He sits on his haunches Palm over the head. The storm last night Blew away his hut. It was made out of straw And some thatch, It was no match For the might Of the raging monster. In Sundarbans, People become meals For crocodiles &Continue reading “After the storm”
Category Archives: poetry
She is falling
[I wrote this poem 15 years ago while watching a tree being cut for widening the road near the IIT-Madras campus. As with back then, even now, my heart aches when I watch a tree fall!] She’s falling. She, who shade gave and fruits bore, For the greedy ones who wanted more Is in aContinue reading “She is falling”
Tribute to mother
Let me hear your song again mother. That song ridden with pain and agony, Which you have often sung to me. For in hearing it, I can feel the pain Through which you have been all your life. You think I will not understand it, perhaps, For, I have never experienced the same. But IContinue reading “Tribute to mother”
This train runs on blood
Once upon a time, a 5 a.m. monster that would screechingly halt By the local railway station, next to my childhood home In Calcutta, used to be my mother’s morning alarm. The memory of that goods train thundering past our abode, Rocking its flimsy walls is vivid still. Who’d have thought That a day wouldContinue reading “This train runs on blood”
Gitanjali – A Poet’s Prayer
[I had originally written this essay in 2005 for a class on ‘Indian Writing in English’ as an undergraduate student of English Literature at Madras Christian College. The essay is an attempt at an original interpretation of Tagore’s collection of poems ‘Gitanjali’, which fetched him the Nobel Prize in Literature. I am republishing this fromContinue reading “Gitanjali – A Poet’s Prayer”
An anthropologist among the journalists 