Acr-lic Colour

 _ ____ is like a hot potato  I don't want to hold it  It's too big to throw away ____ is  like a hot potato  I hold on to it  So you don't have to  ____ is like a hot potato  Watching you hold it Still hurts somehow ____ is like a hot potato  I throw it at whoever's around When I can't hold it any longer ____ is like a hot potato  It will cool in time If ____ really is like a hot potato  Maybe we should pass it around  So when it cools,  Our hands are reddened,  but still whole  And we could make a salad  - Ananya  10th December 2024

Some nights before I started to write this in mid-2022, I dreamt that I was in an aircraft that was plummeting to the earth. I was not surprised by this dream - less than a week had passed since a tragic plane crash in China. What did surprise me was that I had continued to hope that the plane would right itself until the very end. So when I woke up, breathing hard, still alive, what upset me the most about my nightmare was not that the plane had crashed, but that I had not made peace with my death in those final moments.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about death in the last two years; many of us probably did as we anxiously watched counters on dashboards, each uptick marking the end of another human life. On nights when my overactive imagination conjured up terrible scenarios, I protected myself by taking a mental step back and reminding myself that death was inevitable. But creating distance made me feel guilty. Was it not wrong to feel anything less than all the sadness I...

  Ananya Ravikumar Dec 2019 Quiet is not silence  It is the chirp of crickets on a warm summer night, and the rushing sound of leaves swaying in the breeze. Quiet is not silence  It is the whirr of the ceiling fan on a lazy summer afternoon and the comfortable buzz that sounds fade into as you get a little sleepy. Quiet is not silence  It is the patter of those first raindrops hitting the ground,  the gurgling of the water fountain, and the sound of the sea No, I don’t think quiet is silence  It is the azan on a distant loudspeaker,  the sound of the conch from a morning prayer, the shrill whistle of a pressure cooker, the rumble of traffic, the unintelligible cries of street vendors, the screams of children at play  - the sounds I grew up with -  the absence of which I try so hard to drown out, In search of that peace and quiet. Ananya Ravikumar April 2020

                                      Art: Ananya Ravikumar We returned to the place, that precious place,  We played in so many years ago. To return to those days, those precious days, When we laughed and sang and talked. And at first glance, it was all still there, The sky, the dirt and the grass. And at first I rejoiced, and started to hope We could go back to the past Then I looked up, and found instead of the fat, fluffy clouds of that day, Just wisps of white, and even those, The wind was blowing away. The grass we rolled in was long gone, Replaced by newer blades And though it all looked like before  Nothing was the same With growing dread, I turned around To look at you and me Were you still the girl I loved back then,  The one I longed to see? I returned from that place, the unfamiliar place We played in so many ...

                                                                  It is an era of freedom Of speech and of expression We raise our voice over the clamour We love to share our vision; Share our pictures, share our words,  Drag our enemies though the dirt; We judge what's right and wrong, We cry out when we hurt. But what about the thoughts of those Who cannot type their troubles? Who grew up in a slower world, Now trapped in ever-shrinking bubbles And what about the thoughts of those Who fear just to voice them? People of whom we do not speak Before you judge, put on their shoes. Would you listen to your story, Before condemning you? And what about the the thoughts of those who have no words to speak them? Who feel f...

Hello again. I’m back. For now.  I stopped blogging because I ran out of things to write about. The upside of not taking many risks and not traveling much is a fairly stress-free and safe life. The downside is that you don’t have anything interesting to write on a blog about yourself. I briefly considered doing book reviews and stuff like that - but I think there are enough better qualified people out there who are already doing that.  Another reason for my silence is some major changes in my lifestyle and beliefs. I am now a vegan and an atheist. Both changes happened gradually and were challenging in different ways. I might talk about them in future posts, but the purpose of this post is something else. I’m interning at CMU this summer. It’s day two of my trip and I already have anecdotes to share.  I write this post from my room in an attic in Pittsburgh. It just stopped raining, and the cool breeze from the window next to me carries in the scent of ...