How long is ten years? Mine has been a forever. Fell in love to start with, And had my heart broken to end everything. Wrote poems of love once, now I write of pain and suffering. I nurtured the idea of together forever. Now when there's no together, It's an end to that forever. They said the world would end in 2012. I wish it did and my forever couldn't even start. Because now my world has ended in 2022 while everything else still continues. This world has not taken notice of mine that I had built for myself, of love and dreams and all things nice. Nothing changes on the outside as I have collapsed on the inside. The sun and the moon still the same, the rains and the floods, still consistent. Only I am no more myself. They say time heals everything. I ask how much time? Another forever maybe?

If everything was good, maybe then this would have been a good season. We would have gone out on a walk and met rain on the way. You would have forgotten the umbrella, and we would have taken shelter at the roadside eatery. And that would be our little date there eventually, watching the rain sipping warm tea. This is probably better ambience than the cafe you wanted to visit for a cappuccino. The breeze is cold, I would have put my arm around you. And when the rain would have settled to a drizzle, I'd again insist on a walk back instead of a cab to prolong the evening. I've always loved walking holding your hand, sometimes your waist and sometimes you holding my arm in that signature way of yours. We would have inadvertently held each other in all the ways in the duration of the walk. Anytime I left your hand or waist your reflexes would have done the signature grip around my arm. And we would have talked, smiled and laughed along the way. Later at night, when the world would be hit by a storm, there will be a furious wind, lightning and thundering, we'd be unaware of it all. Because our world inside our room would be full of love, lust and romance. And when there's calmness both outside and inside, we'd be exhausted and you'd sleep on my arm, again in another signature way of yours. You said you sleep peacefully on my arm. If only everything was good. But nothing is good these days. Not a morning, not a night. And this season, not at all. Gloomy days and stormy nights. Destruction all around, innocent people losing home and put in misery. I haven't been safe either even within safe and sound concrete walls. The storm inside me even more destructive than the one outside, you see. I shall hate this spring forever.

What you know is a drop, what you don't is an ocean, is how I'd define my pain to you. It's as great as my love for you. And why not? All that love is where this pain has emanated from. I wish I loved you a little less. Fell so hard in love then only to end up broken today. I'm a balloon of pain, overfilled. Your press anywhere with your fingertip the pain rushes to the rest of me. I've swallowed back more tears than I've dropped. Such has been my existence, of suffering. In fact, I'm swallowing back as I write this. Might as well drop a few till I finish. This pain I didn't need. This hurt I couldn't imagine. This phase of life I can't get through. What do I do? I don't know whether I'm living or surviving or merely existing. My soul is dead and it's neither at rest nor in peace.

It's the mornings that's toughest. The feeling of emptiness that I wake up with instead of your GOOD MORNING text sets the tone for a day that's going to be lonely. I go through the morning chores almost reluctantly as if I'm left with no energy after a dreadful night of sleep full of sad dreams that gets me weary. As if the tears I actually drop throughout the day are not enough to acknowledge this pain and grief that I cry in the dreams too. Mustering all my strength to live by day after day, but so little of it that I'm left with, even all of it falls short to take me through. A broken heart, a disturbed mind, even I doubt my lungs or the air quality, for I choke sometimes suddenly. I think there's a bit of pain in the air too, too much pollution you see. Where have I come to be? Is this a bad dream or really reality? If it's the former somebody wake me up, please, and if it's the latter, change the fucking reality.

For everything that there exists there is pain associated with it. How could have I not had some of it? This war I never wanted. I've been a lover of peace. But if the world was to end tomorrow, I would care little. For mine has ended already. Devastated as I am today, terrified of facing tomorrow. Countless are the pieces of my heart, shattered, left incapable of anything except for what's only biological. All my senses conspiring against me to make me feel nothing but one thing. Every functionality of the world is only a mere formality. Whether the sun shining bright or the heavens pouring down, the gentle breeze caressing my skin or the wild wind ripping my clothes, only pain is what I feel. Everything else is just as irrelevant as anything. I'm afraid of living. Take me backward in time, forward is not where I want to be.

I've come thus far unfurling life as it comes, going through the motions, and with the flow, taking this ride sitting on the backseat, driven by life, through thick and thin, and everything. Where I want to go is only my wish. Where I might end up is not known to me. In the end, I'm living the best version of me, in the best place, with the best people I know, I want to believe that.

