Here's a fun collaboration I worked on recently. Barkha Kumari has been blogging about her vivid dreams at Diaries of a dreamworm - some of her dreams are beyond dream-level crazy. So she recently featured a poem of mine, about a surreal dream I had during the lockdown, and also a fun interview where she threw … Continue reading Of dreams and dreamers
We’ve gotta be seen and we’ve gotta be heard we’ve gotta shower the petals and impress the locked-in herd. So, we use them wings to fly across the kingdom’s span while motivational tunes are played on by our army bands. Our department of symbolism will go further with our banners, the officers will salute the … Continue reading For the Corona Warriors
The fan whirs above me, the T-shirt on the drier hangs limp. I need more zing in my writing, I need I need I need something I can’t figure. Can someone tell me, please? Is there anyone else in this room? Are words always this slippery? Are stories suspended from the sky, their tails hanging … Continue reading Lockdown Word Vomit
Out there on the street is a dog who’s mixing up his barks with his yelps. If I listen intently, I may be able to find the interval of his calls. Would it scare him if I jump out into the balcony at that precise moment? Or would it make him happy? For either to … Continue reading Fitting a curve to animal sounds
Extension On the morning of day 21, the man on television arrives at ten, and begins his speech. Listening to it, I feel like I’m uncoiling a ball of wool in slow motion until I get to the core. The man on television makes me wait for long enough that I have to heat my … Continue reading Extension
On Day 20, emotions run high, and technology is at the forefrunt of conflicts it was meant to resolve. We resolve one by creating a video tutorial and sharing it over WhatsApp. We get parents to share their screens through phone calls and mirrors, not by mirroring screens, but through the real glass ones on … Continue reading Tremors and tech
If the lockdown goes on for too long, I might begin to wonder if the universe is just a sphere with a radius of five hundred meters, everything else is a hologram, and all people outside are simulations. Day 19 of the 21-day lockdown in India
This lockdown is like a cocoon swallowing the butterfly. This lockdown is like a video game where the monster has infinite lives. This lockdown is like a door and everyone has the key but no fingers. Day 18 of the 21-day lockdown in India
What if, in this lockdown, we develop different idioms and phrases that mean the same? What if evolution put us on an express track each group in its micro bubble? What if every such unit became a Galápogos Island? And what if, when the gates open and we meet or bump into each other at … Continue reading What If?
The poetry is in the dumps. The poet too is on the slump. Remembering flow and metaphors, he laughs at all the times his words were good enough. The verses now, they don’t make sense. The verses now are full of pretence. Locked indoors, the poet struggles to string words, running out of themes, he … Continue reading Brain Damage (apologies to Pink Floyd)
Grains of thought 