Is there a need to feel proud?
If so, you are still one of the crowd.

Wait for the day hardship arrives.
Destruction has one virtue —
it clears all doubt.

When difficulty finds you, face it.
However heavy — do not look away.

Learn. Experience. Write your theses.
The world may study them one day,
but the world is equally capable of forgetting them.

Recognition is a fragile reward.
Categories are a fragile prison.

People are here to fix your category —
and that is all the strategy.

The one who feels bound
will call the echo his voice,
the label his choice,
the fence his horizon.

The category that bears your name
was never yours to build.

Use your own wisdom —
and you will find
that what you called freedom
was only a well-decorated cage.

Do, to be written.
Write, to be spoken.

Or leap —
and discover
the world had named you
long before you arrived.

© Amit Choudhary, 2000 (Post 23P)

“O my life!
You came in,
and did what you wanted to.

You wanted me to be serious,
though it took time
to make me into one.

Then one day,
you found something too strange,
and went away.

Kept yourself at bay,
just to take care of mine.
Started saying no
to all that once was yes.

It was a good play
that you went away.

You had your life,
did not want me to realize.
Just kept that hanging bangle
over my head,
and changed me very nicely,
for no good reason—
perhaps no reason at all.

Ask God—
if you were right,
He would not have
brought you closer.
Closer at all.

Ask Him again.
Close your eyes.
If He says yes,
please come,
and play again.”

© Amit Choudhary, 2010 (Post 19P)

I’m too soft to be a man.
Juggling, pushing, hurrying—each of them.
When I step out into the crowd,
I feel the need for a magic wand.
I’m too soft to be a man.

Darwin spoke of the surviving man—
the fittest, the quickest—hungry for more.
Each morning, I read the rage,
spilling across every page.
I fear becoming one of them.
I’m too soft to be a man.

Now I see—he is not a man.
Teaching, unteaching, shaping men.
When consent is claimed,
and morals are drained,
I think God too is not a man.
I’m too soft to be a man.

She held us, showed what is a man.
Breaking, bending every frame they claim.
When they fight to be right,
in my sight,
I see they can be a man.
I’m too soft to be a woman.

© Amit Choudhary, 2012 (Post 11P)

Heard the master shouting,
felt him pull the reins.
I galloped, galloped, and galloped,
with wrists in pain.

I starved for a pat,
and starved for the grain.
Twisted, faster, better—
all strain in the vein.

One day, I broke the tether,
and galloped in the rain.
No reins, no master—
yet I feared the wild again.

I slowed before the morning,
unsure of any aim.
They found me where I started,
and led me back unchanged.

I was leashed before daylight,
the reins felt just the same.
I galloped, galloped, and galloped—
freedom was never the game.

© Amit Choudhary, 2010 (Post 9P)

Hey, beautiful day, I just wanted to wish—
listen—what your beauty means to me.

My eyes open—6:30, like yesterday;
they know they will not see, even today.

My body bathes, as needed, to face the day;
it knows it will not feel the touch today.

I meditate—it cools the mind every morning;
yet I know, it changes nothing.

Dawn, dusk, or noon—
no flavor.

I know it all,
yet I go on, with a fake smile.

Boring—smile-less, fun-less days;
again, and again—
when do they stop?

I no longer wait for anything to happen;
still, I go to office—
a machine, moving levers.

Years ahead—no cheer,
lived like the dead;
fake, worthless cheerfulness,
worn every day.

Hey, iteration—
the day returns,
and I say,
good morning, once again.

© Amit Choudhary, 2012 (Post 6P)