Seene mein jalan aankho me tufaan sa kyun hai?
Is shahar mein har shaks pareshan sa kyun hai?

Every place is now a Mumbai

Pareshani seems to be airborne

Like it was (said to be) during Covid.

Every face wears enigmatic expressions, endangered emotions and paralysed feelings

There’s an obsessive, compulsive engagement with unnameable dreads and unbreakable threads

Our trauma–loving selves turned fragile from agile boast of scanning eyes for problem–laden news.

Ferrying flotsam and jetsam of day–to–day worries

Ceaselessly catastrophising otherwise common thoughts

Hibernating in anticipatory anxieties and preferred panic modes

We are happily active and busy in anxiety audits.

A set of manic worriers with retrograde resilience

Spending our untold energies enacting the unseen, unknown sorrows

Embracing discomfort and feigning frustration

Meandering in the vicious circles of known unknowns and unknown knowns

With a ridiculous resolve to resolve every unresolved.

Willing to make friends with worry, a malware, and be maladaptive

We deliberately don disorders and battle borrowed neurosis and end up in an emotional limbo

An acute injustice to amygdala we deal, maybe, is no big deal

Settled in a state of jeopardy, discomfort with equilibrium we feel.

Our banes are born from an overdose of boons

Happy to be unhappy, we wallow in our cocoons

No longing, no belonging

We place our cups upside down when life’s pouring

Never mind missing the beautiful baraat of stars while we bend our heads and our digital extremities are busy in digital scrolling and strolling.

No time to count and name blessings one by one

Sent them all up in smoke and “we’re done”

‘Mind–forged manacles’ or self–styled shackles?

As long as we’re enjoying it, who tries or tackles?

Cart pulling the horse or tail wagging the dog, for us, is simply cool and fine

“Carpe diem” lies buried deep and silent in a dp caption or a status line.

~Rajashekar Gummaraju

Tumkur, India