Reader

Dear soulmate,

I wanted to show you my favourite shades of sunset My best pictures of the sky. To have you sit next to me in my terrace and tell you about the thoughts I had when you weren't here yet.

I wanted to tell you how much my friends mean to me. To tell you about the hundred times I hesitated to tell you all this.

Read all of my letters to you. The times you broke my heart. Unaware at first, but knowingly the next.

I wanted to tell you about my favourite books and why elio and i are the same depressed cowards. To read you my favourite parts of the book. To have you stand next to me and hold my hand while a rainbow of colours flutter around us.

To kiss you in the crowd, with people that wear their hearts on their sleeves. In the rainbow colours. In a little flag on their chest.

I wanted to love you in unimaginable ways. Ways that the writers would want to take a note of. Ways the musicians end up jealous of the melodies we make up. In ways that's never heard of. Never seen.

I wanted to make a new meaning of the three words that i never told you. I wanted us to have a meaning that's only ever known to us. Because I know if they do too, it's not ours anymore.

I wanted to have you stand in the best spot in my room and find every single colour that swims in your eyes and paint it. I wanted to memorise when and why your eyes change.

I wanted to make love to you until I see a different colour in your eyes and paint the exact ones. I wanted to travel far and wide and know every single mark on your thighs. I wanted to have you kiss me until all that revolves around me is you. The time, the weather, the noise. To let everything be you. Only you.

But you disappeared before i could even have a chance to tell you my name. The one only very few know.

i see funders i see activists pied-piping us away from freedom.

oh friends! no one will lead us, fund us.

somewhere somehow on the road, the road to freedom, we will find ourselves walking together, you and I. sharing bread and ideas. freely

the new god shall wear skins of old gods trinkets of justice too and drink from the same cup fresh salty tears

I don’t know what love is; But I look at my mother, And she always gives us One extra piece of fish, Even if there is none for her. She keeps her sorrows to herself, And she never asks for help Cleaning the house, or doing the laundry, or cooking for us all. Maybe, love is sacrifice. But I don’t know, She expects me to be a version Of a boy I could never be. She would never say, “I love you” or “I am proud of you”, But she tells me things That makes me want to Crawl inside a hole or Bury myself alive. And I can never tell her How much she hurts me Because she says She does it out of Love.

I don’t know what love is; So when I fell in love With a boy, I became My mother. I gave him my all. Love became labour for me. I also cooked, cleaned, and Did all the laundry. Give sex when he wanted. And eventually my love withered. I learned the hard way That love doesn’t stay If I feel unseen. So when I caught him cheating, I didn’t scream; I didn’t beg; I kicked him out. I got drunk, and I Cried my heart out alone In my bedroom. I could not get out Of my bed for Months. Because I felt my love Just wasn’t enough.

I don’t know what love is; But when I look at my friends, Navigating through life, My heart fills with warmth. I could never handle them suffer, Or be in discomfort, Or struggle in any way. It took me years to figure out How to be present for them. And how sometimes Letting them figure things out On their own Is the kindest thing to do. Maybe love isn’t just About actions but also about Inaction; letting things go. But again, if I don’t reach out I get complete silence from Most of them till they need My help with something. Maybe love comes with Terms and Conditions attached About how useful are you To people, or worse; That they are not really friends In the first place.

I don’t know what love is See, I have been cruel to myself. I skip meals, I struggle making Boundaries, I give labour Till my body breaks. Maybe love comes at a cost. I chase the grand love Poets write about But I never see it in the world. I have seen men philosophise About love and fail to practice What they preach. I have seen women enslaved In the name of love. I have seen women begging To be Witnessed for the Labour they do for love. I have seen women Spend their whole lives Searching for someone to Just hold them lovingly. And I have also been all Of those women.
Maybe love is just fantasy of men Who discards the labour it takes To love somebody in their entirety. Maybe love is just work Noticing, Being Kind, And Picking up after each other. Maybe Love can’t exist alone; Maybe Love is a collective. I read in a book that the First sign of love was someone Who carried someone with a Broken leg and waited for them To heal. But now we need Self-help books and reels on Social Media to tell us How to fall in love with ourselves.

