six are fine.

on the seventh you

fall apart.

a sickly moist breeze sticks to your face-

treacherous, treacherous.

she names who she loves and

it's not you.

there was something warm about the way

hope used to taste on my tongue, the way she

melted and glided softly across the edge of

my mouth-

i miss her when it rains.

times escapes like sand through my fingers.

i inhale the rot in my flesh like sawdust watch my

bones fester like an ancient wound.

guilt seeps in through the pores of my skin and

i bleed i bleed i bleed.

i dream of strange lands

of a monstrosity and a massacre on the street

of gods and their wrath

of shakespeare and a summer's day

of azure oceans and a thai sky

of the lover and the beloved.

of profound love and the sheer banality of its loss.

of warm hope and the ease with which it dies.

it is morning and it is raining still

a sickly moist breeze sticks to your face.

your mouth tastes of a soft realisation left over

from last night.

it is always this.

the lover and the beloved.

The premise is set thirty years later, when an organisation decides to interview three of the very few survivors of the Covid-19 pandemic in three different cities. It is a tedious task to try and explain how an entire world would look like thirty years from now. The author therefore, tries to complete it by taking help from these three characters. The overlying metaphor is that the fate of the world would always be tethered to the people living in it. This is an attempt to understand the world through a series of character sketches, each character is unique in every aspect and each of them portray unique emotions, resulting in a different writing style in each of their cases. The idea is that each character acts like a segment of the world. The piece is hence meant to be read like an assortment of experiences and thoughts.

‘The Firm proposes that an office in each of the member countries conducts a series of interviews and tests with those who survived the pandemic thirty years ago and overcame the hurdles. The Enterprise believes it would be inspiring for the younger generations to listen to their firsthand experiences...’

Mrs. Patricia hung up the receiver. deep breaths, deep breaths. It was a warm June morning. The bright sunlight contrasted with the blinding white tube light in the office. Mrs. Patricia plucked out a tiny rectangular tin box from the pocket of her coat and opened it, revealing multicoloured pills inside. she picked up one with her thumb and her bony index finger, and swallowed it; then coughed dryly. a light breeze entered through the open window uninvited and Mrs. Patricia shivered a little, and was reminded once again of her growing age. She traced the slight wrinkles on her cheeks and just below her ears with the back of her hand, and was abruptly woken up from her daydream by the phone. she sighed and picked it up. ‘The Firm proposes that an office in each of the member countries conducts a series of interviews and tests with tho-’ Mrs. Patricia cussed loudly into the receiver and hung up again. She picked up a pen and started writing a note to the Tokyo office-‘The Firm proposes that...’

TOKYO-2051

‘can you please pronounce your name once, miss? for the record, yes, just once, loud and clear...’

the woman’s dry lips parted to let out the word- ‘aiko’;

‘and can you please spell it out-’

yes miss it’s spelled eh-eye-kay-oh.

there was something odd about the way her eyes never let out more than was required. her straight brown hair came down to her waist. she kept looking down at her fingernails, which were busy picking on each other.

‘how old were you when the pandemic arrived?’

miss i was fifteen years old one-five fifteen. thirty years ago, was it? anyway i lived with my father and my mother near machida-

‘and are they-’

yes miss both of them are dead and i miss them terribly next question, please.

The crusty yellow walls of the room reeked of old paint and despair. the ceiling looked like it could fall down any moment now, and yet it housed a tiny fan that groaned when it moved. aiko sighed.

LONDON-2051

‘Your name please, sir?’

‘Oliver’,Oliver wheezed slowly. the woman who sat across the table scribbled something on a white sheet of paper that smelled slightly of vanilla. The air was filled with the light fragrance of her perfume. Oliver felt small in the high-ceilinged fancy office room, where the woman sitting in front of him sat everyday. The table that sat between them was made of glossy teak, and Oliver traced the top with his index finger that he struggled to hold up for long. The room faced the busy street below, and the french windows allowed slight amounts of sunlight to enter. He had worn his tuxedo that day, but it had turned into a stuffy mess, and he had to pull on his tie every couple of minutes in order to allow some air to enter.

‘And your age?’

‘eighty-seven’ Oliver said hoarsely. ‘I was a bit older than fifty-six during the pandemic’ he picked up the glass of water kept in front of him and gulped it down in one go. He tried to get up and adjust his chair, but felt a sharp jolt of pain in his right knee. It was in moments like these that he felt death creep up to him. He groaned and pressed it tightly, sitting back on the uncomfortable chair.

