Am I Pretty?

Starring blankly at her wardrobe,
She shuffles her clothes messily,
And as every dress imagined fails,
She detaches each of them hopingly

Red makes her look fat
Black makes her look darker
Yellow looks stretched from her belly
And orange outcasts her unsurprisingly

She walks through the gate of her school
Blind to people coming in her way
Deaf to words of absolute dismay
She walks shamefacedly to her classroom
Ignoring every giggle during the day
Escaping every comment on her way

Every time he passes by, she calms her nerves
And with this feeling of being unnoticed
It confirms she is not allowed to love

She’s teased on Tuesday
She’s bullied on Wednesday
She’s gossiped about in history
She’s a butt of jokes in geometry

Hurriedly she rushes in her room
Holding god’s idol tightly, she cries so miserably
Tell me why didn’t you make me beautiful?

Every day’s hurt makes you numb
Tears only give birth to self pity
This lesson from life one day everyone learns

Enough! She shouts; enough to this stout!
She reads, she observes
She unlearns, she learns
Her wisdom so evidently pronounced

People genuinely sing ‘Lala!’ to looks just once
But if you sing bad intellectually
Then eventually these are the ones who quietly shun

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

Work- Life Imbalance

You stay quiet every time a thing gets most intolerable and you know no word from your end is going to calm you from within. You leave one job and jump to another aspiring to shift your learning curve and every time you feel you are capable of a lot more.

As you become true to yourself of your behavior and attitude, you start to know more of people. And when the world starts to look ugly, you curse your ability to judge people around you. When world starts to become too easy to understand, you wonder why as a kid you never realized how peaceful life was then.

You are not yourself when at work because you have to be calm and patient when situation most demands an emotional outburst. You have to be polite with people who do not respect anyone around them.

You are not yourself when you are home. Your mind most demands you to vent out your deeply concealed frustration. You stay quiet in order to avoid hurting your loved ones. You later disconnect yourself from these people by going off to sleep.

As days pass, you continue to give home to this venom in your body and tears conveniently handicap itself from this situation. Once in this period you lose one good relationship and your preoccupied mind just does not understand how to save this relationship.

You do not dislike yourself because you have to be pretentious; you do not dislike yourself because you stayed quiet in every intolerable situation; you dislike yourself because you let a loved one go away from your life.

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

Love

Profound thoughts expressed in easy words
This intense happiness I experience every hour
One day time decided to just have a baulk
As I blankly stared at my hour less clock

Sun hid from me its darker shade
It surprised me one day with its deceitfulness
And as the sky dressed itself in the darker color
I deeply regretted my inept power

I absent myself from these changing times
As I salsa to your music of love
Oh! How it all feels so right
When every time my sleep evades this full moon night

written by vrushali deshpande

+ 1 to Life

Dedicated to all the wonderful souls who from their heart encourage adoption.

Moment of ecstasy as you hold a life in your hand,
A face unfamiliar, yet a soul you connect to,
Her cry calls you a stranger, but it’s her smile you can relate to
Warmth fills your cold heart as you at last feel smiling tears
Oh! It’s the only experience that peacefully shuns all your fears.

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

On this Bench...

Dedicated to the victims of child abuse

On this bench sits a little girl;
With hope in her eyes and questions about the world.
She looks left, she looks right;
She then frowns to find no one around her.

She violently pins some papers on the cardboard;
Bits and pieces of it which fly aimlessly on the road.
She rests the notepad on her lap;
This little heart pumps faster when the events recap.

Legs thump hard on the ground as she runs;
With voice muted and a dried throat she takes aimless turns.
The ghostly man follows her way throughout;
and with his uncomfortable touch, she painfully shouts.

Whom shall she go to? To whom shall she say?
when she sees her loved ones adoring him everyday.
She holds the pen hard and cries desperately to write;
Wordless she goes when she fails to express her plight.

Tears finally dried and face became expressionless;
Unsurprisingly, she is gripped by insecurity and loneliness.
Can she now survive in this world? Can she now take it all alone?

Past was repeated at every walk of life;
It did not surprise me when she first held the knife.
She looked left, she looked right;
She then frowned to have no one to care for her.

When devils wore the mask of friendship,
she killed her every little hope from relationships.
Whom does she have? For whom shall she live?
What can she say when her loved ones stopped to believe.

On this bench now sits a young girl;
With hope in her eyes and questions about the world.
She looks left, she looks right;
She then "smiles" to find no one around her.

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

Rishabh's Story

That night Rishabh cried with words of his life. His voice could not find the direction of his words because they were creating an impact in every letter. Samira surrendered herself to that moment when he began narrating what had happen to him.

“I love my sister, I love my mother and then I do not know what loving everyone is about. This huge telephone bill will tell you that I am not comfortable with people I meet. I share when they cannot see me because it keeps me away from embarrassment.

Father is busy whenever is not home and he is never home. He showered his love once when I was with him and we were together never before. He met his business partner’s wife and they both exchanged smiles. I saw him smiling for the first time. He turned his head and then I could not see that smile anymore. I was left alone with that lady who was as old as my mother.

