-Hauz Rani, 6:24 p.m. Let’s walk out into the light, my love! Why not? There’s time before night, my love. This sky is hard to define, it’s true; both bats and birds are in flight, my love. Recall how we…
Poems about the dark times.
-Hauz Rani, 6:24 p.m. Let’s walk out into the light, my love! Why not? There’s time before night, my love. This sky is hard to define, it’s true; both bats and birds are in flight, my love. Recall how we…
-September, 2021 Just before the downpour, I thought of Umar Khalid, and how many days he’s spent in Tihar jail. Later, the still sky clung to us like a soggy face mask, and we heard the hard, sharp shouts of…
-August 15, 2021 I spent hours last night trying to write a ghazal that included this line: unbroken, Umar Khalid’s still in jail, and also this one: they aim to break your soul and will in jail. ‘School teachers’ and…
Last night as it rained, I dreamed I was a child; my parents were both sick— I brought them tea and stew. This morning on the road, a man scowled as he weighed a shard of broken glass— he was…
Last night, far from shore, and ringed by roiling water, I sensed a gentle wind calling me towards the shallows. In the morning, I searched the papers for some sort of hidden meaning; they think they killed you, Stan Swamy,…
Just a week ago, my mother called to say my father had fallen again; they were taking things day-by-day. Life’s hard enough in the end, the way we all slip and weaken— how could they make Stan Swamy pass his…
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…
-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 Amit Shah’s police have withdrawn from Delhi streets; still the…
-for Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita Maybe it’s just habit, but even all these months after they locked down the city and took away friends of your friends, sometimes you still float away at that moment when light’s fading and…
Do not call us terrorists for protesting bad laws, or jail us for laughing at gods or Amit Shah. Let us love those we love; don’t tell us how to pray; and when we do equal work, give us equal…
Umar Khalid smiles and raises his fist on his way out of court, and an 83 year old priest is denied bail in the ‘collective interest of the community’. Meanwhile in Myanmar, protesters disappear in the night, and a striking…
We stood in the shadows and ate, it looked like a coronation; how we got in, I’m not sure, perhaps we snuck in the back. It could have been Jaipur or London, or maybe the Central Vista— the music was…
– an Ashoka trustee texts Pratap Bhanu Mehta A plot of land, some recognition; the price was low: your resignation— a quid pro quo is not corruption! What profits us? That’s our best option.
I’ve tried for years to write a perfect poem, an open window that lets in cool air— or a siren calling from the main road, reminding us to listen, reach and care. That might have worked before this darkness fell,…
(i) You don’t know me, but in the summer of 2019, you met my friend— she couldn’t stop talking about you: a man who knew how to listen, a leader who spent more time working out of the spotlight than…
-for Shiv Kumar Hauling carts and vendors home, weary horses stop to drink from a bucket on the road at the edge of Saidulajab. They have no time to frisk or roam, just to quench and shake and blink, as…
-after Kabir No matter how often you sweep, dust gathers under your bed, and the TV is loud and shrill; it sounds like thunder and rust— but outside, across the main road, someone has hung out bright clothes, and the…
-for Nodeep Kaur and Disha Ravi You complain I’m too direct, that similes and slanted images can unfold truth more powerfully than the plain truth told plainly, and that there is wonder afoot even in this time of darkness and…
some things diminish: the scent of morning dew rising off sparse grass; news of frying food or what the cat killed three days back. After sundown, in crowded market lanes we still hear the clamour of hawkers, horns, engines, bells,…
Somebody planted ten letters, it seems, on Rona Wilson’s computer, and then police came and took him away, and later they took many others. We don’t know who planted the letters, my friends, but they raise an important question:…