Translated Grounded by Ankita Anand published in Singapore Unbound. 

  The day MS Appts wall ruptured I was in school thinking That What-If is a silly phrase saying ‘please excuse the rest’ That conjunctions are a metaphor for everything I want   Those days, I wanted everything From taller height to bigger gardens From better basketball courts to more marks From one telescope to one minute more on smashinggames.com   Such was the field that I occupied Such was the force of my small window That when the storm came It hardly moved my pg 286   When I rushed out of computer lab The air was cool, there were winds Even the word rupture means to break suddenly But does suddenly mean to ingest or break   Does it mean to wipe away a moment Before it arrives. Every moment Carries itself on suddenly But suddenly never lands   If things are to stop suddenly Climate will still continue dropping goodbyes So stop poeming on stillness Or counting one two three All numbers are correct...

Some people know what it is like to have air wish for a tree to have water ask refunds from clothesline  to have electricity say sweet dreams in May. Some people see what it is like to weave sweaters for rain to taste urgency in mangoes to leave home for a life. Some people hear what it is like to gossip about weather in hills to count numbers not cases To have water. Some people can feel what it is like on earth days, water days, nature days Some people can have the clear blue sky They can change all word documents to protect with a password (that doesn’t save) so that forgetting is still relevant. When relevance reads their words Earthquakes are delighted. Some people kindle all tomatoes in a pot and still offer kind catalysts to climate crisis with “RO wastes water. We are getting motor installed. What can we do about it” *shrugs* “Surely nothing” is the meaning of 42. Some living things can go on living   Others don’t. Endnot...

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is a story about three children ¬ Jai, Pari and Faiz – a story that’s deeply cracking under the ills of hate, pollution and society, and even when it reads like a fantasy, mystery absorbing prose, woven with vivid images, a hugely disturbing India looms for us to reckon with.  Papa says we are going on a patrol as soon as the smog let's a bit of morning light into our basti. But outside our house the world's changing... In her fiction, Deepa Anappapra gives the voice of the book to the voice of children, who live in a world of confusion. This confusion is not about seeing cities change or the emergence of alternate intelligence, it is a confusion in the world of masks and smog, it is a confusion of seeing friends move, of feeling a future missing, of seeing abuses hurled at each other; it is the confusion about ‘presence of precarity’.  When Jai’s bastimates go missing, he along with his two friends – Pari and Faiz – chalk out plans...

When we are children, we wait for our mind to grow, for experiences to accumulate and choices to solidify, taking shape into likeness of a person. Tara Westover, did exactly that. In fact, these above lines are paraphrased from her memoir Educated's last chapter, Educated. Educated is a story of Westover's relationship with her family and how she got educated. This memoir is about the relationship that became tumultuous. It is also about stories that families create for their own. Who they call 'own'? Very basic instincts of people and a nation. It is also about an education people enable for other people. The scenes in the story have been vividly written even when she uses other people's memory to write them. I like that she addresses the scenes with gaps — When Shawn falls, when the confrontation happens, when they are in accident. Sometimes the way to address a gap staring at your own story is not to include only your own version of it. It's also ...

  A Missing Climate - Summer Issue 2020 - Writing in Education, National Association for Writers in Education An essay discussing making space for creative writing in the Indian Education System. Special thanks to Cambridge School for their valuable support and space while I reflected on my experience. Grateful to Sparsh, Aakriti, Sarah for lending their reading skills and sheltering me in their friendship!

‌If you want to read short stories from the same world where characters reappear, Diwali in Muzaffarnagar offers this in multiple rich forms. It's a collection of short stories about young adults who move from Muzaffarnagar for education. Perhaps the world of Muzaffarnagar is like that — it reappears, not changing anything, so much so that even short stories set in Muzaffarnagar, have characters from the same universe.  ‌ ‌Education is seen as a ticket to freedom, to 'bas ye karlo phir sab mast', is never said aloud but always hinted at. "To study, to learn something about the world that could be used to earn some money — that was the only to escape the pettiness of Muzaffarnagar".  ‌It was Education that took these characters places, leaving them only as pieces of this town that appeared in these stories. Muzaffarnagar always appeared in mid way journey, as if the town was on a journey too. The town in these stories doesn't appear depressing, c...