Aryaman Kakkar's Archive

There are these times when I'm in bed, and my hand is in my hair. These newly washed playthings smell  of warmth and sunrise.   I am tempted to click a photograph. To see these moments when I can call myself ‘beautiful’. When I  know that in front of everyone else, I'll be looking at how my shirt hangs from these love handles as that  cute guy passes buy. I'll flick my hair over and resume Operation Cool: first impressions matter and I'm  trying not to do that shy smile because I don't want to be seen as a toddler anymore.   The thing is, I believe everybody remains the same age as I grow. I can't fathom not catching up to them  someday.   Just this once, I want to look at the camera and think 'someone will love me' before I think of ‘Vain’ and  ‘Narcissus’. These curls that curtain my forehead are purely chances and mistakes, and I am all the more  for them. This body was deemed undesirable, my hair, my eyes undesirable a...

Kisses are the one thing for me. Soft, drowning, teasing, unsure teeth bite my lower lip and a shudder  arises.   That moment before, when I look at their face, my heart is hesitant at seeing their eyes sweep close and  breath part.   This is ours,  I lean in and consume.  This kind of touch is a rare delicacy for I can taste their want, their need.  Desire is already grinning from across the room like they had nothing to do with this.  Affection, Affection is there when we part, lips and lashes. You memorize their face, knowing you will be  blind for the minutes that follow. You map the wrinkles of their eyes, their jaw as it caves into their chin  and you'll wonder. I'm not much for god but god you will wonder why lust is a sin, for such beautiful  things are no evil for me. Such temptation, such soft images come to mind, tinted in the light of  daydreams.   You, god, will wonder, why you choose to remain ...

I am something of a sucker for a good daydream. Being a poet and a reader, I guess that comes with the  territory. The long car rides to Delhi filled with the one universe I have collected.   The books were the building blocks.   You see, I am a thief of your imaginations. These hands have stolen more spells and worlds and Normal  than there were pages that were held between these fingers. To be constantly lost in the tumult of the  sacred solitude, to dream of escape and leave the home of your skin as your mom and dad talk on without  a care. The dreams never stop.   I could never bind them either.  Day turned night. Night turned sunrise. The days are filtered through the lenses of dreams both mine and  thine. Plagues would be mites in the sands of the house already destroyed in the franchises of my mind,  cooking and creating video reels which have left me vacant. To see in the mind's eye almost reality, and  that c...

  My body is the forest floor and goosebumps are the wind that travels its length, shifting the earth,  awakening and groaning. I once learned that Iron is not born anywhere in nature but in our blood and the  heart of the stars we marvel in the night-time sky. I learned it again when I pricked my finger, and again  when dirt rose with the wind and winked at me in the last glimpses of dusk. Stardust or not, we are the  stuff of myth, the very proof of a life our telescopes and microscopes search for, for in our veins burns the  heart of a blue giant and the desire of humanity. We are the myths of the fey as we curl our fingers around  bark in the underwood, the gods when we are proud, unbelieving of our fall to come. I am not a believer  of divine people, but of divine things.   I once knew that we are built upon the ruins of kings and god-men who once believed they were invincible.   Where is their stardust now?  So I wai...