Home ./?
Shloka Sankar
II M.A English Language and Literature
Madras Christian College
Tambaram, Chennai
shloks89@gmail.comI"ve touched, felt, smelt, cried and laughed a thousand sensations.
Home is where I belong, and where I don"t.
It calls, beckons, and yet repulses;
Embraces and shuns me away…
Or do I alienate myself like a diasporic subject?
Or is home just a part of the gory, ebullient past?
Oxymoronic, isn"t it? Well, so is my reason for being and life at large.
I wish I wasn"t engulfed by fear every time I saw this
Castle in mortar, brick, cement and stone.
What is home? What constitutes home?
All I have left, is „"memory mixed with desire"".
Pain, sorrow and bliss unknown:
Good things past cause nostalgia and an
Immediate „"flash upon my inward eye"",
Those rotten and festering, reduce me to insignificance.
Where is home, and where do I belong?
Plates, mats, doors and windows
Those long baths
And those even longer musical concerts when home alone
Eyeing of the cute neighbour
Friends coming over
Warmth, hatred, fights, love and loss
Coupled with my flimsy, brash schoolgirl attitude.****************
Shadows of my Existence
Whatever does it mean to be free?
To be stereotyped into the groove society expects you to fit into?
To be dead to one"s own passions because dilettantism consumes you,
And you no longer wish to delve into previously held aesthetics and
sensibilities?
To remain oblivious to one"s own conscience,
However much it tries to overrule itself?
To extinguish yourself in self-loath, and cumbersome wallowing?
I"m drowning.
The self-same awareness which vanquishes my every sinew,
And yet I continue Sisyphus like?
Yes.
The façade of my teleological sustenance.
I no longer know, or wish to know where my sympathies lie.
I"m broken, bent, and fragmented.
Does it matter to find the pieces of the puzzle which define me?
“The more I search”, the more I lose.
Who was I? Who am I? Who am I turning into?***********************