Childhood spent in Asansol was very impactful in my early schooling years, later coming to Mumbai and growing in a Sindhi household, father’s stories of Sindh influenced my writing. Along with the stories there was a feeling of nostalgia for the ancestral home in Karachi, alienation and identity crises-no one spoke about it in that many words but the melancholy existed and it seeped into my psyche and my writing. There is a constant urge to connect with my roots as I fathom time is slipping and so is a language and culture. From the past five years, I have been working on Sindhi translations of Sindhi Sufi poet Sachal Sarmast co-translating them into English with a spiritual teacher. The short poems are called ‘kafi’ and are generally sung in the dargah.

During these years, I got drawn to spirituality as I started working parallelly as a healer. Both were providential sources of joy and inspiration for me. Since I have a background in commerce, I acquainted myself to poetry by reading poetry and comprehending the mechanism of a poem. My poetry is influenced by the nature poets Wordsworth and Keats; Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Rumi. A few years back, I completed my second masters this time in English literature opening a repertoire of poetry by Ezra Pound, André Breton, e.e. Cummings, T.S. Eliot — all stirring my poetic influences. Charles Baudelaire’s Theory of Correspondence, “Everything-form, movement, number, colour, perfume in the natural world is significative, reciprocal, converse and correspondent” —  This holds true for poetry as well which is existential in our lives. My writing delves in themes like partition, introspection, the world of the unknown, universe and love-the quintessential theme. Invisible Eye (2016), my first book of poems, is a collection of nostalgia, stories of my father’s childhood and memories encapsulated in the form of poetry. The Empress (Hawakal 2018) is my second book which is dedicated to my mother. The title is inspired by the tarot card of the same name which symbolises abundance of creativity and Mother nature.

I love the mystery of a poem. I’m never certain of how the poem is going to end — I let the poem take its own journey. Some of my poems are peppered with images of dreams from the subconscious and unconscious mind. Poems have their own temperament. I give them freedom to say what they want to. There’s nothing more gratifying than crafting a poem.

I experience with forms like haibun, haiku, prose and found poetry because the newness of form intrigues me. I try to write every day, escaping into my poetry bubble but I have realised I write best in the daily chaos and mundaneness. During the pandemic, I wrote on a mélange of themes — death, loss of a partner and isolation. Few of my poems spoke about the claustrophobia of sitting inside four walls, it was a time for retrospection and inward thinking. The following poems have shades of hope, acceptance and closure.

long back, I walk with hunger now. Six-year old Keshav is walking in syncholding the left
hand of his father. They are walking west towards their hometown in the Gondia district. His
mother walks two steps behind balancing a cloth potli on the head and clutching his baby
sister in the other arm. Her eyes are gleaming like empty vessels — It is the second night in
a row, the snaking railway track is like a drunk mirage.The moon and stars are fastened to the
sultry sky, the air is muggy with anticipation, the mind is blank astwilight sets in. Tuka says

light is lit
within the lamp
walking barefoot

Some people come to this universe

to be grave diggers 

Some people come to help others cross over 

to another world 

Some people come to life 

to walk alongside your spirit like a flaner

they work in unison wrapping your suffering 

in a casket of ebony and dried rose petals

sending it afloat safely deep into the waters of the sea.

Pour the day in an empty bottle, 

unblocking the baggage of pain- 

befriending strength softly 

heave a fistful of Mother Earth-

perfumed by early morning dew

then 

Embrace the ache of schism

It is what defines you.

Pluck the fresh Butterfly pea flowers on a rainy day, separating the sepals drop them in a chai
pan with water. Brew with a cinnamon bark, some ginger thrown in generously stirring in
the past karmic patterns. Listen with precision to the gurgling blue concoction, a crystal ball
gathering tepid tears of swansong. Sieve it, serve warm with honey and lime sliced vertically,

the spell reads believe and behold —

Look the indigo blue sky 

setting your heart ajar —

Did you know human souls survive in trees?

every time someone dies

the body decomposes, disintegrates

into a greyish heap of ash

that gets carried away by the wind

into the choppy waters of the sea.

The soul on the other hand

rises like a phoenix from the ashes

fleeting in a soft divine like music

the sound of tinkling cow bells,

the whistling of a baby dolphin,

kneading its way into a giant oak tree perhaps.

Look at its leaves vein-like

just like that of a human hand

breathing and swallowing,

breathing and swallowing

the warm sunlight

sieved through a bough of a tree.

What do these branches seek

looking at the skies open mouthed

gaping at the Universe that

roots them to Mother Universe.

Imagine they are weightless dense souls of children

holding hands encircling the trunk

of a past that’s gone by.

Saving the last flickering of a fire spark,

the last drop of water on a vagrant leaf,

the soft scales of the last butterfly wings.

Chant the dervish’s song

Worship the water God Jhulelal*

Alas! She reaps what we sow

the curse of the wicked man

is eaten by the fiend himself

*Jhulelal: the deity of the Sindhi community