की
की वो जो पागलों सी मेरी चाह थी
अब किसी और की बाहों में सोयी होगी
और मेरे जैसे वाला सुकून ना मिलने पर
होठों से हँसी और आँखो से रोयी होगी
~ कबीर
Ki woh jo paagalon si meri chaah thi,
Ab kisi aur ki baahon mein soyi hogi.
Aur mere jaise wala sukoon na milne par,
Honthon se hansi aur aankhon se royi hogi.
~ Kabir
The Night I First Wrote Pain
There are some poems that are written to impress people. Some are written for love. Some are written because the words sound beautiful.
And then there are poems that are written because the heart cannot carry the weight anymore.
This was one of those poems.
I do not remember the exact date. I only remember the feeling. The silence in the room. The heaviness inside my chest. The strange loneliness that follows a childhood filled with things you never chose but somehow had to live through.
As children, we are told that pain belongs to adults. That heartbreak comes with love. That loneliness comes with growing up.
Nobody tells us that sometimes children break too.
Nobody tells us that some wounds arrive much earlier than they should.
I was young, carrying emotions I did not understand, trying to find a place where all that sadness could live. I could not explain my feelings to people. I could not put my trauma into conversations. So I put it into words.
And I wrote:
"Ki woh jo paagalon si meri chaah thi,
Ab kisi aur ki baahon mein soyi hogi.
Aur mere jaise wala sukoon na milne par,
Honthon se hansi aur aankhon se royi hogi."
At that age, perhaps I was not writing about a person.
Maybe I was writing about the love I never received.
Maybe I was writing about the comfort I was searching for.
Maybe I was writing about losing something before I ever had it.
Years have passed since then. Life changed. People came and left. The boy who wrote these lines became a man with responsibilities, failures, dreams, and scars.
But whenever I read this shayari, I meet that younger version of myself again.
The boy who could not explain his pain.
The boy who believed words could hold tears.
The boy who discovered that writing does not heal us instantly, but it helps us survive.
This was my first shayari.
Not written for applause.
Not written for social media.
Not written for love.
It was written because a wounded child needed someone to listen.
And sometimes, that listener becomes the writer himself.
— Kabir