Inkbydipa

06/10/2026

Seema took a sip of her morning tea. “It’s too sweet,” she thought. Little things like this were enough to spoil her mood for the whole day. She touched the recent blemish on her face. For perfectionist Seema, every small imperfection was a source of frustration and anxiety.

“Breathe,” she told herself, standing on the balcony.

She yearned for a perfect life, a perfect job, a perfect neighborhood, a perfect family, and a perfect house. Most of all, she wanted to be perfect herself. But reality never matched her wishes. When she looked in the mirror, she saw only imperfections. Sometimes she wondered if her obsession with perfection was the real flaw.

She remembered a poem she had read recently by Aldous Huxley:

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly.
Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

She closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. For years, she had believed that peace would come when everything around her was finally in order. But standing there, she understood something she had never allowed herself to accept. Perhaps peace did not begin when life became perfect. Perhaps it began when she stopped demanding that it should be.

The tea was still too sweet. The blemish was still there. Nothing had changed, yet something inside her had.

For the first time, Seema did not reach for a solution. She simply stood there, breathed, and let the morning be exactly as it was.

And for once, that was enough.

-diparg

25/09/2026

24/09/2026

At forty-eight, Reshmi had stopped expecting surprises. Her days followed a familiar rhythm: household chores, a few cups of tea, tending to her little garden, occasional phone calls and evening walks with Dumo.

Until one evening, after a brief spell of rain, something changed.
A stranger sat on a park bench, wearing a flat cap and neatly pressed clothes. His eyes rested on her, not with intrusion, but with quiet admiration, as though he had discovered a beautiful landscape.

Was she still beautiful?

The thought surprised her. Her fingers instinctively touched her carelessly braided hair. Suddenly, she became conscious of her faded kurta and unironed pyjamas.

Since then, an unknown, undefined bond began to develop.
They never spoke. He sat on his usual bench, reading or looking at his phone. She never missed her evening walks. A few exchanged glances seemed to say, “I'm here.”

Gradually, Reshmi began dressing more carefully, braiding her hair neatly and wearing an old lipstick she found in her drawer.
Nothing extraordinary had happened. No words exchanged, no promises made.

Yet, somehow, her ordinary world had become a little happier.

-diparg

15/09/2026

The warm sun of September,
seeping through my veins.
A single call from a wild bird
makes the afternoon grow quieter.
Peace silently flows around.

I look into the sky,
wondering if you are looking too
if somewhere in that blue ocean above,
our eyes secretly crossed?

Love carries its own longing,
and its own contentment,
like the moon that waxes and wanes.

Yet within these quiet, hollow afternoons,
there remains a sense of wholeness.
The past still lingers in the air,
not as an ache or an old sorrow,
but like a vivid dream
that touched reality for a little while.

-diparg

15/09/2026

My Barren Oasis
_----------------

In-between your arrival and departure,
my barren oasis felt a mirage.
It showed a dream,
a smooth breeze,
wildflowers and palm trees around it;
the light of sunsets reflecting,
the amber sky dancing in its waters,
and the silver beam of the moon bathing in the night.
What a beautiful, true oasis it could be.

I soaked in its peace, keeping the dream in my heart.
Then, the mirage dissolved.
The basin tasted reality,
the empty bed,
like your promises.

Yet, for a long time,
I waited for your shadow to reflect on my water,
which I gathered season by season,
drop by drop.
Sometimes traveling from afar,
sometimes brought from the heavens,
I filled the waters of this sanctuary on my own,
while sowing hopes of tomorrow's flowers
on the bank.

And I realize
how cruelly you taught me to make my own oasis
in this desert of a life,
after surviving a mirage, a lie.

07/09/2026

Do you ever talk back to your thoughts?

​The Fool,
the Hermit,
the Lover,
or the Magician.

They reveal themselves only to you.
They open only in private.
​You are the only audience to a great tale,
to repetitive complaints,
to quiet sobs,
and the sudden joy that lights up your inner sky.
​It plays only for you.

​Your thoughts know your suffering,
your pleasure,
your fears,
your silence.

​They know...
But do they feel?
Who knows?
​Sometimes,
a thought reflects a childhood afternoon.
That pond.
That ancient tree.
A hot summer afternoon in a village
where I sat alone and realized, for the first time:
​I am alive.

And I am witnessing.
​A moment so ordinary,
yet it became an anchor
that stays with me all my life.
​"Was there a hidden meaning in it?"
​"I don't know,"
the thought replied.

​Yet I return there, again and again.
And every time I return,
I realize my thoughts and I
have so many things to talk about:
the way we taste this world,
bitter, sweet, and sour.

​One thought leads to another.
Sometimes the expansion of an idea,
sometimes just a witnessing mirror
trying to see its own reflection.

​Wait...
​Isn't that like God?
​To know itself,
it created the whole universe,
to experience everything that could possibly exist.

-DipaRG