We have had times and moments when we owned the world. Everything else was just as irrelevant as anything. As if nothing else of significance had been happening then. Every functionality of the world was only a mere formality. Whether it was the sun shining bright or the heavens pouring down, the gentle breeze caressing our skin or the wild wind ripping our clothes, it was the perfect setting for the love we were sharing. We weren't children of our parents, friends of our friends or fellow human beings of billions like us. We were just lovers of each other in a world of our own. I was yours. You were mine. And the world was ours.

When I fail to make sense of my thoughts, I wonder if it is my own mind possessing such thoughts which are so uncharacteristic of me. It is as if somebody has hacked my mind and taken control of it. I feel what I don't want. I think what I don't want. But I just can't help. And I can't make sense. It's a juggle of thoughts in my mind making me feel a thousand things. I am no more myself. I want to let go but I keep holding on. I want to forgive but I stay angry. All the calmness and my sanity removed from within me. I can't even reason my thoughts and emotions. And I'm afraid not even scans, CT or PET, can give any answers. I am sick but you can't see, I can't figure and no one can cure. What is wrong with me?

I'm afraid of death. Not my death. Of the people I love and keep close to my heart. In 2012 the elder brother of a friend of mine died aged 28. I saw his mother cry and faint. I thought she'd cry to death. I think outliving your children is the greatest pain possible for a human being. Death is inevitable. Fine, I know it. But couldn't it be of a nature that it came to people only when they have lived their share of life and are content with it. I do not like untimely death. That it cuts someone's life short is so unfair. And the amount of pain the dead's close ones are put through is not fair as well. It's painful to the dead's close ones regardless of his/her age. And when it's untimely the loss is all the more difficult to accept. When losing someone does not align with letting them go the loss can be excruciating. My mother is a patient of hypertension. Her blood pressure sometimes gets too high and her condition gets so bad that she needs to be admitted in the emergency ward of the nearest hospital. Last year there was such a day and her condition gave me the fright of my biggest fear. She was in a particularly bad condition that day. I remember looking at her lying on the hospital bed and thinking of the worst. I called my best friend and didn't speak a word, only wept. Thankfully, she was fine after a few hours of treatment. I'm aware of how people with hypertension suddenly die of stroke. The elder brother of my friend I mentioned above died of the same thing. I haven't lost anyone to death yet. There have been deaths of people I knew. But none whose death caused me even a teardrop. In a life what has been I don't know cruel or kind to have given me so many experiences definitely has been kind so far not to have given me the pain of death of a close one. However, I know I can't escape it. For death is a reality. But what I want is it should not be untimely. Because the people who are close to me mean the world to me. I want them to have a complete life and die only when they are old, warm in a bed, content and satisfied. The fear is not of death but untimely death.

The night has always seemed closer than the closest the day has ever been. I like the dark where I can be myself unseen by the world that's always judging. I'm all naked at night. My body remains dressed but I undress my soul baring all the scars and insecurities that I hide with my best efforts throughout the day. When the noises are less and the chaos moves into houses from the streets that's when I feel confident inside the four walls of my room where I'm all by myself and I actually am myself. I keep the windows closed and the curtains drawn, not even letting the air outside get into my space. True that nights are not as fun or jolly. I'm often sad and lonely. All the demons of the past and thoughts of a purposeless future haunt me. I wonder whether the world is a bully or I am too mousy. Some nights I cry myself to sleep. On some I keep tossing and turning. You see, there ain't no peace. But my comfort with the night lies in the fact that it's all reality. I am real and everything else inside my room is. My tears are real unlike the fake smile I put up on my face in the day to avoid the not so empathetic sympathy. My lips and face, without any shades of pink and red, may be ugly but is all real if anybody were to see. So, before the day breaks and I face this world with a fake face and a fake soul let me endure my true self for the night that's close to me.

Not the Khan who'd charm you with his looks. Not the Khan who'd fill the halls with remakes and sequels. Not the Khan of your dreams. Not the Khan you'd keep in your prayers. Irrfan Khan. The Khan of another kind. The Khan who'd never disappoint you. The Khan who'd charm you with what he's supposed to, acting. The Khan who'd fill the halls with what he's supposed to, content. He's the Khan of your reality. And that reality has hit you hard today, hasn't it? You wish you prayed for his life when it mattered, not for the peace of his soul which is lost. You wish you celebrated him more while he was around. You wish you appreciated him more when you had the time, or perhaps when he had it. You didn't know he was worth his name, KHAN, until LATE is put before it.

