October 2024

Our dream trains conjure up faces— known, unknown. You half-recognise a tired mother; I sneer at my drunk uncle who never got to the other side of his third marriage. We pack our dream trains with all we’ve come through. There’s another,

J, I can’t bear to spell out your name. I see you clearly, even now.Dark, pimple scarred, a smooth voice.You were a neighbour, my Godmother’s brother.About the same age as my uncles.But unlike them. I remember the day at WT.You chose to

Lithesome young Gem, her father’s precious lass,born to a family of homely, motherless boys,Endowed with dower of house and jewelsMarried to the first Frankie that pled her troth A jewel of a mother, she bred a brood of threeA son turned preacher,

We lived in Shivaji Park when I first askedmy 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 livedin huge houses

I had not realisedHands and fingers could be so smallSo pink and crinkly, nails and allA little tiny human beingComplete, perfectExcept that you were notI could not hearI did not want to knowThe complicated diagnosisThey were pressing in upon usI’d never heard

In realms obscure, ‘latrine cleaner’ she was named,Love’s tender touch, a stranger’s hand, never claimed.her essence distilled in allure’s potent brew,A deity of desire, in eyes that only knew. Oh, Thangamma, your tale unfolds,beyond the verse of poets renowned,muted whispers, stories untold,in

Day folds into nightshe holds herself stillthe sharp angular linesof his cheekbones and the fire flares in the hearth –orange-tinged blue flameshis temper burning fast and hotlike the gidgee wood he mills. don’t pull that sullen face sonbeware his mood…Mother and sonwait…for

To the world the wounds have healedthe scars faded, invisible.Yet all it takesare carelessly spoken wordsor random, fleeting thoughtsfor the hurt to surface.The wounds bleed invisible dropsthe anguish swirling like a black cloud,surrounds the self.The bright smilethe calm demeanourbelie the echo of

Disconcerted and chagrined,I entwine my fingers tighter around you,glancing from the corner of my eye,a detective of the heart,probing through a maze of veiled secrets—but not to find love,Oh, not now!I eschew discovering it,here and now.I turn my gaze to the other

I sleep miles away from the landCalled Holy;The people are not mine yetThe pain is,The homes are not mineYet the dust is,The blood is not mine yetTheir Death is.Chalks are drawing the borders,Marking the dead bodies scattered around the dustThat was once

This old palm leaf tells us children some stories of her time to put us to sleepAbout how she discovered her childhood in watchingHer mother making paper sweets,home filled every day with sharp sun light on the mother’s eager hands, the sheets

The smell of chai filled up my apartment when I used to wake up, once. I do not remember how long it has been. Two years, probably five. It’s been six months. I walk through the pavements alongside the palm trees. This

All my anxieties…About did I leave the stove on!Or maybe the keys hangingStuck to the outside of the door,instead of the lining of my pockets. Maybe all my worries…about how dreadful the world is going toTurn outare simply attemptsto come home. Time

My mother—in her heyday—had been quitea looker. Pretty enough to have been a Bond girl, framedin a sniper’s scope, I mused to myself. As a teen, thumbing through plastic sleeved albums (eight curved-edge photographs to a double page spread, fizzing lightly with