Kasmere Gate Metro Station While you were out in 405, enjoying the orange bar at Red Fort I went and got sick myself, A sneeze appeared near the blue line As I entered the metro Your great-great grandmother had lived Behind the back of that track. Somehow, without me even turning on the tap, A basin mysteriously appeared. A strange sneeze and cough, Appeared at the speed of autorickshaw. I don’t think we will ever discover Exactly how the supply of chocolate Managed to cut down in the kitchen (especially when you were not home) or how bro just went and mistook the faint heat of March for a fever. I can tell you I was scared when, As if by magic, A series of clangs and crowds Appeared on the balcony. Then on roads I was being good (honest) but I think the city is haunted so, knowing you’re going to have a fit, I am going to be in house for a bit. Heavily Inspired from Dear Mum by Brian Patten.

I walk through the world reminding myself that the trees are awake That they can hear the joke of a leaf curling down to leave That they look winter in the eye & do not think spring! But it had not always been this way Because there have been days when I thought They can be bus drivers someday Hoping while honking that they can be Mathura road someday. That being cotton clouds can also be a possibility. Basically, I would want each of them remaining for eternity.

Chapter one of Cakes in Space, published by OUP once upon a time there was a once that did not know time so it took a chance and tried to plan a lesson for itself. once went to the school You can say once was a determined fool but knew not how to count. When his fingers gave up he only had 10. So once shared the problem with the principal The principal stared at the time table Spilled some water And said “I will be back gentlemen”. She took out a paper and a pen, aka quill and Asked once to dip hand in arctic blue bottle . . . once still could not tell one from eleven Or two from a cute smile lying later flat Or flat from home Or later from time Or time from getting stuck Or stuck from struck Or struck from lightning Or lightning from sunshine Or sunshine from winter Principal smiled her blanket smile She then understood the trouble was actually in paradise & said once you ain't supposed to understand time...

Hold like o sticks in 8 Undeterred unnoticed yet there. Then wonder if alphabets were just numbers Finding x in an equation Will always be a question.   Hold like that tiny dot below the question mark The gap between them makes room for all answers. Tuck the answers in inverted commas And bid them good night. All answers are correct. Hold like spectacles - See through them But don’t really embrace the myopia. Read everything written behind trucks. And off course throw so many exclamations that everything that jumps, makes us wonder & everything that settles, makes us attached. Hold like neither attaching yourself nor detaching yourself People are not post cards or mail accounts Can’t sign in to them. Hold like the December. Hold like how December holds the entire calendar                Together!!! Offering the best spotlight Before silently finally...

I thought of a classroom which drowns the existence of ‘is this a fish market?’. I’d like to believe she is proud of everyone’s voice. All she converses with us is in AAAAAAAAAAAAA. In the past she won a thumbs up from thunderstorm. She has a habit of throwing things down — down staircase, down corridor, down balcony. In the last six months her mother’s slippers, my shoes, her chappals, toffee wrappers, tiny curls of Maggi still hanging on as exclamations the surprise lasted all the while till they hit the floor then it was just a rain drop. These days soft toy Ms. Dog, katoris, steel dinner plates, nokia phone, have all resonated different distances, heights and sounds. She walks up the stairs one foot at a time Tries to startle the stairs by asking it to come along. On the last step, her Majesty turns to look around Enquiring with one finger if the steps have followed her footsteps. Nobody does. Then she slides down the railings. As...

This morning I was made of ginger tea, yellow line, a boy counting masks, stepping out of coaches, walking, and crunching old leaves. No, this was not all, but yellow had spilled along. The guard at the office, wore Khaki in a weather of If shook my id card, held in hazy sunlight with spectacles still in pocket asked, “Second Last day?” I replied like a bee, busying the question mark. X-Ray machine scanned all that bags had. Meanwhile, the guard on a journey, asked “What are you working on?”                          “All of this.”   The bee had become a dot to stop because what if I tell him I just heard working as walking and that I don’t like the colour of the ground today? What if I tell him I was thinking to be a traffic light and that sky has been a bad question paper? Am I stupid because I worry about disasters more...

In New Delhi, inside an institution that is three years old, is a library with a limited space. The colour of shelves is dairy milk brown. They carry books, carefully organised, every single one placed according to its Dewey call number. No dust on any of the columns. This is because the cleaner cleans it every day in the morning. On days he doesn’t, crisp flak from the chief librarian is enough. Even though his straight face doesn’t suggest anything, it is only when he gets a mug and a duster, do the workers know that he is responding to the critical reviews of the chief. But once you were taught to reduce a person to just one piece of their identity, it took a long time to learn to fill in the other details, to make them whole again and see them as fully human.                                                             ...

We have all heard ‘Books are Best Friends’. I was a little taken aback though, by the concept of both 'best friends' and 'books being best friends'. Why best friends? Why not just friends? Why not just positive supportive relationships? What makes best friends appear in the same sentence where the subject significantly is 'books'?  Over the years, my realisation has been that best friends won’t be around us forever. Yet, we all want to be understood, respected, valued, heard and be able to develop a sense of belonging. It won’t hurt to have someone our back in times of crisis. But it is also true that not all who listen and understand us, become best friends, or, stay with us forever. Sometimes, these personalities become part of moments that are whole on their own. After that, they leave and go wherever they are supposed to go. Even when I write all this, I also feel that it is important to be surrounded by an environment of genuine niceness. ...