LOL Issue #2: ( Feb 27 — March 5, ’17 )
By: Arihant Verma
Tags: Storytelling, Animation, Poetry, Lolissue, Humour

Already (Poem): By Ishan Sadwelkar. Starting excerpt:

A while ago in the train

Watching a crowded city float under me

I realized, in a moment, under a sky turning mauve

We have already made love It happened first

at the school choir rehearsal, when

your voice tried touching mine, again and again

at last uniting, gradually undressing my song

in the invisible air

2. I’m a Slut (Slam Poem | Video): By Savannah Brown. Inspired by this poem, another one goes I’m a Virgin. Do not go by their cliched names, they are very very powerful poems.

3. Our Story of Rape and Reconciliation | Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger (TEDx Talk | Video)

4. What’s Behind The Blouse (Poem): By Iswarya Rajagopal. Excerpt from the poem:

I used to take the public commute

to only be pissed off by the looks

that stripped me off my clothing,

by eyes that imagined their hands full with my breasts,

eyes that gauged my size and argued over it,

that peeped shamelessly to catch a glimpse of my cleavage,

those eyes, that slut-shamed me

despite enjoying my nipples

that stuck out ’cause it was cold outside,

the eyes that had the audacity

to judge my virginity by the size of my boobs!

and by the hands that tried to touch me, press me

as though “accidentally”

5. Why I Started Writing Again (Article | Humour), by Arihant Verma

How kissing ants, conjoined insects, and poems written on the back of electronics exams’ sheets, made me write again.

6. It’s Okay to Cry Over Spilled Milk Sometimes (Blog Post | Humor), By Bharath. Bharath Blogs mostly about Birds of Southern India, on this blog. In this blog post, he talks about… okay let’s just let his words do the talking, shall we?

It [the picture of the milky way] seemed as though a precious amount of cheese had been spilled, in the shape of a large kidney bean, across the drunken burgundy sky. I drooled. Delirious and intoxicated. By the vastness of it all. If I had been athletic enough I would have taken off, clicking my heels and fingers at the same time, like Chaplin Chellappa. Or Charlie Chaplin. It might not have been the first time I had seen the skies paint itself into pretty corners. Giant watercolor portraits of fruit-shaped flambeau. Clouds crayoned in sepia. I had been drunk on them many times before. But never had one prolonged the derangement of my senses in such a beautiful way like the milky one did.

7. My Parent’s Failed Marriage (Slam Poem | Video) By Saumya Choudhury. This poem is extremely relatable for me. An excerpt from the slam poem:

I understand the words ‘I’d leave you,

had it not been for children’

is gluing the roof of our misfortune together.

8. Old Aunt Jenny (Slam Poem | Humor), By Swastika Jajoo

Old Aunt Jenny wasn’t really funny

but everyone who joined her

“Handwriting Classes for the Masses”

would complain that she is insane.

She’d make them write her own name

again and again in different fonts

and different inks till

the children started calling their mothers at home ‘Jenny’

and the husbands started calling their wives ‘Jenny’

and it was a real ignominy how half the pets of the town

were also called ‘Jenny’.

Her students, which was the entire town by the way

(Did I mention nobody had to pay?)

would come every evening from five to seven

but end up staying till eleven-

She’d threaten them saying

that if they want to go to heaven,

they must write Jenny at least a thousand times,

she convinced them to think it was an elaborate rhyme

and if you didn’t comply, you’d be dead meat

ready to eat by dinner time.

The townspeople, they weren’t stupid or anything

but such was the fashion of things

that once you told them

“It must be done in God’s name”

they’d do it all without fear or shame

and you’d think at least one of them would stand up,

but they were all quite the same.

Imagine what writing ‘Jenny’ a thousand times a day would do to you,

No, it would break your wrists and a little bit of your will too

but if you were told there is no escape,

you’d have to shut up and write ‘Jenny’ everyday,

There were reels of paper and pages of notebooks

and barks of trees, the town walls and the city halls,

the hoarding for the waterfall, all full of Jenny’s name,

and when her name had been innumerable times repeated,

and all the paper production companies stood defeated,

they began to write on the surface of skin

even when she begged them to stop,

they would write out of habit

‘Jenny’ on knees and ‘Jenny’ on teeth,

‘Jenny’ on heads and ‘Jenny’ on beds,

‘Jenny’ all over Old Aunt Jenny herself

so the next morning she was found dead

due to overwriting and a supposed heart attack,

and they all said “May Old Aunt Jenny Rest in Peace”

and enshrined her and worshiped her with all their might

Jenny was now their God written and written on too many times.

About the Authors/Artists

Ishan Sadwelkar, is an Assistant Director in Indian Film Industry, and a Documentary Filmmaker at TEDx. He’s also a photographer, a writer, a poet. He is on a journey of writing an original poem every day throughout 2017 on his blog.

Bharath’s about me page says it all.

Swastika is a final year English Lit undergraduate student at LSR College Delhi. She writes like a breeze would if it was given a pen. (I’m an official self-proclaimed fan). She’s also a wonderful photographer. Her poems and photographs have been published in international magazines like Maine’s Poetry Journal, Berlin Parasites, Thought Catalogue etc.