/baba, was it worth it? /

my grandma’s stories of her home in Chittagong/ this is just a house as melancholy sets on her surma-donned eyes/ if this world was kinder?

dadu narrating tales about his struggles and raising three children/ he was learning the difference between a boy and a man.

/it is a fire consuming him/ he was the fire./

maa trying hard and failing/ time and again/ changing this rusted iron cage into a house/ her saree is made up of sacrifice more than cotton/ the stains adorning the borders are more of the times she became a sacrificial lamb to the fate of women in my house.

/she tried loving less/ how does it hurt still the same?/

my parents have loved anguish more than love/ their marriage is more of the kind of love that happens after a heartbreak rather than the kind that kisses you in museums and parks.

/pain is pure prescence/ the screams of sorrow that never came out/ Probably the worst thing about love/ is living with it./

red blemishes on asha mausi/ her scars running deeper than cuts/ the testimony to the 101 ways of how women taught me patriarchy more than men ever could have/ scathing wounds inflicted in the past/ Everyone of them are a broken mirror of all my faces.

noor spends less time in the dargah and more in making idols of devi durga/ Arnab falls in love with Zoya even though it’s a sin/ Is love partial to religion/ can poetry act as the language of grievers?