Don’t go counting your steps

Don’t go like a spent monsoon cloud. Stay!

Clear turmeric stains from this table. Drink

your ginger tea. Ma bought this bone china cup

from the Chandni Chowk of her youth

for my dowry half-a-century ago.

Remember, once you were nine and I was six.

Don’t go with bushels of unsaid over your head.

Remember how you carried ten pitchers a day

from the river to home, without spilling a drop.

The neighbors cursed their daughters for managing

only three spilled pitchers each.

Present is too imperfect. Let it recede

into memory where, like your husband’s beard,

it will acquire a fragrant smoothness that his snoring

nearness never kept.

Don’t go counting your steps. Your trek will turn sublime,

if you forget what you leave behind.

First published in Muse India, Fall 2011

When vegetables went on a strike

                          

(To Vishnu Sharma, creator of Panchatantra

& his disciples: Aesop, Fontaine and Borges) 

Using kickbacks and foxy, crowy, mousy, doggy diplomacy

the chicken, goats, lambs and meat-producing cattle union 

got a bill passed, which institutes special culinary laws

prohibiting the use of "only vegetables" in any dish. 

"The dying wish of every meaty-bone, fattened comrade

is to go glamorously on a gourmet plate.

It is said that the soul of a brother is never at ease

if its meat is not eaten, or eaten with too much peas."

"But think of a purely vegetarian platter! We'd live rather than die. 

Its insulting to be overlooked, while the lowest caste of the living get picked!

If the absence of a bloody sacrifice attracts diners to their vegi-curries,

our corporate propagandists must spread 'lack of protein' worries.” 

**

All the vegetarian cattle expressed their support for this move,

"We must be the priority, as long as the roots move less than the hoofs."

Parleys were held, dynamics of proteins was discussed in conferences,

slogans of "Meat is good, Good is meat" appeared as research inferences.

Imagine the politics of taste. Odysseus rose to praise the roasts,

and toasts were styled and rhymed like Goddess Kali's prayer,     

Buddhist non-violence was asked to abdicate power over platters

and tandoori ovens were worshipped the world over. 

Then okra, cauliflower, cabbage, gourd and pumpkin began

a nationwide campaign for the vegetarian nation.

They were soon joined in by the Culinary Institute for Cole Slaw,

Salad is Sensuous Association (SISA) and the ghost of GB Shaw.

"Nature gave humans neither claws nor canine teeth, 

and their stomach is not designed to live on just meat,

without roughage or fiber, the toilets will go out of use,

and constipated ideas cannot be rescued by any Muse.'

**

Fruits and flowers decided to stay away from these protests,

and near-extinction, carnivorous beasts tried to get some press.

Then hens and sheep met the representatives from the sea,

while the fish supported them, shrimps and crabs sought amnesty.

Then the cereals called a strike – bandh: "We too feel repressed,

always on the plate, but never as the main dish, 

we are like the MPs without the ministerial office."

Some vegan voices chimed in, but these were soon suppressed.

Then peppers, zucchini, asparagus, lettuce, shifted camps,

announced: "We no longer support the vege-tramps.

Bah! Who eats okra or beans or cabbage or gourd or pumpkin,

except the penniless pagans with non-Western idioms of sin?"

Mushrooms underwent an existential angst. "We are rooted, but color

of our skin is our undoing. We can hallucinate the best of men,

but we fail to synthesize food from sunlight. Everything decays or

is eaten, by humans or us. But we are the devourers more ubiquitous."

**

Then potatoes, yes potatoes, and tomatoes, yes them tomatoes,

organized with chillis, basil, spices, oil-producing plants and nuts,

a hyperspace of boycott, a non-alignment movement, the middle guts

of truly wise, arguing no matter who is eaten, everyone is put to knife.

The slogan "No matter who is eaten, everyone is put to knife"

soon rose as a gloat from every living thing. As the lament spread,

death became a living threat, and chicken and cattle sighed,

"We wanted a vain status – a vice! Its better to just survive."

Only a sage with divyadrishti and vivek could follow this talk.

Divyadrishti: transcelestial vision & vivek: transcelebral acumen --

acquired by study, right karma & yoga, enriched the Sage

with knowledge of those idioms and ideas that never hit the page.

The Sage addressed all living species with his trans-celestial powers,

"All die, all disappear, but we all carry the seed of immortality within,

that life-force creates more like us. Every seed is first just pollen – dust,

all creatures begin as eggs or babies. Live fully now, that is all there is."

