poetry, Star Literature
‘The Unnamed’ and ‘Incomplete’: Two poems
The unnamed
You can get lost trying to
get back to the exit
at the Vatican Museum.
28 November 2025
Somewhere but not here
Tea breaks,
the perks of a bike ride.
7 November 2025
The ghosts still sing in Shantinagar
"The ghosts still sing in Shantinagar" is one of the winning entries for our Halloween themed writing contest, 'Spooktober: Bhooter Adda'
31 October 2025
From the prayer hall
Whose bell rings in the temple tonight?
Whose hymn rises from the Gospel's heart?
And in the call of Esha,
does the muezzin still implore—
"Come, come toward salvation"?
Across the purified valley of night,
from the world's scattered prayers,
24 October 2025
July 18
Do you remember the sunset on the 18th of July? What colour was it?
1 August 2025
Even in hell, chanachur
And I realised: / even in the line to hell, / waiting for punishment, / we'd still reach for chanachur. / We'd still find comfort / in the crunch of survival
4 July 2025
The poetry of rain
It would rain in the rains / And the rest of this poem would be written by someone else
27 June 2025
Writing a memoir
There’s a purgatorial break between these stretches
…flaxen against the lights
20 June 2025
The people within me
I am not a single name.
Not a single wound.
13 June 2025
Fragments
Grey chips of rough cement
Rust rubble all around,
13 June 2025
Mosaicked wounds
This was the way it ended: not with fire,
But carried quietly under sleep-beds,
13 June 2025
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I cannot tell you that I want to be intoxicated, inebriated, and stashed away for the rest of eternity while holding your hand at the mediocre fair in the middle of the crowd of ill-mannered school-children who grew up too soon
30 May 2025
The companion
It said, 'You've brought a return ticket with you friend / Remember, people are not meant to be held onto.'
23 May 2025
Three Songs: Kazi Nazrul Islam
The mind craves to fly far away. / In the guise of a beggar, eyes wet with tears
23 May 2025
The moon is a cheeseball and we are effervescent
The moon is a cheeseball,
Cratered, yellow, and huge like your eyeballs
16 May 2025
déjà vu
Moving mindlessly and / Etching every alley along the way / With verses devoted to you
16 May 2025
Mould
A quiet, seniority in its touch, / A tenderness that feels like it's meant to last
18 April 2025
Escape
You thought you had escaped, didn't you? / Outran everything that weighed you down
18 April 2025
Delila’s quest (20 October 2014)
Li’l Del is walking all alone
Li’l Del wants to find her way home.
11 April 2025
Memory speaks
Sometimes at early dawn / You overpower my eyelids / And won’t let me wake up
7 April 2025