Freshers’ Week 2009 winning entries

Poetry

First Place

Here We Are Now

Alishya Almeida

The night has siphoned

Off the stars but we make

Our own through the punctuation

Of our hushed sounds speaking of our dreams

Here we are now, barely

Out of high school and into

A sharply structured world

Scribbling for reassurance

But fate isn’t smiling

And so we are unsure, almost

Fracturing under the weight

Of the piling pressure.

The curvature of longing

Has knuckled hope in our veins

And we want to swim

Out of normality that floods,

that punctures our hopes.

But even then sometimes

I find myself curtained,

Sometimes littered with angry

Syntax when we are

Snagged by crumpled days,

Unable to move ahead.

This is growing up,

When you learn to stitch reality

In the patchwork of your dreams,

When you can withstand

The grief of accepting what you get

Instead of what you really want.

Here we are now,

Chained to a wreckage

Of thoughts and epiphanies

Sitting through the starving winter

And picturing ourselves

As adults.

Second Place

My Bitter Journey…

Michelle D’costa

I yelled, I yelled.

Until my vocal chords complained.

Yet he was not affected in the least.

Would continue the torture, that beast!

Every night he would creep in my room,

Slowly, cautiously, every step pronouncing doom.

My blankets he would peel,

Then began my ordeal.

No one believed me,

They thought I was crazy!

Only my pillow had ears for me every night,

The sole witness to my plight.

Rumours had it that I was faking,

For sympathy, attention, I was craving.

God, are you there???

I would ask repeatedly to the choking air.

Soon, I was diagnosed with mental illness

I cried, “Believe me! I have a witness.”

Only sarcasm and more laughs I recieved.

My file was shut forever; I was decieved.

My body bruised my soul torn,

I’m lost in my thoughts forlorn.

Trapped in sorrow and grief,

With no expectation of relief.

Now, as I look back

What did I lack?

Oh, I know. The thirst for revenge.

I always resigned to my fate, very strange.

Enclosed within four walls,

I have nothing to cherish except my falls.

I’m getting old, no energy left for strife

I have realised that I have failed in life.

Haiku

Apeksha Rao

Into my dream you came,

and across the soft velvet of my reverie

You walked, with hobnail boots.

Limerick

(The only Limerick entry in the competition)

Sakina Dewaswala

My expressionless, dynamic cat got stuck in the attic

And since that day till today she is static

She refuses to have her tuna fish

Or any of her favourite dish

Guess she’s finally got dramatic!

The Insomniac

by Asawari Ghatage

 

She lay awake, helpless. She looked at the wall in front of her. The moonlight shining in through the window illuminated picture frames. Only, the glass on the frames encased not photographs, but the pieces she had written. The best stories, the poems, everything she had come up with almost effortlessly. She got out of bed, switched the lights on and stood by her window that overlooked a creek. The calm water reflected the moon and the trees overhead like a mirror. Falling leaves disturbed the water occasionally, sending out ripples that shook the image in the mirror. She stood looking at it for a while, lost in the peaceful ambiance, letting the cool breeze kiss her face. She listened in silence to the rustling of the leaves. She felt calm and at peace. Yet, she could not sleep.

She turned around to look at the many frames that hung on the wall opposite to her window. Each one left her feeling nostalgic. For ten years now, she had written every night. She would develop a story and work on it till the end. If she felt determined, she could finish it in one night. She wrote several poems at once, pouring a bit of her soul into each one. She wrote passionately, and concentrated all her energies into what she wrote. She did not let anyone read what she wrote, for she believed, it would strip her bare to people and make her vulnerable. No, she would not let anyone read what she wrote, she had decided at fourteen. She never read her stories or poems once she finished them. She gave measurements, bought a frame and slipped the final copy of her work behind the glass herself. After she hung it on that wall in her room, she never read it again. It was sort of a religious practice to her, never to be broken. She was introduced to it by an anonymous woman online. She had committed to it, willingly.

She looked around her room, trying to find something to do. She could not bring herself to write tonight. She had tried for two hours. She had sat down with pen and paper. No ideas would materialize, no creative juices would flow. She had sat there for two hours looking at the blank piece of paper, disappointed. She knew her pen was disappointed with her. And so were those frames that hung in front of her. If the frames could speak, she thought, they would be throwing insults at her in indecent language. She was, at herself. She sat down in the armchair by her window in despair. She would have to write tonight. She would just have to. She switched the music player on and sat back for a while with her eyes closed. It didn’t help. She sat up again feeling more restless.

