I was to cut out cat ears and attach them to my Alice band. And turn my nose into a tiny, black spot.

Cancelled that.

I thought I’d curl two locks of my hair into mouse ears. And look very Minnie Mouse-y.

Cancelled that.

I thought I’d slip on some roller skates and look all Roller Derby bad.

Cancelled that.

I then remembered all this rage I had. Rage I thought I’d left back in 2011.

So I thought I’d just be honest and make it my bitch.

Note: Not strictly a photograph but not a sketch either. Just used this online tool to convert a photograph to an ink drawing on crumpled paper, and to make it appear grungy and graphic.

Start a diary when you’re young.

Fill it up with your lonely secrets and your scintillating dreams.

Grow up a bit and watch it swell and morph into a dark nightmare.

And then, when you’ve had enough of your filthy secrets and misplaced thoughts,

BURN IT ALL UP. CRY. LAUGH. LET GO. LIVE ALL OVER AGAIN.

Giving All My Secrets Away

This time, don’t need another perfect lie
Don’t care if critics never jump in line
I’m gonna give all my secrets away.
- Secrets (One Republic)

Why live with a heart so heavy when all you need is honesty to liberate yourself of the burdens that hold you down. Why bother with hiding things that you’re shameful of when you can come out proud not a slave of your shame no more. Why bother with concealing your past, afraid it’d scar your future when all you need is to let go of everything that’s still keeping you behind.

Why these secrets, I asked.
And then I gave them all away.

I set up a pedestal one day

and in swathes of red, I dressed it up.

Someone chanced upon it one fine day 

and my pedestal no longer had an empty spot.

I came to adore and love the one who had clambered on

and then one fine day, they left it for a warmer one.

So that dreary day, I climbed upon my beautiful stage 

and ever since then over it, it is only I who holds sway.

I’m no chocolate or butterscotch, nor do I boast to be strawberry.

I’m the freshness of mint, the tang of passionfruit and the crunch of almond.

So don’t you mistake me for vanilla, for I’m anything but.

I like my doors exciting. Especially when I know they won’t lead to much excitement.

It may sound less like enchantment when you have to make things in your life seem so; but for all the good it does you at the end of it, it is fulfilment enough.

So what I did one day was to create a door for myself. Now, each time I pass by it, I feel a flare of satisfaction flood my mind. It’s brief, but it’s mine to savour.

Read this: Women with balls. Pisses you off right? (Answer no and you can save yourself the trouble and take off.)

@LimeIce’s friend posted that link on his profile. What resulted was spitting outrage from certain women you know against the author of that ridiculous piece, Paul Singh.

If articles like these are put up there for ‘ordinary’ men and women to read, is it any surprise then that there are so many people with low self-esteem issues? Is it any surprise then that so many people are cruel to their own natural bodies and take extreme steps to whip it into ‘shape’?

If people like these go about bandying this whole ‘real men’ and ‘perfect women’ nonsense, what are we ‘ordinary’ men and women to do? 

Oh wait, we can retaliate. This, is merely one such way in which we can. I sure hope you guys can think of a score of more ways. 

But please. STOP WRITING MISINFORMED ARTICLES LIKE THESE. 

A rusted leaf in the green wilderness.

Last night, as I was making my placard for Slut Walk and tweeting, a random person on Twitter who barely knows me told me this.

I was a tad bombed, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what my drinking had to do with anything. I tweet the same regardless of the presence or lack of alcohol in my blood. 

But what gave this stranger the right to say a thing like that to a woman? 

What gives men and women the right to judge a woman’s sexuality or her expression of it and shame her for it?

I refuse to believe I offended this person. I refuse to hold back from expressing myself the way I want to and in a manner I feel is completely natural for me.

Just because I’m a woman/wife/someone’s daughter/sister etc. doesn’t mean I have to shove my thoughts and opinions under the folds of some mental veil spun out from someone’s ridiculous and outdated notions of propriety.

As a girl brought up in an Indian small-town, I have heard notions like these bandied about nearly all of my growing life. They hurt, they cage, they anger, they suffocate.

I may be living in a different country now, but thanks to last night, I realised that this warped mentality still hounds me.

I’ve had enough.

Kitchen Play

When left to your own devices, what do you do? 

Do you keep calm and carry on, or do you whip up your best storm?

You can fit a million exciting moments in your me-time or you can just take another snore. 

This girl tells the woman to just go ahead and play.