1. The world meets my gaze with a dizzy stare. I ask it: "O world, do you hide your pain behind the veil of intoxication?"
2. I bathed in the Ganges by diving into your tears!
3. How it torments me to live without you, to breathe, to swallow food… You don't even notice. Because I never felt your touch, I have been ailing all these years. You know nothing. Perhaps this is the price one pays for loving someone across endless years!
4. I have no enmity with myself, but you—you speak of enmity with yourself…!
5. Even standing on the gallows, I will wait, With my last wish: to hold your hand once more.
6. I dedicated a book of poetry vast as the world itself to your name, Only for someone sitting at the far end to buy it someday—for the price of water!
7. Every insult, every neglect, every wound you gave me— I have gathered them carefully; these scars are wholly, utterly mine alone!
8. You think you've finished me off completely this time! Fool, if you hadn't broken me, how could I ever begin anew?
9. The lover who became calm and still, who cast away all pride from her breast— Hear this: she is no longer anyone now, that woman who was once your beloved!
10. I have the courage to scale the mountain peak, yet I no longer have the courage to love again.
11. Why would I bind myself to you? I am like the Alaknanda—free, Why should I rest my head upon your shoulder? You are bound, like all men are bound!
12. What I have hidden away as pain, you call freedom!
13. : Do you suffer greatly? : I cannot say, but from the measure of how much hurt it takes for a person to become indifferent to everything in this world at such a young age—from that, you can estimate for yourself.
14. Can anyone tell me—what crime have I committed that there is not a single person in this world to listen to what my heart has to say?
15. The eye doctor got it wrong, or the machine is faulty— The prescription reads: "His vision shifts of its own accord."...(he who loves!)
16. How did a world materialize overnight where even breathing costs money!
17. In rains like this Ira would wear her sari and wade through mud in joy. This year she lies in a grave; the rain reaches Ira, perhaps, but Ira cannot reach the rain.
18. For one last time to rest my head upon his chest… I am willing to sell my entire sky.
19. I have no respite, for I have been performing that hardest of tasks—breathing—for years now!
20. I am only yours, yet you are close to her! It is on your indifference that I have learned to live!
21. My heart holds such sorrow that I cannot fill pages with it. A few letters written and I must stop.
22. To write a single line I broke two pens, To have one evening I stayed awake through countless nights… What did I gain— I cannot say! You love me, Yet I do not accept it.
23. : Why do you never love anyone? : My indifference and neglect have already transformed so many lives! And you speak of love?
24. How strange human bonds are! The person who was once your whole world—it takes no time at all to turn him into an enemy.
25. In the gathering of dreams I sat upon such a carpet that though my thoughts ran as deep as the ocean, still I fell silent when I tried to speak.
26. : Why do you not wish to live? : I have lived enough. : Resentment toward someone? : I have forgotten. : Tears? : I have shed them all. : The memory of me? : I have erased it. : I implore you, do not wish for death. : But you are speaking with the dead.
27. : Do you hear nothing of what people say? : I cannot even hear my own heart clearly, let alone what others have to say…!
28. : Will you just while away your whole life scribbling? : A writer's life doesn't simply "pass" the way others do; a writer must taste death itself while sitting here on earth, and endure hell in the bargain. This is the price—the atonement—for the gift of writing.