When I was 7, I saw hell

possess the skin of my father.

There was a madman's fury

Simmering in him, his eyes orbs of darkness

and dementia.

I expected flames to erupt into

life around him,

burning us all but there was only stillness.

Nothing except the salt

trailing down my cheeks and disappointment

coating my tongue.

His movements became lightning quick,

skin striking skin in a blur.

Time stilled. Breaths were abandoned. And a bruise

flowered across her cheek.

At 10, this was no longer a

rare occurrence.

The Easter bunny was still

Real.

but silence after 6:00 was not.

Anger took refuge under the devil's skin.

Students of Sanskrit will recognise, in Kalyana Malla, the author of the erotic manual, Ananga Ranga. Since Sanskrit authors are not often situated, at least not to general readers, in a specific time and place—they tend to inhabit the boundless, calendar-free territory of Ancient India—it is not as well-publicised that Kalyana Malla lived in modern times, and was a prominent member of the 16th-century court of the Lodhi prince Lad Khan of Awadh. It was at his patron’s behest that he composed a verse fiction in four chapters, comprising 563 verses, titled Sulaima Charitra, the life of the king known to Jews as Solomon and to Muslims as Suleiman.

In the beginning of his novella “Notes from Underground”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky asks a question:
What can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?

And he answers:

Of himself.

They opened a window and their mouths they rinsed
And spilled on their anger-laughter and cries thus cleansed
And if they were in reach they’d have been beaten black n blue
Let my kites lose their path, but not your tunes

You sparkle in the eye
Until a moment says good-bye

For twenty-four long hours, I cast a net to get you back in my heart
Heal me, oh love, from the pain that tears me apart...!

(Binoy Majumdar Hote Na Cheye, Tumi-i Pran, Tumi-i Por)

Do you remember?
I am! “Puny”_
But look just once!
I am just me.
Do you know that?
I am ugly_
But see just once!
My inner beauty.
Do you still?
Want me to follow_
All those life rules,
As your shadow.
Have you ever?
Thought of me before?
You wouldn’t lose me_
Please be sure.
Have you looked back?
She is grown;
That “puny girl”_
Won’t be just known.
Farewell! Farewell! I am going_
Just don’t forget!
I wasn’t showing…

تمام شعر من موج نگاهت
ترا من دوست دارم بی نهایت
اگر روزی نباشی در کنارم
جهان گردد برایم چون قیامت

Alerted to it, we tried our damnedest not to notice it.

Of the thirty-three crore or three hundred and thirty million gods and goddesses of Indian Hindu mythology, the most loved perhaps is Ganesha, especially by children. To begin with, there is his absurdly endearing appearance – he has the head of an elephant and a stocky little body – his pot belly shows that he enjoys his food. He has the heart of a child, following his impulses, and does not make much ado about things, even though he is a god. Every god has his own vahana or mount – for instance Shiva had Nandi the bull, Vishnu has Garuda the eagle, while Ganesha, more down-to-earth, rides on a mouse. He uses a serpent as a belt to hold his stomach in and one of his tusks is broken – and therein lies a favourite Ganesha story, one of many.

On a stage
musicians were engrossed
under the gaze of village and town folk
to set the chords
guitars, sitars, veenas and drums
myriads of sounds
in the making.

Audience waited longing for a fine tune.
chords were still being set
discordant voices still rang
desperate musicians and impatient audience
waited for melody to flood the pervading gloom
like the fragrance of hills in bloom.

After an eternity of impatience
chords twanged melodiously
making the audience sway
but a sudden snap jarred
and shattered the expectant crowd.

“Chords of harmony and cords of life
what a company!”
an old man from the audience exclaimed.

Tonight

here should be

dance of words

-in the carvansarai of your glory-

tonight I am as joyful as the grasses

that saw the sun

and full with the existence of my dream.

At midday when her eyes become moist and blurry from the searing heat, there is nothing that Deepa can do but sit idly, her head droopped over her open palms, counting her fingers. First those on her right hand – one…two…three – from the thumb to the little finger, then those on the left in reverse order, from the little to the thumb.

     As her score settles to a perfect ten, she looks up, somewhat relieved of the tedium and the heat, and it seems as though a sense of certainty has descended on her.

     When she was a little girl, she would touch her nose no sooner had she finished counting her fingers. Then the lips, the eyelids, the eyebrows and the ears– until finally she came upon the same certainty of relief. 

JERIT 
(Malay for ‘howl ’) 

**Excerpt from Onkalo (Math Paper Press, 2013)

And so he says it again

through headlines screaming black bold Serif
on undulating white perimeters

Write − You will have the freedom to write –
He says as he spouts jibber-jabber from pink, watery lips
like swine-filled halos of doom
  
from the plume of corrupt plinths of marble arches
stretched across the abyss of power,

1. Do not write ghazals (lyric poems). Readers suffocate beneath the weight of ghazals that, much like guinea pigs, lack diversity and end up looking all the same. No more friend, enough already! However, write one in case you see the last straw of your existence or the burning coal to your immortality in it. One is just about enough to try out your voice and to get some rushed, insincere welcome applause for life. Having nine out of ten ghazals sounding like the first one is to gobble up both you and your audience’s most valuable lifetime in nine little installments. Such life-taking in the name of ghazals is not a poetic service.

Twenty Years of Burmese Writers at the IWP

Like a dervish

I am flattered by poems, emotions,

spitting the coffee

in the longing coffee.

From the east,

the last gate of escape,

I looked upon us

in the froth.

I saw us

in the reflection

of a young color,

singing the impossible

in the womb of

the angel of extinction.

Beloved of poets, emperors and merchants

I am the palimpsest city

ascending from my ashes as the phoenix

Indraprashtha and New Delhi

on the same bank of the Yamuna

just three millennia apart

umpteen monuments, mosques and tombs

remnants of the ancient cities,

some still breathing, some crumbling into dust

the Pandavas founded me, legend says

then long centuries of obsolescence

Tomars brought me into prominence, founding Lal Kot,

Prithviraj rebuilt me into Qila Rai Pithora

Illtutmish turned me into Qutub

my first empress Razia ruled me

with her feminine charm

but how could a woman rule in a man's world?

On the map of India, my hometown Bangalore sits in the southern projection of the Indian peninsula, equidistant from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, at the edge of the Deccan Plateau. We are landlocked, far from the sea, sailing ships and ports of adventure. Even the monsoon winds, which helped the Egyptian pilot Hippalus discover the direct sea route to south India from the Red Sea over the Indian Ocean two thousand years ago, thus bringing a windfall to traders in Rome and India, are spent by the time they reach us, their largesse given to the coast – we are almost in the rain shadow. But then, my city is famous for its silks.

مُدُنٌ ظامئةٌ لوجوهِ النساء

 في بردِ ضحى يناير المشمسِ

 سرق توحدي رفيفُ ذيلِ عباءةِ إحداهن كبيرقٍ أسودٍ على رصيفِ (ستاربكس).

تحاولُ بذكاءِ هاتِفِها تبئيرَ أخرى جالسةً في وجلٍ على طاولةِ المقهى الخارجيةِ، مازجة مر قهوتها بطعم (الدونات).