‘Who did you live-’

PARIS 2051

‘with?’

Acel thought it was an absurd third question. He scratched his nose before answering.

‘I was, what, like, seven? No, eight in twenty-twenty, so I lived with my mother and my grandma. My father had passed away when I was just a kid, so yeah, mother and grandma. And, oh, wait, we also had a cat, Ms. Puffers, we called her, yes’

Acel had bright golden hair, and dark brown freckles on his face. He was also hungover and had completely forgotten about this interview until this morning when his phone rang.

LONDON

'I lived with my wife and our little daughter, my own mother had passed away the previous year due to a cardiac arrest but-

‘Mr. Oliver please explain only what is necessary’

‘Of course, sorry’

Mr. Oliver felt an ick in his chest and his brow furrowed. The air shifted. Chanel ‎N°5 mixed with bright disrespect.

PARIS

'How did it affect you, the pandemic-

could you please get off your phone, sir?'

'Uh, yeah, just a second, yes, well the pandemic, surely, surely affected me, I mean, not financially because we were financially stable, my family was pretty well to do, we had this cotton textile mill somewhere around the house, I can’t remember where. Mother did contract the virus once if I remember correctly, but she quickly recovered after she was admitted to a hospital right here in um, Arsenal? I think it was Arsenal. Shit, can I please pick up this call? It's very urgen-'

'Please sir, just this one-'

LONDON

'What impact did the pandemic have on your financial status, Mr. Oliver, your wealth?'

Oliver's heart skipped a beat. 'Would it be alright if I decided to skip that one? Let's just say we didn't come from money. Nor did my wife, and we lived a very hard life until the pandemic made it worse-’

'Absolutely okay, you were supposed to answer every one of them but let's just move onto the next one. What do you believe-'

TOKYO

‘has changed in the last thirty years? how is the world different now?’

aiko stopped biting her nails and cleared her throat nervously.

it’s not really a question of material miss because sure economies collapsed and were built again and people died and more people arrived and entire countries ceased to exist and more came up but all that is bullshit it doesn’t really matter when you think about the whole large world miss. what matters is how the people miss how we have changed and i believe people have grown more empathetic towards each other but the world is a cruel place and it always has been miss but i believe it is up to us to clean up the mess in the end it is upon us really to decide whether we want to do something about something that goes wrong or whether we want to sit quietly at our homes and cry about it to the television and this choice i think is essential in undoing whatever has happened in the last thirty years and building a better world for ourselves because what are people if not instruments of choice? can i please have a glass of water miss?

PARIS

'Nothing, absolutely nothing, in my opinion. It all still starts with power and ends with power. Money still runs this world. The difference is that some of us, like me, understood it far earlier than the others. Money will always run the world. The people who come down on the streets, raising slogans and cursing the government and whatnot, they're fools. Because in the end, they won't change anything. They simply can't. A rich man would pay someone to overturn a decision, and the people would go home thinking that it was them that did it. What are people if not sore losers?'

LONDON

'What do you mean, the world? What is the world? Who makes it and changes it and destroys and rebuilds it? We do.' Oliver said, rubbing his palms together. He sniffed. Chanel was gone, and they had been replaced by heavier scents of People and Liberties and The Fate Of The World. It was in moments like these that he felt Lincoln creep up to him. Oliver sighed before beginning again. 'What I mean is that worlds do not change, it is the people who change and so the world changes along with them. In fact, what are people-no, what is the world, if not the people living in it?' He felt something rise up in his chest like warm yeast then send a shiver down his spine.

'Thank you very much, sir, that would be all'

warm mornings consume me like hellfire,

soft beads of sweat cling to me like drops of life.

i caress a dying dream with my bare hands,

let its shards pierce my fingertips and

feel the pain shoot swiftly up my throat.

the moon eases the ache sometimes,

the sun is ruthless.

i find you in the back of my eyelids when i

close my eyes,

i find you in the scent of the rain find you

in the colour pink.

i find you in long miserable evenings find you

in brief moments of bright love.

i find you on the brink of midnight find you

on the cusp of noon.

i find you in suffocating darkness find you

in the air that i breathe.

i find you in the slightest of joys.

i find you in the softest of sorrows.

i find you in everything i do.

i find myself when i find you.

how shameless it is to have you slice my heart open

and watch it bleed out every day,

how outrageous to enjoy it still.

i let the blood pool around the organ let it

stain my nails let it seep through my skin let it-

love gnaws at my insides like a vicious animal,

i would give it up for nothing.

