Aditi Angiras: Kindness is Gangsta and other poems

Aditi Angiras. Photo courtesy of the author

Jan 31, 2021

Poet’s Note: ‘Rap guides my method and writing style’

You don’t write what you know but in all the way of knowing it. I’m not sure if this is a line I’ve written or it’s something I’d read somewhere, but I come back to it again and again, and often. It seems I never know what I’m writing about but then it happens and begins to tell me things. I started writing love poems in my teens, and they turned out to be notes I was sending myself, morse-coding messages about my sexuality. I wrote rants in rap and it taught me my politics. I read spoken word in city corners, and it showed me what street activism can do and look like. Writing poetry to me is an instrument to think, deeply and honestly. Like a confession box, where you can do both — spill your sins and/or ask for forgiveness, and probably also ask the gods to fuck off.

I learnt how to write poetry the good ol’ fashioned way, by listening to old school rappers shit-talking to the most beautiful beats, and rap continues to guide my method and my writing style. Hip-hop, overall, has had a big influence on me, not just as an art form but as a cultural movement. It informs a lot of the work that I do around poetry, outside the writing.

Kindness is Gangsta

who would have thought, the world as we know it will end first with a bang and then a
whimper. but then there's always hope that's also a song and a whisper. pause and listen,
man, this the sound of the past on the mixer. we been too fast and got this mixed up. so
what I'm asking is where's the next gig, huh? cz we gots to fix it before it fix us. jusAdt sticks
and stones don't do no more, what we need is a good luck and a big hug. cz kindness is
gangsta and nows real time to be street thugs.

(Published in The New Indian Express, 2020)

Homeless at 3 pm

I smoke a cigarette on a concrete bench that’s falling apart, sharing shade and a bottle of

water with a 12-year-old. Her father smoking a beedi and mother selling roses to cars that
never say yes.

I realise the homeless spend their 3pms the same way in Delhi.

flames and smoke

f a l l i ng a p a r t

with roses in their hands.

(Published in The Indian Quarterly, July 2017 issue)

caduceus

these lost few weeks have pushed me down a spiral of silence. violence conspiring what it
always does, chaos. in a minute of days, bullets cut through columns of courage like a fruit
knife. slits democracy like a wrist, open wounds never heal kindly. we will not take kindly to
this assault, mister. i will gargle my mouth full of blood in your face, not gulp it. these fists
hold fear firmly between the fingers, bring your finest uppercuts to the table. there’s a
handprint on yesterday's newspaper, lying next to my morning coffee. i’ve spent all night
trying to read between the lines. what's the message here? who is the messenger? hermes
walks around with a stalk, two snakes in an embrace. emblem. you can’t set wings on fire
with your guns and gibberish. the caduceus is a pen. it’ll ricochet your rifles.