The Bengali Chic

We didn’t break. There was no loud goodbye, no slammed door, no final breath of rage. Just space widening like a tide we forgot to swim against. You still smiled, but not the same way. Your words still came, but later, and lighter. Like you were learning how to say less of me.  I reached across the distance with laughter, with softness, with the version of me you used to crave. But you held your silence like a shield; and I, not knowing where it hurt, could not press gently enough. Now we are two familiar strangers, still shaped by each other, but fading from the frame. And the saddest part is; no one was cruel. We just stopped arriving  at the same time.  Pritha Krishna

Like a breath of fresh air, it entered my life quietly  and stayed. It stirred my wants awake, lit rooms in me I didn’t know were dark. Things I’d never named as need began to knock, again and again, until they lived in my thoughts. The want to reach, to have- like thirst in the middle of the sea: water everywhere, not a drop that satisfies. Blessed with abundance, yet hollow. Achieving everything, yet somehow consumed by what was missing. There is a feeling that turns your stomach into a question, that makes hunger out of fullness- you eat to the brim and still feel a void chewing from inside. Joy, too, becomes a chase: you hold it, and it slips into purpose. Happiness arrives with tears, and even when it fills you, something keeps asking for more.  This is how consuming works perhaps, not the lack of having, but the having without lacking. Everything you dreamed of in your hands, and still a restlessness gnawing at their worth. Is it mea...

It began with conversations; the kind that arrive unannounced, spoken by strangers who never meant to stay. Stories rooted in compassion for the world and its people, told by some weathered by half a century of living, and others still learning how to look at society without flinching. I moved through crowded streets that never remembered my name, along beaches where footsteps dissolved behind me. I swam through salt-thick waters and crossed quiet bridges of feeling, traveling not toward a destination but away from a restlessness I could not name; hoping meaning might surface long enough to feel like fulfillment. Along the way, I met people who left impressions deeper than time allowed: untethered connections born of late conversations, of laughter shared without promises, brief, radiant, and unrepeatable. Now, what lingers is what always does; happiness slipping like sand through open hands, tan lines fading where the sun once held me. My eyes remember what m...

She rested her chin on his chest and slowly touching the fine line near his eyes said, “I wish time would stop.” He turned his face in the opposite direction & took a big sigh. Sensing his discomfort she moved her chin from his chest and lay on her back looking at the ceiling. “I’m sorry but I’m scared of emotions and I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”, Eliza said, turning towards her. Lily was aware of the history but the timing was never right for them, not three years back, and not now either. “Don’t worry, I’m seeing someone else, so nothing will happen between us.”, lily replied. She then jolted off the bed and started dressing up, “I’m gonna be late now, I should leave.”, she said. Colder than ever her voice sounded but tears accumulated in her eyes. Eliza was shocked processing all the information. He wanted her to stay but felt hurt knowing she was already with someone else. He walked her to the lift,   Lily turned back giving him a kiss. She kept her eyes closed as ...

I wonder where the Peace went. I wonder where I lost my comfort. Searching in strangers souls, Hoping to reunite my surrenders, When happiness was a constant feeling, When anxiousness was mere a word in the dictionary, Perhaps the love was the loathsome truth, The truth I had right in front of me. I wonder when the love got lost, In between those “I can’t live without you”, I found the truth of "I think I’ve never loved you enough", If I did you’d feel more content and yet, I stand on the edge of this hill,  Looking at the mesmerising sunset, And you one text away, But I feel uncomfortably sick. Sick that past all these years you were the medicine to my panic attacks, And now you’re just someone I’ve known yet I know nothing about. Pritha Krishna

Where should I begin the unhinged tangled story, Should I be the protagonist or the villain. Or should I narrate the story of Hawk and Tim, How they were in love & I was just a short chapter in their epic story, How I lived through Hawks colluding sexual identity, Or How I supported Tim’s journey out the closet.  Should I begin with the lies I learned,  Or Should I share how the love lost again? Perhaps, I should begin with apologies, For I walked by Tim until Hawk caught a glimpse of me I was loyal to our friendship until Hawk made eyes at me, We were young, dump and rather tortured by our stagnant endearings. Lost in our mind and hung up on realities. Tim was always in love with hawk, only to be caught in his fear of identity,  I walked in when winter came by, closer then ever they stood in false reality, I was just a passerby, an insignificant letter to their unrequited tales of love.  Until the sand castle came down with waves, Desires, F...