Setting Stuff on Fire

By Jahnavi Kocha

Dear Fellow Travellers,
In this journey of life, one of the most interesting expeditions is no doubt, the teen age. This is all about being individual, growing confidence in one self, establishing ones imprint and evolving from the cocoon to the butterfly.
It is said that the shearing of the cocoon is a painful task. Every single tug, pull, arm flexing and kick against the constrictions of its shell alone sets the butterfly free. Rainbows of colour seep into its wings. Its limbs strengthen to take flight. Freedom. To be.
Setting Stuff On Fire is reminiscent of just that. The shearing off. The coming of age. The spread of the hues in the wings. The conviction that now, I can Fly.
Jahnavi, as I skimmed the pages of your dear doodlings, I realised the strength that you have derived from your home and the anchoring of your values at school. I see the grateful ness with which you approach life and the reticence with which you have accommodated loss.
May your writings always be like the pristine waters of a clear lake, and tell the world with boldness tempered by love, just how much you have to still share with it and how much you care.
Fellow travellers, may I entreat with you to lay your burdens down for brief moments, and share a goblet of reading with me. It will see Jahnavi, the young seeker, go far.
Sudeshna Chaterjee,
Principal,
Jamnabai Narsee School, Mumbai.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Nov 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781482841589

Jahnavi Kocha

Jahnavi is a 16-year-old IBDP student who is truly a global citizen and has taken up multiple roles in a myriad of activities. A bubbly level-headed person, there is not one minute you can spend with her and get bored. Her enthusiastic zest for life is what helps her succeed in everything she does. Her honesty and integrity sets her apart and her gentle words and mesmerizing smile win hearts wherever she goes.

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Copyright © 2014 by Jahnavi Kocha.

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Contents

POEMS

INSPIRING for the teenage perspective:

1. Eyes

2. Love literature

3. Angst

4. Death, another life

5. Life’s a stage

6. My city

7. Need of the hour

8. The loom of time

9. In the face of loss:

10. Happiness

11. Alive is enough

12. Conflict

13. Burqua

14. Cancer ridden

15. Change

16. True love

17. Repeated thoughts

18. No need for reality

19. Water

20. Mumbai

21. Never easy

22. Party animal

23. Escapade

24. Misadventure

25. Exhilaration

INSPIRED by my daily encounters:

1. Words

2. Killing time

3. Masked

4. The Dilemma

5. Numbed with doubt

6. Shortcut to growing up

7. Miles to go…

8. Forgetting is the key

9. Invincible

10. Finding freedom, a dream. Ever a reality?

11. A victim

12. Storybook perfect

13. Discovering yourself

14. Hide my secret

15. Trust

16. The teenage dream

17. Heave heavy

18. Judgmental

19. The discovery

20. First instinct

21. Sister, sister

22. Run away phase

23. Change is the only constant

24. Good enough

25. Emptiness haunts me

26. Power is power

EXPERIENCES

INDEPENDENCE like never before:

1. Netherlands: First time’s the charm

2. The International Youth Summit

3. The German way of living

4. How I spent my birthday this year

5. The student council dream

6. The International Youth Conference

THE LITTLE THINGS from the daily happenstances:

1. The first goodbye

2. Meeting a long lost friend unpredictably

3. My first concert

4. Stargazing in Kutch

5. When the Germans came to Mumbai

6. Second home

7. Friendship is special

8. Mommy

Why I began to write

About Me

Acknowledgements

For Mom, whose birthday gift became this conception of mine;

Dad, whose humour and support always made my day better when I was tired from school and work;

and

Aadhya, who became my inspiration to work hard and my guide to bring me on track when I was low.

POEMS

INSPIRING

for the teenage perspective:

Eyes

Eyes they say are the windows to a soul,

Eyes they say hold language.

The honesty, the fraudster they hold

One sees this as positivity

while another mourns it course.

Looking to the others’ beautiful, beautiful life

Yet blind to their own condition

Have grace for the god

Looking down on you from above.

Have faith in His action.

Look right, look to the left.

One way some are stricken, one way forbidden,

The other way, always, the luckier guy.

It’s your turn to watch out now

Want the glass eye?

We can share it like the three fates.

Do we care if it’s forbidden?

Ain’t your life seem a better place now?

View it from the right prison.

Love literature

The Great Gatsby you must study,

Oh why oh why, we said.

Little did we realise what a Pandora’s box we’d opened

Minds grew, like parachutes they bloomed, even before we knew it.

Borne back ceaselessly into the past, till today, we recollect.

Gatsby’s green light and ambitious mind, oh my

What sad fate he died, we said.

Gatsby and war, a genre unexplored

Our tender minds were enlightened.

Imagery of sandy beaches and the pearl-white castles,

Loud parties and long nights we read about, we live.

Where there’s pageantry and revelry there’s strife

Where the city dusk lingers there is Fitzgerald

Hemingway had been lucky to have his company,

Paris they graced,

Together with such brilliance

Making the lives of one like me more worthy today.

Angst

Why are we so similar?

And yet so estranged.

You give me inspiration

From all the hate and pain.

So close and yet the distance seems to be closing in

Making me claustrophobic, I needn’t know how you do it

Lack of air I feel all of a sudden

Like you block the wind in my air tunnel

Making me nervous with rage

Or is that just normal?

I choke on your spitefulness, your disguise,

And yet I have to hide it all

For you make my world go round in all its carnival.

Death, another life

Death comes close and near to life,

It’s the closest way to part and yet bring one down with pride.

The paradox of ‘wanting to live on’ and yet dying

Just never seems to fade.

Did she know it, the day she didn’t live?

Her eyes left cold and staring, balls sunken deep in their sockets.

A cold creeping up her warm and loving body.

Oh, how this life had turned out!

Too young, too soon

She was gone.

Did she live with ‘no regrets’?

Or does that ever happen for one?

The irony is how painful it is

For those who live,

For those who survive

Knowing that something could be done.

Knowing that she was all too young.

Will we ever know what her last thought was?

Or is it now gone with her rotting flesh and stark memories.

Her lullabies and rhymes might haunt me now,

Her sweet smile but a spooky laugh,

Her hair still turning gray,

Her body still turning frail.

Dear lord, you must send her back to us,

It’s been a year since today she did pass.

Life’s a stage

The room is