Aaditya Bajpai

  • I want to go back to the first day I saw a sunflower. I’d do many things differently.

    I remember the first day I saw a sunflower. Or maybe it was a streetlamp in July, drunk on the heat and guilt. Time folds weird when you’ve got regret in your mouth like old pennies. She—no, it—no, you stood in the middle of something golden and stupid and I thought, “This is what permanence must feel like.” But permanence is a lie with good lighting.

    I didn’t write the letters this time. I tied them to a pigeon’s wing, but the pigeon never came back. Maybe it read them. Maybe it burned them. Or maybe it was never a pigeon, just the part of me that wanted to confess and chew glass for forgiveness.

    Do you know how many syllables are in I’m sorry when you whisper it into a night that doesn’t want to hear you? More than language allows. More than my mouth can manage.

    I rearranged the clocks. Pushed the minutes back into their eggshells. Unsaid everything except the part where I watched you walk away like a promise I never earned. If I could, I’d pluck every second off the stem, eat the seeds raw, spit out time like venom, and begin again at the point where I should have stayed.

    I didn’t write the letters. I carved them into mirrors. They bled backwards. My hands still smell like ink and something heavier.

    I’d undo all of it. Every stupid metaphor. Every petal I mistook for truth. Every word I placed between us like a wall. I’d do anything to make it right, even if it means remembering the sunflower wrong, just so I could love it better.

    -aaditya

  • Oranges and You, Again

    I once sat by a broken clock that ran backwards and thought it was wiser than me. It hummed in rusted circles, and I, a fool with open hands, kept asking it for the right time. The trees around whispered sideways, and the river bent into knots, laughing with its back turned. I didn’t mind. I kept waiting.

    You were somewhere in the smoke, maybe dancing, maybe just breathing, maybe peeling sunlight off an orange, one slow curl at a time. I didn’t know. I just knew the sky had changed its spelling the day I saw you.

    Sometimes, I carry a basket full of rain to the hill where all the forgotten things are sleeping. I’d empty it there, thinking maybe you’d find a drop and recognise it as mine. Sometimes I planted chairs in the dirt, hoping one would grow into a table for two. Nothing ever sprouted, but I kept sitting anyway, waiting for the feast.

    The birds stitched holes in the clouds with threads of melted snow, and the ground became soft enough to write names in with my bare feet. I wrote yours until the letters got tired of standing straight and lay down to sleep. I didn’t mind. I kept walking.

    There are rooms in my heart where the windows are stuck half-open and the rain drips inside when it wants. I never fix them. Maybe one day, you’ll come and sit inside, knees tucked, shoulders warm, holding an orange between us, peeling it slowly, the juice running down our thumbs like tiny suns.

    And I will wait. Through every crooked hour, every river that forgets where it’s going, every chair that refuses to bloom, every letter that collapses into dirt.  

    It’s my 5th April, waiting for you. I will wait.  

    Just to share an orange with you.

    -aaditya

  • The Lamppost

    There is a lamppost on the corner of a road no one remembers being built.

    It stands with a spine bent slightly backward as if surprised to still be standing. The light it casts isn’t gold, not quite. It’s that color just before a dream ends but before you know you’re waking up. It doesn’t flicker but you imagine it would if you blinked at the wrong time. And it does blink, with the wind maybe or with the memory of someone once leaning on it, half drunk with hope or half sure it wouldn’t last.

    The evening folds in around it, the kind that doesn’t quite settle. That blue which still believes in the sun though the sun has long walked off. And in that bruise-colored hush, the lamppost is alone but not lonely. There’s a difference.

    Sometimes, you find yourself staring at it as if it might explain something. The way it holds light as though it’s been entrusted with warmth it didn’t ask for. As though someone once whispered to it, hold this, just for a little while, and forgot to return. You think maybe that’s what love is, the holding of something bright without knowing if anyone will come back for it.

    You walk past and it doesn’t call, not in words, but in a hum low enough to miss if you’re too sure of yourself. It hums like old lullabies in languages that didn’t survive. Grief maybe. Or memory. Which are not always different things.

    It never moves. Never grows. But still, somehow, it changes. And in that change, you see yourself, heart first and blurred. Because love leaves footprints. And grief walks in them barefoot.

    You don’t know why it matters. But the lamppost knows. And it keeps burning. Because to stop would mean admitting that some things don’t return. And maybe it still believes.

    Maybe so do you.

    -aaditya

  • Spilled Water and Chopsticks

    The glow of neon catches your skin—
    pink and purple painting shadows on the curve of your cheek.
    We are haloed in “good vibes only,”
    but the way you look at me is the only gospel I believe.

    You wrestle with chopsticks,
    a clumsy dance of wood and slick noodles.
    Every spicy mouthful steals a blink,
    your lashes flutter twice like a nervous spell—
    and I am enchanted.

