About
Hello! My name is Naila and sometimes I go by Nishi. I am a jack of all trades and a master of few.
This blog is a collection of my life: fashion, diys, poetry, and travel.
My Youtube Channel: A Primrose in Winter
Poetic Sundays: The Constellations in my Life
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I've decided to start something called Poetic Sundays. I like to write and I don't want to loose touch with my writing once I go to college, so hopefully having this once a week post will force me to write something every week. :)
The piece below is something I've been working on for about a month. I'm going to be reading it at the Scholastic Center in Soho, Manhattan on June 22. It was hard to write because I didn't know where I wanted to go with the poem. I knew that I wanted to talk about my mother, but my mother is a vast subject and I had to narrow it down.
The poem was actually originally a college essay.
The Constellations In My Life
The stories and wishes of our parents before us
Compose part of who we are today.
These subtle connections bind us,
In this way we are connected.
So connected that it’s hard to distinguish one person from another.
You are unique they say.
How unique am I, I ask?
There’s 7 billion people in the world.
Statistically it’s impossible that anyone is unique.
99.9% of me is almost the same as you.
It’s that .1% that makes all the difference.
I like to think that the .1% encompasses all of our experiences in life.
All of the heartache and adventure.
That .1% leads us to say things like “You don’t understand me.”
“You don’t even know me.”
That .1% leads to war, discrimination, rape, and misunderstandings.
That .1% is to be or not to be.
That is the questions, whether tis nobler to follow someone else’s path of right.
Or better to carve my own way
Through the ocean of 7 billion
Beating against the current of status quo
Going against the grain, the the path less traveled.
There’s woman in the audience, the one in the back row,
I was born to her amidst the sweltering Bengali summer
She carved her way through an ocean
With a three year old in one hand, a luggage in another
She had mild suspicion as she crossed the Atlantic
Traveling to a distant land where a man lives
Attached to her through a ring and a promise.
Foreign but not quite.
There’s woman in the audience, the one in the back row,
She a mastermind, an evil genius. Though she seems like an innocent little lady,
She’s been plotting since before I was born
Because where I come from,
Newborn girls need to hit the ground running.
Hurdling through years of misogynies and preconceived notions.
Pushing past rape culture and patriarchalism.
We must be prepared to fight teeth and hair for our rights.
We must be independent and fierce on the inside.
Perfect ladies on the outside.
So I imagine her plotting, that woman in the audience, the one in the back row,
Devising ways to ensure my success.
She calls me Rhydee, her heart.
They call me Nishat, My Nom-de-plume.
Nishat a name that appears on all my papers.
Her plans worked out fine
I keep my head in the clouds with my feet planted firmly on the ground.
Like the Buddhist monk who consulted my stars
I strive to do her justice.
Always moving, never idle.
I dream of the Greats.
Amelia Earhart, Genghis Khan, Indira Gandhi
N. I. The I in Nishat is for inspired.
I may live to be at least 79 years old.
But that doesn’t mean I should wait until 30 to accomplish something.
I imagine her, the woman in the audience, the one in the back row
I imagine her sitting
In a cacoon of nothingness
And dreaming of the future
When the present is unbearable
And the past holds no comfort.
All alone, though not quite
She is a survivor.
Savior, salvager. The s in Nishat is for survivor.
She consulted with a Buddhist monk
The one who read my stars.
My stars said I’d endure any burden thrown my way.
So I took charge when the woman in the audience, the one in the back row
was diagnosed with Lupus, an incurable autoimmune disease.
N. I. S. H. The H in Nishat stands for happy because I’m always smiling, no matter what.
Because as Rudy Francisco said
Some days
Life is a pile of dirty clothes
And laughter is the only clean shirt you have left.
N. I. S. H. A. T. A .T. the last two letters in my name.
Always thankful.
I am always thankful to that woman in the the audience, the one in the back row.
And I am always thankful to the man sitting next to her.
My parents sacrificed so much for my brother and me.
They sold their souls.
Signed away their liveliness, friends, and comfort
To take the path less traveled by.
They went against the current, traveling over not one ocean but two
the Atlantic and the Indian.
For me.
And I am always thankful for that.
And I will always love them for that.