 (الأخُ الأكبرُ) يُرْبِكُها،

 يُفْشِلُ سَعْيَها مراراً،

 يُرْغِمُها على تكرارِ المحاولة.

تخافان التلبسَ بجرمِ الحياةِ في مدن الظمأ.

بينهما و بيني، أنا المكبوتُ منذُ النشأةِ، سمكُ زُجاجِ المقهى.

أقاوم فضول النظر إليهما،

 أحاول تطبيع ذاتي مع الحياة،

 أتظاهر بالعادية.

I was born in a remote village in the mountainous region of western Nepal. Until I grew up as a school boy in that remoteness and learnt that a bigger world existed beyond what I could see around, my entire understanding was that of the mountains, meadows, vegetation, the cattle, wild beasts and birds, my parents and villagers who toiled hard day in and day out, their pains and pleasures, and the images of human condition in the stories narrated by my peers who “bet villages” in their games.

The language of love

is spontaneous,like me,

like a painting of a child.

I used to draw my house

on the left side of the paper.

My house was so small,

neither doors nor windows,

On the sands of aging.

When I was nine years old, I read a random short novel by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev called “Notes of the Hunter.” I wanted to read any interesting story in the style of action, or maybe horror films, but I left dangerously confused because the story was not about hunting. It was my first reaction to literature. I was very small, but I understood that literature is not simply funny stories, is a puzzle, a secret, a joke that I was waiting for.

My World, My Writing
By Binayak Banerjee (India)

Poetry, to me, is a continuous struggle to bridge the sense of materialistic cosmopolitan presence with the realm of emotional privacy. Now, this privacy must be balanced by an interest in the people around me. Otherwise, a state of anxiety might creep in. And we all know that in a state of anxiety, we can’t stand closeness and want to attenuate this feeling by opening up and stripping away bodily impediments so that the anxiety can be relieved in some way. But why do we try to get rid of it? Is it because anxiety tries to get rid of everything materialistic? Across this bridge between anxiety and material existence, we are likely to arrive at a spiritual emptiness.

Enchantment

میتوان در ژرفنای یک نگاه 
تا به اوج آسمان حتی رسید
میتوان در یک نگاه ساده ای 
درد یک عشق نهانی را کشید
میتوان با دیدن یک ارغوان 
حس شگفتن را بیدار ساخت
میتوان در اقیانوس آبی عشق 
پاکی مهر و محبت را شناخت
میتوان درسکوت آرام شب 
طپش قلب عاشق را شنید
میتوان با کوله باری از امید 
به شهر پاک احساسات رسید
میتوان با هر قطره باران 
عاری از اشک و غم و آه شد
میتوان در لبخند ناز کودکان 
گاه آن کودک فردا شد
میتوان در اوج تنهای خویش 
همصدا با موج یک دریا بود
میتوان در عمق دلتنگی خویش 
شعر آزادی فردی را سرود

Writing in eternal battlefields

Afghanistan is country of wars. It has been the center of great empires under the Kushans, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Timurids, Durrani dynasties and so on… in fact, the Silk Road passed through it. It was not only merchants who were passing through but also empires, extending from one part of the world to another. For example, Alexander the Great founded cities and military bases in Afghanistan, where he stayed for many years, while the attacks by Genghis Khan in the 13th Century resulted in widespread killings, including of Attar of Nishapur, Rumi’s spiritual mentor.

It is the story of a long past. In a village, there lived an old couple. They had a single daughter. They did not have any son. As they wanted a son, they performed various religious rituals and duties, and went on fasting as believers. Wherever they went, whichever temple they visited, they sought a blessing from the God and that was for a son. In hope of a son, their youth passed and they started getting old. Yet they had no son. As their daughter got young, they arranged her marriage to a man far away from their village. After her marriage, the old couple was left alone. The agony of not having a son ever left them.

Translator: Alex Niemi

Little boy, sliding from line of light
to line of scroll,
where letters of black
tangle together, like blackened chains
tangle together, like clinging leaves.
Little boy stooping, leaning, balding.
Little boy swallowing clear drops.
And at his temples two wilting lilies,
white wilting lilies;
a handful of rice.

The spider‘s web was spreading all over the room. The old woman was trying to string a needle with her skinny bone hands, but her hands were shaking and her eyes could not see the needle, so she left the old carpet.

Outside the room there was a cold wind. Old woman put some potatoes into a black dish and fired under it; soon, there was a black and suffocating smoke in air, after a while she put them into a broken bowl and brought it home. Slowly, slowly the sun was setting; there was darkness all around the air while there was no light inside the house of old woman. She took one of the potatoes to eat, but couldn’t swallow it. A cold, clear tear followed on her cheeks.

 The undersecretary was a tall, slim, bald, nice looking old guy who would turn 60 and retire within six months of summoning me to his office. He received me with a grin that turned to a hesitant smile as he said: “Boy, you might have a chance.”

“A chance of what, Sir?” I asked.

He said sternly, “Of surviving, my son.”

It was the year 2000. I was a 23-year-old kid, freshly graduated from the department of English literature at Benha University, newly appointed as a translator in the state information service (SIS) affiliated then to the ministry of information (now to the president himself, wow).

Rahoul Gonsalves 

The uncertainty of life annoys me. I mean, wouldn’t it be awesome to have all your life’s trajectory set, before coming of age? You could make a conscientious decision of what you want to do in life and then just do it. Imagine the comfort of just taking one direction, without “opportunities” popping up and derailing you from the path you’ve painstakingly taken.

Feet still wet from the freeze
of a Band-e Amir pool,
strung one to the next
like stone beads
with waterfall thread,
we pile into the hatchback,
bumping back to the highway
to the rhythm of Hindi tunes.

The hills of the Hazara heartland have names
like Gholghola – the city of screams from Mongol times –
and towns named Shahidaan for the martyrs crumpled
by Soviet planes

but these hills     with spacious hearts
these homes           healed by hand
                  keep calm
like warm naan wrapped in cloth
like the cliffs that lean to kiss
the lake’s lapis cheek,
lined with turquoise necklace.

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Everything I write is nourished by my childhood years. I have a clear memory of the beginning of my ability to remember when I was three plus a few months. My father who had joined India’s freedom struggle was to become the Chief Minister of the small Union Territory of Coorg (now Kodagu). I climbed the steps to the house which was to be his official residence, nervously holding on to the edge of my mother’s sari. I was awestruck by the electric lights in the house, and terrified of the fluttering moths thicketed around them. In our village home that was only thirty miles away, we were using oil lamps then, and for the next decade and a half. The newness of the rural town that I had just entered must have awakened the sensibilities of being a person.

The wind brought down this yellow:

petals littering

the garden, the Maruti’s windshield. 

The rain shreds petals, leaves

sticky splotches.

Armed with a rag, Ram Niwas

(a hardworking old fellow) declares war

on the yellow, enters the battlefield.

He works stubbornly, wrestling stains

in the rain.

The glass listens,

yellowness watches

the old man. It peels off quietly

in petals, remains.