Maybe I don’t understand What love is yet. Maybe I’ll never know what Love is. But that is okay, I am gonna Seek it out anyway. And when I am old and frail and on my deathbed; Ask me once more about What Love is. Maybe I’ll have something Better to offer than this Lousy rant of a poem.

Neither artificial nor intelligent, AI are big powerful computers and ginormous data centres, using up electricity that the people need, wasting water that the planet needs, and made of silicon, copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, and other stuff, mined by people who remained poor, exhausted, exploited.

The AI data are spoils of theft – the pictures you shared, stolen; the text on websites, stolen; the writing by millions of authors, stolen; the brilliance of millions of creatives, stolen; Emotions, memories, associations, labour, histories, Stolen! By the Empire of AI.

The AI algorithms are powered by millions of data workers – Sorting, labelling, selecting, guessing, checking, to lift out the words that might hurt or hate, to sift out the pictures that are unsafe,
for low pay, long hours, and no job security, traumatised by what they must bear and see. Hear it from Wilington Shitawa! Don't hear it from me.

The AI technologies make predictions, based on patterns in the data – What is the next word in its output? What should be the colour for that pixel? What will you buy next, see next, like next? Do you want prediction to be your information?

Families denied welfare in the Netherlands. Black people denied healthcare in the USA. Poor neighbourhoods turned into crime hotspots, Asylum denied because the lawyer used chatbot, Palestinian man arrested. “Good Morning” translated as “Kill them.” AI Snake Oil for the people, AI profit for the bosses. Injustice structured by algorithms, coded by engineers, sold by billionaires, administered by the State.

They sell it as intelligent. And we are all so excited. Oh! It can do this! Oh! It can do that! We did not pay the writers, the designers, the artists, the singers, but we will pay for AI slop?

The AI Con Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Machine! Machine that can think like a human!! Only better!!! The minions of the empire have long tried to decide who to declare intelligent and who to deride.

We are all intelligent! All the people! So are rats and pigs and cows. Owls and chickens are intelligent, and fish and crabs and snails. Mosquitoes are intelligent. Mushrooms are intelligent. And plants are intelligent.

They make food from sunlight and water and air. Plants are fucking intelligent!

Ayesha (Ayush Gupta) is a science educator with no training in writing poems. Ayesha thanks Wree for encouraging her to express creatively with abandon and for feedback. If you want to search for the references within the poem without using AI, please feel free to use search.wree.space. This poem was published in the 2026 issue of Anantar magazine.

Untitled

I keep having bad Mondays. As i sit at midnight with my write-ups incomplete, Hurriedly noted down to not forget it Not having time to remember it, I'm thinking of all the times my words were my walls.

Words are my form of expression but they're also the walls of my fort I go to when i refuse to talk to anyone. And now I don't remember what i started to write about.

With music tuning me out and when they fail my thoughts take over, i barely identify the pattern.

My life sometimes feels like a ball of yarn that can never be untangled, often rolled around by a cat too arrogant and dead to notice my screams

And I try to find a corner to hide. Try each yarn but I keep going back to the state of numbness. All I wish for your arms around me and for you to wait while i slowly come undone.

There's a fire burning around me and my eyes try to find yours before finding a way out. Foolish of me to think you'd be the rescue team.

And I keep hating every writing of mine, so i offer them to the fire.

Waiting for it engulf me, until all but your eyes is all I can see.

Pluto – A Poem

I sit in the front But I feel like I'm in a corner Watching everything happen Like it's all on tv and I'm not part of it

I lean closer For there's blood connecting us all The blood is alarming enough to attract attention

I switch channels Everything is rainbows and unicorns Everyone's hugged and loved All gain attention and understanding

I come back And realise I don't belong In a dark room With no light in the end of the tunnel

I look at my shaking hands And wonder if i deserve them I open up my brain and check for the dirt they expect me to carry

But I only see yards and yards of Yearning and withering sunflowers Polka dots and red frocks With ribbons that don't match

I let go of the space scientist dream When i understood I'm Pluto A dark disappearing rock that's Supposedly a part of a family

What's wrong with Pluto? Was the title It just belonged in a different galaxy is all

I hope Pluto realises it soon.

