By Salil Charturvedi
The man sleeps on the rim of the pavement, one hand under his ear, legs bent. This is the shaded part of the esplanade. Now and then, a few bright-yellow flowers from the adjoining Copperpod tree fall and settle around him. His legs are draped with a faded blue-checked lungi and his skin is slightly darker than the tree’s shadow.
By Jessica Faleiro
During a routine consultation, the cardiac interventionist frowns at my father’s ECG reading. He’s immediately admitted into the ICU, where he’s restricted to seeing visitors for only thirty minutes, twice a day. The ICU security guard, Raj, allows me into the ward after visiting hours, when he realises that my father is in for a long haul. It occurs to me that he’s seen as many dead people wheeled out as live ones wheeled in.
By Zilka Joseph
Issue no 24
We lived in Shivaji Park when I first asked
my parents about Santa—because he brought presents,
and my picture books showed him flying—
in a sleigh drawn by reindeer over fields and mountains of
snow in cold countries where white people lived
in huge houses with fat furniture and funny things
By Sara Leana Ahmad
Issue no 22
I remember this one evening when I was six watching the news with my family from our suburban home in the San Fernando Valley. During those days my mom was always crying. One of the first times I ever saw her cry was in those first days of the invasion, crouched under the dinner table, too ashamed to face us, wailing like I’d never seen since.
By Jessica Faleiro
Issue no 22
We are on summer break in Goa when my father first hears. “I was just there,” he tells everyone. “It won’t last.” We hear the stories of Kuwaitis being tortured and Indians being airlifted. I’m quickly enrolled in the local school, expected to befriend the other tenth graders. My mother brings a kitten to the place we’ve been calling home, to distract us.
By Frances Kai-Hwa Wang
Issue no 20
An APWT publication
Winning Entry
He laughed at me and my family for saving and reusing—tofu containers, green onion rubber bands, plastic bags, twist ties, takeout containers, glass jars, cookie tins—and he took it upon himself to secretly throw away all that we had carefully saved and washed and stored away. He thought it made us small and poor to reuse. He was big and rich enough to go out to the store to buy things new.
By Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla
Issue no 20
An APWT publication
Listen quietly to your seer sitting cross-legged
with dark kohl eyes she discerns,
when the cyan of the skies shall tincture
the fig vines coiling all over the arbors of the backyard,
of the virus that will kill with human touch
nose, eyes threatened fugitively…
By Jose Varghese
Issue no 20
An APWT publication
Little mother rocks the baby in her tiny arms that’ve migrated from pain
to numbness, from struggles to sorrows. She forgets the lies about better worlds. Eyes that hawk low over her are burnt deep in scorn. Hunger comes in search of her body. Overgrown fingernails dig deep on the flesh of her past…
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