there was a red building with open lawns

and once these were graced with strains 
of a qawwali that came all the way 
from Karachi, and played for us 
just because they could, they’d been called, 
these were the kinds of things that happened within this building.
one year, I remember being told
about a lovely man who rolled up his sleeves
to show a new world to a roomful
of college kids, along with the bangles on his wrists, 
something they had never heard before.
but most days nobody had to be called,
it happened every day, the lectures 
that sometimes would launch a debate
of ideas that’d take shape or wing
and probe boundaries of definition as well
as the walls that made up the safe space 
where they could grow.
(red from the outside, peeling inside)
this is where it began, where
we had a thought to call
a man to speak, for whom so many had 
already spoken that it was over a year forgotten
what he originally ever had to say.
(tell me, will every idea that touches your ears
be like one emerging from your own head?
but how would children ever learn to speak if they didn’t listen as they grew?)
but this, what made it
magical, or enough at least to allow me
to romanticise it to some extent,
was where left and right and the rest could find
a voice to express themselves,
and hear, dissent, something beyond
boundaries that were built in our heads and on paper walls.
and sometimes dreams.
of pyaari pyaari azaadi:
what cannot be killed within these walls, 
what we demand from beyond as well
to preserve this sanctity

On Diwali night,

strings of lights try to lift
the darkness, but they don’t mitigate it
quite as much as the smoke from the crackers
that makes the sky purple
and silvers the air
prematurely,
something about the way
the lights are hung up over houses
that doesn’t reveal
their sadness or happiness
reminds me of people,
bright stars of smiles
like facades decorated with rangoli powder,
that could scatter in a second
in a breath of wind
or lit with diyas burned out by tomorrow
and as we pass
on a road
filled with celebratory trash
winter air combined
with the ash we can’t cough out
for a year
there’s a house in the corner
that’s under construction,
uninhabited yet,
and on its side
is a jhuggi
like a forgotten child
that will never not be
under construction
that can’t keep out
the bitter ash in the air
but it’s lit as much as the house on the corner
and for one night
on a festival
both houses will light
a candle to their gods
pretending to smile
for
as long as the wick will burn. 

Newspaper Rain

the newspaper and rain arrived together today, 
one regular as always, the other unpredictable as ever  

“14 yr old dies after scuffle with two brothers” 

“man bludgeons wife, strangles child, kills self” 

–headlines that draw my eyes in first

though the articles, I choose not to read:  

what will one more act of violence be
but another prick to our collective conscience, 
another snag in the proud-flying flag, 
one more fester in the city’s flesh 
that for all their exploding frequency 
it will get sicker before it dies? 

instead, 

I read about the arguments 
between the central and state governments;
the PM skipped the president’s Iftar 
but will be going for talks to Mozambique. 
Maybe I will only realise the importance 
of these events in the future. 
so I plough through an editorial on the Brexit 
understanding about half 
and one on the latest cure for cancer 

in the obituaries,
a young soldier is remembered 

alongside a ninety year old man: 

the former for his service in the Kargil war, 
the latter by grandchildren 

newspapers 

like readers, 
are selective 
unlike rain, till it falls 
on roofs of plastic or of brick or 
under open sky.