The first few pages intrigues my mother most.
The secrets of evicting lizards and the ants
or the ways to conceive rain during high summer
come utile if you live where she lives irrespective
of the places and time. Be it a city or be the backyard
where her father took refuge, disturbed, mute,
grieving the line drawn between two newborn countries,
my mother always lives in the same place –
where clouds unmask the ways of an almanac,
where lizards disappear fearing eggshells,
where my age endeavors to crawl and stumbles
into a run instead. It is always October. The scent
penetrates both the wistful and the jubilant states.
Kushal Poddar
Illustration Nick Victor
Authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals, Understanding The Neighborhood’, ‘Scratches Within’, ‘Kleptomaniac’s Book of Unoriginal Poems’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and now ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’ (Alien Buddha Press)