the grief of your absence greets me like an old friend

and i embrace her like she never left.

the absence of your grief pulls my chest apart

and fills it with beauty.

love infests my wounds like a tapeworm,

i would give it up for nothing.

warm mornings make me sick,

sunlight makes my stomach churn.

i caress a dying dream with my bare hands,

let its shards pierce my fingertips and

feel the pain shoot swiftly up my throat.

love knifes it way straight through my flesh,

i regret nothing.

how desperate it is to have loved you for so long,

how terribly crushing to not have you still.

decembers are the hardest of all.

often i lie down on my back

and let my blood turn cold let my blood

freeze to death.

i've never been less content or more lonely-

there are no more beautiful things.

sometimes i cannot seethe at my misery.

sometimes i look at you and my heart gets so full

sometimes you look back and i crumble down

like dust.

my fingers ache for a touch of your skin.

my heart longs to be loved back.

the winter air smells like cheap old mattresses and

stale death. i cut my wrists and bleed out red

red christmas.

i look inside my throat and claw out veins in disgust.

in the night

sometimes i dream of cradling you in my arms

sometimes i wake up and cry.

(is this what Yeats said was love? that bastard)

love is a laughable thought and yet

i write in the dark on yellow dog-eared pages hoping

love will find me hidden away

in the folds of your flesh one day.

(trivial, trivial

words are blasphemous when love is god)

sometimes I smile quietly at you

sometimes you smile back and slowly,

slowly i break down into tiny little pieces-

digestible, (and perhaps slightly) loveable.

(Yeats always did know what he was talking about.

that bastard)

feeble candles burn themselves out to death,

(hard cold flesh burns and reeks

in their motherly warmth)

and bury themselves in blue fondue.

someone picks them up gently between two fingers

and harshly throws them away.

(there's something nauseating about dead candles)

somewhere, a song stops playing.

somewhere, the evening ends.

they adjust their dark coats and shake my hand,

the lights are slowly departing.

my history teacher says communists are dry and

so is their history and i spit on the ground.

(and so does che).

young blood spills on rough concrete.

yellow leaves fall from the sky onto my terrace

in the night like ill crows

and whisper to me that autumn

is almost here and i cry myself to sleep.

yellow leaves never lie.

august passes away quickly

and i mourn for it sometimes.

(in a dream, i walk over august's dead body,

and it waves back).

pretty pretty words were strangled

inside my throat and trampled under heavy feet

(i hear them shaking like broken glass

sometimes)

in moist july nights.

september promises to be harsher.

this time, there is a finality with which

dark coats are adjusted and hands shook.

the lights are slowly departing.

i.

and there is something cold about the way

dry fingers burn on rusty stoves.

there is something sweet about how

flesh shrivels-

the woman bleeds

within these four walls-

no, the woman will bleed here,

always.

ii.

it was a cold cold morning

when it had been passed on to me,

there was something cruel about how

the note was crippled and-

but she had smiled at me;

i had liked how her lips felt against my cheek-

it had reeked of finality.

that was the last time i saw

aunt z.

iii.

it was a hot hot morning

when the note was opened.

aunt z had been beaten to

death and the note

reeked of warm blood

now.

easy cake recipe (for beginners)

i could see how her pale frail

fingers had scribbled it.

iv.

ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups whole milk (or 3/4 cup heavy cream mixed with 1/2 cup water)

-whisk 3 cups flour, the baking powder and salt in a bowl. whisk until they no longer cry. whisk until every last breath is crushed from their ribs. beat 2 sticks butter and the sugar in a large bowl with a mixer on medium-high speed. beat until the bleed to death, like-

no, until they are light and fluffy, yes. about three minutes. three minutes are enough to kill a woman. three minutes are enough to scream out in terror. three minutes are enough to be not heard (or are they?). beat for three minutes. now reduce the mixer speed to medium, (the neighbours must not hear). leave the mix alone, dead things don't talk; now beat in the eggs, one at a time, slowly, deliberately, scraping down the bowl as needed. beat in the vanilla. It must not reek of dead flesh under the sofa. beat in the flour mixture in 3 batches, Head Torso Legs alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with flour, until just smooth.

v.

and there is something rotten-

no, why must there always be something,

there is nothing left.

rotten rotten air

breathes

breathes

down on my neck.

sour metal glints like stars and

blood under floodlights

(or does it? and if it does or if it doesn't then why

does it and why doesn't it?)

above

me,

and there is something

incomplete about.

pale light enters

around the edges-

slowly, hesitantly,

and gets sucked into the

darkness.

