Vinita Agrawal is an award winning author of four books of
poetry. Her work has been widely published and anthologised. She was editor of
TheWomanInc for three years. Her poem won the Tall Grass Writers Guild Award,
Chicago and the Proverse Hongkong Poetry Prize. She was also awarded the Gayatri
GaMarsh Prize for literary excellence. She curates literary events for PEN
Mumbai. She has assisted in curating a section of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival
2020. She is on the advisory board of the Tagore Literary Prize.
Mumbai
A
very dark sky but no rain
and
the burden of knowing too much.
Cramped,
shadowy spaces,
living-units
in short supply.
Mumbai
-
where
a room is a house.
A
solitary nameplate
against
a solitary pigeon hole.
Men
dream of wheat fields
women
of fresh air and sweat-free afternoons.
They
want to raise english-speaking kids here.
The
sun-dolloped, Laburnum sea cushions their aches.
Local
trains hoot through the suffocation,
commuters
lolling from splayed doors like tongues
for
breeze, just breeze.
The
Traveller Inside You
Not
everyone knows what it means
that
pale opal play of light
on
which a cartographer leans
as
he sails away one night.
What
does he hope for when clear
that
death curates the tide of life?
When
biennales mark with a smear
the
thin scimitar moon of strife.
Bosons
of gems he finds in jars
And
beauty sails against the wind
Capella
that bright golden star
lies
to the lissome black night pinned.
The
brave explorer does not know
what
is real or what is false
What
will he do, where will he go
what
if the allure fades and palls?
To
travel a mystic distance
is
all that his blood seeks to do
To
that inner call he listens
like
the traveller inside you.
Gunjiyas
It
isn't just food
this
melting sweetness
encrusted
in a crisp pastry
murmuring
in the mouth.
For
the filling, the red-brown charoli
dots
the desiccated coconut, slivered almonds,
khoya, powdered sugar
and
raisins (as soft as your eyes).
Delicately
encased in half moons of pastry,
sealed
and fried to the colour of raw silk.
The
crests in the painstakingly crimped dough
that forms its decorative edges
appear to me like the peaks of our tender bond.
No,
these
aren’t Gunjiyas that you've prepared today,
this
in your fourth stage
when
the doctors say
you
might find it hard to breathe.
So
when you offer the sweets
to
me and say
‘I
made you your favourite treat’,
I
realise that I’m going to taste
tangible
love.
Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020
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