TSC Poetry | Three poems by Kapil Kachru

 

Photo by Aletta Andre 

 

Kali’s Katha

 

ii

 

elaborate,

impermanent

bamboo frame

platforms emerge

in every lane

 

ferocious bright

fabrics & louder

speakers

 

lit by ribbons

of jumpy multi

colored electric

flame

 

trade

in tradition

is thriving

 

every footpath 

overflowing with

Bengali paper art

 

Durga Ma

battles shadows

many armed

 

robed in the

subtle milky

symmetry

of shola

 

Photo by Aletta Andre

Kali’s Katha

 

vi

 

USIS bookshelves

starved of poetry

shivering, naked

 

outside:

 

Gandhian Marxist

serves up egg rolls

& chai & gladly accepts

American dollars

 

in the background,

growling:

 

stray dogs

nose & play

with decapitated

coconut in gutter

 

they’ve tasted

cream before

                                                                                      

Photo by Aletta Andre

 

Kali’s Katha

 

vii

 

Having roamed this

sweating, aching city

for weeks now

 

gulped down gallons

of gasoline flavored

internal combustion

 

marched the eroded cement

footpaths reeking of history

 

indulged in exotic

typhoid breeding fast foods

from vaguely illuminated

vendors

 

stared blankly at attendance

registers in art galleries

begging for comments

 

been propositioned by

Chinese ladies on

Free School street

 

while shuffling

through second hand

records on narrow

wooden shelves,

 

this

i can say

with certainty:

 

every thing is

up for debate at the

India Coffee House

 

especially

the meaning of

water

 

Kapil is a writer based in Boston. His poems and stories have appeared in journals, magazines, chapbooks and anthologies in India, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

Poetry | Urszula Marciniak | Haiku

 

Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh

The prison

The trampled grass in the yard 

Growing back

*

Sunflower

The petals ran out and 

She didn't come

*

A great river

A child carries its warmth 

In his hands

*

Spring sunrise

And nothing has changed 

Since yesterday

*

The full moon

I look for your hand 

In the fog

*

Crossing the river

Halfway there overcome by 

Doubt and cold

*

The bright summer dawn

One by one the stars and 

Wishes fade away

*

A bomb crater

Slowly turning into 

A summer playground

***

Bio: Urszula lives in Poland on the outskirts of the city. She has always loved literature and devoured countless books.

Novel | Serialised Fiction | Junk Days | Abhimanyu Kumar | Part IV

                                                                   

I really can’t remember how we first scored. It has to be from Old Delhi, I suppose.  That is where we started scoring from in the beginning. Someone must have tipped us off. It is pretty openly done around that area anyway. Junkies sit with their foils and run lines, usually covering their heads with a cloth, in the corridor that houses the LIC building and stretches from Ramlila Maidan to Delite Cinema.

On the other side of the road lies the GB Pant hospital. The bus stop next to it teemed with junkies as well. This entire region is like the junk capital of Delhi.

We must have asked someone we spotted with a foil or something to get it for us. This is the least effective way of scoring. Junkies are bastards and they have no conscience. They will take your money, ask you to wait and run away with it. Or else, they would give you dirt packed neatly in small bits of paper. This happened a lot to us initially. But we had to go through it as we had no direct contact with those who sold the stuff. 

We were really desperate too. To go there and return without scoring was a soul destroying thing. One such night I remember vividly. We had gone there in the evening and left  the auto at Zakir Hussain College, which lies close to GB Pant hospital. We walked past the stable, with the horses neighing at the setting sun with a dreary melancholy, the wafting smell of beef being fried on the other side of the road in small stalls – for two rupees you could get quite a lot of it. Snacking on Old Delhi delicacies like this was a pleasant part of the scoring process.

By then, we knew this guy who lived in Ram lila Maidan and sold stuff. It was Robi who knew him basically. Robi led these expeditions, so to say. We first checked for him next to bus stop outside GB Pant but he wasn’t there. So we went and looked for him at Ram lila Maidan. Not to be found. We went to his house next.

After walking the impossibly narrow and dirty alleys of old Delhi’s slums, with open sewers on both sides, people looking at you suspiciously – we stood out of course, in our clean middle class clothes and appearance; somehow, we reached our contact’s house. Robi called him out but no one responded. So we walked inside, climbing a small and decrepit flight of stairs. His wife and kids were inside but they had no clue about his whereabouts so we got the hell out of there.  

