Ritika Jyala - Tumblr Posts
Sometimes I think this world is cruel and unjust but then I remember how I dropped my wallet when I was on the bicycle 8 years ago and a homeless man ran 6 blocks to return it to me. Sometimes I think this world is lonely and grey but then I let the rain touch my body and hear birds make their way home at evening and for a moment, just a moment- I understand why Prometheus stole fire and laid it at man's feet, why dying stars leave a trail of wishes, why I still love 6-year-old Erica I met on a summer trip a decade ago, even though I never saw her again.
Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
There'll be a moment when you realise you're 27 when yesterday you were just 17; and you wouldn't be able to tell how a decade passed away and your life got divided into before and afters. The fury of youth will subdue and nothing will really change but everything will feel different when you look at old photographs and blurry videos taken on cheap mobile phones. Scents will remind you of childhood and certain friends you don't talk to anymore, hangouts will become reunions and mom's burnt pie will become the best food you ever had. And I know on some days you won't be able to show anything of those 10 years but I hope you remember to breathe, and let go of the knot in your chest. I hope you go out in the sun and live a little, because tomorrow is 37.
Edit- I added the visualizer for this piece on my YT, check it out here
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
As a child, I had been obsessed with black holes. I wanted to know what it meant when people said they felt nothing, how everything- all of the universe and all of their life could fit inside nothing.
When you're a child, you cannot fathom seeing nothing when there's the sun, plants and broken parts of machines to look at, it feels impossible to be empty. I asked my grandpa if it hurt when he lost his left ear in the war. He tells me his brother lost his life. But did it hurt?, I ask again. Grandpa says it still hurts. I don't know if he's talking about his ear. Sometimes I see him drinking alone at night, tears rolling silently on either cheek and I understand how sometimes nothing can feel safer, how black holes devour the universe- and are still empty.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.
I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.
One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.
The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here
My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.
I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.
One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.
The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
On November 21, 2019, I had written in my diary, "I wish to glow up".
Watching girls that look like the soft winter snow falling like breadcrumbs, with faces that would put Aphrodite to shame- I wanted that; hair flowing like the quiet river when it's about to meet the sea- I wanted that. Because all my life I was taught to want that.
The magazine covers that lay around, stacked on top of each other in the drawers of my heart, had these women. The movies that I was in love with, advertisements and billboards, made me feel like I was stuck in the hour, physically so far- could never meet the bar. I saw myself as a ruin, a battlefield of scars, an abandoned city- yet filled with ghosts. A city that badly needed reconstruction.
So I took the 'before' photos because we have learned to divide life into pieces- before this and after that, as if life is big enough to be divided. And every Monday I said to myself, now is when you begin, start now. But I could never be like those girls- girls that feel like the morning dew, like sunshine breaking through the forest, those girls that fall like the soft winter snow. I was still the city, the ghost town that badly needed reconstruction.
But, did they ever teach you about the ruins of Giza, Coloseum and Konark, how the Great Wall is falling apart but is still Great? Tell me how beautiful the river looks when it's slashing through the mountains, not caring for beauty or grace, how her conviction is what makes her beautiful. Or how Aphrodite was never really the goddess of beauty. All she believed in was love and her love is what made her beautiful.
I did not worship my city until I realised that for hundreds of years, they have been trying to find the lost cities of Atlantis and Dwarka. I finally realized that I never needed to glow up. All I needed was to love myself and my beautiful city.
And so do you.
-Ritika Jyala, transcript from Don't glow up
I had written this piece when I was 15 and my poetry style has evolved a lot since then. But it's good to pay homage to my earlier works and learn how I can grow further. Last year, I posted a short video for this poem on my channel, here's the link if you're interested.
You wasted another day but the sun is still out there and it'll be there tomorrow and the day after. I hope you remember to love yourself a little bit more and brush your teeth before going to bed.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
Mama I don't want kids, I say. For the hundredth time. Mother has this look on her face, it sits still- something between disappointment and bewilderment. But who will take care of you, she says, when you're older? And that is a rotten feeling. To believe that a child is only as good as what it does for its parents. To believe you are only as good as you give. To believe you owe someone, only to feel love. Who deserves this? Who deserves this wretched snarling beast sitting in my chest, whispering, shrieking- give, give, give.
-Ritika Jyala, The Beast that makes me Give
Movies and books also don't tell you that friendships don't just end after one fight or incident, it's like the rusting of a bridge, the slow decay of flesh and bones and secrets.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
(read the whole thing here)