Boxes by Sony Shrestha

‘Life’, it is such a small word to utter out of this tiny mouth. The fight between the teeth and tongue gives a start to this word. The on looking lips also try to prove their ability and thus gives off the incomplete F bomb. Does the word life mean like it is made?

I am not a philosopher nor am I a ‘someone’ whom people would seek for suggestions if they have problems in life. I am not someone to give some precise ideas on what to do next to save yourself.

I am just me, a person, a silent soul inside this violent body, still desperately trying to understand the meaning of life. Actually meaning will be a meager term, let's say ‘truth’.

I will introduce myself as a small kid, who is still trying to figure out what she is exactly doing. Yes, I am not such small kid too. But I feel like it. And I can give hundreds of proofs to that.

Actually worrying about the life is not what I am here for, or maybe, it is the main thing to do as long as I am here on this earth. I am no God. So, I don't know the truth about anything……

Sometimes I feel like I am a stranger for myself and it is weird. It is weird how I wake up every morning and look at my face in the mirror realizing I reside in this amazing body. It is weird how I get so inspired by someone in the movie and it is weird how I realize I am nothing in front of them. It is weird how I forget how better or worse I am and I resort to paintings or music in a meantime.

I live, being so many things in a day. I am a rock star in my imagination while playing my brother's guitar in secret. I become a beauty, when I try my every makeup on my box, though I don’t have much of them. I sometimes bury my soul inside a random track and try to ignore the chatters around me. Yes, I am not myself sometimes.

I have heard a sentence somewhere, "life is not inside the four walls of a house, life is out there in the world and travelling is how you learn what life is"

I would say, “I don’t know how much truth this line speaks.” Fortunately or unfortunately, I am an introvert and living inside the four corners that has been my life since 22 years. Yes, these corners know me better than anyone, maybe more than myself. I have laughed and cried and slept and smiled inside these four walls. I don’t know I enjoy it or not, maybe I do. Living outside with the people has made me lose my temper so many times. Living outside my favorite den had made me feel like I don’t exist. I try to see this world, but I don’t see the beauty everywhere.  I see myself vanishing amidst the crowd, like a dust and getting blown away into the vacuum.

People often say to me, “You are shy and invisible because you never go out and see the life.” Yes, I never go out, but please I still do have a life, a life of Silence. At least I don’t have to burst into tears of emotions every time I get ignored by people; my four walls are always protecting me from unnecessary emotions. I don’t have to talk with people; some people just piss me off and make me feel like I am so bad. No, I don’t always want that feeling. I don’t know who I am, but am I a coward to live inside a box? They say, living inside a box would give you nothing, but I have earned so many feelings here. It is slower, living inside a confined space makes you grow slow. People out there learn fast and easy---Inside the box it is slow, it feels like learning something would take an eternity, but it’s not being dead. You just learn different things.

Anyone will think that I am a psycho, writing about life, who even hasn’t seen a fraction about the world, yes, I feel the same. How can our thoughts match when you live outside the box and know so much and when I am confined inside four walls and know nothing? I feel like it's all illusion how you take everything. Life is a mere perception.

The small screen of my PC, and my TV screen are my windows to the world. And the times when the load shedding torture of my country beats me down, I read the walls, about the history, about what happened in today's class, and about what happened the day when I got hurt by people who even don’t remember me. Living inside the box has given me the memories that I don’t really want to remember and the memories I may forget. Reading the walls in my room has been a hobby of mine. I read the same walls trying to create something new every time while I sit near my drafting table. Being an architect student I know that you will never go far if you don't see the architecture around the world but being inside these amazing walls, I have flown to the places I have never been creating new things from something I have heard from my teachers and from the memories of the videos and pictures I browsed in my laptop. Yes, living like this is a totally different experience compared to others and I feel the difference so deeply.

