Poetry / Phenomenon
13 June 2026
I am a phenomenon.
Like a whirlwind
I’ll twirl till I can
change the world.
13 June 2026
Book review: Fiction / Aruna Chakravarti’s ghosts don’t just scare, they remember
16 April 2026
Aruna Chakravarti is a doyen of historical fiction, spinning out narratives on the Bengal Renaissance with her Jorasanko (HarperCollins, 2013) novels, reviving the story of the Bhawal Prince with The Mendicant Prince (Pan Macmillan, 2022) and doing series of fictitious short stories based on chronicles from the past.
16 April 2026
POETRY / ‘The Unnamed’ and ‘Incomplete’: Two poems
28 November 2025
The unnamed
You can get lost trying to
get back to the exit
at the Vatican Museum.
28 November 2025
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Bridging divides: Aruna Chakravarti’s journey through Bengal’s hidden narratives
3 September 2025
"You have done an excellent job. People who know English tell me that your translations are better than the originals," said the late Sunil Gangopadhyay to Aruna Chakravarti on her translation of his writings.
3 September 2025
POETRY / Diamanté
17 January 2025
I jump from ship to ship, / fly dangling from the claws
of a huge bird in the sky / till my toes scrape mountain-tips.
17 January 2025
BOOK REVIEW: FICTION / Of dewdrops and grit
23 October 2024
‘Shabnam’ is a dewdrop in Persian. Shabnam (1960) is the name of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s passionate love story that stretches beyond the history of nearly a century ago.
23 October 2024
ESSAY / The flute player
24 May 2024
“I sing the song of equality–
Of a country where fresh joy blossoms in every heart
24 May 2024
Together in Tagore’s imagined world
“Who am I? “
4 August 2023
London cabs, jams and kinship
London, once the centre of the empire where the sun never set, dates back to prehistory with evidence of structures from Mesolithic times.
26 May 2023
When fiction challenges communalism
A journey that shreds castes and creeds to heal the self-esteem of a woman.
13 February 2023
Words of Love
Thoughts of a devoted poet
27 November 2022
Festival of Memories
Bulldozed brick by brick, my
childhood was torn apart by
tears streaming down the stone
facade as my house collapsed.
4 November 2022
“No Home or Land, No Country, No Earth”: Plight of the Refugees
“War is vast. It reaches across the horizon, loftier and older than peace. Killing came before war, but it might also be that refuge preceded war.
14 October 2022
Two Poems
If sunflowers shone in the sky
and clouds floated in lakes,
2 September 2022
Creation
A brief history of the creation in verse.
4 August 2022
Waves
Peach seas murmur with
the colours of the setting
sun. There are no peach
trees here — only
3 June 2022
“In the sky of knowledge, there are no borders”
“Today it seems to me that every festival in Santiniketan offered homage to the seasons in some form or other… Much later I learnt that the festivals of Santhals and other Adivasis are the expressions of respect for farming and forest life. There are forms of nature worship based on an advantage of the earth as a primal mother.”
15 April 2022
Embroidery
Pink cherry blossoms,
26 November 2021
Anointing with Love
Listen to the swish of the waves.
Feel the breeze whisper caresses.
See the mangroves stretch
25 June 2021
A prayer
What is the sadness that with
25 June 2021
To Bahadur Shah Zafar
The Emperor wrote
a lonely note. In exile,
he wept for a grave in his
Native land. Colonials
25 June 2021
Aubade
Each night, the sea with the moon croons a lullaby.
23 April 2021
Unrest —
And then it rained flowers,
then it rained flowers
emptying the trees.
2 April 2021
When?
The scents and colours of the morning
arouse the wetness of the night.
The dewdrop splendour awakens the
dawning sunrise drenched in colours
1 January 2021
Something missing
Something missing from
this dish and that.
16 October 2020
Moving On
Flowers on Facebook —
Violet, red, yellow, orange —
splashed a welcome
into a garden never visited
21 August 2020
Love, Love Again…
Perhaps, the time has come to Love,
Love again
10 April 2020