I was ten when she tried doing something uncomfortable and all I knew that it was uncomfortable. I was not just physically weak but even mentally to understand the thing that was happening to me. I did not know the meaning of right and wrong and I did not know if this uncomfortable thing is termed as ‘wrong’. It was her touch that made me unreasonably cry- Unreasonably because what made me cry before was never this. It was not my mother’s shout; it was not my teacher's punishment for not doing homework.

It was someone touching me and that uncomfortable feeling was making me cry.

Next day I saw my father standing where I was. That day I saw him smiling for the second time in my life.

I love my sister, I love my mother and then I do not know what loving everyone is about.”

Note: Today Rishabh(name changed) is one of the successful entrepreneur's of India. His only wish was to protect his sister and give some peace to his mother. He has fulfilled his responsibilities.

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

Simplicity of Life

I look at life with an enthused spirit waiting to pour its energy on worthy things. Life is an endless journey which has its own way of accompanying my wandering soul. I meet some people who hold my hand & they decide to walk with me. These people & their stay in my life I cannot foresee. Life for me is living in the present, cherishing what I receive ‘now’ from people & things.

There are things that I do not need & there are people, who do not need me. There are words which we remember the whole of our life & there are words which we know are not worth registering.

I sleep peaceful nights because within my body lies a soul which is pure in its thoughts. I wear a face of true smiles because within me lies blessing for human beings.

Some relationships talk too much to understand if the base is strong or weak.
Some relationships go quiet because they have their own reason which is seldom communicated.

Best form of love is expression of the feeling you have towards someone. Love is love when it shows on the face & speaks in silence. Love is love when all attempts are made to convey the good intentions & it fails with no outrage for the person involved.

Life does not stop love whether there’s a busy life ahead, whether there’s someone’s absence, whether there are too many things at that time to think about.

And love does not stop life because life goes on whether there’s love, hatred or simply plain ignorance.

Written by Vrushali Deshpande

If you find some people selfish, some fake, some jealous, some weird, some cheap, some rude, some noisy, some lazy, some talkative, some messy, some political. Just chuck it! That's their comfort in living life; that’s the choice they have made. Life's simpler when we accept these facts than investing our time in finding answer to the Why’s. Life’s best lived when we least concentrate on the wrongs of people who least matter to us.

You will feel most light hearted at the end of the day when you know you have not been impolite to anyone in the whole day. From the cabbie and security guards to your juniors, colleagues, and needless to say your superior; from strangers to your friends and family.

You will feel most strong at the end of the day when during the most discouraged and humiliated day, you find power within you to constantly motivate yourself that very moment of humiliation. When you realize complaining is only poisoning your strong mind on which you worked on for years to make it this tough.

My conversation with Time

You ticked faster every time I spent time with him
You looked so old that day; you trembled so much when I couldn’t be with him
I foolishly wondered if life was nothing beyond this rendezvous
And in this life time I would not crave for anything in lieu

You ticked faster when I met him after a long tiring day
You looked so disinterested to tick when in night I awaited the forthcoming day
I crazily wondered if evening could follow the night
Because there wouldn’t be anything as important as capturing his sight

Monday I counted the day sixth
Thursday I said it’s three
Saturday I cried helplessly before God
And with these tears God had his spree

You ticked faster when I finally waved good bye to him
You looked so dead, so motionless when I awaited him
Awed by my eyes you played with my restlessness
And with your every tick you drove me towards craziness
I insanely wondered if you could pause the present moment
As I foolishly prayed to unwind those lovely moments

With every such plead, God you laughed back at me
With every droplet of my tear, you just vainly ignored me
Desperate I became to talk to you
And with my word, you turned deaf ears towards me
I have never learnt to lose faith
And I know that at some point in our lives, we all re-write our fate

With every such belief, God you did everything to challenge it
And with my repetitive triumph, I redefined what you called "defeat"

I Have Count Of All Your Tears

Dedicated to my best friend

Walking relentlessly with hope of victory,
With silence you covert your screams
In dark you often cry
But I have count of all your tears
Tirelessly you run for having a life of your own
But I have the count of your racing heart beats

One small hope knocks the door of your happiness,
You work harder to get closer to your dream
And every time it’s shattered,
With silence you covert your screams

You hold my hand and ask for my assurance
And I give you a tight hug to take away all your fears
Under your blanket you often cry
But I have count of all your tears

Your tears shine in this darkness
and you can't anymore hide it with your spectacles
I can hear the painful screams in your silence
and you should give up on your attempts to deceive me

Persistently you combine words to make it sound convincing
Monday you tried it on your interviewer
Saturday you did it on your folks
And every time the cycle repeats,
I have felt the count of your racing heart beats

Void

Uneducated to the meaning of betrayal, I ponder since dawn to experience one moment of truth. And as dusk follows, I realize that in this journey of deception, only the shadow of incompleteness remains loyal.