# include(sneha.h)

I’m at the crossroads now. But I wonder if this is a cliff, disguised. What lies ahead? Adherence or adventure? I look and I see a mirage. I see no horizon. And while seeing, and desperately seeking, I momentarily tilt my head backwards because it has followed my heart’s lead. My eyes need direction, My head needs to focus, but my heart has decided upon solace. It aches for familiarity. Pheromones lure me. How about an embrace from you, they contrive. For, just an embrace would solve this conundrum. It would tell me to tread. Tell me that I should walk. Away. Aside. Ahead? An embrace from you.  You, who aren’t on this path with me. Who hasn’t been. Ever. I crave something as fleeting as your hug because memory tells me that place in your arms, on your chest, at your shoulders is where my journey and my destination dwell. Will I hold on or will I let go? Will you let go, yet again? This is – you are  –   my cliff. The creator

  I had learnt to  live off the scraps  of your love. The bits you threw, I caught.  The bits you didn’t, I rummaged. The bits that you snatched, I grabbed.  The bits you hid, I searched. Scavenger. Scapegoat. Starved. Scarred. Now they say 'Love yourself.' So I’m giving myself scraps now.  It’s not new - it’s just hard.

My memories of us  play tricks on me. They cling onto me when I need to let go. And I cling to them, when I am let gone of. They grip me like a nightmare that I cannot snap out of. And I latch onto them because I have not found better solace. But my feisty self wants to conquer. And conquer I do, sometimes. I keep them at bay, just how you did me, on several days. Now, I feel powerful. Now, I have survived.   All hail the Queen! But then, a mere symphony, a phrase, a number, a condiment – Abduct me from an ordinary day. And rush me into remembering you, make me forget my conquering. Quicksand. Again, I am brought down on my knees, to kneel before our memories. My heart is yet again hijacked to the smell of your skin, the sound of your laughter, and the sensory pleasures that my body lusts after. Well, You live now, and I exist in this loop. You’re you and them now, and I’m still only us. You’re free now, and I’m still whirling. God save

  I’ve always believed that the book finds you. Some come and make a home for themselves in your bookshelf, and others instantly cradle between the grip your fingers and your fixed gaze. Karuna Ezara Parikh’s ‘The Heart Asks Pleasure First’ found me in January of 2021, when the global COVID-19 pandemic had completed 10 months and we were trying to make sense of what collectively our lives had become. It had found me at a time when I was very willing to give up on love stories – heck, maybe on love itself. "Longing. Is there a fuller word in the world? Tell me, is there an emptier one?"   I couldn’t curtail myself from reading even a single day. And like anything which is addictive, I had a hard time snapping out of the world she had created in those 316 pages when I finished. Anyone who’s been in love knows that when love grips you, you find it hard to live even one day without communicating with each other – and that is the same effect the story of an Indian and Pakist