Achilles, the mightiest of the Achaeans
brought precious prizes
for Agamemnon—the Achaean Lord
or the hunger’s epitome
who allocated defamation to his chieftain’s share
and ignited swift and shielded Achilles
into a red fireball.

In his presence
Trojan Fronts and Scaean Gates
shook in fear
rained blood
and when Achilles
thunderously warned the lustful Lord
even Hector--firm in resolve
dwindled.
.

Ego of two nations
fought a dreadful war
Achaeans too hugged death with Trojans
but with better recompense
of some more land
some more treasures
some more beauties
confiscated and treasured
and left for their Lord
to subdue, use, and enjoy.

The letter was from a friend in Bihar, a nun who had trained with me in medical college. She wrote that a rural hospital there, run by the Sisters of Charity, was urgently in need of a surgeon. Was I interested?

I had just finished by surgical training in Liverpool. I loved every moment of my life in England but was also certain that I would go home soon. The offer from Bihar appealed to my foolishness. I said yes, and four months later, was heading north and east by train from Bangalore. My family was dismayed. Bihar was not a place anyone went to out of choice, it still isn’t. Tell anyone that you wish to work in Bihar and you’ll see eyes go round and big. “Bihar! Why?”

“Djailoo” in traditional Kyrgyz culture is a fundamental concept, embodying the summer pasture and grazing, where every year during warm period Kyrgyz nomads move their families and yurt homes. “Djailoo” occurs not only out of economic necessity, but also as a life-space and cultural practice that encourages free time and exploration for children. The precarious situation in contemporary Kyrgyzstan affects youth and hinders their access to education and books. Djailoo Reading, therefore, seeks to bring live readings and discussion—hosted by writers and/or actors—to ten remote communities in the Osh and Issyk-kul regions.

You are the one who can’t be described

Neither forgotten, nor left a side

You are endless as blue sky…

Or the secret of autumn seaside 

You are my world, my peace and silence

I wish no more than to be your bride!

She swirled the glass. The wine tossed and churned, the crimson waves at fight with each other until a drop bounced, hit the edge, teetering dangerously before plopping down on the white couch.

She just studied the red stain that was expanding with every passing second, not in a hurry to get it cleaned up until she heard footsteps approach the door.

Her eyes flew to the door, watching as it swung open, before they settled on the stain again.

She heard him come in, his scuffles echoing on the hardwood floor.

There was a minute’s pause.

“You’re not supposed to be drinking.”

 To be born into the hubbub of an Indian city, is to be born into a world of multiple cultures and at least two other languages. We boast a staggering number of gods and goddesses and hundreds of thousands of texts that depict their greatness. Given any urban street in India, you are bound to find the humming of prayers or a song in the distance mixing delicately with the honking of auto rickshaws and the rumbling of the rails, and the roadside book dealer wailing out the names of the latest hits from a crop of up and coming writers. Each one, more or less boils down to what is the core of the Indian literary culture – a healthy mix of superstition, philosophy and fiction.

در اوج بی نیازی تنها نیاز من باش
ای آشنا چه بودی دایم قرار من باش
در جاده های پرپیچ در شب بی ستاره
هر سو اگر روم من فانوس راه من باش
در لحظه ای جدای آنگاه که پرگشودم
ای همره ثانیه ها همدم آه من باش
درین دنیا پناهی حتی نیمی نگاهی
در آخرت عزیزم تو همصدای من باش
در لحظات غربت حتی اگر نبودم
ای نازنین دلها تو یادگار من باش
چونکه ربودی ز من دل شکسته ام را
تا هستم و تا هستی تو تکیه گاه من باش

Hi, I'm going to Starbucks, can you meet me there?
Which one?
The one on the beach, Yusuf is invited to a party nearby and I'll kill the time at Starbucks until he is done.
Where exactly?

Where exactly, I ask the driver.
At the end of Sari street.
Near Pizza Hut, yes, I know where you mean. Ok, I can. It's nearby, the driver can drop me and then go back to pick up Omar from school.

I arrived there before she did. I watched her get out of the car and went towards the stairs before she came up. I said, you can order because I already did when I arrived.

Fostering regional consciousness needs mammoth efforts. South Asia has a formal mechanism of cooperation in place among its member countries through the vibrant organization of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). I visited foreign ministries and Foreign Service institutes of South Asian countries in 2004-2005. Those days the idea of deeper interaction among the South Asians always brought back memories of my days spent in Jawaharlal Nehru and Delhi Universities. I cherished the company of students from the South Asian countries who enriched my academic life in many ways.

[Concept definition: Religion will hereby be used to refer to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, while writing refers to creative writing.]

“Catholics should consider boycotting the film "The Da Vinci Code" to let the world know the story offends and defames the church. If the kind of ‘slander, offenses and errors’ contained in Dan Brown's best-selling book and the film based on it had been written about the Quran or the Shoah (the Holocaust), they rightly would have provoked a worldwide uprising." These words, spoken by Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to the Catholic communications directors on April 28, 2008, illustrate the deep contemporary conflict between writing and religion.

Investing emotions when other operating levers exist,
loving without the privilege of parenthood is an essay
in emptiness. In some eyes I can see myself. I’m inured
to their throes. Come, let us camouflage grief in girdles
of guffaw. Let this be our memory.

You and I inhaled prescriptions scried by sources beyond
our breath. By then my sight was misted by the smoke
of your sticky tune. As with passive smokers we nip and
sometime nurse. An opisthograph on love is not enough:
lived lives have other needs.

Originally published at Synaesthesia.

دنیا چقدر شیرین بود روزیکه ترا دیدم
رویای من رنگین بود آن روز که ترا دیدم
اندر دل من یک بار یک روزنه ای تابید
آن نور امید بود روزیکه ترا دیدم
روزها گذشت و من اندر طلب رویت
عاشق شدم عاشقتر هر روز که ترا دیدم
روزیکه بمن گفتی دوستتدارم جانم
من محو تو گردیدم آنروز که فهمیدم
روزیکه صدا کردی آمده ام جانم!
شاهزاده ای رویاییت من هم پسندیدم
روزیکه قسم خوردی تا ترکم نخواهی کرد
دیوانه ات گردیدم آن لحظه که بشنیدم
روزیکه سر قرآن گفتی منم تنها
در خواب و رویایم هر جا که میدیدم
گذشتم از خود سوختم به پای تو
آتشم زدی آتش، حتی نفهمیدم
آخر فدایت گشت زندگی و عمر من
چی کار کردی با من چرا نپرسیدم؟
تو از اول هم صیاد بودی و من
چقدر ساده بلی آسان شکار تو گردیدم

between our arrivals and our
Departures, it is a strangely
guiltless territory

- Marne L. Kilates

I drink

the low-fat morning death.

I begin it by eating dates.

How many times did

the dates immigrate us?

How many times did death strip

the conscience of silence

with the sand locusts ?

Locusts that can’t understand

the chant of the gulls

or the whispers

of the sea waves.

In the year 500 AD the great sage Adishanya had a series of visions that he inscribed on fifty ola leaves. In the late forties an archaeology student discovered some of the writings in the tragic Pulatti expeditions. They foretold of dreadful times in store for the island now called Sri Lanka. Legend has it that once all the ola leaves have been recovered peace and prosperity shall reign once more. So far only 32 of them have been found.