There are the times, when I actually enjoy being out of my house, the box I live in, when I get to forget it. I love it so much and yet I think of leaving it forever. But I am just a small kid living in an adult body. I am too much dependent over my own feelings and I am governed by my own feelings. My box has been my guard and a lover, and this box is all that I have created out of my life be it from my designs or in the real life. Architecture, it is not so simple word they say, I won't judge if it is simple or not. It is just another form of life, and I feel there are fractions of ‘life’ in the word ‘life’. Yes, I know nothing about life, but I know something, about this box. This box is not a prison, and it is also not a freedom. It is just another fraction of life.

The nature is home of the living organisms and the home of people too. And we create our own boxes out of the nature, we always live in the box, I live in the box like you but I hate the boxes around me sometimes. I love the nature around me, and sometimes think of designing something that needs no home but only nature. But it is not actually my type, is it? The people don’t love the idea of getting back to nature. The people make new boxes and leave it and explore new nature around, explore new life and again make another box there. People create boxes and call it architecture.

I don’t remember when I began to love the nature, but I remember myself loving my box. I remember the time when I peeked outside of my box to see the green field at the behind my house. I felt the gentle wind flowing and gently striking against each paddy plant and then transferring that heavenly smell to my box. God, how much I loved it! And I thought that I will one day buy all these fields and let those paddy fields remain wild, just as it is, for I knew someone out there will one day add another box in that place. It gave me shivers and sadness to imagine that place being covered by the piece of natural things modified to be artificial. Years passed and there are no paddy fields no more. The sunlight still enters to my box, for the fields don’t have tall staggering boxes on them, but it has a banquet and a small cottage factory and a parking area. I am just happy how there are no boxes, a box like mine. I want my box to be alone in the nature. Yes I love my box so much, my box too stands on some paddy field, call me selfish, but I want my box to be alone in the lap of the nature.

There is a line in architecture, build in scrap and look into nature. Yes, I want to see that nature free from boxes like mine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my box, I love it more maybe, that’s why I can never leave it, and I love the nature and thus I want my box in the nature and me inside my box.

My box has given me so much to remember, my loneliness, my happiness, love, hate, betrayal, honesty and above all that it has made me feel myself. It has always reflected me. If I am to know the truth of the world today, I would really love to know I, but I am also afraid because it’s scary, the idea of what would I do with that truth. I am not some philosopher, I am not some lover of mankind, I am myself, and being myself is the only virtue I see in myself, though I am not myself sometimes. Because I live with fearful intrusive thoughts and the obsessions and compulsions has made me stranger to myself sometimes.

Being you most of the times makes things easier. But sometimes, you don’t know who u are, what are you actually doing. Yes, it’s really confusing, and living in a box has given me the solution. In the outside world, people live in so many colors, the world is much colorful outside, and I feel myself being blown away there, I have no identity outside. All the people do outside is copy. People copy their ideal people and feel proud to say that they are her, or him. No, I don’t really like that idea. I don’t like the people I like. I don’t like them because I don’t want to copy them. I love the people whom I can never copy, who are bad in the eyes of other people. I see the freedom in them and I find myself inside of them. Yes, my box has taught me this. And I know it is not even a fraction of the vast word, ‘life’.

I really don’t like how my feelings change. In my box, I have been sad because of not being able to see the world. And in the same time, my feelings change and I am happy being just like the way I am. I laugh like a mad girl who got a beautiful dress in her birthday party, discovering this new ecstasy of feeling about myself. Yes, I become happy because of it, but at the same time I become sad for my feelings are never stable. And it is one of the many things that piss me off. My box had seen me being like this, felt me like this, and in a meantime given me a lesson that not everything is constant, even in your small box. Yes, it is small, but your feelings are grand in there and the grander things also change. I am sad for a moment, but in an instant people see me laughing my heart out and joking around. Yes, I change, and that really is something I never understood.

