Poetry in the city.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

This budding Delhi poet is moving to Mumbai for good, and with at least one high hope. Maybe he’ll finally meet some real poets in flesh and blood.

At the moment, Siddharth Sijoria is in the family apartment in Ghaziabad where he’s leaving almost everything behind except for some poetry and legal works. The 26-year-old lawyer, who’s been working at the Supreme Court, is launching his professional life anew at Bombay High Court.

As an amateur poet, he’s found Delhi disappointing: “I’ve never run into a real poet here.” He’s more optimistic about some kind of encounter in the posh south Mumbai neighbourhood which will be soon his new home.

The only poet he’s met so far is, well, himself, writing easily in Hindi and English. Now lying on his sofa, Mr Sijoria first recites Kipling’s If—his favourite poem—and then a poem by the late prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

“My own poems usually involve getting out of a kind of darkness…always being on the move, leaving for somewhere else,” he explains. He shares with us the very last poem composed in Delhi, “just a few months ago when struck by inspiration while jogging in Lodhi Gardens.”

Illuminating Dark

After dark there would be light, they say
Still confusions surround my mind,
Should I wait for the sun to rise,
Or should I be my own light in this dark

In this dark, I cannot see my destination
But still I could see and walk upon the road to my target,
Should I still wait for the light to guide me,
Or start walking upon this road I see,

Countless thoughts occupy my mind,
I can hear every second pass by,
Should I wait for the time to pass and await for the dawn,
Or be my own guiding lamp in this dark.

A lawyer’s last city poem

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