“The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same.” ~Pablo Neruda I was young when I first read those lines, from a poem I still regard as one of the finest I have…
Author: umashankar
I am just a watcher then. Sometimes I watch life, sometimes I watch death; many times I watch in between...
A Byte of Moonshine
Sharpen now a crescent for the rite of moonshine, Bullets will not halt the flight of moonshine. Clouds germinate on the zephyrs from wet hills, The heart leaps windward with the kite of moonshine. I count my blessings over…
A Dewdrop Ghazal
Get me worms of silk for the runes and a dewdrop, Seven folds of veil for a cocoon and a dewdrop. The mirror is in youth, and the jasmine in bloom, Smoky is the kohl like the moon in a…
The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan
“Those who can really represent China are digging dirt and paving roads with their bare hands." ~Mo Yan Sidestepping the polemic surrounding the Nobel citation of Mo Yan, and the seeming incompatibility of the Chinese tongue with English hoes and…
Nightfall of Blogging
As the nightfall of blogging closes in on me, I am more inclined to exhaling in private than gasping online, more willing to navigate through the bushes and backwaters than honking in the perpetual crescendo of the world wide web.…
With the Cicadas
The evening is long with shadows of the afternoon chopped and spent at the edges of green black leaves of pubescent jackfruit trees. With the cicadas I pause and creek. With the cicadas I wax and shrink. A blackbird took…
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Somewhere in the pages of his unforgettable autobiography, Paul Kalanithi alludes to the concept of areté, the ability achieved through a confluence of human faculties at their peak, to describe neurosurgery’s unforgiving call to perfection. Neurosurgery, where a scalpel’s journey…
Three Tamarind Trees -Part II
*The beginning It was half past six in the morning as I trod the bridge over the moat to the looming entrance. My heart matched the pitter-patter of my hastening steps. Unlike the stolid façade I had come upon in…
Three Tamarind Trees -Part I
I swear I shall tell you the story exactly as he whispered it to me. I first met him at Sadar Bazar in Agra. I had just purchased a paperback called Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and was sipping a…
An Open Puzzle to Haiku Writers
Rose gold iPhone Fingerprints of feather Haiku they wrote. The bowels jettison Smokes of pot noodle Dawn, noon and dusk. Grumbling in the groin The brooding, wet cistern Agrees and sprays. Young eves frolic In the pale light of the…
The Silence of the Scrolls
It’s been a while since the nightingales sang in the darkness, fidgeting on boughs swaying in the night-wind. It’s been a while since the fingers splattered on the keyboard like an impromptu rain. There is this dike thin as rice…
The Pentagon Down
The commander of the forces of associate provinces barged through the door of my tent two days before the clash of the legions. His chubby face was ashen with nothing less than volcanic fear; his fingers shook like peepal leaves…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 