    My food cools, untouched.
    Yours vanishes, each bite disappearing
    into the story of your hunger.
    When I offer you more,
    you laugh,
    slide your plate too far,
    topple the glass of water between us.

    “Why didn’t I drink this?” you mutter,
    grabbing napkins like they’re answers.
    I want to ask if you are always this messy
    with things you care for.
    But I only watch
    as you swipe at the spill,
    as though it’s urgent.

    When it’s cleaned,
    I pull my plate between us,
    a quiet offering,
    a bridge.
    You lean forward,
    foreheads grazing—
    a fragile hello.

    “Don’t move,” you whisper,
    your breath pooling in the air between us.
    “Stay like this. Close.
    Like elephants. Did you know they do this?
    Heads together, a greeting.”

    I don’t tell you
    I already knew.
    I don’t tell you
    I want every moment with you
    to feel like this—
    strange, and full,
    and alive.

    aaditya.

  • December

    December stands still, yet moves within itself,
    a solemn breath before the year exhales.
    The air whispers secrets of frost and fire,
    a quiet warmth nestled in the heart of cold.

    Beneath bare trees, life lingers,
    fragile as the glass ornaments we cradle,
    shining and trembling,
    aware of their fragility.

    It is the month of hands—
    hands to hold close,
    hands to wave goodbye.
    Snow falls like memory,
    each flake a piece of what was,
    melting as it lands.

    The sky wears both dawn and dusk together,
    an endless twilight
    where time folds in on itself.
    The past feels closer,
    the future a breath you cannot catch.

    Love in December is fierce,
    burning against the chill,
    because it knows it must.
    Because it knows
    it will soon have to let go.

    And so, we wrap the year in ribbons,
    in the ache of holding on,
    in the grace of release.
    December, you are the stillness of endings,
    the weight of beginnings,
    a lesson in everything
    we can never quite keep.

    aaditya

  • Have I Gone Gray?

    I Often wonder what it would be like if the world had no colors?

    Without blue to mark the sky, how would I even know where the ground ends or begins? The sky wouldn’t care; it never does. It’s me—I need the blue, the reassurance. But without color, would I even need reassurance? It would all be the same. A shapeless, blank thing, indifferent to whether I saw it or not.

    No. If there were no colors, would I still feel anything? Would love still have a place in this strange, hollow space? Colors bleed into everything—maybe feelings are just the shades I wear inside. A soft red for love, a cold blue for sadness. If they disappeared, what would that leave me with? Could I still feel love without the red? Would I even know if she was next to me?

    Maybe I wouldn’t need to feel her anymore. Maybe warmth would exist without the red to dress it. Maybe it’s all just a glow, like two moons caught in orbit. But even moons need light. Without the sun, they’re nothing. Am I nothing? Am I just a reflection, existing only because of something else? Something that isn’t there?

    But… maybe that’s not emptiness. Maybe it’s the beginning of something else, something beyond the colors that have fooled me into believing they mattered. Perhaps the love remains, even when I can’t see it.

    What if color is love? What if red isn’t just a hue, but the pulse in my chest? If I lose that red, what happens to love? Would I even be able to touch her in a colorless world? Can touch exist without the proof of color? Without the feel of warmth against skin?

    Maybe I wouldn’t need hands anymore. Maybe I wouldn’t need to touch. I could just exist, like a thought floating in endless gray, sensing without seeing. Knowing without proof. A love that doesn’t ask for evidence. But… can love survive without proof? Wouldn’t it all fade, blur into the same endless shade, like a flat line on a blank canvas?

    Hasn’t it already?

    Maybe life itself is just nothing layered on nothing, a story told through colors I never even chose. If I stripped it all away, what would remain? Would I recognize what’s beneath? Or maybe I’ve already seen it—and I’ve forgotten. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to this same thought, the same question. What if there are no colors? What if there never were?

    I think I’ve already had this conversation with myself. Over and over. Like an echo trapped inside my mind, circling back to the same point.

    A thousand times, and yet, here I am. Still searching for color in a world that might have never had any. Or maybe… the world never lost its color. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m the one who’s gone gray. And I don’t even realize it.

    (Aaditya, 2:00 AM, 26/09/24)

  • Asylum

    Whenever I look at a sunflower

    it’d remind me of you. 

    Sunflowers are metaphors for 

    the people around whom you feel alive. 

    I have an open field inside of me

    wherein the wind echoes your laugh.

    The open field has always been filled

    with roses, that your presence has watered.

    If this is what the poets call love, then I’ve

    laced far too many notebooks with the idea of you.

    How everything eventually is about you?

    How sometimes i go sleepless at nights, but then

    How I yearn to sleep a little bit more

    because you came into my dreams.