Ola leaf Number 15

There will come a time when blood will flow.

The country will be split and Red will be the only colour.

Seoul, the capital of the land of Morning Calm, Korea, is the largest metropolis of South Korea. She is the home to over half of South Koreans along with 632,000 international residents. Situated on the Han River, her history stretches back more than 2,000 years when it was founded by Baekje in the Three Kingdoms era around 18 BC. With urbanization of the country people gathered to Seoul and they built their home even on the mountain. Those villages were called Daldongne, meaning Moon Village. Every government built the apartment to solve the residence problems. The elegant, tile-roofed traditional houses were vanished quickly to make the home to the people who rushed into the city. Now the scenery of the city has changed into the apartment town.

Life is normal
only a bus carrying
infants, youth, and old
had to be gathered in scraps
only the skull of a fifteen year old
had to be collected and identified
by his mother
to find life in death
and death in life
perhaps more life in death.

Life is normal
announces the Home Department
with clarity of conscience
only a hundred batons
have left bloody scars
on a sane protestor
caught in a protest’s insanity
only a few soldiers’ boots
have rained on a lone pedestrian
only a mother in her twenties
has disappeared in an encounter
leaving behind eleven months baby
yelling and searching
his mama’s protuberant and heaving breasts.

After the afternoon drain streets fill
again with approaching dusk
naan-shops open shutters
date carts grow lighter,
children dash on final errands.
Sun-wizened job-hunters wait still
in wheelbarrows
near low-voiced conferences of sheep,
heads bent as if considering their fate.

A boy already a man
washes his feet in the jooey,
red-faced cop pulls man from car
beating him till he pays,
even on Friday, even
in the holy month.
White beards and clustered listeners settle
in unglamorous parlors – blankets spread
on ground or wooden platforms,
No one is alone.

The weather was extremely cold and snowy. The street was covered by ice and snow. Everyone was in a hurry to go home as soon as possible.

"Buy a handkerchief for yourself please," said a small boy, his hands were red.

"Help! Help me for God's sake. My children are hungry waiting at home." An old kneed man was shouting and crying, but no one heeded him. Everyone was busy with their own work. There was the sound of music in the shops, and the smell of roasted meat filled the air.

A small girl rushed to the bakery and said: "Please give me a loaf of bread." Her fingers were insensible, her shoes were wet.

"Hey! You girl, come and stay in the line." "It's my turn don’t you see?" shouted a tall man.

مثلما خدعنا العالم كله

ستخلعينَ قبعة البيسبول مثل العادة

وتبحثينَ عن زاويتك المفضلة

في مقهى ماريو.

وستنظرينَ في المرآةِ

وتأخذين وقتك لتستيقني

 من أن الملائكة ما زالت

تحرس التفاح الرابض

 خلف الساتان الأبيض.

وستطلبين قهوتك المفضلة مثل العادة

وتنظرين الى الفواخت وهي تحط

قرب النافورة كحلم أبيض

وراء زجاج المقهى.

وستمُعنين النظرَ في اللوحةِ الحمراء

المعلقة على الجدار

كطوطم عند مدخل قرية افريقية.

وستسمعين أديل وهي تغني

في المذياع

Someone like You

-the fragment of meta-novel “The Wings of Dying Bird”-

(for J.F.R, with thanks to Michael Longley)

I will tell you this;
That love, is the art
Of green hands, nestled
Keen as the root,
In red earth.

Here, where my body
Grows thin and stalk like,
Where you, woman,
Give me life,
A patch of grass, a finger
Turned lily shaped and purple;
Here, love is a reaping,
A marriage, a baptism,

Where my body bends,
Broken backed and rump like,
I search the names of flowers,
Where you hair rests, snug
As the scattering of falling, frail branches,
Dissolving ripples,
Like a mellow monsoon;
Here, love
Is the holding of a breath, a drowning,

Burrowed under her duvet, snuggling close to the pillow on her right she was in that state where she was half asleep but half awake. Where everything was blurry and it felt like she was in a dream. Lately, without him, things were hazy.

The house, dead quiet, everybody tucked into beds. The vibration of the phone on her side board ringed through the room. The phone stopped ringing and she slipped into oblivion.

A pulse lapsed and the quivering of the table started again. Groaning she smacked her hand all over the table trying to locate her phone. Her hand hit the metal case and she squinted at the screen in the dark. Unknown number. God! Whimpering she swore if it was a prank call she would strangle the person on the other side.

                                                             If a river became road,
                                                                    I may forget you
                                                          Or my world was destroyed_
                                                                      I may forget you
                                                            You have forgotten me easily;
                                                                        Well, I do agree,
                                                              When the tears became rainy_
                                                                         I may forget you

He was first a snake and was in love with her - a she-snake. And then he molted and after he molted he was a turtle and he met another she-turtle and fell in love with her. When he de- shelled after years, he became a four-legged animal, black spots sprouting over his fur, and he fell for a leopard. He moved this way through the jungles, the savannas, the deserts, the skies, through the oceans, the air, the land and beneath it, changing and changing and meeting and falling in love with new she-species.

The lovers he left behind did not change. They were who they were. The same.

Since the night of shooting stars, the night of travail,

the call to prayer calms me. Some people chant,

“Hale Loya.”

It was the last supper and the birth

of a certain death.

My silicone

was oxidized with love.

I was born from a pairing of the dust of Al-Jalil

and the waters of Euphrates and became

the infant martyr.

From the collection Bleeding Gull: Look Feel Fly

Between the predisposition to the Absolute, and the red walls of the labyrinth, the paths that lead to the meaning vary. And, whether the letter is a sword, a candlestick, or a wall-- the truth is farther than being reached by normal or exceptional call. Today I sleep, beside me an old book; I don't think much of curves that can roll down infinitely, or of question chains, nor the absolute. I lie on the edge of the bed, looking down, to the abyss that can be a real scene--waiting death more calmly: the point where the line comes upon the point, the wish comes upon the riddle, and the meaning comes upon the inattention--Behind each letter.

I had not met Shikhar in a month. I’d heard he went to Kathmandu. Not that I really cared where he was. But his face after what happened to Bhima Didi flashed in front of my eyes and threatened me every now and then. There were times when I thought he had left the Party. But I couldn’t enquire about him with my father all the time. In fact he didn’t even know about my decision to join the Party. Regardless of how I felt for him, he was the only person I wanted to tell about my decision after my father. I had a feeling he wouldn’t believe I’d work for the Party. So I was already elated, confident that he would try confirming it with my father.

-

                                                                           Things fall apart
                                                                               At a twinkle,
                                                                                 In a night_
                                                                         When others left you;
                                                                      And you remain at one side.
                                                                              Something vanishes,
                                                                           When you get depressed

It is my right

to love as she wants it,

to get ripped by desire

when her necklace scatters

the tears of pearls.

It is a riot,

and it is my right

to love and die

the way she wants it.

