The Mingling of the Oceans (Part-II) on November 23, 2019As for the Majma, this brilliant and seminal achievement in spiritual harmony that could have changed the shape and destiny of South Asia was reduced to rubble when Aurangzebhad Dara beheaded. It was a death foretold as the younger sibling was already busy building a case against his elder brother arguing that Dara was an […]
The Mingling of the Oceans Part-I on November 21, 2019When in 1652 Dara Shikoh was formally declared the crown prince of the Mughal Empire his future seemed secure. He was given the title Padshahzada-i-BuzargMartaba, son of the Emperor with the status of a Saint. He was also given the highest rank in the Mughal army which came with a command of 40,000 horse and […]
The Sailing on November 4, 2019After many a day we entered the cinnamon-scented harbour lights of your eyes to rest a breath in concordance with the lilac eve of your spirit and mine; tides will move like rhythmic bowels and I will sail. But have I the command to order the anchor anymore anymore after you? And you? Will you […]
The Consolation of Philosophy on October 28, 2019When your favorite poems Fail to move you When your sacred verses Cannot elevate you When even The deadly modern drugs Do nothing to you And you are still left Wondering How to make sense Of the baffling Events and Behavior of people Around you And you have nowhere to turn Here is a name, […]
The Old Chinar Tree on October 18, 2019There is a holy hush And stillness at sunrise On Dal lake And at this time of the year A sharp sting of cold at dawn. As the sun emerges A million shimmering leaves Of soft-gold, red and mauve Set the valley ablaze. Here, I have heard countless stories Moody young men reciting their love […]
Galactic Veil on October 14, 2019Prometheus chained by the four-cornered walls of my fragile snowed head and bounden and the first spinning drifts of love that they took away by calling those immortal embers only water and jelly and there her body the curve of a decaying tissue that must swirl the dance of decay and the lizards lambent tongue […]
A Little While on October 9, 2019a little boy playing with words a little voice crying for love a little love wasting for you the senseless patterns of the garden butterfly the insistent urgency of the army motorcycle all those hours dropped in waiting all those years in hoping a marshmallow love that is never toasted
Golgotha on October 2, 2019That bolus that stuck ringed in my breath-pipe that misery that muck scattered me like tripe on a nude day spent lying in the solarium and nothing to pay except the die-hard solatium that the invertebrate needs and love too soon hopes spent wasting in distant meads twisted in tiring ropes again and again the […]
Since on September 23, 2019I have not slept blackness and slipped the nightly nocturnal sublimation I dangle, comes the suffocating successions of dark, a silver coin on a silver string revolving in sentience over and over the same, set orbit. Last night I dreamt: I, a female-ant smug on an endless beach of brown sugar; I knew the joy […]
Love poems in the age of Islamophobia on September 14, 2019WASHINGTON: It was a crisp January morning as we ascended the stairs to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. With the Washington Monument towering above the city and the Capitol building standing firm before us, it was difficult to miss the symbolism of this moment. Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, “the world’s leading authority on contemporary […]