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’....

A girl full of headache comes home To a room made of cream walls She puts her earphones on the table On the wall behind the table is a rainbow-coloured cycle sticker The girl puts her blue pens in the racks of the table She puts down her imbalance with a sigh on the table Rolls up her anger from speaking to her mother unkindly She puts it in a pouch inside the drawer And caps all the red pens writing mystery The table records a jangle of keys There is her softness, her large handwriting Her laptop in red, a worry, three more worries, a 2 + b 2 = (a+b) 2 -2ab, a maths teacher’s memory, a hairclip, some sound of life and her friends in her mind. She puts everything on the table And it still looks like a pebble. She now takes off her spectacles And puts its dust on the table She puts her cough on the table Puts paracetamol on the table She reaches out and touches the pile So many days she had wanted to rest on a cloud And now the thunder ...