Why should I love my box Just because it has given me so many things? But I hate it sometimes. It has been so close to me most of the time, I hate it for I can't live without it and I hate it for I love it so much that I can't hate it. I love it, my friends call me over to meet and go watch a movie. I don’t feel like going out with them not because I don’t like hanging out with them. But I am a type of person who gets wild if I enjoy too much and I kinda like my wild outgoing type. But I just can't go with that wild feeling. It’s like I am bound to live inside my box, and I hate my box at the very same time and kiss it even more out of love, because I can't hate it. I just can’t hate it.

My cousins and friends would always talk about going to places and eating and spending time in new places and restaurants with their other friends. I sometimes envy them for I am never like them. I am too embarrassed to be me out in the world, I feel like a dust invisible and indifferent but still hovering in the air. I am an introvert who acts like an extrovert describing to the world about itself. I don’t know if the most of the words I speak are true. But yes, I sure do know one thing, and that feeling oneself inside oneself is the greater ecstasy I have felt inside my life, and truly speaking I never felt it out in this amazing world. But my box of love and pain, reflects myself back to me. And therefore I love it.

My description of life is short. And it is finding a happy version of myself and exploring myself.

Diary of A Seven Year Old Kid: Day One

Dear Archie,

I don’t want to call you a DIARY because dad said I can call you anything. He said that DIARY is a place where you write everything you learned or the questions you want to ask so that you can easily remember them. But you have to do it daily. And he said I do not have to give interviews when I become famous because this DIARY will be enough. I hate interviews when it comes on TV. I do not get to watch cartoons.

So, I learned following things today:

1.   I saw Shreya and Suyog holding hands today. My best friend ANGAD said that if boys and girls are holding hands then that means they are in LOVE. Yuck!

2.    I don’t love Shreya because we didn’t hold hands but I feel strange. It means that I don’t get to share Lunch with her. I like to share lunch with her because:

a.   She is so funny. This one time she told me that when we grow old Boys and Girls have to have sex.

b.   Sex is like a Game. Only adults are allowed to play it. I don’t know why. It sounds fun to me. I mean Shreya said that in this game called SEX boys and girl have to go inside a dark room and close the door. It is like Hide and seek but little different. Here, both boys and girl have to scream until they find each other. The one who screams the loudest will win. It is new. I want to have sex with ANGAD. It is unfair that Boys can only play with girl. I think I will win. Because I can scream very loud. I can even break glass with my sound.

c.   She has big eyes and funny nose.

d.   I can talk with her all day If there was no School.

e.   It means that we cannot talk from tomorrow. I feel strange just like the time when I lost my favorite toy ‘Dino’.

3.   I hate LOVE. Once you hold hand with a Girl you do not get to talk with your friends. I do not want to LOVE. I do not want to lose my friends.

4.   Adults are funny. And so are teachers. I learned that If we do not know answer to a question then it is okay because it means that the question is SILLY. For example:

a.   I asked dad yesterday If I can have sex with my friend Angad when I grow old. I mean it is just a hide and seek and it is unfair that a Boy should play with a girl only. He asked me to not ask such SILLY questions.

b.   A week ago my English Ma’am said that God has written life story for everybody already. She said that We just do what God wrote. So I asked her today DOES THAT MEAN GOD IS EVIL BECAUSE HE WROTE THAT THE TERRORISTS WILL KILL MANY CHILDREN IN PAKISTAN TODAY? She shouted at me and asked me to not ask such silly questions and I felt very bad. God is Bad. Adults are bad.

c.    Why can’t school teach us things we want to learn and why do I have to learn things that I do not want to learn about? Like why do I have to learn dates in History? Why do I have to learn English? I do not want to go to England anyway. Why can’t they tell us where we came from? Why does man look like man and flower look like flower? Why do not men grow in tree? How does magician float in air? But school doesn’t answer the questions that really bug you and teach you the things you really don’t want to do. Wait! Does that mean that school is just killing our time so that our parents can escape from us? My mom always says it is so peaceful when I am in School because I make lots of noises in home. That is why she pays money to school? I mean there is no point in sending a person to a place he doesn’t want to go. Parents are paying money to school so that they can shut us up. Are we being punished?