(can the dark suck in the light?

and if it can or if it can't then why

can it and why can't it?)

& there is something cruel

about the way nails

scratch grey metal

and how it screams back

in terror.

the fragility of the air is breathtaking

& there is is something odd

about the way yellowgreen lights

press against my nostrils

and how this dying night smells

of decay.

(can something so alive reek so

outrageously of death?

and if it-

no. when does it end?)

& what happens if

the walls crumble down

before the life in me

seeps out through my eyes.

and i feel it

erode out of me-

cold cold blood

runs in my veins

and i feel my insides

dry up to a crisp;

but surely, this is death.

or is it? and if it is.

i.

the sun rises over the valley and

bathes her in gold.

and we’ve cradled her in our very arms,

pinched thin stripes of sunlight out of white air

and fed her pure madness.

we’ve folded her edges and

pressed out the creases.

combed her greasy brown hair

and dressed her up for school.

and we’ve kissed her on the cheek,

lisped her name in quiet whispers-

jannat.

somewhere, a child is born

somewhere, an old bird dies

somewhere, the light fragrance

of tea and leftover wazwan erupts

in a small motel restaurant

and takes the valley by storm.

somewhere, the quiet peace shatters.

somewhere, a storm approaches.

ii.

and it was five in the morning

when she woke up to watch in silence

as the men in green walked on her-

wet, dewy grass crushed to paste

under blackheeled blackboots

trampled under sync-

leftright leftright leftright left

barbed-wire fences hung

like christmas lights in backyards.

somewhere, a child was born

somewhere, an old bird died,

somewhere, the stench of fresh blood

and burnt flesh wafted through the air.

her greasy brown hair was plucked off her scalp-

one strand at a time.

her oceanblue eyes were blinded

with rubber pellets,

the sound of metallic bullets rung through her ears,

and as all hell broke loose,

kashmir crumbled underneath.

iii.

father flinches a little as he

reads the news, then shakes his head

in dissappintment.

‘bloody musalman terrorists’

he whispers and sips cold cold tea

from a porcelain cup.

a thousand miles away,

a billion birds flock together

to scream of unexplicable injustice.

iv.

and kashmir was dragged on the streets

in the death of the night, mid-song

by her collar for the world to see-

naked. she wept under the apple trees-

(leftright leftright leftright left)

and kashmir was unfolded,

bit by bit, broken into swallowable pieces

for the world to devour.

somewhere, a child was killed

somehwhere, the fragile smell of death

erupted in a small motel restaurant

and took the valley by storm.

and now as we suckle on her teeth for words,

as we kneel on the ground beside her

the soil that holds the blood,

the soil that demands freedom,

she begs us for freedom

آزادی

and if freedom is what you want

then freedom is what you’ll get,

kashmir, mi amor.

vile fragrance of dying lilacs

infesting slowly-

wafting through cold white air

stings my throat. coughs

come out, sliced at thin angles

jarring vocal cords.

i breathe.

it brushes past my warm cheek,

His hand: i shudder.

something tingles down my spine the poets

call it love but we

say it like it is: dread.

His mouth smells of rotting grapes-

of old spirits that mother says not to touch

ever. He opens his eyes- bloodshot bloodshot

spits out greed no-

lust. red lust that clings to you

like cellophane.

He scratches His grizzly beard.

dizzy hands touch me: His hands-

wrinkled, old, with fear trapped

in the creases of His skin but he calls it

trust. 

they move down: slowly, swiftly.

i dig my nails inside my palms

bite my tongue and blood spurts out

like the fountains at the mall-

sicksweet sicksweet blood i let it

stay let it flow around

my mouth let it stain my teeth let it

stain my soul. 

He watches me

naked in my utter shame-

He smiles He steps closer

closer to me.

His lips neatly sliced into a macabre grin-

He spits in my face.

thick thick saliva-

tastes like rusty metal i

wipe it and He 

laughs.