The toady, mousy, cattle crowed in unison, "O holy person,

we know this, "No matter who is eaten, everyone is put to knife,

and know this how can we live fully now? Tell us what awaits us,

in our after-knife? What does live fully now mean? Ah is life only strife?"

**

  

Every capillary of the plants, every veins and every mane of animals dilated

each organism initiated the biochemical mechanisms for absorbing information,

the Sage composed with practiced slowness, to match the kinetics of osmosis,

and after the living world subconsciously prepared itself, the fasting Sage stated:

"All atoms and molecules, kindness and ridicule, and every emotion, insult,

ionic content, electrostatics, life functions, the chaotic loves, instinctive antics,

the nonlinear dynamics of sex, the philosophy of universal acts and results

are dictated by misunderstood religion and science. But forget what I just said.

Now listen: To live fully now is our manifest destiny, to die is to bring closure,

what value would breath, beauty, food, babies hold for us, if nobody died?

If nobody ever aged, why would we value what stages and seasons we see?

if nothing changed, our existence would be gargoyle-like wait for eternity!

Everything reruns, in new rhythms, in new colors, before changed eyes.

The audit of a good or bad life, is neither made on earth nor in skies.

The answers are within, the force & the source is within, Tat tvam asi: Thou art that." 

All living beings heard his words, few understood, but all concurred, "Knife is good".

First published in MUSE INDIA, Issue 39, Sept-Oct 2011

Flotsam

Flotsam

Without you, I float like an abandoned ship
seeking sailors left behind by wreckages.
My journeys end in unknown ports.
I trust your knowledge of stars, of drifts,
of the birds that bring luck, of rocky shores.
I know you can rescue me.

Without you, I float like an abandoned ship,
the sky is endless blue, direction-less,
the waves only know the harmonics
of nausea, the ocean is an unguided
atheist, and the winds are false promises
that can only lead astray.

Without you, I float like an abandoned ship -
a ghost at sea, a sailing monument, a tomb,
a message to future, a trove of memories,
and I suspect that I will be ecstatic
if the pirates pillage me. Without you, I float
like inarticulate thoughts.

First published in MYTHIUM, No. 3, 2011

You Are A Festival

You are a Festival

colors of Holi, gulaal, sindhoor,
splashed hues of bhang-like joy,
decorated like Diwali, your eyes,
your bangles, your earrings, sparkle like diye,
you waft into a room like the fragrances of Basant Panchmi,
and day-dreaming kites sashay in the breeze of your chatter

like Christmas gifts I unravel you,
and gasp each time, surprised anew,
I turn towards you on every Id
and thank Allah as you thank Ishwar on Teez, on Karwachauth,

like Krishna, when surrounded by gopiyan,
I sing and dance to your name –

my Radha. My Sita – I yearn for you.
Every separation is an exile
and I battle demons and Ravana of the worldly tasks,
blazing my way to your door with the Dussera glory;

when I meet you, it is like Bihu, Sakranti, Navratri, Lohri , Onam;
Bhangra, Garba, Raas throb in my steps,
and my songs, composed in your praise,
resound like Sanskrit chants, hymns,
poured with milk, honey and ghee - panch amrit,
over the Shiva-linga by the fasting believers.

I know that my baraat will arrive at your door one day,
with the same ardor that Durga Pooja and Ganesh Chaturthi
bring to the streets of Calcutta and Mumbai.

You are a festival
and I celebrate you each day.

Notes: Festivals: Holi, Diwali, Id, Dussera, Bihu, Sakranti, Lohri, Navratri, Lohri, Onam, Durga Pooja, Ganesh Chaturthi mentioned here are all associated with myths and rituals, that vary with region and language.

Bhangra in Punjab and Garba and Raas in Gujarat are popular folk dances.

Teez and Karwachauth are difficult fasts, carried out by wives, once a year (even a sip of water is prohibited). On these days, wives pray for the longevity and well being of their husbands.

Baraat is the retinue of the groom that goes to the door of the bride for wedding ceremony.