Suleman was being dressed in fresh clothes after a long time. The heady smell of naphthalene coming out of the newly laid out dress tickled his nostrils, even the eyes and maybe the ears too. It's been a long time since he had last smelt that scent. With the tickling going on over the layers of his brain, his head danced a bit as one or two slow, dizzy bubbles rose causing the mud-soft indent of the brain to tremble just as someone else grimaced – nice, nice! Suleman closed his eyes as the bubbles of the scent rose one by one. How nice! Good, good!

     The jangling inside the head increased. Suleman opened his eyes. There was nobody around.

I live in a country rife with systemic inequality.

These days, my Facebook feed is flooded by a certain share, friends urging friends to sign a petition: Allow Nepali citizenship to be conferred by the mother or father in the new constitution. The petition stares at me every day from my laptop screen. Women aren't granted this legal right, I explain to my Spanish flatmate, who is a traveler passing through Nepal.

 red lines of revolutions,

a dot of enlightenment

a calendar of life.

میروم با اشک و آه و ناله ها
میطپم من از هجوم درد ها
آخر اینجا هم برایم جا نبود...
هیچکس صادق به مثل ما نبود
در پس هر چهره ای بود چهره ها
هیچکس چون من نبود در هیچ جا

آهای! آدمک های ظاهر نما!
خسته ام از قوم و خویش و از شما!

The Maldivian culture, language and literary traditions are a few things one simply does not get uninterested in too easily. One of our most loved literary traditions is “raivaru”, this is a form of reciting poetry that is traditional or even our own with a unique rhythm to it. In the previous centuries and even now people would use raivaru as a way of expressing feeling for another it is also used in marriage proposals. One man who I most admire in this field of work is my great uncle, Abdulla Sodiq who is also known as “Saodu Be”, which in translation means ”Saodu brother”. Abdulla Sodiq is a songwriter, author of countless short stories, poet and novelist, inventor of words and writer of the Maldivian dictionary.

In the theater of time

crucified on my language,

watching the birds

falling onto my song,

stealing pieces of bread

from my melody,

what does its meaning

Prepare for me?

The nails of its tones

bleed my rhyming soul

while its hopes shatter my hands,

and my questions are unable

to hammer a dream.

I was born and raised in a suburb of Fukuoka, a city in the south of Japan. After eighteen years in Fukuoka, I went to a university in Kyoto and lived there for seven years. My parents are Japanese. They are both from the region and never left the country except for occasional group tours. My native language is Japanese. Like any other Japanese student, I started to learn English in the seventh grade. I am neither an immigrant, nor a postcolonial subject, nor a refugee. Now I write fiction in English in Japan and submit my stories to literary journals in the United States. I represent a small, but ever increasing group of writers.

The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia describes the city of my youth as follows:

Fukuoka City (pop., 2000 prelim.: 1,341,489) and port, JAPAN. It incorporates the former city of Hakata and is located on the southern coast of Hakata Bay. An ancient port, it was the scene of attempted invasions by Kublai Khan in the 13th century. It is now a regional, commercial, industrial, administrative, and cultural centre. It contains an active fishing port and is the site of Kyushu University (1911). Hakata ningyo, elaborately costumed ceramic figurines found in most Japanese homes, are made there.

Being part of the city Lahore has integrated in me the love for spicy food; ‘kebabs’ (meat grilled on a skewer over coal), ‘malai boti’ (creamy, buttery chicken), paalik paneer (spinach with cottage cheese), are some of the famous dishes. Being part of the province Punjab has incorporated in me humor and how to appreciate it. Being part of Pakistan has made me realize success is achieved after sacrifices; it has made me strong and fearless. Being Muslim has taught me peace, love, kindness, modesty and good. This forms my culture and most of my identity (the rest I am still figuring out.)

بیا من دمی تو گفتگو کن
دلم را با نگاهی زیر و رو کن
اگر بودی، نبودم در کنارت
مرا در خاطراتت جستجو کن

(I)

The red luscious apple was well beyond her reach.

As her limbs stretch, adrenaline courses back and forth inside and just like that, out of nowhere, her thigh muscles stiffened and she slipped and started to fall from a nine feet ladder.

As her stomach feels the strong pull of gravity, her seven year old heart feels a vigorous push of negative energy.

Her cherry coloured hair flew everywhere blinding her sight; in the same manner, doubts clouded her judgment and self esteem.

The gravity did its work and she did her: thinking if she was truly as pathetic as others describe, if she was indeed a failure and if ‘disgrace’ was the only word to describe.

You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.
(English Proverb) 

- Do you respect my rights?
- I do. The article was devoted to your rights...
- No--do you respect my rights?
- Sorry?
- My rights – to be a housewife, to raise my children, to obey my husband. And more importantly, not to be accused of backwardness and sexist thinking. Is that clear?

In my father’s head is a map of Singapore quite different from the ever-dancing web of abstract colours that we have come to know from the official records, the bus and train stations or the increasingly unreliable street directory. His chart of the city is marked by stories and street legends, not signposts or landmarks. Like the key characters in tales, who do not often stay in one place, the settings shuffle about – without causing anxiety, as long as one has been following the plot.

Bare to the bone

in tattered garb

freshness of adolescence

on my face

I stand amidst the traffic,

bouquets of roses in my tender hands––

red, yellow, pink and white,

picked up from the nearby graveyard;

waving, begging, hoping

someone would buy my flowers.

Oh! a cab driver beckons me,

bargains, I plead,

take my flowers.

He pulls me nearer

I jerk back  in disgust;

my clothes torn,

flowers scattered,

I gather myself,

then flowers

and start again––

pleading, hoping.

From The Seduction of Delhi by Abhay K. (Bloomsbury India, 2014)

...قایق کوچک

          ...اقیانوس بی انتها

...من باشم و من

             ...تنهای تنها

I wake up tense, the way I used to feel at the start of the war. I open my clenched fists, I don't say good morning to myself. I can't. Yusuf is asleep next to me, hasn't changed his habits, wakes up in the middle of the night and sneaks in to lie down beside me. School time, honey. As usual, he doesn't wake up. I remind him the psychologist yesterday said he doesn't suffer from any troubles. Mr. Saleh said you are a good boy, remember? He decides to get out of bed; for the first time I ask Norma the maid to get him ready for school. There has to be a first time for everything. And I find an excuse to myself, it's the war.

 By Aiswarya Sasi (2015)

I walked into the eerily quiet room, like a rabbit venturing into a lion’s cave. In the middle of the room was a lone table, with chairs at both its ends. On one chair sat the source of all my fears. This would be my first viva in medical college, and my cortisol levels were at an all-time high. A few questions into the viva, the examiner asked me, ‘What is the normal red blood cell count?’ ‘Finally, an easy question,’ I said to myself in relief. ‘Seven billion, Sir,’ I said confidently, without a second thought. A pause. His eyebrows shot up incredulously. ‘Oh no, I’m sorry. That’s the human population,’ I said sheepishly, cringing on the inside. In retrospect, this incident amuses me to no end.

Lyrics by Han Inhyun
Composed by Lee Heungyeol

After mummy went to the sea to pick the oyster
The baby keeping the house all alone
Hearing the lullaby sung by the wave
Fell asleep making a pillow of his arm.