She had to distract herself. She switched her computer on and connected to the internet. She liked to read blogs and always commented to posts in anonymity. She never read books. She only read blogs. Personal accounts of ordinary people. People with normal lives and normal problems. Individual interpretation of different people always fascinated her. She read blog after blog, endlessly, late into the night and left comments for every single post that she read. Writers on their blogs thanked this Anonymous for her comment, half confused and half pleased. She never read the same post again either. And she didn’t have a blog. She spent two hours reading blogs. She read about fifty, all she had never read before. And left comments, dutifully. After the fiftieth, she closed the browser and went back to her armchair.

She sat there, in her window, looking out into the night, turmoil in her heart. She would have to decide. She would have to force herself this time. She hadn’t been able to write tonight. It was a sign. She would have to bring it all to a stop. But did she want to stop? It did not matter, she told herself, all those blogs I read give me the faith. She was convinced that there were people who would take the responsibility. They would keep the ritual going. After all, at the end of each comment she left in a blog, she explained the terms of the ritual. If people chose to commit themselves to the ritual, they would have to carry it out, sincerely, just as she had for ten years. There would be no end. They would have to go on writing till they were exhausted of all resources. The choice was their’s. How many people out of those who knew would take the ritual seriously, she wondered. How many would be sincere, if they did choose the ritual? She closed her eyes and sat in the armchair till the grandfather clock in the living room chimed twice.

She got up, bracing herself, preparing as if for a battle, and walked over to the wall. She stood, her body tense, and looked at the wall, as if it were her enemy. She started from the first frame. She read it, a sad smile on her face. She moved to the next, then the next, and further on. She read each story, each poem like she was reading it for the first time. She enjoyed the impact of her own words. She soaked in each frame. She didn’t miss one frame. There must have been over a hundred frames on that tall wall. She didn’t miss a single one. When she finished the last frame, she was left feeling very weak. She smiled again, a sad smile that reached her eyes. She had begun to see that there were more conditions to the ritual than she had known. The woman who introduced her to the ritual had told her just part of it. What she had not known when she committed herself enthusiastically to the ritual was that when the writer was void of ideas, the writer ceased to exist. Because, an important part of the ritual was that the writer had to go on writing. There was no stopping. And if they failed to go on even on one night, their end would come, without prior notice. She looked at the frames one last time, content with her commitment to the thing she had given ten years of life, ten years of story, and ten years of nights she spent writing.

She walked over to her bed and lay down. Just as she was about to close her eyes, the grandfather clock chimed thrice. For the first time, she felt sleepy. She looked out at the moon that shone bright. She looked back at the frames with a smile on her face and closed her eyes. For the first time since she was born, she slept.

For ever.

So…

by C. S. Bhagya

 

So

We have begun

A journey

 

Blowing water

Bubbles floating

Sea of resonance

 

Wherever we go

Hovering in

A beam of radiance

 

Darkness losing ground

For

There are

 

Morsels

Of flame

Organisms

 

Of

Barely a sound

Only movement

 

A

Conflagration

Of motion

 

Whisking

Music

Swirls

 

Like thin

Distilled silk

Waves breaking

 

On a shore

Of stillness

Swept with old magic

 

A multitude of

Minuscule stars

Resting

 

Luminous emerald

Plankton

Scattered

 

By

Windswept

Bleak sand

 

Curtains

Sewn of

Onyx and dream-pearl

 

Sweet love.

Free Association

by Tharindri Rupesinghe

I started with “voice”.

It led me to “speak”

With a voice only I own,

A unique instrument of

Rhetoric and rhyme.

Free association.

Next came “hear”,

Listen when they speak,

That’s all some people need,

An ear, a shoulder,

A sounding wall.

“Sound” comes next,

Sound and fury,

Like Shakespeare’s black warrior

Thought of life’s tale.

Afterwards, “right”.

Why? Who cares.

Free association.

Then “Bell”, like the

Hunchback.

Ringing, pulling on the

Ropes; Dangling.

“Toll”ing them for the

World to hear, masking

His ugliness by the

Gargoyles and the spires

That tower above him.

Finally, “Hemingway”

Who tolled a bell too.

Leaving us with that

All Essential Question,

For whom?

Ink Noise

by Asawari Ghatage

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