First published in Mythium, No. 3, 2011

Poems of Nazim Hikmet

Poems of Nazim Hikmet (translated from Turkish by Randy Blasing and Multu Konuk, 2nd edition, Persea Books / New York)

Poets like Nazim Hikmet have a deep understanding of human feelings, failings, optimism, dreams, desires and contradictions. Poets like Nazim Hikmet know their words can rend a heart as easily as they can mend a heart. Poets like Nazim Hikmet appear rarely on earth, and when they do, their songs conjoin the undying spirit of humanity as eternal echoes of their rhymes and times. A collection of hundred poems appears in a translation here and for readers like me who must rely solely on translation, the poems present flavors, sights and a sensibility that fill our hearts with a mixture of sorrow, serenity, loss and hope. The ability to create hope in a reader or a feeling of serenity is indeed a testament to the power, generosity and depth of the poet for he manages to do so, even though he spent thirteen years of his life in jail and thirteen more in exile. Only great souls can bring out humane words after living through hardships and bitterness, and bunch them into words as melodious as of Hikmet.

His biography can be deciphered by reading some of his own poems. He wrote (It's This Way): "It's this way: / being captured is beside the point, / the point is not to surrender." In a Rubaiyat, he said: "Between us just a difference of degree -- / that's how it is my canary: / you an unthinking bird, with wings, / and me with hands, a man who thinks..." and in another rubaiyat he wrote: "Me, one man, the Turkish poet / Nazim Hikmet / I'm faith from head to toe --/ from head to toe, struggle and hope ..." and of course, the best rubaiyat: "I don't mean to boast, but I've shot / through ten years of bondage like a bullet. / And putting aside the pain in my liver, / my heart's the same heart, my head still the same head..." In another place, he writes (Angina Pectroris): "I look at the night through the bars, / and despite the weight on my chest / my heart still beats with the most distant stars."

The poems in this collection are arranged chronologically. The poems written before 1945 or so (first third of the book) are perhaps not as moving or as potent as the poems in the remaining two-third of the book. In Hikmet's case, one can see the sapling young bard turns into a banyan-like mature poet after weathering a succession of historical storms, personal winters and amorous torrents of springs. Hikmet poems talk about melons and pomegranate seeds, Istanbul and Bosphorus, Berlin and Moscow, Marxism and solitary confinement, son and wife he cannot meet as he lives in exile, wife waiting at home while he sits in prison day after day keeping himself alive with songs. When Hikmet talks about freedom or blue skies or hope or hunger and cold felt by his people or death without meeting his beloved or change or love, when he talks of the same cliches at we all poets are moved by and use in our verses, the wordplay is an incidental embellishment to a deeper song of the human spirit he symbolizes within the poems and we aspire to, as readers. Hikmet uses as his source a stream of experiences and feelings which uncommon as they are, provide him with a connection with universal, and sip after sip from his every poem (especially later poems) brings to us through sounds and translated sense a recognition of what lies outside the cage of our own personal limitations or sensibilities. 

I can provide only glimpses from his repertoire. He wrote (Separation): "finer than silk thread sharper than a sword / separation is a bridge between us / even when we sit knee to knee" in a series of poems written in 1945, when he was in prison, he writes:"Today, not broken and sad -- / no way! -- / today Nazim Hikmet's woman must be beautiful/ like a rebel flag..." Or a Rubaiyat: "My love's image in the mirror had its say: / 'She's not real -- I am,' it said to me one day. / I struck, the mirror broke, her image disappeared / but, thank goodness, my love stayed in her place..." We can say he passed a comment on the strength of his will, that kept his quill overflowing with love for humanity and Turkey when we said (From Sofia): "Exile is not an easy art to master..."

Maybe Hikmet was in solitary confinement or in prison or lived as an exile for years, but his poems are usually set where his heart truly is: either outside the confining walls, back in the streets where his imagination walks uninhibited and unrecognized. Indeed most of us being prisoners of our ambition, exiles made so by our own desires, can identify with a poet whose personal life itself becomes a metaphor for so many feelings that are suppressed or strengthened by our own deeds, thoughts and desires. Hikmet seeks neither pity nor praise, neither power nor reverence, tries to be no martyr or reformer, but his every poems seeks for people love, joy, peace, liberty, justice and above all empathy. In his lifetime he says in his poems he touched the two extremes of poverty and riches, insults and solitary confinement as well as international travel and recognition, hunger for a simple morsel as well as the flavors of choicest delicacies. He also died as a poet whose poems were translated into forty languages, whose books in translation were found in shelves in many countries and yet they were banned in his own country. In a poem (You're) he said:

"You're

You're my bondage and my freedom,

my flesh burning like a naked summer night,

you're my country.