অ্যাবিস থেকে দিগন্ত ঠিক কতটা দূরে?

একদিন, সেই কবে, সেই কোন দূরে, দিগন্ত থেকে কিছুটা মাঝামাঝি দাঁড়িয়ে ছিলাম। আমার হাত দুটো ছিল সিঁদুরে লাল, ভর্তি ছিল মুঠোয় করা একটা মন। আমারই হবে হয়ত। পৃথিবীতে রোজ কত মন ভাঙে। রোজ কত মন আর জোড়া লাগে না। রোজ কত লোক হারিয়ে যায়, রোজ নেমে আসে অন্ধকার। এ আর এমন কী?

সেই ভাঙা মনের কুঁচোগুলো আজও জোড়া দেওয়া হয়নি। হাত দুটো আজও সিঁদুরে লাল। মনের কুঁচো অংশগুলো বেশ আছে, তবে! শুকনো, গোলাপের পাপড়ির মতন, একতাল মন খারাপের মতন। মন খারাপ কি তবে এরকমই দেখতে হয়?

আমার মন ভেঙেছে বহু যুগ আগে। এখন মন বৃদ্ধ হয়েছে, বার্ধক্যের অবহেলাতেও সে দিব্যি থাকে। এখন আমার চোখে কাজল, কাজলের আছে তীব্র তেজ, মিশমিশে কালো রঙে চোখে নামে রোজ রাত্রির শেষ।

ভেবেছিলাম মন নিয়ে একদিন দিগন্ত হেঁটে যাবো। মন গেল ছেড়ে চলে, মাঝপথে। আমি এখন কাজল পরি, আমি আজও মাঝপথে।

মাঝে মাঝে ভাবি অ্যাবিসের কথা। কেউ কি জানে অ্যাবিস কোথায়? তার ঠিকানা কোথায়? রাত্রির চেয়ে ঘন তার শূন্যতা, কাজলের চেয়েও ঘন তার কালিমা। কেউ কি জানে অ্যাবিস কাকে ডাকে? জানা আছে তার গল্প কী বলে?

তাই বলছি, অ্যাবিস থেকে দিগন্ত ফেরার রাস্তাটা, ঠিক কতদূর, কেউ কি বলতে পারো আমায়?

Being lonely is no more an art

Lately I've been chasing the high of people's voices. Be it video calls or audio calls or podcasts. So much so stay, I can barely sit with silence anymore. I can't even sleep with it.

Perhaps I'm too scared to sit with my own thoughts? Too much of a coward to lay out all my decisions in the dark and wonder where it all went wrong? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

But i know this.

There once was a time when I desperately wanted peace and quiet from everything – my parents house, my hostel, the city traffic, the thoughts in my head.

Gone are the days when i reached my hand out, another reached out. Tiffin boxes always full of food and hostel rooms so loud and messy with our laughter and unwashed laundry.

Gone are the eyeliner training classes from you and late night snacking that always ended up in one of us getting sick.

Gone are the days when i’d come home to your hi, how was your day? Was that client too annoying today as well?

Gone are the days where I had people around me who didn't mind my loudness and weird laughter. Heck, they were weirder.

Gone are the days that I'd go out for a walk to seek some silence.

Now I live alone and mask the loneliness with all my Pinterest posters and post-its on my wall to physically move myself from the bed.

Really, all I do is go to my empty apartment and the only thing that welcomes me is the light I never switch off in my kitchen.

is being free just an illusion?

I fell into a rabbit hole of my own memories. It's weird.

I have tried so much to hold on to every single moment

It's so obvious from the videos.

