Metempsychosis

10 Dec, 23

Hello friends.

I hope you're having a blast. I was swamped having fun and thus couldn't write sooner.

Let me share my colourful Diwali experience with you :))

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A collection of poems I enjoyed reading on Instagram:

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Current read:

Just leafing through Kafka's Letters to Milena. Did not have much time to read. So couldn't start anything after finishing Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.

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Book review: If We Were Villains

Title: If We Were Villains

Pages:

Genre:

'If We Were Villains' was a frustrating read. I picked this one after seeing Instagram going mad about it. Though the writing had potential, it just wasn't for me.

The prologue begins with the narrator Oliver Marks giving a brief about how the story will unfold and that is good. Oliver, after spending 10 years in jail for a second-degree murder is finally getting parole and tells Detective Colborne that he's now ready to talk about what happened. The story shifts at this point into the past and is told by Oliver.

It is a story of strong friendship, friends in their 4th year of college, so inseparable that they end up far detached from society. This group of 7 prepares for a Shakespeare's play and things take a turn when one of them is murdered. Oliver, without talking much about it goes to jail.

Though this plot leaves a lot of space for imagination and excitement, I found it a little off and boring. The dark academia was so stuffed into the writing that it started losing its grip over the story, for me. I did not like the ending at all.

Unless you're into multiple stories within one and can handle a love triangle, don't read the book.

My rating is 3 ⭐

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Here are some pieces I wrote recently:

Gatherings with

Longings manifested aloud,

banging doors,

muted chatter

a heart-

waiting to be heard.

It is a gamble

to put faith in others,

to look for clues

in tight lips-

a smile or

a conversation.

Too much hope

in frail humans-

Hope can kill too.

Kajal, A game of hearts

There was once a heart

Rather shy,

but that did yearn

looking for love,

love- strong emotion,

love - it couldn't discern.

With passing days,

changing seasons,

the longings

grew deeper.

A deep longing

for discerned love

made the heart weep.

For, it was hard to keep

Kajal, Of love and a heart

There once was a beauty like butter,

With a smile that would make your heart stutter.

Her eyes were so bright,

Like the stars in the night,

But her heart was as lonely as the lover.

Kajal, Beauty of Terror (Limerick)

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A special poem for a special person: Samyak

I met Samyak through WordPress and trust me his poems hit me, the first time I read them.

Here's a poem for you, Samyak:))

Some stories last many centuries,

others only a moment.

All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,

grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree

and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,

ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket

gives off --

the immeasurable's continuous singing,

before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.

Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,

to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:

an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.

To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,

and then keep walking, unimaginably further.

Metempsychosis by Jane Hirshfield

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I'll see you guys on 15th December.

Sending Mountain Breeze and hugs,

Kajal.

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