Hazel eyes marbled green,

you're awesome, beautiful and brave,

you're my desire always just out of reach."

The opposites, the contradictions meet in Hikmet like parallel rays of light meet at in a distant star. His skill as a poet and his life as a person, have made him into one of the brightest stars of Turkish and twentieth century world literature. He will forever be a guiding light for many people across the globe. Like Darwish of Palestine, Hikmet never surrenders his faith in humanity, and indeed after reading this collection by him my feel that as long as poets like him continue to arrive to sing, we can hope for and progress towards a better and just world. His poems (the lines quoted below are from 'Message') will continue to speak to us, for now and forever:

"My fellow

       patients,

             you'll get well.

The aches and pains will cease.

Ease will come

       softly, like a warm summer evening

       descending from heavy green branches."

Book Review: Chef by Jaspreet Singh

Chef by Jaspreet Singh is a lyrical novel, set in 1990s, expressed through the landscape of memory of Kirpal Singh or Kip. The shortened hip name Kip is a name he acquires after joining as an assistant to a chef in the army general's house in Kashmir. The body of Kip's father lies somewhere in the Siachin glacier, which Kip eventually visits at a crucial juncture in the story. When Kip first arrives in Kashmir, the memory of his father who was a decorated soldier/ officer in the army invades his conversations and interactions with armymen around him. The Sikh recruit, Kip, learns to cook local, national and international dishes from Kishen, who had trained in various embassies in Delhi to acquire the skill to blend flavors and prepare delicacies. The mentor Kishen, also a Sikh, extends his scope far beyond culinary arts, for he provokes Kip to think about women, about Muslims in Kashmir, about battlefields where soldiers like Kip's father die each day while "civilians" go on living unperturbed by the bloody reality at the troubled border between India and Pakistan. While Kip is the main character and the narrative emerges from his memory, it is Kishen who makes the eyeballs of a reader throb with emotion of every kind.

The army general has a motherless daughter who grows up in the shadows of the house, while the father is busy administrating Kashmir. While their personal fates are important elements of the novel, for Kip one presents his boss, the other who grows into a poetess, a foster daughter. Kashmir was once central to Hindu imagination, for many celebrated scholars emerged from Kashmiri Pandits, and in the last twenty years, (and a few hundred years leading to it), the Pandits and other Hindus were driven out from the peaceful land of their ancestors. In the new Kashmir, remain only the army and the Muslims. The Muslims who are half-unhappy with the military-dominated presence of the rest of India, are half-sympathetic to cause of freedom expressed by their leaders or youth for various selfish or selfless reasons, are perhaps half-motivated by propaganda from across the border, half-raged by the apathy from the rest of India, are being stifled by conflict, dwarfed by the unreasonable expectations of two nations. In this land of contradictions and conflict, Kip cooks curries with a military precision and churns dish after dish using Kishen's recipes. While the kitchen keeps him occupied for most of the time, it is his trips outside the kitchen that take the story forward.

Kip learns Kashmiri, and is called upon to talk to a infiltrator, a Muslim woman from across the border who ends up in India, washed to the shore of a river after her failed suicide. Till her emergence, Kip stayed secure in his anger and hatred for the enemy. But now a frail woman was the enemy, and her emergence upset his preconceived notions. In a jarring, haunting narrative, that one experiences while reading rest of the novel, (but cannot capture in a review of the novel), Jaspreet Singh creates a compelling masterpiece where love, scars, disillusion, hope, loss and compassion compete for space on every page. Sadness settles on a reader as the story unfolds, but the lyrical writing and an attachment to Kip's memory and fate, carries the reader into a somber night, not restless, not restful, just somber.

A good debut, a good read...

A Biography, Scripted by Astrologers

A Biography, Scripted by Astrologers

Sometimes I think our family of astrologers tricked

me into choices I have made all my life.

Astrologers said: "The nav-grah, nine planets would align

to make your tasks harder. But if you make the effort

Vrihaspati, Jupiter, the guru of gods, would delight

in imparting you knowledge. But like in the Puranic times,

the demoniac influences would attack you or try to seduce

you into failures. But if you keep meat off your plate,

drink no wine and fast at least once per fortnight,

you could lessen the severity of blow,

and become a world-famous engineer".

