Love lines. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury! This love verse was penned by America’s Emily Dickinson. The poet of Amherst was writing her passion poems around the same time when a world away another poet was writing his equally passionate poems—our Dilli’s Mirza Ghalib! This Valentine’s Day, here’s a selection of some of Ghalib’s romantic verses. All that you have to do, dear reader, is to go o Lodhi Garden, and read aloud these lines amid bees, bougainvilleas, and the park’s many dogs. (The verses have been chosen by poetry scholar Aqil Ahmad of Delhi’s Ghalib Academy who spends his days editing and annotating the lines that young folks

On a new year. [Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] May the new year treat you better than the year just gone. This same wish goes for labourer Anand, who turned 65 yesterday and whose ageing body can no longer bear strenuous labour; for Bimlesh who is carrying on with her late husband’s legacy of a tiny food stall; for colony guard Saurabh, who is patiently waiting to get a job deserving of his graduate degree; for street hawker Shehzad, who recently lost his wife, leaving him alone to look after his young children; for elderly pavement hawker Rani who lost her husband and son, and earns for her grandchildren by selling trinkets; for Abu Noman, who in his 70s is single-handedly keeping

City verses. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] She gets up every morning at four. She goes to sleep every night by 10. Her waking hours are crammed with action. She makes breakfast for the family. She makes their dinner too. She also has a office job, which means her mornings and evenings are consumed in long bus commutes between her home in Vikaspuri and her office in Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar. Plus, these days she is battling Delhi’s horrible pollution, which has worsened her “allergic rhinitis problem” (she keeps prescribed pills in her handbag for emergencies). Even so, she has a firm faith in “our Guru Nanak’s chardi kala optimism, which is to be happy at all times, come what may.” Maybe

An ode to this time of the year. [Poem by Mukul, photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Blue sky, fresh air. But the panorama is coated in dust—see photo. The smoggy Delhi scene was actually snapped this weekend. The extreme pollution that strangles the capital at this time of the year is threatening to return. That’s not the reason why Mukul left the city last week for his other home in the clearer air of Dehradun. The young writer attributes it to other reasons. Whatever, he wrote a poem at his “Jamnapaar” Dilli residence as his response to “a resigned, helpless rage… in a city suffocated, gasping for breath….“ He agrees to share it with us. How Tender Is This Wrath of

Season's poetry. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is her first summer without “baba.” This time last year, poet Jonaki Ray’s father was “very happy” on receiving a copy of Firefly Memories, her debut collection of poems. Professor Bikash Raymahashay passed away in January. Jonaki’s mother, Deepali, died some years ago. These days, well-meaning acquaintances, including her cook, gently nudge her to quit Delhi for a city in the south, because that is home to her brother and his family, and they imagine there she will feel more at ease. “But my world is here—my friends, my day-job, my colleagues, my poems.” Jonaki amusedly wonders if such an unsolicited advice would have come her way if she were a

Poet in the city. [Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Their silks and shoes are as shiny as new money from the mint. They go about the lanes, democratically (and sportingly) breathing the city smog, before retreating back into their moneyed enclaves fitted with the best air purifiers premium credit cards can buy. This could be Khan Market where Delhi’s super-rich come to see and be seen. This evening, poet Tansy Troy is strolling with daughter, Dasel, on the market’s Front Lane (see photo), and agrees to share two poems she wrote in the market, tearing through its clichés, giving us a more nuanced sense of a place that many of us affectionately call just Khan. Silent Conversation Outside the bookshop in which I first