Settlements.

Our Shades of Grey

Friends? Nah. We aren’t just friends. Maybe being just friends is a bit too dark. But we aren’t lovers either. Maybe being in love is a bit too bright. Half-girlfriend? It’s a cliche. We lie somewhere in between breaking the cliches, beautifying the grey shade, having something between us that’s too mundane to be labelled or titled yet magical enough to hold us on both ends.

Life isn’t a game of chess. Blacks and whites are often hypothetical. Picking up a side is theoretical. Look at us; you lie there with your own little insecurities you inherit from your past, and me, with my worries about my future. Maybe we are just two passengers on a ferry waiting for the other end to arrive, knowing that it will not last forever. Maybe we just represent the logarithmic function; we do not exist at the extremities. We are just legit between your zero and my infinity.

So let us not waste time picking sides and labeling things that aren’t meant to. Let us not just wait for the other end to arrive. Let us turn the slope of this function into a roller coaster ride. Let us just not exist but live this small eternity. Let me pick you and let you pick me and let us be together if not ‘forever’ but at least ‘always’.

~Vikalp Joshi

Love

Being in love is not as simple and easy as it sounds and it is not as beautiful a journey as people would like you to think. Infatuations on the other hand, are very pretty. They tend to leave you with the smiles a broken heart usually takes away. Maybe that is why singles are considered happier folks, and lovers are considered grown. Falling in love is a part time thing. Everyone falls in love, but staying in it is full time. It requires patience, trust, compassion and moderate levels of tolerance. Maybe that is why I would always prefer the company of lovers to that of single men smoking weed with the bartender.