    How I grieve when I am not close to you?

    But then what is grief, if not love persevering.

    What is grief, if not love with no place to go,

    that corners in your eyes, and 

    in the hollow part of your chest?

    What is love, if not the poem 

    scracthed on the walls of my throat.

    How I’d want to linger near the door

    uncomfortably, rather than leaving.

    How I’d want you to forget your scarf

    and come back later, to find it. 

    What is love, if not everything that I feel for you?

    For it was when you allowed me to enter

    your world, when I was scared of mine. 

    Toh aakhir Kaha chala hai man ka rasta? 

    Tumhare paas. 

    -aaditya.

  • Radha’s Plight

    “O woman with desire, place on this patch of flower-strewn floor your lotus foot, And let your foot through beauty win, To me who am the Lord of All, O be attached, now always yours”

    Krishna to Radha

    When Krishna left for Mathura, the mind of Srimati Radharani was completely disrupted. She became almost mad because of the extreme separation from Krishna and experienced great mental pain and agitation, which caused Her to drown in various sorts of mental speculation in the river of anxiety.

    She (Radharani) thought, ‘Now I am going to die, and when I die, Kṛṣṇa will surely come back to see Me again. But when He hears of My death from the people of Vṛndāvana, He will certainly be very unhappy. Therefore I shall not die.’

    -Caitanya Caritamrta, Antya lila 1.53- Srila Prabhupada’s Purport

    Describing the love in madness (Unmāda) of Srimati Radharani, Uddhava, after returning to Mathura from Vrindavana, spoke to Krishna as follows

    bhramati bhavana-garbhe nirnimittaṁ hasantī prathayati tava vārtāṁ cetanācetaneṣu

    luṭhati ca bhuvi rādhā kampitāṅgī murāre viṣama-viraha-khedodgāri-vibhrānta-cittā

    Uddhava said to Lord Kṛṣṇa, “My dear Kṛṣṇa, all the gopīs are so afflicted by Your absence that they have become almost mad. O Murāri, at home Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī laughs unnecessarily and, like a madwoman, inquires about You from every entity without distinction, even from the stones. She rolls on the ground, unable to bear the agony of Your absence.” – Sri Ujjvala Nilamani 15.175

    Radharani would madly talk (Pralāpa) as follows

    kva nanda-kula-candramāḥ kva śikhi-candra-kālaṅkṛtiḥ kva mandra-muralī-ravaḥ kva nu surendra-nīla-dyutiḥ
    kva rāsa-rasa-tāṇḍavī kva sakhi jīva-rakṣauṣadhir nidhir mama suhṛttamaḥ kva tava hanta hā dhig vidhiḥ

    My dear friend, where is Kṛṣṇa, who is like the moon rising from the ocean of Mahārāja Nanda’s dynasty? Where is Kṛṣṇa, His head decorated with a peacock feather? Where is He? Where is Kṛṣṇa, whose flute produces such a deep sound? Oh, where is Kṛṣṇa, whose bodily luster is like the luster of the blue indranīla jewel? Where is Kṛṣṇa, who is so expert in rāsa dancing? Oh, where is He, who can save My life? Kindly tell Me where to find Kṛṣṇa, the treasure of My life and best of My friends. Feeling separation from Him, I hereby condemn Providence, the shaper of My destiny.-Lalita-Madhava 3.25

    Radharani won’t eat anything. Even sleep would desert Her. Thus, She had become very thin (Tānava). Uddhava thus describes Her condition to Krishna as follows

    udañcad-vaktrāmbhoruha-vikṛtir antaḥ-kulaṣitā sadāhārābhāva-glapita-kuca-kokā yadu-pate
    viśuṣyantī rādhā tava viraha-tāpād anu-dinaṁ nidāghe kuly eva kraśima-paripākaṁ prathayati

    Consider the condition of the gopīs! Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī especially is in a very painful condition because of separation from You. She has grown skinny, and Her bodily lustre is almost gone. Her heart is immersed in pain, and because She has given up eating, Her breasts have become black, as if diseased. Because of separation from You, all the gopīs, especially Rādhārāṇī, appear like dried-up water holes under the scorching heat of the sun. -Sri Ujjvala Nilamani 15.171

    Observing the death-like condition of Srimati Radharani, Lalita Sakhi, wrote a strong letter to Krishna and chastised Him for staying in Mathura. She thus wrote as follows

    aye rāsa-krīḍā-rasika mama sakhyaṁ nava-navā purā baddhā yena praṇaya-laharī hanta gahanā
    sa cen muktāpekṣas tvam asi dhig imāṁ tūla-śakalaṁ yad etasyā nāsā-nihitam idam adyāpi calati