The baby is sleeping like a log at home
Mummy becoming anxious at the cry of the seagull
Carrying the basket not filled yet on her head
She rushes to home across the sands.

If the core of rising

Is the core of kneeling,

where will I direct

and to what will I surrender

my eyes?

From the collection Bleeding Gull: Look Feel Fly

In the beginning

love was a gift from God.

Its law melts as words.

Its eve was the tone

of the letters.

Adam was not there

but a sheet containing

the fate of all lovers.

Everything I write is nourished by my childhood years. I have a clear memory of the beginning of my ability to remember when I was three plus a few months. My father who had joined India’s freedom struggle was to become the Chief Minister of the small Union Territory of Coorg (now Kodagu). I climbed the steps to the house which was to be his official residence, nervously holding on to the edge of my mother’s sari. I was awestruck by the electric lights in the house, and terrified of the fluttering moths thicketed around them. In our village home that was only thirty miles away, we were using oil lamps then, and for the next decade and a half. The newness of the rural town that I had just entered must have awakened the sensibilities of being a person.

In the footsteps of my history
And shadow, I am caught
In the half light of remembering,
The house, the mouth,
The woman, whose cotton-coiled
Waist is the yearning for an India far away;

In the archipelago dusk,
This world is a water kingdom
That swims and hisses,
And urges a love for the shimmering hills,
The parched sand, the plaited rain,
Where, Malaya, my freedom,
Is a dark face reflected in this sea.

She was a white round girl considered an outcast in her traditional Damascene environment, and I was a country girl raised in the big city, where neither Damascenes nor my original townsmen considered me one of their own. We were both in our early twenties, struggling with our families’ traditional values, and trying to be honest to our own, which made us stick together quite well through the seven years that followed. Each of us was trying to pull herself, and the other, together through the difficulties of growing into independent women in a complex and patriarchal society.

I

Something familiar
when you walk into town:
kids chase a rooster.
drying clothes flap in the sun,
old men play chess in the square.
They stare at first,
but later laugh with you
at the children’s antics,
at your funny accent.

You settle,
never fully one of them
but woven like a new color of wool
into a hand-crafted kilim.

II

Nomads know what essentials are.
They wouldn’t bring the kitchen sink
even if they had one.
Life is hard, whittled down
to its main ingredients.

It is so much easier to build a house
and fill it with packing peanuts.

III

With technological and skills-oriented changes in the medical profession, graduating doctors today have little in the way of interpersonal skills or multidisciplinary perspectives regarding the human condition. With this in mind, the purpose of this project is to bring a variety of speakers—writers, artists, film makers, musicians, and historians—to St. John’s Medical College as a way of inculcating humane values, enhancing the sensitivity of medical students, and developing a vibrant regional network of multi-talented, multi-disciplinary, and multi-faceted doctors and other professionals who feel strongly about the need for collaboration between the humanities and medical fields.

Female Bat

My father was the quietest man; his few words made no sense

in the world’s idiom.

Saddled into a marriage

astride a dead horse of tradition he flogged it too many times

for two children.

He stayed away even when near. He did not belong to anyone, unaware of our favorite colors, our school grades, or

the names of our boyfriends.

He lent money to ruffians at high interest rates and recovered nothing.

Smoothening his hands over glossy brochures, he invested in scams of impossible dreams.

He used to count his coins like I now count my words

I too am falling out of the system. I too belong to no one.

I fear he is growing inside me...

Food stall 1

Old bald man at market yong tau foo* store
stands below his sign:
10 pieces for $4, $2 per bowl, 50 cents rice.

In between serving customers
before the weekend crowd builds up,
one hand on aproned waist,
the other holding a glass of kopi-si*,
he sips, whilst
biting into his home-made fried bean curd
stuffed with fillings,
clearly food-tasting and hunger-stalling
while his wife munches her pink rice-kueh* hastily,
stacking bowls of mee hoon yong tau hoo expertly.
(talk about multi-tasking).

For just one brief moment,
they sit down on the plastic bench in front of their store.
Within earshot,
they discuss last night’s ma-piew pou*
(we all have our strike-rich dreams).

Careful: step out into the not-quite-street.

It used to be a swamp, and sunk boar, pushed

roots into the air, and stank, and free

from old purposes still it tries to take

you in. This parking lot is where the gash

of a hill once stood. Breathe slow. Speak

short sentences. No knowing when the earth,

so rich and red, might fill a lung. And rushing

past us, silent now, the houses, mirthful,

cackling with flame just thirty years ago.

Nearly done. Why have all the fishes

disappeared? This pavement used to glow

with them, the yearning of a sea grown thin

from lack. Now, trust the surf, how it washes,

come, the crowd is surging, let us swim.

Written by Divya Devaraj, a second year medical student at St. John's Medical College.

Kanthi watched them carefully as they walked up her front verandah, running her fingers through her wet hair. It was Sankranthi, the harvest festival. She had awakened with the sun, helped milk the cows; cut the plantain leaves, and prepare the turmeric and sweet potato for the puja. She didn’t think they would come today; it was a habba after all.

When we started our business in 2008, the idea of a bookshop akin to a literary salon was an appealing prospect. Literary events that were organized in the city were either invite only book launches or a lack luster book fair for the public – mostly brought to the public’s attention in the media after the event had taken place. Our vision for literary events centered on the author and their work. We hosted readings once a month and engaged the media prior to the event so that interested readers could join the events.

Nepal has a rich multi-lingual literary history dating back to the Malla Dynasty in the 12th century. The Malla kings supported literature in Nepal Bhasa (the language of the Newar community) and the Maithili language. Literature was orally produced, written and enacted through dance-dramas and songs. Nepali language literature came into prominence with the establishment of the Shah Dynasty in the 18th century.

When sun rises high
I wish to fly
In silence of sunlight
At shinning moon of night
I want to see the sea
I wish to be free.
I and spring
Together sit and sing
Each moment is sweet
When peace is beside it
I feel it can be
I will be free.
If birds fly high
If dews never die
In future I see
I am going to be free.
When each black and white
Could read and could write
When no one ignores it
Life would be complete.
I want such a world
Without fight, without war
I will change my life
Follow the shiny star.
You can stop my heart
You can take my breath
To achieve my goal
I will work as a whole.
You may call me black
Either name me slave

Here I want to share a secret of mine! When I write, I pretend to be in India.

As a writer, although I'm prepared to write anywhere, I prefer to write in a quiet corner of my home, away from all distractions. And when I return home to write, I often like to unite myself with the memories of India to condition my mind; India, where my poet was born, and I wrote my very first poem in Hindi at the age of fourteen.

SHE loved him you see and so she thought it was honesty that would matter in the end.
So when she said, “You can’t handle the truth,” she was unprepared for what happened next.
He dragged her by the hair, dragged her like a rag doll through the dark corridor lined with paintings and mould into the room at the end of the hall. It was dark and dank inside compared to the light in the verandah and the sound of singing voices. The smell of the jacaranda trees and the sight of the blooming white frangipani allowed her to think of all that was possible.
It is possible that he will accept this, she thought. All is possible. All I need is to speak the truth.

