The clothes left on the line outside the flat across the street are flapping in the dirty wind; one shirt has just flown free, and someone’s firing atom bombs or guns; it’s hard to say— the autumn air tastes acrid, and the sky’s an inky gray. Tonight, we’ll sleep to yapping dogs and creaky ceiling fans; we’ll dream of sirens, pre-dawn raids, unjustly jailed friends.Comments closed
-for Natasha Narwal I don’t smoke, but somehow I’m smoking on a cramped South Delhi terrace; I’m looking down at a wide, brown field of dry grass and scattered trash. Beyond, are trees and more trees, and gathered in upper branches, a murder of angry crows is scolding a circling kite. Beyond that are just skyscrapers— or maybe that’s just an illusion, and there is Natasha Narwal, sipping tea at a roadside dhaba. I want to go down and ask her about the food in Tihar Jail, I want to go down and tell her how much we all have missed her.Comments closed
-Delhi, October 13 Smoke presses down on the 5 pm sky leaving the sun bloated and glowing, like a molten bronze medal, or a strange neon fruit. As raptors glide in high, hungry circles, crows keep watch from ragged rooflines, and closer to earth, children run laughing through lanes lined with dust and shuttered shops. This weekend, we’ll read the police have beaten another reporter, and this reading will make us remember this is our city, we must take it back.Comments closed
If you fear you might be condemned for committing atrocities, go file some FIRs and claim there’s a conspiracy; sedition or 144, incitement or simple foul play— if anyone asks for bail, just invoke the UAPA. Clichéd, yes, but also true: all tyrants and most all cutthroats know when the going gets tough, it’s time to go hide behind scapegoats.Comments closed
-Jantar Mantar, October 2 Last week, we dreamed a feathered thing dangled high, in tangled wires— the scent of wood and petrol smoke, the violent glow of pre-dawn fires; some terrors are too large to name— some wounds, so deep, they’ll never mend— still, something’s breaking in the east; friends, even this long night will end.Comments closed