Aryaman Kakkar's Archive

(A bourgeois Indian family is seated at the dining table. It is early afternoon, and the air shimmers with scents full of promises of a lunch yet to be served. There are curtains in peach tones to the north and west of the set, and the light of LEDs mimicking the Indian summer sun filter in through the glass windows embedded in cardboard walls. The table is set with cutlery fit for special occasions, the legs ornately carved. A dresser of fine china adorns the wall to the east. Everyone is speaking, save a child sitting close to the head, head bowed towards the plate. The child / man speaks, and in the background, familial conversation continues without interruption.) Child/Man: Daydreams at midnight have become so common now. Eyes stinging with each line that my fingers scroll through, rooftop balconies decorated with speakers and empty diaries. Second guesses were never meant to be written down: they are lies trying to slide up these shrivelled cords. Dogs fly in the garden, the wee...

  My mother grew up with silent tongues in a house she still divides between the in-laws and her own.  Brilliant, her words are the gales before a monsoon storm, what flight truly is: joyous. I am terrified of  becoming like you, who hides different versions of the same whole. How much longer than 21 years do  you need? It is not a home if you still feel the need to call it the kitchen ‘hers’ and not your own. These  silences teach me that sometimes joining them means beating yourself into submission, derelict and  wasted in your mind. This fear, this anger that you see comes from fear, mother. Terror that one day I will  be silent too long, and before long, I won't be the only one the beating myself up. It is a cruel irony of  sorts: my mother who never speaks at all, my father to roars his rage with every drive of his phone, his  free hand swords cutting down enemies in his path. You'd be surprised by the number of times I say  ‘hypocr...

  Dirt finds a hideout in the caves of my fingertips. These nails are nothing but convenient spots to  disappear. Every piece from the time I've scratched myself, one grain from the tortilla I made last week,  history has attached itself to me like an unwanted hitchhiker on this human highway.  I shake my hands with everyone and see my stories walk the bridge of our thumbs. All the times I've  touched myself: no amount of soap will wash away the memory of losing myself to prayers of your name.  Hidden tales only time will tell, the faint scent of mirch and lassan rising from our grasp and your eyes  flicker, asking, realizing, glazed over with whatever imaginary confection you have hinted from my  world.  I say nothing. These gaps between our words are a psychological trick to see who breaks the silence first  and gluts on air to fill the void with the voice and thoughts we think about a second time and hide away.  The almost word...

  My teenage was a minefield of boys and men who thought ‘sixes’ were slurs and ‘cats’ were too. I came  out of this newly furbished closet when I was thirteen, confused. Called brave and stupid in the same  breath, I cursed myself for leaving the comfort of the dark too early.   Until I didn't.   Until I did.   Imagine the moment when a firecracker flies off into the night and bursts into this compass of falling stars  and you come pretty close to what it was like to like boys in an Indian all-boys boarding school. I shot up  in hope, in fear, in terror, and everyone burst away from me like the sparks of a firework too weak to light  up the sky, fizzling away into nothing with everyone leaving me behind. I hung out with the few girls that   were with me and then I was the ant to every boot that stereotyped me into every joke, every side glance  and mean sneer that completely forgot why I hung out with the girls ...

The walls outside my door cry tears for the heat that crashes against their skin, the cold they contain too  afraid to show love for warm hugs in any other way. The rotting bars they are betray the corpse that  grows and sinks in the body of my being.   I am done.   These flying hands and one-night kisses are promises of a different kind: they only last as long as you are  in front of me. With your words as shields and yours eyes hunger pangs for a body I no longer know how  to love. My thigh is flaking skin and I am a poorer Pennywise for it - I have never scared men away rather  called them closer. To touch, to tear, to use like pin pages in a notebook that you give to a friend in secret  when the teacher isn't looking and say, “Here. I know a guy who'll help you relax. Don't worry about him,  he'll do anything you tell him. He's desperate and lonely that way.”  I am done with ASL and role and likes. These funeral pyres of gh...