When I was a child and travelled around the island with my parents, I would see a sign board dotted along the roads with the slogan: Anytime is Tea time put up by the Ceylon Tourist Board. Invariably every journey would include a stop for tea at a wayside tea shop. That is a tradition that remains with us still and whenever we travel between cities and towns, a tea break has become essential. It is a chance, to stretch your legs, have a picnic, admire the scenery, take a break from driving along treacherous Sri Lankan roads, and an opportunity to chat with your fellow travellers and share your travel tips.

(an episode from the Sejarah Melayu – the Malay History)

And then several horses and cows and goats were slaughtered. Rice crusts collected in a mound. Water for the ceremony amounted to an ocean upon which the heads of buffaloes appeared like islands. After 40 days and 40 nights, bath water was brought in a procession abounding in joy and noise in a vessel decked with jewels. Then Seri Teri Buana and his wife Princess Uwan Sundari walked seven times around the raised throne. Then they were bathed on their raised thrones by Bat. Following the bath they covered their bodies with the finest threads, the threads of the kingdom; and sat as man and wife on a throne decked with jewels…

A short story by Mohibullah Zegham (from my first collection of short stories “Hill in the Human”)

Translated by Rashid Khattak

It was a market day. I had loaded 16 sacks full of potatoes in a truck and was moving towards Kunduz. After a long time I was going to the bazaar [again?] . Everything seemed strange. Traveling the vast desert of Shorao, the truck was raising clouds of dust. The desert was so flat that one could not believe it was the top of a huge mountain. We had not seen any other vehicle during the hour-long journey. In the past, the buzkashi competitions used to be held in this desert, but now there was no trace of horses’ hoofs. All you could see on the ground were the caterpillar tracks of tanks.

(Translated by Eileen Cham)

When you kissed me, I realized

That it was your first kiss with a man.

When you pushed me away

You pushed open

A door in your life – an ornate door

That you would not be able to open

on your own. What that kiss

told me

surpassed the sum of all my previous men

You

You have lingered too long in realms of straight-love, you are weary

Your body full of scars

Abused by the want for fights, for winning, for conquests 

you are someone else, You

are not you –

You are racecar covered in dust. I only wish

To wipe clean a window for your soul

For you to breathe through

for R.

O, how was America then, pre-discovery? Suffice to say there is no experience like being smack in the middle of this billowing concerto. It could turn out to be our tarnation or salvation, depending on the jury and their tote bags of mood swings. “You sound a little pitchy in the second verse.” But don’t you see, it’s all a harmless karaoke session, a symphony of wolves having a minxy reprieve of fun from a day’s hunting… A quizzical prairie dog would rear its head from its security blanket and nobody would lift a paw. For those commercial breaks, the globe twirls in total harmony and no one eats no one else: “In the months of spring, we will play like silly butterflies in the strawberry fields, but do keep out for muggers and axes with vendettas.”

Abstract

After Darren Soh

 A great hand rises from the ground

to sweep the insubstantial sand,

gathering to a crown, an iron

crown, the roots of homes. A fire

chills the grass, the tree, and air

assumes the nonchalance of a door.

Big light pierces through the greatness

of the hand. My eyes say yes.

Today, the soil yields a worm,

bold, glistening in the calm.

When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked India’s first cosmonaut, Rakesh Sharma, at a video conference in April 1984, how India looked from space, he replied without missing a beat: “Saare jahan se achcha.” Every schoolchild in India recognised the phrase, for it comes from a song composed by Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), and is deeply identified with the Indian nationalist struggle. At the same time, many in South Asia regard the same man as the ideological father of Pakistan.

I am writing from Varkala, a coastal town by the Arabian Sea, located in India's south-western state of Kerala. Last weekend I was in Kochi, Kerala's biggest city, where I had an opportunity to check out the second edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Before writing about the Biennale, it is necessary to reflect on what led me there because until a month ago, I had no idea about the journey that lay ahead.

Helena Makri

“If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to me to be the book”—William Godwin (on reading a narrative by his future wife)

A poem written inspired by the Silk Princess, a Chinese wood panel painting from the 7th or 8th century. As the BBC's "A History of the World" describes the artifact: 

According to this legend, a Chinese princess smuggled the secret of how to make silk out of China and into the country of her new husband, the king of Khotan. As she was a princess the border guards did not dare search her. In this painting her elaborate headdress conceals the cocoons of the silk moth and the seeds of the mulberry tree.

You are an escort in my head-dress

which everyone claims beautiful;

I am a girl from  a country in the heart of Asia. My family named me Farkhonda, which means beatific and auspicious. I am the oldest child; 12 years ago I was sent to school to learn to read and write. I read books and step by step started to practice writing.  I chose to write stories. Their narrative style was one of the reasons behind my interest in fiction: I enjoyed writing about different characters and what I imagined about them. After getting some of them published in a few Afghani magazines, I realized that critics and readers alike believe my fiction mostly focuses on women. Maybe this is natural, since I am a woman living in a country that has experienced decades of war and setbacks for women.  

It is widely accepted that the greatest literature is born when cultures, civilizations or worldviews come together. This often happens in case of diplomat-poets who often find themselves in exotic milieus, novel circumstances and in company of people with diverse viewpoints.

There is a connection between diplomacy and poetry as several diplomats over the ages have excelled in poetry, to the extent that eight of them have won the most coveted prize in literature -- 'the Nobel Prize'. This is one of the least known literary facts.

      I was born in a remote village in the mountainous region of western Nepal. Until I grew up as a school boy in that remoteness and learnt that a bigger world existed beyond what I could see around, my entire understanding was that of the mountains, meadows, vegetation, the cattle, wild beasts and birds, my parents and villagers who toiled hard day in and day out, their pains and pleasures and the images of human condition in the stories narrated by my peers who “bet villages” in their games.

 Vladimir Nabokov migrated from Russia to the United States and wrote his bestseller, Lolita. Arundhati Roy wrote The God of Small Things from the small town of Ayemenem. Fyodor Dostoevsky was translated from the Russian to English, and so was Anton Chekhov, while Melville and Fitzgerald both wrote the great American novels of their time.

His carpet is stone, dirt

And trash that no one wants

Decorated by urine and faeces

Which is often his own

Feet blistered with red blue sores

Toenails crafted with serrated stones

And filled with soot

Because he walks barefoot

The cleanest liquid that cleans them

Is the blood of his wounded soul

Which exudes out at night when he is alone

Because earlier that day he saw kids

Walking with their back packs

While he held his trash bag

And he ran back

To the tenous home

With walls torn

And a broken core

He thinks about all the food they could spare

And all the money they could share

And ponders on why they have so much

                                                                       There is someone
                                                                He is coming toward me
                                                               I can hear my heart voice
                                                               He brings me prosperity
                                                                       Walking softly
                                                                He is coming toward me
                                                                      My eyes are waiting
                                                                         Can he see me?

When we started our business in 2008, the idea of a bookshop akin to a literary salon was an appealing prospect. Literary events that were organized in the city were either invite only book launches or a lack luster book fair for the public – mostly brought to the public’s attention in the media after the event had taken place. Our vision for literary events centered on the author and their work. We hosted readings once a month and engaged the media prior to the event so that interested readers could join the events.

