Inaugural Issue

The most abstract mountain
Out there, amidst the clouds
Is in fact the most grounded,
the most concrete
Just like my sorrow that is
masked with joyful dancing...

Lips on lips, the gaze towards nothingness
Would it matter delving in these wrong verse business?
Nothingness is the Scorpio moon-sign, the lips quite unaware
Hair waving in the air, tight jeans, oh the desperate lover
Imprinting the lipstick mark, those lips keep quivering
Passion boils up, passion spills over...

A dry land seeking liberty
to get drenched wonders
about the quiet after this storm.
The roads are familiar to it. 
The smell of the air isn't.
The trees no longer liaise...

I have seen these lines being used in love letters. I know how dear these lines are to the young lovers, in particular. But whenever I read these lines, I feel that I hear the voice of poetry. Poetry, as if, whispers in the ears of a poet, words which are intimate, seductive and smell of the aroma of new birth.

Always
my sister will repeat in anger
what Amma says more subtly: that I am to blame
for all that goes wrong
in the bedroom.
Everyday, in the bedroom...

sit on the banks of Benares 
with Sant Kabir in my lap 
breathing the ancient scriptures.
The air settles in moist colours 
of marigold desires.
My soul is smeared with sindoor...

I stay on the seventeenth floor.
The moon can see my solitude.
But I cannot touch her sky.
I can see the sea below.
Inside it too there is a sky.
Behind me is a sea of slums...

We are the angry men
We are the confused men
Confronting each other
Our heads filled with rage.
When we shout at each other
Our voices are loud and meaningless...

Aliens are seated in the metro rail.
With their eyes glued to their smartphones,
and their headphones plugged into their ears, 
they have shut out the earth's reality around them.
Their faces are robotic and restless, being totally
commanded by the signals of the virtual world...

When a person crosses the bar,
becomes a sinner.
In the dark evening, the road I am walking on
is full of dirt.
The evergreen forest gets burnt
when there is no love...

'I'm one of fourteen siblings,
 I found out all of my siblings have the same birthday,’ my father said.
Some of them were qawwali singers
Others were magicians;
Specialized in curing grief, and agony.
‘I loved all of them –...

So, the field wasn’t even there,
crossing which, all those days,
we had gone to that village.
My own people stayed in that village
When we went there,
carrying umbrella of sunshine or rain,...