“The liberation that comes through sorrow is greater than the sorrow,” says Nikhilesh, in Home and the World. I quote from Penguin’s Modern Classics edition, in Sreejata Guha’s translation.

But talks of harmony flood your nose. / Harmony, harmony, harmony—you want it so bad, / and so you put words in our mouths

“Attention passengers. The next train arriving is a B train traveling westbound towards Boston College.  Please stand clear of the closing doors."

a man walks into a bar but he looks like a little boy

Geronimo rushed inside the hole coughing, somehow managing to shut the door behind him. His mother Telapatra grabbed her son, hugging her tight for an instant before smacking him across the back. “How many times did I tell you not to go out at this hour?” cried Telapatra.

the bullet hole/ in my brother's chest/ unfolds like a pandora's box

My father speaks in a dismantled language that goes up in  smoke. 

Over the last two semesters, my course on South Asian writing at both the undergraduate and graduate level begins with Shahidul Zahir’s Jibon O Rajnoitik Bastobata (Life and Political Reality, translated by V Ramaswamy and Shahroza Nahreen).

I often think of flying on a bird’s eye view  Spread my nimble wings over

Three-year-old Maria asks  her nine-year-old brother, Ibrahim.

Perhaps I should have met that girl. What if I was wrong and imagined an ordinary girl so fantastically that I couldn’t even recognise her in real life?

justice—where is justice?

Where voices unite, a chorus strong, / Demanding justice, righting wrong

"Growing to love something, and allowing that to change me is not immediate, it is not profound. Nor is it something caused just by reading a handful of books"

‘You must bury / yourself / Every three days’ / She said, / ‘Corpses are of / No use

Your grief rots the decades old paint and the lakhri no one bothered to replace. Even across the road, it reeks of death.

The Notorious Loverboy, Slum Boy and Millionaire’s Daughter, My Bride or My Mother, My Mother’s Body in a Wedding Saree,

In memory of the late Mike Franklin, 1949-2024

I inhale the luxurious scent / of squelched earth / smoking under the sodden leaves

Echoes of your voice ring in my ears / As the world turns scarlet in front of my eyes