Bombay, India [I prefer to use the older name, ‘Bombay’, as it symbolizes the inclusive and cosmopolitan character of my city; the name ‘Mumbai’ was imposed in 1995 by a right-wing provincial (in every sense of the word) government, and is associated with a nativist, majoritarian ideology steeped in regional and linguistic chauvinism. The claim that ‘Mumbai’ is the original name of the city is questionable, since the city originated in a Portuguese outpost later ceded to the British, and ‘Bom Bahia’ or ‘Bom Baim’ might equally provide an origin for the toponym.]

Your love is beautiful as a painted lily,
As a moon in darkness, as honesty.
Your love is sunset,
It’s neither golden, nor red_
Like a rose… no, a star,
It’s near although it seems far.
It is shining in my eyes;
But, runs as dew when my heart cries.
If I catch it, it will fly,
What should I say? It goes so high_
Your love is with me forever I see,
Even though in my life, "To be or Not to be…"

Parallel to an angry road of hasty vehicles, lies Ardiya’s mumsha, its walking area. It is where Ardiya’s residents exercise. To the naked eye, the mumsha is a plain route with trees and light poles. Yet when one exercises in it, he or she joins a floating positive spirit. Every step, crunch, squat, and push-up reflects the story of an individual. An elderly man fighting and preventing disease, a woman building her confidence, and youth enjoying the bliss of heath. This is why an empty space matters as much as any other integral facility.

Distances are empty

between us.

Prayers are love,

and when I get drunk

by desire

I forget from which amulet

I wrote myself

using its bloody saffron

and which I use

to erase myself.

Red is another language,

and I can’t speak it anymore.

Do you know the first cosmopolitan of Korea?

Hecho, the author of The Book of Travels to Central Asia and India, Wang O Cheun Chuk Kuk Jeun(往五天竺國傳)

But who will listen

to the scent?

Her smile

could light the darkness

but one question haunts her.

Why are they saying “her”

when they talk about me?

Have I vanished?!

Have I?

A hush—

then she melts

like a flower in the snow.

Urdu, a language thousands around the subcontinent speak, a language that is my mother language, a language which encompasses a culture, a cosmos of its own. Hidden beneath its charisma is a rich history, defined by poets, revolutionaries, novelists, scholars and spiritualists. It is defined by its decorum and propriety, a language of the elites of South Asia. Urdu is history, is my past, my present and my future. It runs in my veins and clogs my brain. It defines who I am, my identity and I can never be more proud of it.

I would like to begin with these words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery- "In this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together," and share with you the need for a common global symbol that can unite people across the world transcending the traditional notion of race and nationalities. Ancient Indian wisdom of ´Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam´ and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi can possibly guide us on this path.

 Wherever we come from, we all have one entity in common - our planet, our Earth. A tribute to her in form of an anthem, therefore, should be able to find support from people of all continents.

There is a holy spot

bher eyes

where angels burn their feathers

And lose their faith.

Do not blame me.

أعيش في جدة. فتحت عيني في هذه المدينة ولم أغادرها في حياتي لأكثر من أسابيع قليلة. أعود بعدها مشتاقة أو لأن لابد من العودة لارتباطي بعمل وعائلة. غريب تمسكي بهذه المدينة أنا القادمة من عائلة تعودت على الهجرات. كأن تعب أجدادي من الترحال ترسخ في ذاكرتي أنا وإخوتي فجلسنا في البلد التي خرج منها الأجداد ولم نغادر. سكنوا مكة. الأرض الحرام. وعادو بعد قرن إليها. لكن أبي سكن جدة لأنها المدينة الأكبر التي تضم النادي الرياضي الذي شاهد موهبته في لعب كرة القدم وضمه إليه. جدة. في صغري كنت أمشي في شوارع البلد يمسكني ابي من يدي وأنا مبهورة بالناس، المحلات الكثيرة على جانبي شارع قابل، ساندويش الشاورما سموثي الكاكاو والمكسرات الحارة.

Will dread to speak straight
Maintain a distance between the cup and the lip
Will scatter bits of politeness
In a cauldron of arrogance
And conclude that it's perfectly fine...

Will find fault in the authority and their fellow-passengers
After losing their cell-phones
While returning from a trip

Will keep on bugging about extremely fashionable issues
If necessary, will champion it
And get enraged at the slightest criticism

Will swear bare-chested people, uncultured and rustic
In the night of power cut
Beside the pond in the neighbourhood
And fall in love with wolves disguised as sheep

I am with you wherever you are,
Up or down, near or far_
My soul cannot be separated from you;
Final destiny!
By Your precious love_
I see the moon and reach in sky.
Like sky sometimes blue, sometimes white
You are splendid in each color, cannot be sought_
I am with you in horror of dark night,
I always seek you at a small feign of light_
Let me call you fancy world!
Coz, I am with you till I became old_
My last wish is: just once tell me!
Just once tell me: I was the one, you wanted me.

I grew up in a house which had books in every room. We read everything we could lay our hands on. From well thumbed, back copies of my uncle’s Readers Digests to my father’s leather bound tomes of Anna Karenina, and A Tale of Two Cities. As little children our personal library consisted of all the Enid Blytons, Daphne Du Mauriers, and Rumer and Jon Goddens. In my father’s library no book was denied to us and long before we understood them, we had looked at Virgil’s Aeneid, the Mahabharata, the works of Aldous Huxley and even the original Arabian Nights.

I grew up in a house which had books in every room.  We read everything we could lay our hands on. From well thumbed, back copies of my uncle’s Readers Digests to my father’s leather bound tomes of Anna Karenina, and A Tale of Two Cities. As little children our personal library consisted of all the Enid Blytons, Daphne Du Mauriers, and Rumer and Jon Goddens. In my father’s library no book was denied to us and long before we understood them, we had looked at Virgil’s Aeneid, the Mahabharata, the works of Aldous Huxley and even the original Arabian Nights.   

and this is the beginning of it all,
in the middle of someone
always someone else’s narrative
when one barges in, spewed like an
interruption, our first cries dissonate
(even science cannot make us, sans ciy)

and here i (he)
am, was not born Joshua Michael David Chan Kwok Keong (Gúo Chiáng) nor
Tan Ah Kow, that proverbial arithmetic
Doggerel example, smacking of warehouses:

“Tan Ah Kow can carry a hundred and five bags of rice a day.
The Taipan/Towkay/colonialist merchant/
entrepreneur has three thousand bags of rice on his ship. How
many days does it take Ah Kow etc.”

Smoke disperses
Night has fallen
Violet Alice
Holds out two hands from the black velvet
Pastoral is getting old-fashioned
We’re tied up by utterances
Growing more clueless day by day
How to make ourselves transparent you said
There is one whole world out there yet we
Turn around to face the inside

Cat sneaking along the vertical edge
Rose of pain withers away day by day
Just a puff like this will do?
When we’re still searching for the right word
Like shaving our sideburns clean with a razor
Hoping in vain not to be bothered