And yet I've tried to enjoy it at the same time. I was wise enough to know I'd miss it. But i didn't want to. I mean if i lived it to the fullest i wouldn't miss it, right?

I still do, though. I wish I could go back to my college days, running on the road at 11pm to get a bar of chocolate, dancing my heart out at an auditorium and smiling in a way that's so careless of me.

Now I'm tired by 7pm, have to get drunk to dance like I did and smile like everyone's watching when no one is.

Is this what growing up is? Is adulting so lonely that I miss myself more and more everyday?

Is being free just an illusion?

“My type in men”

I need someone that's willing to walk through a storm to give an umbrella to me.

I need someone that's so hot looking (to me) and so kind and whenever we fight we just talk about it and get over it

I need someone i can hug. Not those meaningless, contactless awkward hug. A full on proper one, the kind that cures a bad day.

I need someone that's knows me so much that nothing I ever do fazes them.

I need someone that wants to make my own decision and be there for me if (when) it gets fucked up.

I need someone like the man I met in my dream. The man of my dreams.

I need someone that makes me so blush that even alcohol loses to that face.

Speaking of, i need someone that gets drunk with me and listens to me 10x worsened rambles.

I need someone that looks and acts like the pilot in my dreams, ready to take over anytime a disaster is about to happen. But waits for my signal first. I'm too adamant to let someone take over my problems.

I need someone that's so rich. Rich in health, in ideas, in love and happiness. A little bit of money that can get us by too of course.

I need them to be pet lovers too. I'm so running a shelter that's a home to so many strays.

Someone that sees how much I try to be better.

Alone at the hospital

ஒரு குழந்தையின் முதல் ஏமாற்றம்.

அம்மா தன் குழந்தையைக் இருக்கி அணைத்து “ஒன்னும் இல்ல, ஒன்னும் இல்ல” என்று சொல்ல

பின்னாடியே நர்ஸ் வந்து ஊசி குத்த அவன் கதரி அழ.. ஆஸ்பத்திரியில் ஒரே கூச்சல்.

ஆனால் இன்னும் பல ஏமாற்றங்களை அவன் சந்திக்கும் போது அவன் அம்மா அவனை கட்டி அணைப்பால் என்று நம்புகிறேன்.

இல்லன்னா என்னமாறி தனியா ஆஸ்பத்திரியில் வந்து காத்திருக்க வேண்டும்.

டாக்டர்க்கா அம்மாவுக்கா என்று தெரியாமல்.

Since the last couple years, AI has been taking over a lot of aspects of our daily lives. Every self-proclaimed expert on social media is talking about AI. Like most other issues being talked on social media, AI obsessed crowd has put themselves into a binary of AI-promoters and AI-haters. The regular social media thrives on polarisation as it increases user engagements on their platforms. This also leaves out the people on whom AI is forced upon but their opinions are not being heard or valued. It also leaves out the nuances of using or not using AI.

I have had quite a few in person discussions regarding AI in my personal day to day life, and I want to highlight a few of those.

My local grocery and cigarette shop is run by a millennial. He is quite friendly a lot of young people frequent his shops and engages in conversations on various topics. A few days back, he asked about my opinion on AI. I mentioned AI is a marketing term and an actual ‘intelligence’ and asked further about why he is asking about AI. He mentioned about a guy who is very specifically pro-AI was talking about how there will be no need for coders and artists anymore because AI is getting so good, it will just replace those people. There were other people in the shop, and all of them got into a debate about whether AI will replace the people or not. The shopkeeper, Pritam and a few other customers vehemently denied that AI would replace any humans because they saw AI as a tool, that needs other humans to maintain it. If something made by AI is also breaks down, we will also require actual humans to fix it. I agreed. This is an argument you can’t deny. But he was also lamenting that the guy was quite adamant about the fact and was dismissing everyone’s opinion about it. We laughed at his naïveté and engaged more in the conversation of what actually is AI.

