Pause

For Mumbai. The railway coaches stand like zombies, like they have been assigned a job they never signed up for. They look desolate without the crowds. The sea-link looks like a lonely strip, the flyovers show off their curves, but who’s there to watch? The maidans lie bald, speckled with spots of brown and green. …

Advertisement

Origins

I come from a city where you don’t have to work too hard to break a sweat. Okay, jokes aside, I come from a city where, depending on how you look at it, hope is flattened when metal wheels clang on railroads, stepped on, smashed by armies of sweat or zips forward aboard the train …

Leap

I have spoken to the rivers, understood their frothy, foaming words. I have heard their words collide against the rocks. I have listened to singing trees, Their leaves dancing in the wind. I have flipped their pages in my head, and read through their poems, their couplets and their epics. They tell tales of what …