Poems - Chawnga

What Ails You?

I want to know what helps you sleep at night. Of little disputes, light grazes or even emotional mortal wounds that we have to deal with every so often, deep cuts just heal
too slow but maybe for a cause; the value of trusting and the price of betrayal.
Something that shapes us now, everything we’ve experienced, individually or
collectively.

I want to know so much more. Tell me what ails you?

I’m glad we met, and I hope you never forget me. Even if you leave me.
I’ve learnt you can’t expect everyone to be there, all the time.

People need space to grow. To think. To romanticize;
to overthink, to act recklessly, spontaneously.
A double-edged process in which it’s your choice and mine collectively;
The existence of our bond and our meaning lies in each of us.
And I do hope, through it all that you always find meaning in us.

Something superficial, love, like justice and law – they are crucial cogs in the
collective understanding which we have built up, stories that we have told ourselves,
stories in the civilization that has been the product of human constructs, which have
no meaning without us humans interpreting those stories.

To find meaning in this small speck, a fraction of existence we get to savour.

Tell me again, what ails you?

An Open Letter to Us

Hey you,

You just went off the radar. I was worried.

I mean, I should worry; friends who have supported me through my trivialities. Even the smallest scratch gets diagnosed, yet still the friends who get to peek off the deepest wounds life had inflicted. And each has their time, you can’t expect everyone to be there all the time.

As long as they’re alive, the ones who understand will always be open for reconciliation and confrontation.

Do trust others, but also do not be naive; trust accordingly.
You’re too smart for your own good, the self-conscious person that I admire for your strength and vulnerability.

The moments shaped us, like a young nation starting to build itself. All craving for meaning and dreading the life un-lived.

My friend, I have trusted you with honesty and myself. I do hope I’m sometimes useful or amusing but always the one you trust.

Loyalty, I won’t ask of you; for our views may have conflicts, better confronted than silently alit. I won’t ask you to compromise your “Self” for something as vain and selfish. I continue to ask for honesty and communication, be it in any volume at any bulk of time you have limited for you.

Our conflicts and confrontation will be the ones weaving our experience.

Comrade, rest well, for we have the world to confront and most importantly ourselves.

 

Chawnga (Chawngthanmawia) calls himself a young radical who was involved in the Darjeeling Insurgency as a schoolboy. He says he has been influenced by the writings of Rosa Luxemburg and Bhagat Singh, to name a couple, and is convinced that writing has the power to influence history. Despite claiming to be a pessimist, he hopes to work towards helping humanity in some way and to make a ripple with long lasting effect if only for just one person.

He is currently a college student in Aizawl.