-for Sharjeel Imam and Gulfisha Fatima You tear down a party flag as we cut through the back lane– I warn: CCTV; you scold: Control your worry– How many have they jailed? Let’s pray they are beaten soon! I concede…
Poems about the dark times.
-for Sharjeel Imam and Gulfisha Fatima You tear down a party flag as we cut through the back lane– I warn: CCTV; you scold: Control your worry– How many have they jailed? Let’s pray they are beaten soon! I concede…
Spring has arrived in Delhi as the Supreme Court scolds SBI again and India Today live streams the PM– later, on the edge of the city police tend gardens of cement and spikes, and the rich gaze out their windows…
-Recalling Umar Khalid’s latest bail plea while reading Langston Hughes on Republic Day It might shrivel– or fester and run, stink, explode or crust over– but the taste of the air today tells me, for now, it’s likely to smoulder.
Every morning last week, two butterflies appeared near the bush by our back window– they flickered there, like static from your mother’s old radio, or faraway lightning– or j0y. This week, they’re suddenly gone– like the tailorbirds’ storm-broken nest, or…
Sometimes in the epics, demons fall on heroes as they pass through forests– like the thugs who grabbed you, late night, from a bus stop– they took you to the station, gave you to the police, who tried to extract…
-Republic Day, 2023 I asked the AI for a poem, in the style of Kolatkar, about justice and Umar Khalid– I said please, I asked three times, and each time the AI replied: ‘An error has occurred’.
-for Umar Khalid I was holding you tight and praying as we weaved through autos and cars– you said we were already late for our train to the south– and the sea. At some point, moon swallowed sun, or was…
-August 15, 2022 Some day soon, you’ll be watching a pair of tiny squirrels chase each other around a muddy park– or you’ll hear a young girl laugh as she rides an oversized cycle, hard through rain-soaked lanes– and for…
-for Mohammed Zubair On the day Mohammed Zubair was released from Tihar Jail, sheets of rain bounced so high that for a few moments the ground all around shone and bloomed– a watery garden, suddenly sprung from a muddy, North…
-for Professor Ratan Lal The feelings of powerful people are so easily hurt, lately– the police investigate satire as if wit were a felony. Reason, humour, history are now enemies of the state; solidarity’s called ‘terror’; they see love and…
I was sitting near the back at the launch of G.N. Saibaba’s book of poems and letters from prison when he slipped into the seat on my left– I might not have noticed, but his white hair was glowing like…
–While reading Ilya Kaminsky, I Think of Umar Khalid Just outside Qutub Minar there’s a line of buses and cars filled with all kinds of folks, looking for all kinds of things– some have come to lose themselves; some, just…
-January, 2022 The dull, orange moon was hanging there, a dusty, swollen ache. The guard said, Close your phone– you said, friend, it’s just the moon. He shrugged his shoulders and looked down– what was left to say? This waning…
-writing from Tihar Jail, Umar Khalid quotes Faiz Ahmad Faiz In the photos the young lovers post, they are smiling as they sip from the same bottle of cola, they are sharing a plate of chaat, they are sitting on…
-Lodhi Garden, December, 2021 I was reading that story by Manto about two old friends, now soldiers, fighting each other in Kashmir, and I was thinking about how the distance between us has grown, but also how we sat on…
-for Sabbah Haji When I heard the Kashmiri educator had been jailed for calling a general a ‘war criminal’, a serious question came to my mind: How often does anyone in any large country rise to the level of general…
Omicron’s arrived, be it mild or strong– Delhi smells of smoke; Amit Shah’s an animal. Still, let’s celebrate– Sudha Bharadwa: out of jail; the farmers have proven when we unite, we do not fail.
Last week I crossed a narrow bridge strung over a wide canyon, and as I crossed, I felt a hole open in my belly. Last night under a swollen moon, I dreamt of Umar Khalid; I heard him laughing in…
-Dyal Singh College Road, 9 P.M. Emerging from the metro, I met a swollen moon, I sipped a little smoke, tripped on the NIA. There was Hany Babu singing out a lecture— it was so soft and clear; it sounded…