Spacious, shiny, new roads are built in my city to rent them for raw-markets

I look in the mirror, and the tides start turning,

You Are a Rickshawallah

The hush of dawn and the whispered breeze,/ that caresses nature's resting face

the moon watches over you, when whales beach themselves, the tides wash them back home; the moon looks down

When I was born, my skin was dark, like my grandfather’s, in whose arms I discovered my first home. Relatives old and new, whose disappointment was being nursed by my parents’ fair complexions, looked from afar as my rotund cheeks melted into the sleeves of my dada’s discolored half-sleeve shirt.

She stands in front of the canvas and stares.

Sameer’s mother looked at her husband before quickly stepping in and attempting to defuse the situation. “You know it’s just a heritage thing. We’re not really Biharis".

After our spiritual journey to the Old City and West Bank, the realities of life caught up to us.

News from Gaza rips the heart open/ Idlib is burning too

Eurydice, his beloved,  lost to the shades, In the underworld's depths,  where darkness pervades.

Once on a particularly smothering hot day, on a CNG ride to work, I was stuck in the most heinous traffic for over two hours. Over the yelling drivers, honking cars, and incessant cursing over why the CNGs were trying to overtake the expensive cars, I was listening to my usual cycle of songs. As coincidence would have it, David Gilmour in his seraphic voice posed the question: “So, so you think you can tell/ Heaven from hell?”

Who is the one playing such a plaintive tune on a flute

My mother’s house is beside a lake that separates the rich and mighty of the city from a little isle of people who work for them.

Death dwells between is and was, Riding the final particle of a fading breath.

It is odd that nowadays One seldom hears the words

Tell me what to say when I need to speak, If I have to say something, So what can I say: look at that

The door didn’t fully click shut. That was an ordinary affair in the house because the door locked to prevent escape. But, by chance or sheer good luck, it didn’t fully lock this time. The click was off. Someone hadn’t done their job correctly. Bloody hell, no one does their jobs correctly in this godforsaken country.

I once again find myself drawn to "The Waste Land"—though this isn’t about just the one poem, not really—where so much of the old world exists in motifs in a tattered landscape.

Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred