-5-Star Hotel Edition For only 5k, we’ll give you a room, with wi-fi and vaccination— (and soon we’ll present our low budget plan: PPE and a speedy cremation.)Comments closed
Poems about the dark times.
Month: May 2021
The day my mother calls to confess she’d woken in tears (she still misses her mother, after so many years), I am blessed to meet a six-week-old baby girl; drunk on her mother’s milk, she smiles as she sleeps sprawled on a charpai, like a pehlwan after a hard-won match. Later that night, I read that Stan Swamy can no longer walk or bathe or even feed himself, and how he’s told the court he does not prefer a hospital to Taloja Jail; he prefers to suffer and die in prison— or to go home: ‘Whatever happens to me, I’d like to be with my own.’Comments closed
-Delhi, May 15 १. Our PM works hard on his palace and speeches; ‘Let’s be positive.’ Vaccine centre’s closed; an old woman asks, ‘How long?’ ‘Try again at dawn.’ २. Amit Shah’s police have withdrawn from Delhi streets; still the sirens wail. They locked up our friends, but did not send oxygen: we will not forget. ३. Far from the city, neighbors die of breathlessness; something is not right. Bodies float downstream: this is not a metaphor, just friends we couldn’t save.Comments closed
I dreamed of hillsides littered with bundles of burning wood: death is all around us; there is no other way to read this. I woke to news of more bodies gathering in the Ganga: it was a kind of protest; there is no other way to read this.Comments closed
Outside the emergency
department doors,
a woman sobs
as she clings
to a trembling,
straight-backed man.
As we pass them,
everything shakes:
the smoky clouds,
the hospital walls—
bushes, flowers, trees—
the footpath
under our feet.
These two are holding up
a piece of the sky tonight;
it has broken,
I know
you can feel it.
Comments closedOn Friday, your mother’s cousin, on Sunday, a comrade’s father; today, a friend you just messaged— you wish you’d said more, and sooner. As the rest of us count and worry, afraid to answer our phones, the PM plans his new palace; it is time for him to step down!Comments closed
one man cuts the distanced queue to buy a tube of toothpaste; we shake our heads, but in this heat, who has the strength to shout? Some time later, another man approaches, and says in a shaking voice: Please, I need two face shields, please— I must go to the hospital now. We shuffle our feet and bow our heads; for once, we’re all glad to give way.Comments closed