I was forewarned: "The fame will come late,

after a long hiatus, or wait,

that too when Surya or Sun rises

with an intent to set your world straight,

But till then it will be Mars or Mangal,

the blood-bathed planet's rule.

Mars bestows only anger, and scars

through accidents involving water or fire."

Ma said drive no motorized vehicles

till the age of twenty-three. Her argument:

The engines have to be ignited, and there is no smoke

without a fire somewhere.

I battled Mangal with a magic stone,

set in silver ring, and fasted on Mangalvar, Tuesday,

seeking Hanuman's aid to keep accidents at bay.

Hanuman's skill at battling the bad-blooded

demons is celebrated in Ramayana, in Tulsi's Chalisa.

Ask any Indian who drives or walks alone at night,

how many times does he recite,

those lines from sixteenth century?

I was told, after Mangal's reign ends,

only the page would see my rage.

"But Soma or Moon will follow and bring

moody states and hazy visions, implying

unrequited love, or spectacles".

Possibly the latter, said my mother,

from the stress on eyes from excess reading

spectacles are a Borgesian after-effect,

that shows a scholar's good-breeding.

"If the father's influence wins", astrologers noted,

"Sahib's chair would be a fitting career,

but satellite inclinations for writing and music

seem unrelenting. But as shalokas, hymns

are musical poems, maybe a spiritual journey

will unfold, as is befitting for a son of a Brahmin family.

Unconventional comparisons with other birth charts show

leadership as a celibate Guru or a great King are possible."

But my mother insisted I'll marry (a girl of her choice),

like my grandpa before me, I'll also worship the devi:

female divinity. She ignored me when I protested

that democracy has no kings.

Ma kept fasts for my sake,

made me touch clothes, lentils, rice, wheat,

sugar, iron, stale roti and stale bread, coins

before she gave away these as alms.

Though she prayed for an excess of my success,

she thought the Himalayan house would be my only address.

She somehow forgot that the counting

(they refer to the astrology as ganana or counting),

suggested a prowess in science and engineering.

The astrologers foresaw higher education

and training in foreign languages and alien countries.

*

As a child, I could not visualize my future

beyond a Sahib's kursi (bureaucrat's chair).

There was no writer or poet or engineer in our family,

no traveler, none who visited the distant territories,

I saw only Sahib's kursi as possibility and my youth revolted

against the Sahib-like life of hypocrisy. I set out Westward,

holding an admission card, seeking an undecided destiny.

*

Now I think my family's astrologers dealt lies

to trick me into a role-play, I think of as my life.

Since success was said to be scripted,

gods and numerics were working to ensure it.

Unless I botched up my lines or missed my cue,

I was to get rewards, and become world-famous too.

"You must focus on the effort, karma, necessary

to deserve the rewards your are destined to get",

is how my Ma always put it every year

when a varsh-fal (annual prediction chart) arrived

ever compiled, to keep the prophecies updated and alive.

*

As predicted or so it seemed, at twenty-seven, I turned

"charming" for the feminine eyes, or perhaps the prophesy

gave this lover-boy the confidence to prove the astrologers right.

Now I am marrying for love, which was not revealed early,

but I am told, no arranged marriage was prophesied for me.

At the astrologically correct time, humans, Gods,

gandharavas, ghosts, ancestors, souls, stars, planets,

will supervise my wedding. Invisible blessings,

as celestial flowers, will tumble from the skies,

and we will unite before the holy fire, Agni,

for at least seven lives.

*

Years back, on returning to Atlanta from a trip

to my Himalayan abode, I told Thomas Lux:

"When I asked an astrologer about my writing,

he squirmed and said: 'focus on engineering',

your chart says you'll write,  but no planetary

alignments will ever conspire to make you a Rushdie."

Gurudev Lux smiled, and said, "That dimwit!

That’s great! Why would you be a Rushdie?

The guy is a fiction-writer, and you're a poet.

A poet you will forever be, with or without prophecy.

Trust me, if we publish a chapbook of your poems,

you will mint more money than me."

One prophesy is always necessary to kill another.

*

It seems many grand schemes are in place

so my undercover motivation stays.

For example, when I was born Ma's uncle prophesized:

"Trains are destined to bear his name".

