My Living Historian - Three poems by Itika Chandna

// Everything is possible
Yet nothing is
And so we live and die
In this circle of pity //

It was 3:20 am
When my father woke up abruptly
To tell me about the dream he had
“I was swimming”, he says
“You were in my lap, in the swimming tube, you were so small Ittu. So small.”
I remember crying back to sleep
After hearing him
Tears crawled down my eyes
Like ants carrying their food
home
It’s scary how life
Just passes by
Without any warning
Until one day
You lose it all
My father’s illness has taken him
To a past that I thought
I have lost forever
But each day, there’s something
New that he remembers
And become my living historian
“When did you grow up so fast? Why can’t I remember it?” He often asks
“I can’t either”
I tell him
I can’t either.

When you start living on the 18th floor
The height stops scaring you
And you imagine jumping off the balcony
a thousand times
while smoking cigarettes,
sticking close to the boundaries
As if you own it.
Your fear towards faith
starts building rationality
And your tiny existence
Fails to create meaning
of its own.
When you start living on the 18th floor
Nobody hears you screaming
You realise you aren’t
Any close to the sky and
The people sleeping on the streets
Feel it closer than you.
The unbearable lightness of being
Shakes you to your core
and you dream of floating
In the sea over and over.
When you live on the 18th floor
All by yourself
You are reminded of the world
That does not stop for you.
You hear the cars passing by,
You hear the construction
of new buildings with 18 floors
and beyond
And you just try
To get up
To make it to another day
And hope to be.

My father weeps all night
his cries float through oceans
Waiting desperately to drown
I ask for nothing now
My existence is a shameless being
Crawling through the dark
With no desire for light
‘Things will change, it will, it has to!’
A woman keeps reminding me
Every day in the temple
And I just nod
I nod like I was taught to
Selflessly, with no understanding
Vomiting nothing but silence
A desperate love sets itself on fire
and the Ganga
No more reflects the face I know
Thousands of flowers wash ashore
And I mumble my only verb
‘To wait’..
Oh, the endless wait.
Itika Chandra grew up in Rishikesh and has always felt close to rivers and mountains. She is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in History Honours.