On our way out we met someone who said he could score for us.

We trailed behind him. We did not offer him money upfront. He said that was fine. That he would take it once we were close. “A lot of people will take your money and run away. I am not like that. I can see that you need the stuff. Don’t worry, I will get it for you,” he said. Of course, since there are no free lunches in world, we were prepared to give him one pudiya out of what he scored for us.

After some more walking in those lanes – it was already dark by now – we reached another old, ramshackle house. Standing at the door, he asked us to wait outside. We saw no reason to suspect him – he had to come out the same door – so we gave him the money.

Minutes passed. We stood outside, smoking, avoiding direct eye contact with passersby.  Half and hour and he still didn’t come out. We began to get restless. Finally, Robi walked in and I followed behind. We came across a large courtyard with no one in it. The door to the house was in the center of the courtyard and it was closed. The bastard had slipped through another small opening between the wall of the house and the wall of the courtyard.

Desolate and desperate, we went back again to GB Pant, swearing to beat up the guy if we ever managed to catch hold of him.

It had begun to drizzle by now. But we didn’t care. We wanted to score at any cost. We asked around again. We still had a hundred rupees left. Enough for two pudiyas.

It was then that we came across the one eyed Bengali man who sold bananas or something during the day and got high on smack at night. He said he knew where to get the stuff from. We tagged along. Just behind Zakir Hussain College was a park. The boundary wall to the park was broken and junkies were going in to get their fix. The Bengali asked someone to get two pudiyas for us and told him we will pay once he got it. That man never came out again.

I am not sure how we scored finally but we did. The pockmarked face of the Bengali has somehow stayed with me after all this years, like a living nightmare. Just like junk is.

We immediately went inside the Sulabh loo next to the stable, got inside one of the stinking latrines, the inside of the commode caked with shit – we could not care less. Robi took out a foil and we chased some lines before getting out and hailing a rickshaw, drenched in the rain and the over powering relief that junk gives you, by now. Of course, since we had no money left, we had to drop the rickshaw in JNU near Ganga Dhaba, tell him we would be back after buying cigarettes and disappear.

Photo Essay | A Morning at Yamuna Ghat | Shriya Rawat

A Morning at Yamuna Ghat 

The ghat is an iconic morning spot for both locals as well as visitors, with stunning views of the seagulls flying around the river. 

Too much is going on here, all at the same time...

and somehow, everything is detached yet connected. 

Yamuna Ghat offers moments of quiet beauty of nature, visible in sand as well as in the water. 

People who visit the ghat often buy fish and bird food from the nearby vendors.

​

​

Preparation of fish food; making balls of atta/ flour (after kneading the dough).

Boatman rows the boat to the other side of the ghat, which offers a wide expanse of land to walk on and explore.

Shriya Rawat is a student of English Literature from India, currently pursuing her masters from Delhi University. She is a mountain child living in the city, who finds joy in photography, cinema, nature, travelling and books. 

*** 

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TSC Poetry | Prathibha Nandakumar | Mansplaining

Artwork by Berus Witold

 

 

You are a lampshade; I am happy for you. Let me put a bulb up your ass – Katie Hopkins

 

All this mansplaining

was sounding like Chandrayan

and I said, ‘it’s not rocket science’.

 

He was, as usual, inaccurate and

oversimplified, like talking to a nursery child.

It is possible for ChatGPT to answer follow up

questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect

premises and reject inappropriate requests,

said the brief. 

Unlike its sibling InstructGPT, it is not

trained to follow an instruction in a prompt

and provide a detailed response.

 

I read it out loud to him. He was still clueless.

I said some men have this habit of

explaining things they shouldn't and

don't hear things they should.

Who said it’s the most creative word of the year?

Mansplaining is the trend and why would he be not trendy?

I did a quick search and took a screenshot and sent him

“keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare;

 that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way

harassment on the street does, that this is not their world.

It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as

it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.”

And finally, I showed him this:

“The term has been used as an ad hominem to silence debate.”

 

And exactly at that point he started to explain ad hominem

“Typically, this term refers to

a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks

the character, motive, or some other attribute of

the person making an argument rather than

attacking the substance of the argument itself.”

 

I opened the door to walk out, and he jumped at it,

shutting it, screaming, “No, you are not walking out on this”

 

and I walked out.

 

***