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Tuesday, 14 October 2025

Knowledge (for Adam Zagajewski)

The poet writes,

while resting his cheek in his palm:

Knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth.


and I can't help but

smile and smirk,

how slyly and obliquely 

he conceals certain things 

that accompany its nurture.


Knowledge grows slowly,

behind all the spectacle

of the incisors,

in agonizing pain,

like a wisdom tooth.

Tuesday, 7 October 2025

Steeling

Monsters, when granted voice 

within literature, speak just.

They turn out more humane 

than everyone else.


Monsters, when provided space 

within life, spout venom.

They turn out more spiteful

than already thought.


Herein, therefore, lies the difference.


Books showcase spine 

far stronger than humans,

put together.

Wednesday, 1 October 2025

Anting (is when birds use ants - by rubbing or allowing them to crawl on their feathers for self-maintenance)

Birds perform anting 

without any shame,

in the open.


In different forms,

the same 

relates to humans.


Literature is anting.

Love is anting.

Talking and listening, anting.

Reading, anting.


Like birds,

we wallow in there

to soar high, again.


The thing to remember, however,

is this: every body reeks of ache.

Sunday, 24 August 2025

Apor Lal Chowk

A disenchanted Maratab Ali 

mourns lyrically for his beloved.

A teenage conductor swanks

his counterfeit jacket.

His yells pose a competition 

to the singer while 

guiding passengers to the bustling,

nevertheless seatie-khalie bus.

Meanwhile, woustie keeps 

a close eye in the side-mirror

on sadah trunamath inching closer.

The handwritten board at the front 

reeks of human agency.

Random couplets in graceful Urdu

adorn the side panels.

Just below, hastily, is written 

laddias seat with an arrow 

that hints at nowhere in particular.

Woustie's gunj baanie rests in between 

some grease-ridden cloth and castrol bottles.


My dull memory,

of the Tata bus,

of the Mazda bus,

grazes past 

the historicity 

of your Smart Bus.

Friday, 22 August 2025

This World

In a world

where cackling is

nation building,

where progression is 

an unending résumé,

where hollowed out 

mountain is development,

where truth-telling is

unequivocal cheating.


In such a world,

life is a hearse,

stuck in a traffic jam.


Wednesday, 13 August 2025

Waiting (dedicated to Doctor Uncle)

The earliest and the faintest memory

I have of you, is you listening intently 

and diagnosing your patients

in your meticulously set medicine shop,

while I'm waiting 

on a wooden plank by the counter.

You handed me a mint candy

and promised

that if I wait calmly,

you'd take me to your home, 

to which I smiled like a patient 

relieved from a latest asthma attack.


Decades later,

things have changed drastically.

The shop is no longer there -

neither are you.


However,

I'm still waiting on the wooden plank,

in the middle of what is now a road,

faking to unwrap the candy.

Thursday, 7 August 2025

Starvation

The Manna Salwa

that was, yesterday,

drone-delivered 

reeked of mould.


We had to sift 

the breaking news

from the legumes.