By Gargi Guha
Rains,
Yet again,
Through a curtain of coconut fronds.
I know, I must forget plans
or try to be practical. Or nice.
For, this is a call
Petrichor
The Ways of Rain
In My Father's House
Percolation
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.
Columbus in Christmas
For Plath, For Love
Forest of Horses
A Procession of One
Visiting Hours
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.
Dying to love
Three Sea Poems: Moulting
Three Poems: In the valley of red
Mumbai Goddesses
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
Two Poems: Our Christmas Eve
Two Poems: This Christmas we'll speak of ancestral legacies
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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.
Inventory
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.
