Two poems, and one review

For once, I will let my words do the talking

• Two of my poems (Straight Talk and Mrs.Sunshine)
• A review of Touch by Professor Jaydeep Sarangi

have appeared in MASCARA LITERARY REVIEW that’s published from Australia and edited by Boey Kim Cheng, Michelle Cahill and Adam Aitken.

Please stop over and read the review by Prof.Sarangi. It’s really the way I would love my poetry to be approached.(I can go on and on and on about the stuff I like in there, but then, I am not in a mood for spoilers)

Apart from the happiness of such a beautiful, beautiful review, I am also moved by the company that I find myself in. I have studied Keki Daruwallah’s poetry and short-stories at school. God! He is the *canon*. I can still reel off lines from his story, Love across the Salt Desert. I can smell the rainstorm building in the last lines of that short-story. And now, my poems appear alongside his, and I don’t know what to make of it, how to react really. And Michelle told me that he liked the review. I nearly swooned.

Sukrita Paul Kumar is another writer I am in awe of. She works among the homeless, and writes about a host of social issues through poetry. I always admire that.

Or take Geoff Page for instance. Last year, in August he was in Chennai. At the University of Madras, and I translated ten of his poems into English. And this year, I find my name beside his, but in a wholly different context. I don’t know whom to thank for all this happening to me. But thank you to the whole universe in that case. Things can never get any lovelier. I return to poetry like the way in which people return to an old lover, seeking the shoulder to cry on. This time, the sobbing shoulder has given me reasons to smile.