You, a size ten craft of beautiful bark brown suede Cocoa colored laces, only a few inches shorter than the silent pine trees You bit my feet throughout our first Himalayan trek Almost got me frostbite, though it was mostly my mistake You were a pair of waterproof shoes at best We walked across the…

Two hundred years of history I stand a stranger to my own ancestry My great-great-grandfather moved here to Malwa From somewhere North Generation after generation Toiling the same two acres of lands Building, breaking, breaking the three rooms of the mud house Over and over again The last time I walked through the narrow street to our house Which…

as spring arrives we seek daffodils along canals solemn art in what survives

On nights, when life feels like a distant dream One that leaves you happy right after waking up But melancholic nonetheless For you know you could have used little bits of that lie This sadness is a pathetic routine and I am too wise to put anyone at fault but me On such nights you hold me longer than I need, or deserve or know what to do with You pull me close, kiss my forehead, lips, and chest And so, life feels close, and warm, and alive

I don’t know. When people tell others, it’s going to be all right, or when they tell themselves the same. Right after a tragedy our body goes into a shock. The pain sets in after a while. It’s a defense mechanism since our primal days, the numbness that sets in allows us to act. Even our body tells us lies.

Standing in the line for tickets outside the Victoria museum’s white domed building I looked at you, waiting, cigarette smoke rising from your lips like silent hymns to the sky We were young and bored, quick to get distracted What was it about those old statues and paintings that fascinated you? Sacrilegious ruins from…

May my words carry more And travel far May they sneak serendipity In familiar spaces May they grow, as weeds do In an empty fields after monsoon

As the storm arrived I couldn't do much Except look for a shelter And weather it I believe the living are afraid of the dead The dead talk to us in metaphors and memories And we reply them, in silent prayers to the sky Taking forms of maple leaves floating in the air Or the thick white smoke rising out of the chimney of the students centre at the corner You ask if I have been safe from the storm So far, I reply Come along, we'll have a few quiet drinks in the garden Once, when all of this is over

Floating on the surface, smug that I know the depths I want to sink, to fall through the cracks Terrified of it all, and I sense that you are too Though, I can’t do much beyond than just be there with you