    Simply by dancing in the circle of the rāsa dance, You attracted Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī’s love. Why are You now so indifferent to my dear friend Rādhārāṇī? She is lying nearly unconscious, thinking of Your pastimes. I shall determine whether She is alive by putting a cotton swab under Her nostrils, and if She is still living, I shall chastise Her.-Hamsa-duta [96]

    Being greatly afflicted by the pain of separation from Krishna, Srimati Radharani, as if diseased, said to Lalita Sakhi as follows

    uttāpī puṭa-pākato ’pi garala-grāmād api kṣobhaṇo dambholer api duḥsahaḥ kaṭur alaṁ hṛn-magna-śūlyād api
    tīvraḥ prauḍha-visūcikāni cayato ’py uccair mamāyaṁ balī marmāṇy adya bhinatti gokula-pater viśleṣa-janmā jvaraḥ

    My dear Lalita, I cannot bear suffering the fever of separation from Kṛṣṇa, nor can I explain it to you. It is something like gold melting in an earthen pot. This fever produces more distress than poison, it is more piercing than Indra’s thunderbolt, more sharp than a spear plunged into the heart, and more horrifying than the last stage of cholera.- Lalita Madhava 3.24

    When Radharani was feeling separation from Krishna, She would constantly chant Hare Krishna Mahamantra. Chanting of Mahamantra was Her only resort.

    ekadā kṛṣṇa-virahād dhyāyantī priya-saṅgamam |

    mano-bāṣpa-nirāsārthaṁ jalpatīdaṁ muhur muhuḥ ||

    hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare |

    hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare ||

    Śrī Rādhā was feeling the pain of separation from Kṛṣṇa and was meditating on the reunion with Him. In order to rid Herself of the agony of separation She felt in His absence, She repeatedly began to chant the mahā-mantra: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/ Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare.

    -Quoted in Sri-Harinamartha-ratna-dipika, Srila Raghunatha Dasa Goswami

    When Srimati Radharani would faint, all the other gopis would chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra in Her ears and would revive Her.

  • The Art of Letting Go

    Loving someone dearly is what we do the best.

    Probably better than breathing, we love.

    We cling close to it, aware that

    we in no way can control it.

    Everything seems to be wonderful, 

    Filled with colours, rainbows and lights.

    We want to stay close, and keep them close.

    We want to hold them, and take them home.

    Touching of toes, meeting of lips,

    Making love with your every bit.

    Beginning the days with their name

    And wanting to end the same with their breath.

    Adamant and ignorant of the fact that,

    All of it is just holding roses,

    until the thorns press against your fingers.

    Letting go is an art of necessity.

    We do not want it, but we have to master it.

    It wasn’t until I saw in her eyes, that

    irrespective of what I feel, it will never be the same for her.

    Even Stephen King once said, that sometimes in life

    You have to just let the bird go, for

    You know it’s not meant to be caged.

    When those thorns press so hard,

    That you realise that its time to let go,

    For it just means that we are all humans

    Incapable of holding on to everything,

    specially when it hurts the most.

    The only barrier to letting go is hope,

    We hope that maybe something somehow will work out,

    But it never does. It’s always the thorns over the roses.

    So, in the end, the whole of loving someone, 

    Becomes an act of letting go.

    So, take you moment, and take you time,

    And bid that farewell with all your heart.

    -aaditya

  • DECEMBER

    It’s the 17th of December, 6:05 pm,

    exactly two months since I last wrote to you.

    Have you ever yearned for something

    that wasn’t even yours to begin with?

    Because I know I have been lost, since so 

    long, in something, in you?

    The leaves of autumn have fallen dead, and

    here I am wanting to have an orange with you.

    This winter, it tells me, to finally stand up to you

    and tell you that I am so much in love with you.

    Its like even the ghost in my closet,

    is screaming to let it all out. 

    But it’s you we are talking about, 

    in front whom I am nothing but an idle candle,

    burning in its own flame, and 

    standing still nevertheless.

    My heart skips a beat and my world stops

    as my gaze takes in the sight of her stunning form,

    clad in her kurti and a dupatta.

    My eyes flicker my heart flutters,

    as I gaze upon the goddess of perfection.

    But it’s December, the month of letting go.

    December holds so much,

    the end of best times, and

    closure for all that was lost.

    A month so hopeful, yet

    carries heaviness in its frost.

    Maybe this time, I’ll say it all too.

    On Christmas’ eve, I’ll meet you at the golden hour,

    standing hopefully, you’ll be in my sight, 

    and, I’ll give you the yellow flower.

    Then? i’ll leave it to december

    to teach me that new beginnings,

    don’t really require new calendars. 

    Because I know, it’s always you.

    I’ll spend my eternity, in 

    perfecting the subtle art of loving you. 

    Today, tomorrow and the day after,

    every bit of my love, will be about you.

    -aadi.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started