5.   I learned that IMPOSSIBLE means Adults way to run away from things they do not know answer to. I mean my Granny once said that people used to think it is impossible to fly many years ago and now look at us flying in planes. IMPOSSIBLE just means that adults are feeling lazy or they are foolish.

6.   My friends lied to me that RAMESH is untouchable. Today I accidently drank water from his bottle because his bottle and mine look same. I didn’t die. That means my friends are lying. I will talk with RAMESH from tomorrow.

7.   Why do I have to pay money to shopkeeper uncle to get things I like? Does his son pay him money? Why can’t we share things?

8.   Is Ramesh poor because he is untouchable or he is untouchable because he is poor?

9.   FUCK is a bad word they say. But I heard my sisters saying it many times on her phone. That means if you are adult it doesn’t matter if things are bad or good because it is the adults who make rules about things being good and bad in the first place.

10.Why is it bad to kill butterfly but not bad to kill a moth? Aren’t they both living things?

11. Are there any white crows?

12. Why didn’t granny wake up? Why is she still sleeping? Doesn’t she care that I miss her? If old people go for a long sleep is it necessary to burn them? Is it bad to not cry although I felt sad that they burn her without asking me? How can she come back if she has turned into ashes? Is it bad to sleep for a long time? I sleep long on Saturdays. I am afraid that they will burn me. So I won’t sleep long on Saturday.

13.Why are adults so confusing?

I hope you understand whatever I am saying. Thank God Archie you don’t pretend to have answers to things you don’t know.

Are you an adult? Do you have feelings?

Ok then. See you tomorrow!

Stardust: I am Another Sun

What I am seeing is the another Sun today
Eight Minutes old

How puny am I to ponder in the past of the wasted Hydrogen atom?

And call it a present

The Juncture of survival I claim

I am Eight Minutes New

And I am yet to comprehend my existence

Am I an Extant Poem?
Will I ever ponder beyond the locution I Intertwine?

Or forever remain a Confused wordplay

Not Playing at all

I live inside the Ghost of a misspend Helium

No inferno could ever make sense

than the Sun I revolve around

I can be the morning from now on

Why Not?

I have always been a stardust

"Lizard who Smells like Rectum"

(A Perspective)

You were a sperm

Who aced the ovary's test

And since then

You have been examined and tested

Like a commodity

In each and every steps

What is world if it is not a factory?

Your qualities are being controlled

Your destiny is prescribed

You are sold in the market

Advertised in CVs

You are interviewed

Tested and it never stops

All you have is that false sense of freedom

False conviction that choices are yours to make

But Alas!

You are just like a lizard

Convicted of crime unspeakable

Arrested

Because you cannot fly

What is world if it is not a factory?

You are a raw material

Filtered in high schools

Distilled in colleges

Mocked with false choices

Crushed in the fabrics of so called reality

All ready

You are now a machine

Whose job is to please everybody

You are packed with your fancy degrees

Labeled to be sold in the market

with inhuman currencies

And then you are played with

Stripped of your dignity

Sadly

You adapt

Strategically placing your lips on the rectum of anything that promises dream

And then you try to morally justify your rape

By calling it 'Sacrifices' the world asks you to make

Nothing changes

You are still a Lizard

But now you smell like rectum

You are nothing

You are just what the market needs

Interviewed by Anonymity

What is your Greatest Fear?

I do not have greatest fear. Although the fact that every person around me who love me and acknowledge my existence are eventually going to disappear from the face of the earth sends the chill down my spine. I do not want to lose them, not now, not when I am alive. I think I can barely exist without them. But it is not my greatest fear.

