top of page
Writer's pictureYogesh Chandra

Self-Infliction—A Review of Naked Compulsions by Yogesh Chandra


Ecstasy never did like me, and your house made of silver ceilings is only good for writing wet prose—never to be mistaken for creativity even if the heart were to betray everyone. It’s been a rough day, but what makes it an even challenging day—these rhyme schemes will never understand.

Spaces get filled, and so does the desire to feel a thing. Intact, screens and drums that want to play with your virginity. Walls start beating, and this is when the birds stop singing. A whistle at a distance, calling out my name but nobody listens. It’s always been about the absenteeism—of light that was never supposed to be.

And as everything starts to persuade me into believing, act of love and butterflies inside the stomach that were the first and the last. She undresses infront of every guy she meets, art that will still shine even if the world were to end today.

A razor that has been staring at you since dawn, nowhere to go and each leaf is trying to hide its shade. You are no longer the art that you once were, and the wolves have started talking about you. Now that joy is in destruction, path which was never understood by the commoner. And so he always said, “Why don’t you just snap out of it?”

But as you try to lift your body, waters get filled with an elegant poison. Everyone around you is excited, and you begin to question the morality behind such frenzy. Pleasure in red towels stained with everyone’s blood, and it waits for you like never. A beautiful feeling it is to feel suicidal—at least the desire to make love is overpowered.

Still, to the dismay of the broken rainbows, a sound close to the last sonnets written inside your diary. Those journals that will define your life once you stop breathing. Is it a good thing to think about killing oneself? These mortals ask—

But why is there so much haste, wealth that is elite and water that is an expensive commodity. Scarves are flying, and so is the tendency to end one’s life. It’s like you were on moon and the only idea sticking out of your head was returning to earth.

Images will get blurry and so will the train which carries 500 passengers all at once. Nothing is ever congested, but the theory of regret makes it shiny. No one responds, because all cellphones are being tapped, and to tap into each conversation—you ask for nothing but an understanding into your mind.

Three seconds after killing yourself, verses that start exchanging vows. And each heart that has never been kissed, quiet and tender winds that fly beside your bare skin. Nobody ever knew—or what is the art of such suffocation—now that you have killed yourself. Nobody will ever know why you did that.

Yogesh Chandra

bottom of page