People intuitively know that there is nothing intelligent about AI but they find it hard to express how or why. I decided to show him this nifty new tool by google called https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com

This tool by google is actually a veiled effort by google to train their neural network to recognise human doodling. There is a quite a bit of gamification going on. The tool is like an online Pictionary, where the user is given a prompt and they have to draw it. The neural network accesses a database full with other doodles and tries to guess what the user is drawing. The user is given six prompts and after it, the tool shows the user the prompts and the drawings together along with other doodles users across the globe has done.

We played one game or one round, and I purposefully drew a few completely haphazard drawings so that the algorithm could not guess what I drew. It provided random guesses during the rounds. But after it shows the answers, We could see the algorithm was trying to pick a few lines from the haphazard doodles we have done and trying to calculate the probability of that shape be a labelled doodle from it’s database. Even if it has nothing to do with the prompt. Pritam realised by seeing the answers that the AI was trying to match our drawing with already existing doodles made by other humans. The database the AI have access to has doodles with their corresponding labels on it. When a user draws something, it checks the database and tries to match the drawing with a doodle already existing on the database. Since quite a few objects in the real world would look the same in a doodle format, the AI calculates the probability of a user-submitted drawing with various doodles it matches in the database. At the end it would return the label of the doodle with the highest probability match with the user-submitted drawing.

Here is an example of a correct guess:

Here is its reasoning:

Here is an example of a wrong guess:

Here is the reasoning for it:

Oh I’m sure you had been hungry, I mean who hasn’t? To be honest, I wanted to add so before hungry; I needed to get some things off my chest.

Have you ever been so hungry, That the food you hated so much Felt like the best thing in the world? It stopped making your stomach lurch.

Have you ever been so hungry, That it just made you nauseated? But you couldn’t really puke, And tore your throat instead!

Have you ever been so hungry, Neither coffee nor nicotine could douse it? You curse any and all gods, For giving you an appetite

Have you ever been so hungry, That your mouth got progressively bitter? From you bile; and all you could do Was to make your belt tighter.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you punched yourself in the gut? And then you’re still hungry but also in pain? Yeah, that move wasn’t smart.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you just went to sleep? Hoping not to wake up tomorrow Because this life? it doesn’t come cheap.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you traded your body for a meal? It’s not a real choice, if that’s the only option! IDK about others, but this is what i feel.

Have you ever been so hungry, That you had to crawl back and beg To your abusers? undoing every progress; And that knocked you down another peg?

What do you know of starvation? Do you even know how to cook? Who are you to preach about shit, When all your dialogues come from a book?

You call me brave, powerful even, But also an uncouth ticking time bomb. I may not have the means as you, But you’ll never know where I’m coming from!

i am a town. you don’t need to know my name. i’m sure you have heard of it in passing, may be even came over and hated every bit of it. but it doesn’t really matter, unless you are sick. so sick from all the pollution and toxicity of your city life that your doctor says to you that you need to change the city for some time. and you ask back that you thought it was for old timey people and for people in the past, but your doctor assures you that it is very real and you have to get out of the city to survive.

then you start researching about wellness centres and destination travel, and eventually you come across me and something clicks. there has been at least someone in your life who have mentioned me to you, and you decide to come over.

you love me. you get to explore my different parts with a slowness you never knew could be possible. you roam around my main street, browsing books in the library or trinkets in the commercial district. you can watch movies in the cinema hall or watch plays in the theatre across. there is grass here and that is greener here. you can’t believe what you are seeing while exploring many of my secrets in sultry afternoon you have whispered in my ears how you are never going to leave me, how you are moving back here so you can be with me forever. stay here, take up work here. or maybe you just wanna plough me all day in your small patch. you think i’m fertile and you can grow gold. but all of those are talks. maybe bravado of a hopeful soul who just found out living like this was a possibility? i have freed you and you haven’t realised what this freedom entailed yet? in a way i think that is my fault. i have schools and colleges, but you came here to heal, not get educated. but i am bad at communication anyway, kids from my town often choose other colleges anyway. i doubt you’d like them either.

