Every afternoon I sit at my table and write

For the last few days,
in the evening,
at six pm sharp
the sun strides into my living room
pulls up a chair
and just looks at me,
without speaking.

I look up
pack up my words
and leave.

begins between the feet
of a girl who plays the Cajon

because she was forbidden
to sit with her knees open

You’ll find it wedged between a naala and a cemetery –
a white key, pressed into breath, in a sonata
of gullies, filled with compact CPU houses,
whose roofs are ears pricked up to the bustle
of a Bombay street rearing its head between
catcalls, coconut water swish, the laughter
of schoolchildren, and Chandra chaiwallah,
who stains his customers’ crooked yellow smiles
with tobacco, between eternities of tea
spilling like gossip into cutting glasses.

In the morning, when the city is still dreaming
its last dream of solitude and silence, you’d see
Alwin – basketball in hand, glasses firmly placed
under white strands combed neatly around the pate,
whistle slung around jerseyed neck – a prayer coaxed into plastic,
and some of the other boys, jogging with knapsacks
and shin guards tucked safely in place.

They set out for the day solemnly tracing
their synchronised morning crosses under the white signboard
with a palm tree, and a halogen sun bursting
out of the clouds, above the words “Perpetual Resort”

for Varavara Rao

On a day when the afternoon pops his head round the side door,
unravels his turban, wraps it around a finger of light, and careens

into the hall in a dance of...

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