But after brooding over polymers, beetles,

breath figures, drops, gels and nanoparticles,

after writing verses in Hindi and English,

my doctoral thesis and research articles, I fear

errors in the calculations of the astrologers,

or unexpected, uncharted celestial events,

like demotion of Pluto as a planet, 

or improbabilities embedded in the string theory,

have tempered with my biography,

I falling short of the life as it was ever expected

or predicted or prophesized for me.

When I seek engineering or physics problems,

I find myself wallowing in precincts

of the known, echoing established findings.

When I try to translate Hindi poems,

or describe my childhood in my writings,

I see how the words in English are trapped

in their own cultural labyrinths,

and editors fail to see puns in my half-rhymes.

*

Old, young, fat, thin, bald, bespectacled men

who know nothing about GPAs, test-scores,

academic politics or scientific publications,

pore over my janam-patri, birth-chart,

to provide self-similar prophesies.

I know that these calculations by different priests

are based on the initial values or positions

of constellations at the moment of my birth.

I know using the same differential or algebraic equations,

gives consistent results and since even the Hindu planets

follow a near-eternal rhythm, there is no reason to expect

different answers from astrologers of different sects.

But the astrologers themselves insist that interpretation

is the litmus test to distinguish a master from a dilettante

Any computer, monkey, politician, or even an MBA

can compute the odds, any experimentalist or journalist

can collect the data, but seeing what lies beyond the literal

or lateral or within or beyond the miasma or the mist,

requires a mystic, psychic, scientific vision.

Only the spiritually advanced, chosen selves possess it.

*

I think our destiny is shaped by the limits

we set aside. Our destinations,

aspirations tug us, we drift towards

what is described as the grandest acts.

Not destined to have a simple life of hyacinths,

I grit my teeth and then I wait for the galaxies

to complete their motions. I know Gita says,

I control only my actions, "karmaneva adhikaraste,

mahafaleshu kadachana," not the ultimate fruit. I strive

to reconcile with whatever the life brings, and I hum:

To savor the madhu (nectar / honey) as earthlings,

develop a palate for the rich flavors of bee-stings.

*

Many say that Rama, Krishna, Moses and Jesus

turned divine through their words and actions,

a 'divine will' was through them realized,

but maybe they too acted heroically

to fulfill their destinies . . .  prophesied?

First published in The Whirlwind Review, Issue 1, 2011.

Published here in a new, revised version.

Anthology of published works (English)

1. ‣Poetry (Dec 2007): “Letter to the Editor” Read here 
2. ‣The Cortland Review (Feb 2008): “Your Face” * Read or listen here 
3. ‣New Verse News: “Half-Happy with India Turning into a Trillion Dollar Economy” (Nominated for Pushcart Prize) Read here; “Mumbai Burns” and “Beaten but not Bruised”
4. ‣Atlanta Review (Spring 2009): “Maghi Tyohaar: The Goat Festival” ** (Reposted here)
5. ‣Kartika Review (Summer 2009): “Coke Story” ** (Read here)
6. ‣Bateau (Spring 2009): “My Verses” *
7. ‣The Cortland Review (2009) Read or listen: “Breadwinner” **
8. ‣Nilab (July 2010): “Introspective Desi” ** (Reposted here)
9. ‣Mythium (Summer 2011): “Twenty-first Century Incarnation of the Snake God” **, “Lotuses of Misquotes”, “Vedanta” **, “Flotsam”, “You’re a Festival”
10. ‣Nefarious Bellarina (Fall 2010 & Spring 2011): “Naked Translated World”, “Punjabi English”, “Bottoms-up Girl”(Read here)  and “Devout your Lips”* (Read here)
11. ‣Poets for Living Waters (Fall 2010): “Missive to Ancestors” * and “I must”.* (Read here)
12. ‣Breakwater Review (Fall 2010): “Fatherless” ** (Read at my blogsite)
13. ‣Mastodon Dentist (Fall 2010): “Choicest Wife for a North Indian Son” (Reposted here)
14. ‣Muse India (March 2011): Commit to Amnesia my Name*, 1990**, Eclipsing the myths and discovering America**,  Saffron, Gifted Loneliness*, Dinkar’s Fist and Lexicon of God*. (Read at Muse India)
15. ‣A Handful of Dust (June 2011): “Explosive Droplets” (Read here as a repost)
    
    ‣The Whirlwind Review (August 2011): “A Biography, Scripted by Astrologers” (Read here as a repost)

1. *Ghazal in English (9)
2. ** Village poems (9)