Poetry in the city.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Not only a prolific poet, he’s also a busy tax lawyer.

But Siddhartha Singh, chatting in a Delhi café, does suggest a greater intimacy to poetry, “even while law remains my profession!”

Mr Singh, 29, talks of poems as his “coping mechanism”. He recalls his boyhood in Kanpur, UP, when he was struggling with depression. “At that time, people around me thought depression was not a disease and that it could be fixed by being happy and by regular exercise!”

The depression started fading away only after he found himself turning to writing “first prose, then poetry” as a law student in Lucknow.

By now he’s got some 500 poems under his belt (his blog: https://lastbluebird.com/), sharing one of his latest with us.

Arthouse Birdhouse

Petalled within
a camera’s lust
a birdhouse finds
itself
travelling amongst
high art.

Not so long ago
it was but wood
and sawdust
brown like
the carpenter’s
hands.

Before
it became a Lutyens’
plaything
the photographer
was
a human being.

Now,
the sparrow sisters
congregate
on Ms. Dabral’s ledge
for their once
reclusive home
is now famous.

A portrait of the tax lawyer as a poet

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