Can a new place become something else? When does a new place become a place on its own? The journey to Nottingham began on a sunny day. The bus departed at 10:20 am. We passed a few towns along the way. But mostly it was the flat plains, with some low hills having gentle green slopes that extended long distance. Sheep dotted like cotton clouds in these plains. Sometimes the sun was caressing the window with much needed yellow shiny warmth.  We were almost reaching Nottingham as some windmills could be seen. Nottingham is a city of students. But it also reminded  me of Chandini Chowk on a 11 am winter morning of Saturday when many kinds of Delhi come to visit it as tourists into several of its lanes. As we deboarded from the bus and began walking downhill towards the market square, we saw many eateries. We speculated their inner world and the prices. We tried to watch out for traffic lights. We tried to ask each other if we would be able to remember the way back to the bus when...

Some snippets from a carol concert Was trying to capture the celebratory spirit inside and the outside greyness. Many trees on the campus have let go off their leaves. In the evening there was a Moon event, attended by lots of school children and their parents. Some of them designed their own projects using legos. We got to see some lunar and martian rocks. We also got to hear some talks and visit some labs where student and researchers work on space projects.  A scientist played some beautiful music while sharing how she named some of the craters on moon. One of the crater (towards the right) is named after the poet Robert Burns While returning from the event, I took a moment to pause how many of the houses had put the lights on. Interestingly, as compared to India, where I have seen pulling lights themselves, I still have not seen anyone putting lights. I am sure they do. But just the invisibility around it, gives the lights some kind of magical tone. This complemented with the d...

This review contains spoilers.  The lead pair wears white (mostly). The attackers wear black (always).  Heroes are glowing because how else would we have recognised who they are — the title of the film is not enough. T he female protagonist, Isha, isn't shown to have any life of her own as she goes to take the articles of the male protagonist, Shiva, as he trains in the mountains. The Himalayas is talked about as the next shopping arcade in Connaught Place and not a mountain range which spans from west to east. I mean it can't be bigger than the film right?  In being called a button or pataka, there is humour.   Such is their huge world, that the movie Brahmastra makes me feel stupid.  Even though the story is about astras, which are shown as some kind of objects, the vision of the storytellers was okay with treating humans as objects too (well apart from the big stars of the story - because they will have an arc as well as a voice). Maybe in a movie t...

Evening at Dhauligiri, Odisha. These days I have been trying to understand places. I am not even a regular walker but I think about outside a lot when I am inside. I walk and walk because that is what slows me down. To walk is to move at a regular pace by lifting and setting down each foot in turn, never having both feet off the ground at once. There is so much rhythm in walking, that all my poems land on the ground first, as words find a crack between black tar and stare at this gap with curiosity, like crows at the passing bulldozers. Tales of Hazaribagh is that ‘lifting and setting down each foot in turn’. A Zeitroman, the book is an intimate exploratory account of something which neither ends nor begins. Hazaribagh is pursued actively in conversations, anecdotes, histories, spectacular ordinariness amidst aids like, Google Earth, a prophetic grandfather who knows everything about everything, and confident young guides like Md. Danish Ansari.  Morning sun in Lansdowne Divided in...

Some words make grass greener Some actions make a star seem smaller  When 7C writes, we all seem closer   Sharing some of their lines, Their trials with a superpower prompt And a tyre as a hula-hoop Some tell their superpowers Some ask—   .   She could change the world whichever way she thought That day onwards, with her darkness, she tried her best to bring light to others She could control the dead from dread Ocean trusted her He saw a rainbow-coloured bird She could make a house with the help of clouds. Creative Recycling, traveling as fast as lightning, Superpower to control lightning, water, underworld, time… Phew! Oh wait, there's more --- to fly in sky, super strength to carry large stones, a brain better than Einstein, a power to run fast, reverse time, and even go to future; fighting Ronan with her lightning, d reaming of meeting Avengers peculiar; a power to turn anything into a new form Saving diamonds with Hulk’s...

Here in this part of Delhi, I look at crows long enough and am eventually beginning to recognize them. Some have an oval head, some have a little-flattened-but-still-oval head, some wear a cloudy grey throat with richer iron black crown, some when stretch in sky show a slit like ‘v’ in one of their wings. Invariably, they all make sounds other than caw caw caw. Some are thinner, some are larger, some swoosh on my walks but then swiftly turn another direction (perhaps some can even smell coconut oil in my hair), after drinking water some wipe their beaks by perching on dish antenna, some on bare-branched tree of Mango, some on a parapet wall.  When I see crows my senses sharpen. It is said that crows retain memories of human faces. I wonder about this possibility of being recognized while not giving up my own thrill of becoming familiar with nature.  . In June evenings, which spread like a butter yellow of Amul on golden brown toasts, this intense sun also partners with white c...

In response to Birds of New York by Francisco X. Alarcón     dear Birds of New Delhi, look how I began with a small letter no, capital worries! Just capital jokes from the colony.   this is about ants of New Delhi living a bit below in elbow of a house, channel of a tv, just casually ducking a common career.                      can you see them? they are too many. too many. divided by labour, united by communication.   they are whisperers alongside cabinet filling up voids of city even on top of India Gate.   every morning these ants find a fallen tree in New Delhi pierce mandibles through a busy mango and its bee.   they miss the fallen barks of Madhav Rao Scindia Marg the ants of New Delhi drop from Mulberry leaves in March and show up in the middle of my homework. They show up during winters, while writing ‘Trees’....