अब दुनिया चाहे इसे डर कहे या एहतियात,
पर मैंने अपने तजुर्बे से ये सीखा है की—
क्यूँ हर ग़लती की माफ़ी देना सही नहीं,
क्यूँ हर शिकायत को नज़र अंदाज़ करना वाजिब नहीं,
क्यूं हर गांठ खोलना किसी एक की ज़िम्मेदारी नहीं,
और अकेले, प्यार की ख़ातिर, रिश्ता निभाते रहना ज़रूरी नहीं।
क्यूंकि खैरात में मिली मोहब्बत और इज्ज़त से बेहतर
तो वफ़ादारी से नवाज़ी गई रूकवायी और बदनामी है।

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What Love Is Not

You cannot put a sham of control and call it love,
You can't take away my peace and expect me to stay sane,
You cannot restrict my individuality in the name of protection,
Do not try to tame my thoughts because you seek compliant company,
Curbing my freedom to be is not care,
Constant ridicule disguised as criticism is not tough love,
Gaslighting me won't make you look right,
Shaming my opinion won't make yours more worthy,
Trying to portray yourself as the victim of my anger
cannot hide your arrogance that prevents you from understanding
difference and dissent, let alone respecting rejection or reasoning.
Mental and emotional manipulation is not the tool to be used for carving out the model of a loving, promising, and happy relationship.

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पूरे ज़माने की शिकायतें लेकर जिनके पास जाते हैं,
अब उनसे मिले ग़म की दास्तान किसको सुनाए?
हम जिन्हें हर दर्द की दावा बना बैठे हैं,
उनके दिए घाव भर सके ऐसा मरहम कहाँ से लाएँ ?
जिस शख़्स को अपना जहान मान लिया है,
उसकी दुनिया में अपनी जगह कैसे बनायें?
जब ज़िंदगी ही उस मोहब्बत के नाम लिख दी है,
तो ज़ालिल होने के लिए कहीं और क्यूँ जायें?
और बाद इसके अगर फ़ना होना ही तक़दीर है,
तो इश्क़ के अलावा कोई और वजह क्यूँ चाहें?

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आख़िर क्या चाहिए मोहब्बत में रिश्तों को नाम देने के लिए?
शख़्सियत, चाहत, नियत, कैफ़ियत, हैसियत, किस्मत,
या सिर्फ़ कोई ऐसा जो आप से भी उतनी ही शिद्दत से
मोहब्बत कर सके जितनी आप उससे करते हैं।

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Certainly, yours wasn't the hand I first held,
but it's the one I most dearly want to hold today.

Sure, you weren't the first to utter those three magical words,
but no one has ever meant them more deeply than you.

Yes, we failed to see love in each other's eyes at first sight,
but all the dreams I dream with open eyes are incomplete without you.

Indeed, I'm familiar with the feeling of being in love,
but the ecstasy of being loved in return is beyond price.

Doubtlessly, I have spent my brightest days elsewhere,
but with you, I desire not just to exist but to live,
to grow old, and to wait for the day we begin anew in whatever comes after.

By all odds, love has happened to me before,
but never so passionately, so naturally, so promisingly.

Even though I may not be able to call you my first,
I am claiming you as my last, my only, my always—
non-negotiable and precious.

If you are a blessing, then you're the one I have spent my life praying for.
If you are a sin, then I'm prepared to burn for eternity
in exchange for even a moment of loving and being loved by you.

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The Yearning Heart


I miss a home I do not own,
I seek to please a family I was never born into,
I search for a friendship I have never found in any friend,
I hunger for a love that perhaps no longer exists in these times,
I crave care in ways the world refuses to offer,
And I yearn to live in a manner that seems almost
impossible to attain;
So is it I who expects too much,
or are they who no longer offer even the bare minimum?
Is life inherently unfair,
or am I unreasonably, desperately hopeful?

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What troubles you more, my love?
My presence in your life or my existence at all?
Be what it may, if your happiness, peace, and well-being demand my departure from your life, then I shall withdraw myself and leave in such silence that my absence will hardly be noticed, let alone felt and mourned.
And that is my love for you, sweetheart—love enough to not even have you for myself, so that you may have everything other than me.

If loving you means loving you from a distance,
If caring for you means caring from the shadows,
Then let my love be the ghost that guards your joy,
The whisper that never disturbs your peace,
The vacancy that gives you space to soar,
The silence that lets you sing out of joy.

Let me perish, for you to flourish,
Let me lose, disappear into dust, for all I dream is for you to win, rise, shine, and celebrate—with or without me.

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Because expectation was
my biggest mistake,
One that disappointed me
so hard that it's broken
pieces still prick my eyes,
Taunt me of my stupidity,
And remind me of my
redundant reliance on
others that I still regret.

I've learned that the ache
of unmet expectations
cuts deeper than loneliness ever could,
That trusting my own rhythm
feels safer than dancing
to someone else's broken promises.
So now I choose solitude
not as punishment but as protection.

In this chosen isolation,
I'm not running from connection—
I'm learning to love
the one person who will never
leave me stranded:
Myself.

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How difficult it is to love less or unlove someone you once passionately loved with all your heart, let alone hate them?
And oh, forgetting them!
That demands ripping your soul into fragments, your eyes bleeding—just not in red—your mind tortured, tormented, and screaming for help without making a single sound.

Because you still haven't stopped loving them?
Perhaps worse, you can't find the version of yourself that could love so fiercely anymore.
Perhaps it's not the person you lost that you're grieving, but the love you were capable of giving—that's what died.
Though they left, what's left behind isn't the you you're searching for.

The question that haunts isn't whether they'll return, but whether you will—the you who knew how to love without fear, without reservation, without the armor that now guards your wounded heart.

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मैंने ख़ुद को भीड़ में तन्हा और तन्हाइयों में महफ़ूज़ पाया है,
जिनके दिल में मेरे लिए परवाह तक न थी उनका साथ बेनफ़्स निभाया है,
उल्फत और वफ़ा एक साथ मिलना तो खुशकिस्मती होती है,
हमने तो उस बेवफ़ा को भी बेशुमार मोहब्बत से अपनाया है।

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