He digs His claws

in the back of my rib it

hurts and black black blood drips 

on the stark white floor-

is this what we call art?

and if we do-

no deep breath deep breaths 

i feel the life evaporating out of my lungs

i feel my veins surrendering my

eyes blurring and-

is this what they call beauty?

i pass out.

i move around-

float around the darkness.

i let it engulf me 

i let it tear me apart.

and i think i’m alone but-

i open my eyes.

i feel the floor beneath my head

am i dead? no this isn’t eden.

or is it?

i feel Him moving

inside me i feel Him

grunt.

somewhere, i hear pens scribbling.

somewhere, an infant dies.

somewhere, i hear music.

mozart presses against my burning flesh

and flows in my veins.

i sense a crescendo

(and the life slowly seeping out)

and with every note it

becomes harder to breathe harder

to hold on.

it grows it grows it grows and 

i smile i see mozart i see him close his eyes

and here-

here i witness me dying here

a requiem.

nostalgia sticks to the roof of my mouth

my tongue excitedly flaps around chapped lips

sounds of whirring printers and cackling staplers

ring in my ears, i tap my fingers on the desk-

half-chewed fingernails on moth-eaten wood,

unhinged tubelights flicker above

and i wander off to dusty memories

of when i was made of milk-toothed youth

and phosphorus, coiled like a fetus in

porcelain bathtubs filled to the brim

with lukewarm water.

/

stuffy car rides in summers/ sticky fingers/

made of saccharine and/ honey flavoured toffees/

the sun glinted/ through hardened glass windows/

leather seats/ that burned their souls/

plastic waterbottles/ that sang in their watery voices/

air conditioners/ spewed out icy air/

bryan adams/ bled out of the broken radio/

beads of sweat/ crawled through father’s eyebrows/

i wiped my forehead/ with the back of my hand/

moved my tongue gently/ across the rough surface/

of sharp-edged rock candies/ bobbed my head to soft rock/

and it sat there/ hidden beneath seat covers/

packed under bottlenecks/ muffled by lip-syncing lips/

heartbreak/ fleeting childhood/

/

i swiftly move my fingers through reams of paper,

licking the pale fingertips that taste like starch and death.

my mouth dry like sawdust.

i light up a cigarette,

melancholy madness rises up with heavy,

tobacco-laden smoke.

she enters my ribs.

armed with the ghosts of my childhood,

sweeping gently my diaphgram,

sweet death.

she gnaws at my liver, my right lung,

breaks it into swallowable cubes-

death is a woman, always.

/

the air was thick/ with jealousy/

yellow coloured/ school buses/

staggering up slowly to the hills/ to remote cottages/

on overpriced school trips/

the seats were torn at the edges/ they spat out yellow foam/

overweight children/ shuffled out of the metal doors/

stretching their arms/ plastic wrappers crunched under their feet/

we slept in warm camps/ in groups of four/

there was something sad/ about the way she had smiled/

i had loved her then/

the chemical taste of sandwiches/ burned through the air/

warm tomatoes and soggy bread/ mixed with amylase/

naked bodies floated around/ in chlorine-rich pools/

i wanted to drown/

and once again/

beneath piles of woolen clothes/

masked under the smell of tomatoes and chlorine/

there it was/ heartbreak/

i cried myself to sleep/ that night/

no one left school trips/ unscathed/

/

the night is young,

i make my way slowly to the subway,

soft fog looks pretty under

purple neon city lights.

i rub my palms together-

it’s cold outside.

it’s cold inside.

i rub i rub i

rub.

/

sickly smell of soft drinks/ swept through the air/

happy birthday/ the banner said in a happy font/

he blew the striped candles/ drops of saliva/

stuck to the frosting/ it was vanilla/

his mother/ plucked out the candles/

remnants of cake clung themselves/ to the wax/

i would lick them off/ later/

the walls faded/ to a pale yellow/

chairs screeched/ afraid of being dragged around/

i wore a checkered shirt/ red and blue/

wiped my wet hands/ on the soft fabric/

we were served/ cold noodles and warm cake/

i had gulped down the carbohydrates/ shamelessly/

fat thighs burned/ filled to the brim with lactic acid/

the air was moist/ something loomed over us/

mingling with the humidity/ something hideous/

/

i switch on the lights.

the room glows up in yellow illumination,

i wipe my moist eyes with the back of my sleeve-

i have left something behind,

and replaced it with the grief

of unborn memories.

and once again

i sleep through dimesions

and wake up in vibrant thoughts-

i had always hated the dark.

and once again i was floating

through/ faint yellow birthday-walls/

red wax candles/ i loved to lick/

through yellow school buses/ with the pain peeling off of them/

through old pages/ of worn out leather diaries/

through muddy playgrounds/ in monsoons/

falling off bicycles/ on hard concrete roads/

through broken toes/ that bled so crimson/

through cracked lips/ and torn tongues/

the lips had bled/ and i had sucked on them/

i had loved the sicksweet taste/ that reminded me of home/

and yes/

this is home/ this is home/ this is

home/