#ritika jyala
My 13 year old cousin came back from a date with her boyfriend and said, “I can’t wait to grow up and spend sunday afternoons with him.” At first, I wanted to laugh (after all they’re just 13), but I remember being 13 and having the world in my hands. I remember getting excited to talk to someone about my dreams and wishes, and how happy these daydreams and fantasies made me. There’s this innocence you can only have at 13 and the world rises and falls and crashes and burns every year… until you do not think about quiet sunday afternoons.
So I asked her about the date and heard her giggle about bubblegum flavored ice cream, and how much she loves this little life. I think she makes me love it too.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
He asked me when I fell in love with him and I knew it sounded dramatic to say the moment I saw him, so I told him this story of my grandma who had Alzheimer’s- she forgot her name and the words for fruit and food, she forgot her address and how to use the washroom, all her life lost to the disease. The only thing she remembered was her son’s name and when that began to fade, the one thing she always remembered was that she loved him, even in illness, even in insanity. She saw this 6 foot 2 man with a scrubby beard and she didn’t know him but she said she trusted him, she asked him to hold her hand when she died. When does memory end and love begin? All I know is- she loved him before she remembered him.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
She cuts carrots for me almost every day because she thinks I love them. The thing is… I’ve never actually liked carrots. On our first meal together, she said she didn’t like them and I took the pieces off her plate and since then, I see a plate of carrots near my desk every afternoon and I never thought love could look like carrots but here we are
-Ritika Jyala, A conversation with my dad after a dance competition or it could be God
There’s a sort of goodbye that comes with 17.
All questions of ‘who do you want to be when you grow up’ turn to 'who are you becoming now?’ 17 is young, 17 is old. It’s everything you wanted. It’s everything you despised. It’s messy and ruthless and full of grief at times. And 17 is scary as hell because now you know that you finally have to say goodbye to childhood.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned (source)
Sadness is a pretty girl by Ritika Jyala
Mother, tell me what to do. How do I breathe without also choking on the air? How do I grow up without also losing my innocence?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
As a child, I was always searching for the meaning of it all, the big Why; and my father always said that there is no one big purpose but I had the most ripe orange today and kissed my cat goodnight, I think that’s enough purpose for a day.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
My 13 year old cousin came back from a date with her boyfriend and said, “I can’t wait to grow up and spend sunday afternoons with him.” At first, I wanted to laugh (after all they’re just 13), but I remember being 13 and having the world in my hands. I remember getting excited to talk to someone about my dreams and wishes, and how happy these daydreams and fantasies made me. There’s this innocence you can only have at 13 and the world rises and falls and crashes and burns every year… until you do not think about quiet sunday afternoons.
So I asked her about the date and heard her giggle about bubblegum flavored ice cream, and how much she loves this little life. I think she makes me love it too.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Sometimes I want to pull out my hair and scream through my chest and go back to my primal instincts of raw savagery, because I don’t have the words to describe how beautiful she is and no camera can ever justify her worth. If only she could see…
…it was almost like seeing myself as a token or prize whose worth is decided by the man who holds it.
-Ritika Jyala, I love Pink(source)
…so I spent my 20s reclaiming barbie dolls and lip gloss, pink and skirts and everything I had once denounced for the fear of being ‘cringe’.
-Ritika Jyala, I love Pink (source)
The first boy who liked me told me how he thought I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and how much he’d love to be with me. And I know that he was just a kid and didn’t mean any harm but it instilled this thought in me that being pretty was the only way I could attract people, that I had to give parts of myself to others in order to feel validated; it was almost like seeing myself as a token or prize whose worth is decided by the man who holds it. I began focusing on how much people would love to be with me rather than how much I enjoyed their company and that’s a big burden to carry at 11.
And after years of feeling trapped, I decided it was enough and tried to hate pink and makeup and skirts and everything I had loved as a child because I associated those things with the idea of performance. Again, I lost sight of what I liked and enjoyed, so I spent my 20s reclaiming barbie dolls and lip gloss, pink and skirts and everything I had once denounced for the fear of being ‘cringe’.
-Ritika Jyala, I love Pink, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Last night, she woke me up at 2:37 to ask me if I wanted some cold pizza and her eyes lit up when I said yes. We ate in silence and I couldn’t stop thinking how I found my God and my religion at 3 a.m. on a tuesday night.
It’s just how different suffering can look and feel. You see movies and shows where you see a character in pain but the lens makes it pretty, the suffering is beautiful and then you look at yourself and nothing about your pain is pretty, nothing is worth looking at. So you tell yourself this is not real- that your pain and your agony don’t really exist and you’re just being dramatic but if you could see what you feel, would you still be so harsh on yourself?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
My mother never let me light candles when I was a kid. I thought it was because of the mess I’d make but last night she told me her father died in a forest fire and I finally saw how love protects and shields.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from Elle took a knife and carved her thighs
she has never said she loves me but I see her smile when she makes me coffee or tells me about her day- she bounces with excitement and blinks real fast. I never thought I’d believe in love, but I could drown in it now.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
(read the whole thing here)
Sometimes I think this world is cruel and unjust but then I remember how I dropped my wallet when I was on the bicycle 8 years ago and a homeless man ran 6 blocks to return it to me. Sometimes I think this world is lonely and grey but then I let the rain touch my body and hear birds make their way home at evening and for a moment, just a moment- I understand why Prometheus stole fire and laid it at man’s feet, why dying stars leave a trail of wishes, why I still love 6-year-old Erica I met on a summer trip a decade ago, even though I never saw her again.
Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
I know that some days you barely exist- scrolling mindlessly for hours, trying to find some peace. I know that sometimes you wish you could be someone else because your 10 year old self had big plans to save the world and some part of you wants to make her proud still. I know that sometimes you feel like a side character in your own story, written with someone else’s words. I want you to please unclench your jaw and let go of the tension in your shoulders and save yourself first. The sun is still out there and it’ll be there tomorrow, ocean waves exist and oranges taste like peace.
I hope you say goodbye to the ghost of your 10 year old self because unlike her, you still exist.
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned
My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.
I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.
One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn’t ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn’t know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn’t look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.
The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?
-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire
Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here
