parents
But in another world, in another time, in that car, they are lovers
Learning the sound of the last syllable of their laughter
That stretches too much before giving in
Just how the language intended
Before yawning on their tongues
And sleeping when I wake up and says me uth gyi
A heart-shaped leaf
My sister finds a heart-shaped leaf,
Stops mid-step while walking our dog,
Giggles and calls out, “Gaffu, look, look!”
I, like the ruthless scurry of winds
Ask her what it’s all about.
She holds it up,
I see,
Huff,
And walk along.
My sister sees the world in colors
I haven’t yet learned the shades of.
She calls blue “teal blue,”
While for me, blue is the color
Of an unknown wound that aches
She says, “Gaffu, there’s no easy choice,”
Then walks ahead, a grin on her face.
I follow, a lost cat
We wander differently through the world.
When she says she’s in pain, she means it.
While I,
Have spent years
Doing poetic justice to what I felt
Years ago
The leaf rests still on a small, round rock.
Its shape lingers in my mind,
Wrapped in shades of old, burnt yellow.
And my sister—
I remember telling her, often,
That the colors she pours into this world
Are her own.
The leaf doesn’t know what my sister knows.
It doesn’t know its shape,
A heart lying quietly in the plain grass.
It doesn’t simply succumb to its deformity.
Is this what it means to be brave?
About the Poet:
Bharti lives in Himachal Pradesh. Her striking poems speak of home and heart, while she herself stays quietly behind her words. Find her understated presence at @useless_thought25 on Instagram