Sword in pen

  On 1 January 2021, I landed back to Delhi from my trip to Kashmir. I reached home, talked to my family. My mother was a bit unwell and my brother was hopping around the house like a squirrel. The moment I lay on my bed, I instantly missed Kashmir. Delhi is a modern, jazzed up song that makes you move and laugh but Kashmir was an old song that you heard someone, whispering in metro and searched all over the internet to listen to it. And when you finally listen to it, you forget who you are and where are you going. It makes you fall in love. Yes, Kashmir was known to me only by whispers and news but when I myself got there it was completely different. There was one agathokakological statement that kept coming in my mind, “If there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.” Jannat-e-Kashmir was indeed heaven by all the looks of it. There are snow capped mountains and cool breeze, dry leaves and tall trees. The first time I walked on snow, my boots went straight insid...

In October, the streets welcome me with fallen autumn leaves Like my letters to him, which lie at his doorstep forgotten as he leaves. I pick one of them and trace their veins, I look at my hands and wish its ridges to shred away like these fallen leaves. He used to leave dry flowers instead of bookmarks in pages so, I could find his favorite lines from library's stolen leaves Alone on that street, I witness beauty in separation,  I find a dead flower and bury it beneath the rotten leaves. I smile for the first time in months, mom was right like love, like everyone, one day even pain leaves. - Chanchal Bagla

The youth is like a paper boat which has just sprung into the real world. There is a huge sea in front of them, swirling hungrily. Life puts youth into that vast sea and the fragile boat sees an end. The boat is made of paper which soaks all the negativity from the sea. The more it soaks the more heavy it becomes. A point comes when the tiny boat is no longer able to hold on to all the negativities. It becomes a part of the thing it was fighting. It breaks and drowns. But when the youth is cloaked with a layer of cello tape (plastic), things take a different turn. Unlike paper, plastic is fire, water resistant. It knows how to fight storms. The plastic coated boat doesn’t drown; it sails and shines as it does not let the negativity to enter it. The youth needs that protective coating to defend itself against negativity in the world. This will lead to a happy nation. - Chanchal Bagla