Intrusions
four poems by Shaurya Pathania
content/trigger warning: discussion of mental health
Receding Hairline; a case of the railways
The question of hair strangles me often.
My mother is my lawyer,
She tries to defend me from prosecutor
Again and again.
She applies rotten eggs, onion paste,
Coconut oil with vitamin E capsules,
Every remedy in our house
Has tasted my head.
But my hair did not bow down to
Any efforts and the hairline kept
Racing up, making my forehead big
And my life low.
It’s because of the travel on trains;
I could never rest in one place,
The different waters led by the
Parallel tracks
Ruined my hair care,
Moreover, collecting tickets is
A task of stress in itself,
If I were not on railways I would
Have long shiny black hair.
Last week, I was called “uncle”
By my new colleague,
I’m not even married yet,
And the transplant surgery would
Cost a lifetime for the man
On the railways—
Although I’m hopeful and
Better now,
One of my friends sent me
A forwarded WhatsApp message
Which claims women are more
Attracted to bald heads.
Weddings and the Teacher
We have a teacher who dresses up for
weddings every day.
He'd wear a wine-colored shirt with black trousers
a grey blazer, a tie too. Sorry, I forgot about the shoes,
mostly they are black leather shoes, those high-top ones,
I think they are called boots.
His hair seems designed
for his head perfectly and his skin, deprived of any spots,
shines under the blinking tube light fixed
at the entrance of our classroom.
He enters like a king being welcomed
into court, he sits on his podium, watches us
and smiles, then bursts into laughter.
His favorite courtiers smirk at each other
then follow his laugh too.
I sit on the last bench by the way.
The teacher never teaches, he comes and sits.
He asks the students, what do you want
to study, and if someone is enthusiastic
enough to learn, the student has to learn himself
by assuming the role of the teacher in the room.
A boy with crooked teeth in the first row
claims that the Almighty does this for
our betterment.
He wants to hear our views and maybe
expects a few words of
praise for his face too, who knows.
The teacher never touches the chalk,
why would anyone ruin a manicure
for few bunch of clueless machined children
who don’t even know how to wear proper clothes.
Sometimes he speaks
about his hard-earned degrees from places
I’ve only heard of from our TV.
I wish for his life sometimes but then I remember no one really likes him.
Moreover, how would he look if he ever went to a real wedding,
no different than the classroom.
The Right Choice
Money and mother rarely settled with each other,
She never liked riches. She never saw it too.
When I planned to leave my home for a city,
She cursed at me for choosing money over her,
I wanted to tell her it was for her well-being,
A case of convenience begins there.
She listed all the perks of a rural household,
My capitalist comforts fell short in the argument
(But has an argument ever been just)
I won against ma, she cried on it
With a hand over my head and holding me to her chest***
I visit her once in a while,
She denies all my gifts and when I return,
She still cries.
In order to know that
Ma was and will always be right,
I keep her photograph in my wallet.
Inevitable love & smoke
The floating cloud forcibly
kisses my skull,
when I say skull,
it means me,
not just tongue and lips,
also the nose and nostrils,
the smoke kisses me really hard,
it makes me cry,
let me tell you something,
I like my eyes wet while kissing,
tears up my heart's strings.
And lastly it holds my head,
sprinkles the kisses on my curls.
Am I exaggerating?
No, not about kisses,
about my hairs, yes,
they're straight, but I
don't brush them
so they get wavy, funny
how mischief
by not combing
to make hair striking
is really exciting,
sorry for digressing,
yes, so the cloud kisses me
and then I hope it'll stay
but in the air, it fades away,
does it really kiss me,
because who am I?
I am my father, I am my lover,
I am my love, I am my mother,
in reality, these people
are kissed by the cloud,
and I’m also in the hassle
of cigarette's smoke, I am bound,
oh dear, wait a little,
I sound mentally unsound.