eventually you do get a grasp of things. collect yourself. sometimes it takes three months, sometimes three years. but eventually you leave. go back to the same city or to a different one. healed and ready to face the world. you promise me that you’ll come back and that you have to leave because the world is different and i won’t understand, how could i? i am already here and people here don’t wanna put up with me. i have become the mistress you won’t talk about to others. maybe your friends are now relieved that you don’t blast the daily chat about how moving to this town will solve all their life problems.

maybe you will come back from time to time, between your other affairs. and you know i’ll be here waiting for you. i can’t move on silly, i’m a town.

রোজ রাতে আমার ঠোঁটে যেন দুটো ঠোঁট আলতো করে নিজের ছোঁয়া লাগিয়ে মিশে যায়। প্রতিবার চোখ খুলে খুঁজতে চেষ্টা করেছি, তাকিয়ে খালি দেখেছি সিলিং আর সিলিং-এর বুকে পাখা। তাই এখন আর চোখ খুলি না। ছোঁয়াটা থেকে যায়, ঠোঁট মিলিয়ে যায়, মুখ পড়ে না মনে। জীবনে কত মানুষই তো এলো, গেছে সবই প্রায়। সকালে যে শহরের চেনা-অচেনা ব্যস্ততা দেখে বিষণ্নতা বুকে বাজে, সেটা রাত্রে এসে মনে করায় শূন্যতাকে, একাকিত্বকে।

সন্ধেবেলা ক্লান্তি ঠেলে যখন সেই নিজের বানানো পোড়া লাগা ঝিঙে পোস্ত আর মাইক্রোওয়েভে গরম করা বাসি ভাত প্লেটে ঢালি, মায়ের কথা বড্ড মনে পড়ে। আজকাল বড্ড নিজেকে স্কুলের প্রথম দিনের বাচ্চাদের মতন লাগে। মায়ের কাছে যাওয়ার কথা মনে পড়ে, মাছের ঝোল দিয়ে ভাত খেতে ইচ্ছে করে, বাবার সাথে বাজারে গিয়ে রুই-কাতলা দরদাম করতে ইচ্ছে করে। নিজের অসফল খাবারের প্লেটের দলাগুলো মুখে নিয়ে একমনে ভেবে যাই এসব। আচ্ছা, মা খেয়েছে তো? আর বাবা? ওষুধপত্র ঠিক করে খায় তো? দুজনেরই তো হাই প্রেসার, বাবার আবার কোমরে স্পন্ডিলাইটিস, মায়ের পায়ে আর্থরাইটিস। বুড়ো-বুড়ি দুটোর জন্য খুব মন কেমন করে।

ছোট ছিলাম তখন, ভেবেছিলাম এই পৃথিবীটা এতোই বড়, সবটা দেখতে হলে পাখি হতে হবে। পাখি হয়েছি। পাখি হয়ে ঘর ছেড়েছি। ছেড়েছি আরো অনেক সুখ, মনের মানুষ, রাগ-বিরাগের আবেগ, মান-অভিমানের লোকজনদের, কঠিন কত সম্পর্ক, মিষ্টি কিছু ভালোবাসা, মন ছুঁয়ে যাওয়া কত বন্ধুত্ব... সবকিছু পাখি হবো বলে। এই এতো বড় পৃথিবীতে প্রচুর পাখি ওড়ে ঠিকই, সবার কি নাম হয়? সবার কি ঠিকানা হয়?

দিনের শেষে সব পাখি বাড়ি ফেরে। ঘরে ফেরার দিন কি সব ফেরত আসে? মানুষ গুলো, মুখ গুলো, আবেগ গুলো, ইচ্ছে গুলো, ভালোলাগা গুলো, ঝগড়া গুলো... সবটা না হোক কিছুটা কি ফিরে পাওয়া যায়? কেউ কি সদর দরজায় দাঁড়িয়ে বলবে “এসো মা, ঘরে এসো”? কে জানে!