Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] At the time, she was doing her Master’s (specialisation in ophthalmology) in coastal Pondicherry. One evening, after returning to her non-sea-facing apartment following another hectic day of work in the hospital, Dr Esha Jamal found herself intensely missing her smoggy polluted Delhi. She then did what came natural to her. She wrote a poem--Memories of a Delhi Afternoon. That was more than two years ago. So much has happened since then. She lost her father, Hafiz Akram Jamal, to the second wave of the Covid. She herself has returned to her Delhi, and now works as an eye specialist in a hospital. Chatting this afternoon about poets and poetry, during a brief reprieve from patients

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] She was Covid-free. Fully jabbed, always masked, she had been working from home since the coronavirus pandemic gatecrashed our world in early 2020. Finally, last week, omicron caught up with her. The first two days passed in a blur of high fever (102 degrees). Jonaki Ray, technical editor in a software multinational, is now feeling better, she says on phone. “I don't have much appetite, I’m having sandwiches and soup.” Being a published poet who picks ideas for her verses from the immediate world around her, Ms Ray hasn’t let her infection go in vain. On Sunday night she transformed her positive status into a poem, which she agrees to share with The Delhi

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] She is a statistical officer in the ministry of labour. She is also a poet and a rapper. She writes her own songs. This afternoon Nishat Ahtesham, 29, is in Connaught Place, which is a short distance from her office in Central Secretariat. She is talking about her relatively recent initiation into the rapping scene. “I found the raps in the movie Gully Boy really inspiring—the language, the words, the way of expressing… it was all hard-hitting but not crude. My heart was touched.” A month ago, Ms Ahtesham, who lives with her parents in north Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh, wrote a poem in “simple urdu” over the course of several days. She would jot down

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] The evening sun is setting behind the Metro station. The adjacent drain, clogged with plastic bags, has turned ethereal in the twilight gold. In her early 20s, Shahana Khatoon is unhurriedly walking along the station’s foot overbridge, towards her home in Shaheen Bagh. The pathway is crowded with men. There’s a stray dog, too. But Ms Khatoon is too occupied in her thoughts to care for the immediate world around her. She isn’t even turning to look at the orange sun as it dips in slow motion at the rear of the Jasola Vihar-Shaheen Bagh station. May be because there’s so much for her to look forward to. Having completed her Master’s in English

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Kandala. Such an uncommon name. “It means ‘golden’ and suggest someone who has the properties of gold, such as beautiful, precious, rare,” says Kandala Singh. The word is from Punjabi, her mother tongue. A poet, Ms Singh lives in south Delhi’s Munrika Enclave, a neighbourhood that “gives me plenty of fodder for poetry—interactions on the terrace with neighbors during lockdown, messages on the colony WhatsApp group, the Ashoka trees, the cacophonous chorus of birds twice a day.” In her 30s, she finished composing Birdwatching this month last year. She wrote the first draft in a single day but “went back and forth on this poem over the next four months, revising and editing, and re-revising with

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] He’s a writer—Aryak Ray works for an ad agency. He plays the guitar. He also sings. And it’s the first time he professionally released a song he wrote and rendered— on YouTube just last week. With it, he also launched his music band (Midnite Djong) that he co-founded with schoolfriend Joydeep Banerji. Chatting over WhatsApp video from his Palam Vihar pad that he shares with his super calm dog, Dino, Mr Ray, 30, talks about how he arrived at this landmark in life. “I wrote Stealing Time in 2020, and sent it to Joy (Joydeep Banerji) in Calcutta. He composed the music. Soon, I met him at his place, and we recorded my vocals.”

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] Her life is returning to some sort of normalcy, but the recent days were a nightmare. In April her “Nanaji” was lying terminally ill with cancer. The whole extended family was attending to him. As soon as the end came, another crisis started—everyone got covid. This must have been too much for somebody so young to process. Isha Ahuja is 23. “The worst part was that we couldn’t undertake easily even the everyday tasks, like waking up and making a cup of tea,” she says, talking on Whatsapp video from her home in west Delhi’s Janakpuri. A literature student in Jamia Millia Islamia University, Ms Ahuja’s study is lined with black-spined Penguin Classics. By now,

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] While Delhi passes through one of its most tragic times in living history, it has citizens distilling their experiences into art. Isolated within home in Kailash Colony, actor Siddharth Sethi, 20, is away from fellow actors and rehearsals, away from the audience and the stage. “Theatre was my escape into a reality other than mine,” he says on a WhatsApp video chat. With the city in lockdown, he is flailing about in only one reality. This reality too is rich, comprising of his “dada,” parents, and younger sister, Suhani, who is holding his mobile for this photo shoot. There are online classes to stay busy—Mr Sethi is a literature student in Delhi University’s Hansraj

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] As we reach the first anniversary of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, here’s a poem about our housebound days, then threatening to go on forever. In his early 20s, poet Raj Tekwani is both preparing his MA entrance exams and giving a helping hand to his father’s business of “supplying disposable items.” Chatting on WhatsApp video late night from his 2nd floor apartment in Gurgaon’s DLF Phase 4 in the Greater Delhi Region, he got the poem’s idea while on a fellowship programme in August last year. “We were all receiving training in pedagogy and education over online platforms.” He was inspired by the repeated structure and sessions of those days, he recalls, “especially since we were

Poetry in the city. [By Mayank Austen Soofi] She is an engineer in a Noida-based multinational, but has been working from her home in Vikaspuri since March last year, because of you-know-what. But Jyoti Vij Ahuja is also a writer, who exploited the pandemic by compiling her short stories into a self-published e-book, Marital Bliss & Other Things. Ms Ahuja, 39, wrote these stories during her two-hour daily metro trip from home to work and back, she says in a WhatsApp video chat. The now-suspended commute was the most creative aspect of her day—it would give her ideas for prose and also for occasional poetry. “Looking at strangers’ faces, I would try to imagine the stories behind them.” Her writing pad was a