Somedays I'm a broken heart. Somedays I'm the happiest soul. Somedays I'm a lover. Somedays days I'm full of hate. Somedays I'm a man, Somedays I'm a woman, also there are days when I'm a gay, and on some a transgender. Somedays I'm a wise old monk. Somedays I'm an immature child. Somedays I'm the sky. Somedays I'm the rain. I am a writer, and I am all that I write about.

There they keep me in the pigsty of patriarchy. And the stinking pong of it has sickened me. I don't belong there, that's a graveyard for femininity. Every day is daunting and nights are unending, my soul being killed over and over again, with their pervy gazes, shrill voices, dirty hands silencing my revolt, muscular bodies violating my chastity. I'm left with only a body, my soul buried in that bog of patriarchy. And so I have come, to my mother. I'll show her the marks and the scars, I'll show her the burns. I've brought the tiny pieces of my shattered heart for her to see. And I'll beg in front of her for mercy, not to send me back to that swampy land of patriarchy. So, I must dash. For I've gotten mad. I'll dance along the way, set the storm within me free for the world to see my fury.

As I stared out of the window that night, into the sky, I couldn't see the moon. There weren't any stars in sight either. Pitch black it was! The dark clouds had grasped it under their spell. It cried out, may be to the moon or the stars who he thought were his friends and would be there in his darkest times. But alas! The entirety of it left all alone that night. Frightened and terrified, no way out, it gave in. I wondered how I could understand the sky so well that night. A voice within me answered, "Because you're like the sky yourself, tonight. All alone and lonely. Weak and vulnerable." And then, we broke down, in sync, the sky in rains and I in tears. Don't know how long had it been till we were exhausted and dry, and whether I slept or died. The sun next morning hit me with a ray of sunshine and brought me back to my senses, quite literally, entering through that very window. And I opened my eyes to stare into the sky once again. Only it was blue this time. Clear and bright in the sun's company. Almost as if it had fled all the demons of the night with bravery to smile at me with pride. I took a moment. Then smiled back and began the day with a new intent.

West Indies, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and now South Africa, three World Cup winning nations and one nation as good as the other three though they have no World Cup to show, are not posing big threat to the top nations like India, Australia, England and New Zealand. It's almost as if these eight nations can be divided into two categories based on the quality of cricket they have been putting on display: the former four in one category and the latter four in the other. And this division has not been good for the health of cricket. The quality of international cricket has degraded with these teams' performances falling drastically. West Indies was the first team to suffer this downfall to be later joined by Sri Lanka and Pakistan creating a group of their kind with the latest entry to the group being that of South Africa. The two major and common reasons for this have been their big guns retiring and not finding proper replacements of them and board politics. South Africa, unlike any other team, has faced another issue, which is losing potential international regulars to Kolpak deals. This being the scenario, right now in World Cricket, we have only four teams playing good consistent cricket, i.e. the latter group. What this has done is that, it has made cricket predictable and the predictability was there to be seen in the recent ODI World Cup 2019 with everyone, prior to the tournament, predicting the top four teams of the tournament exactly as it turned out to be. In sports, where is the fun if you can predict, right? In the years gone by, there was no such gap between teams as is the case now. Although Australia was the most dominant team, all the other teams were not too far away from one another. These eight teams were the super eight of World Cricket. Sri Lanka were the runner up of two successive ODI World Cups, 2007 & 2011. Pakistan were the runner up in the 2007 T20I World Cup and the winner of the next edition in 2009 and ended up as one of the semi-finalists in the ODI world cup 2011. South Africa, as we know are under performers in World events, only going as far as the semi-finals in 2007 & 2015 World Cups, were always a big competition in general. They were the best travelling team in Test cricket till recently. West Indies do not have much to show in formats other than the T20 where they are the only team to have won two World Cup titles. This is because the fall of West Indies in the other two formats had started a lot earlier than the other three teams. Where there has been questions raised, discussions done, debates held, opinions sought on the survival of Test cricket, no such talks have been heard of as to the survival of the very sport altogether. According to me, cricket, the sport, is under threat. Not only one format. So then, can a sport sustain itself with only four quality teams?