Funny thing is I am always anxious. Anxious of little things like what if my boss finds the accounting error I committed in the financial statements he has just approved, what if I cross my path with a burglar, what if some goon sabotaged me in an ATM and decapitate me [I recently watched one video] and take all of my money, what if I am not really destined to be great, what if I die, what if I fail, what if I…?

I do not have fear, the greatest one. But I do have series of them that sometimes make me anxious and paranoid.

Will I die alone?

Will I find my soul mate?

Will I be saved?

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I have excuses to everything. That is why I haven’t progressed. I reason my incapacity with my witty way with words which I am really good at. But I am not the words I wear, explanation I give.

And self acclaimed realization that I am a good student (My academia makes it official), a good poet (I have won few competitions and some hearts), a good singer (I have been acknowledged with honest reviews that have advised me to practice and the sky will be the limit.), a good leader (I sometimes find myself influencing/manipulating people to do what I want them to do. Many have acknowledged. I almost revolutionized entire High School policy. The Principal still despises me.), a good photographer (Some of my Achievements have been paid homage to.), a good……….. I hate the term ‘A good’. I deplore ‘A good’. It confuses me. I do not know who I really am and what I really want because I enjoy everything I am good at. It makes me impractical.

And I almost forgot to mention, I deplore the fact that my English is rather simple. Not complicated and beautiful like those writers. I have tried but I cannot change the way I am, can I? Haha

What is your favorite journey?

In a Philosophical Way?

I have learned that everything fades away. The love wears when the feelings remain. You feel different about the same thing in different point of time. Sometimes you confuse it with love, and sometimes hatred, but the feelings remain.

In a physical way?

I remember few journeys in pieces like when we had to take a day long Hike to travel from Bhojpur to Dawa and we passed through some beautiful peaceful places away from humanly civilization where you could hear the soothing sound of the distant streams and nostalgic chirpings of every soulful birds. You could listen to yourself thinking and could almost see the heart of every person travelling through those places.

I remember few bus journeys and no the destination is not the reason I remember them. I remember them because I had right set of songs in my MP3 player to accompany me.

I remember leaving for home. It is one of the best feeling.

On what occasion do you Lie?

Most of the times on the occasion when I am not needed to lie. And I tend to tell the truth in the places I do not necessarily have to. I trust people. Not the wrong people. I trust anyone who is nice to me. It is for them to decide if they are right or wrong. Besides I do not have nuclear secrets to hold within myself. I rarely keep secrets.

But I lie sometimes and I am not really proud of those occasions but there are times when manipulating the version of truth have rightfully saved my ass.

What do you dislike about your appearance?

Perhaps my vertical alignment, how the sky wants to stay farther away from me?

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

I do not quite remember. I have to ask the people around me.

When and where were you the most Happiest?

Recently, when I scored two goals in a Commonwealth stadium. Although it was small achievement but I remember being happy.

And few days ago when I was jamming with my Guitarist friend, Ankit. He is like a brother to me and that song he wrote and sang. It was very tough day for the hair on the back of my neck to stay intact. It was soul refining.

What talent would you most like to have?

I just want to find myself. I am complete. I just need to find myself.

If you could change one thing about yourself what would that be?

My literary prowess? Although it contradicts with my previous answer.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of Misery?

Self fabricated miseries? Which are physically nonexistent but they exist because we believe that they exist.

What is your most treasured possession?

I have been surprised with many gifts and I treasure them the most and the person involved in those gifts are my most treasured possession.

Where would you like to live?

Somewhere peaceful that possess less man made things and more of nature.

What is your favorite occupation?

Happiness? What more can I say?

What is your most marked characteristic?

Although I regard it as painful possession but people who know me tell that it doesn’t take much time for people to trust me. I have enjoyed this skill many times but sometimes it becomes burden. Because people trust me with their secrets and I do not value secret or perhaps I am not good with them and things cannot really stay inside my heart forever. I yap them out eventually.

Who is your favorite hero of Fiction?

Rick Blaine from Casablanca.