Four Clover Life- By Namrata Shailendra Singh

                 It starts when you are thirteen or fourteen, and sitting on the hard triangular seat of the red bicycle makes your crotch tingle. You move uncomfortably ( more like rubbing it hard there)and feel electricity race through your body. Soon you start liking the hard conical seat.  You like the bathroom mirror too, the one that tilts down, and how your body makes you feel: sexy. The unblemished skin, the curves, the two sweetest cherry tomatoes on your chest, and when your father knocks on the door, you set the mirrors straight, slip into your clothes, and vanish. At school, you meet people, the ones you call BOYS, and you realize you like almost everyone. EVERY SINGLE ONE.  However, the broad chests attract you the most, and you wish to be saved by them, to be your knight in shining armor, to save you from some fictitious torment of life and become yours forever and love you like princesses are loved. You listen to songs(strictly Bollywood) that encourage you to think ab

September is an impish month when summer and autumn play cat and mouse. One time a dollop of hot glow, another time, a dash of cool breeze. In the half-asleep morning, I teeter myself to the stove to make tea - a brown liquid in a brown ceramic pan, sweetened with brown sugar and just then, it goes- the electricity. I stand still, stare, blink and wonder how to jumpstart the morning when the battery has died? The body moves, but the brain lingers near the stove, holding the saucepan half filled with water. And so the next two hours go by doing the usual and mundane the one he and I have been doing nonstop for years two unpoised performers filled with exasperation- bathing the children, school uniforms, chobani and bananas, water bottles, and goodbyes. Two hours later, the electricity is back, and I hasten toward the stove Just then, he calls — my husband. He inquires about me and the tea "Common, you anyways had it in office, imagine me," I gripe "It&#

The toast burns to  obsidian crumbs as the putrid smell starts to soar interrupting the meditation of my words that I routinely slit my heart to pour. Does it matter if I bleed or not They concluded I am not a writer yet The story of a thousand days and night Not a cent, a dime, a quarter it gets. Yes, I have miserably disappointed the masses But my failure, though, is yet to come For I continue to blow the dandelion Until I choose to be done. A 2nd-grade nipper stands alone a body deformed by torrential pain  the ground beneath has cracked wide open as he flails to breathe and walk again how to feel warm in the arctic of grief when loved ones float far, far away the mother who packed his lunchboxes the father who gave him sobriquets Yes, life has struck him hard indeed But mind you, his defeat is yet to come For he continues to blow the dandelion Until he chooses to be done.  Sifting through  anguish, anger, and despair She stares at the  heap of hands-me-down In the white and  elite

                  You won't be pleased to hear this, but I am trying hard to forget you. A relationship is not some random data stored on a smartphone. When it starts taking space, you tap and delete, maybe empty the trash too. A relationship is more sticky, clingy, and slimy. And ours came tied by a milk-white cord, smeared in bright maroon blood and the deepest purple of the placenta.  I never told you this, but I have stopped eating chicken and goat meat. Over here, people eat all things alive—cigadas that emerge after 17 years of hibernation, sea urchins, and ostriches. The planet is burning; the news of a never-experienced-before cataclysm has now become commonplace. One step more, and we fall from the precipitous conditions we have manufactured for ourselves to our own end. I can see, feel, and hence I am trying to make reparations, seize the moment, and pivot to something better, more sensitive, more gentle, more humane. However, I am cooking salmon curry today. Somehow, I h

                  In my mother's head, my 30th birthday was some kind of Cinderella clock, but instead of my coach turning back into a pumpkin, it had her imagining that my youth and my eggs would soon shrivel up, wither away or die. She was thrown into disarray by a looming specter of "lonely singletons addicted to morphine and men for the lack of anything better: marriage. When it comes to a woman's life trajectory, my society, with its dogmatic paternalistic mentality, relies heavily on relics and risk aversion- something that I had bent every now and then.   The man I had broken up with had vamoosed after 16 months of a serious-confused relationship, he being serious and I being confused. One winter afternoon, standing on the 9th-floor terrace cafeteria of my office in Bangalore, I texted him with dramatic depth, "Talk to me or else I will jump down from this building." The knife cuts on my arms and palms, which I thought would give me an advantage, had fai

Have we romanticized teenage angst? Have we sentimentalized teenage loss of identity? Have we glamorized teenage confusion? I ask because angst, confusion, and identity are part of my journey, maybe yours too, and maybe the seventy-five-year-old living in a technologically dominated and emotionally desiccated world. Many of us find stable ground as we move into adulthood; however, for some of us, the cocktail of anger, confusion, and loneliness revisits us in waves and recedes and comes again and recedes again. It's just not you, dear teenagers. While listening to Billie Eilish's 'Lovely' and Olivia Rodrigo's 'Brutal,' I am compelled to pay attention to the word choices of the song that hegemonizes and controls my teenager's mind and soul. The conundrum- my experience with Psychology and Vedanta informs me- you are your mind- if my privileged teenager feels anything close to broken, hopeless, and disconsolate about her existence, then I, as her mother,

गुरुचरणाम्बुज निर्भर भक्तः, संसारादचिराद्भव मुक्तः। सेन्द्रियमानस नियमादेवं,द्रक्ष्यसि निज हृदयस्थं देवम् ॥ O devotee of the lotus feet of the teacher! May you become liberated soon from the samsara through the discipline of the sense organs and the mind. You will come to experience the Lord that dwells in your own heart. गुरुचरणाम्बुज निर्भर भक्तः, संसारादचिराद्भव मुक्तः। सेन्द्रियमानस नियमादेवं,द्रक्ष्यसि निज हृदयस्थं देवम् ॥ O devotee of the lotus feet of the teacher! May you become liberated soon from the samsara through the discipline of the sense organs and the mind. You will come to experience the Lord that dwells in your own heart.   Veda sang, gently caressing the wrinkled forehead of the divine soul that lay on a low bed at Lumina Hospice & Palliative Care in Corvallis, Oregon. The sunlight, sparkling radiant gold, illuminated the blue as the red and burgundy leaves clung to the skeleton branches of the pacific dogwood and vine maple.  November being a few days away,