Ridhi Bhutani

Oceans in Our Mirrors

I wonder if us humans always see damage first and everything else second.
Funny, when you stare at an ocean for long, your first thought is of the depth of it, followed by drowning.
My family bought a new house, a few years back and funny how my mother saw a home and my father saw separation.
Funny how I constantly feared a ghost. I wonder if it’s only inside us–ghost, separation, drowning, depth, oceans.
I wonder if we are anything apart from walking mirrors.
We tend to ignore everything that doesn’t fit in the mirror we carry, or maybe we just keep shifting the focus.
I have always disliked capitalism and buildings that way. I dislike whatever doesn’t fit my mirror.
My father disliked a luxurious car that way. He told us how a Maruti Suzuki would be a waste of Indian rupees, but I wonder if he has cut his mirror into parts made of my school fees and literature dreams.
My mother always selects clothes that don’t fit me, loose oversized clothes.
She always predicts our annual vulnerability.
She knows the size of our annual income that way.
The little circular mirror my mother carries with her fits in her purse. It’s the smallest mirror I’ve ever seen.
She says she’s been using this mirror for makeup, though she never wears makeup. Her mirror is small, circular and endless.
I wish she knew there’s a world beyond our kitchen and budget.

Life for her is the size of her old bangle, small, circular, endless and traditional. She loves wearing bangles. I wonder if she has started feeling beautiful in compromises. I don’t mean we’re helpless. I mean we’ve created a home out of compromises.
We live here.
We colored with Asian paint, and we live here now. Our mirrors suit us.
We dream about swimming in the oceans like every other human.
But when we stand in front of it
We see drowning.
Dreams come true, but what if you carry a nightmare inside you all the time?
Swimming, swimming, swimming, swimming, Drowning.
Ocean, ocean, ocean, ocean, Depth.
Home, home, home, home, Separation.
Mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror, Reality.
Art, art, art, art, Helplessness.
Many of us can’t write happy poems that way. Our nightmares are stronger than our dreams.

Ridhi Bhutani is an Indian spoken word artist whose work has been published or is scheduled to be published in magazines such as Pangolin Review, Narrow Road Journal, Literary Impulse and an anthology edited by Hannah Norman. Her work was recently presented in an exhibition curated by the Houseguest Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky. Currently, she is studying literature at the University of Delhi, India.