I'm not a poet of love songs or heartbreaks,
my pen does not sing of cigarette smoke,
and red wine stains.
The poet in me was born under the summer blooms
of a Gulmohar tree.
She is fluent only in the language of
green earth and brown seeds.
She always trips and falls over
popular 'lingo';
The language of the masses has never been her friend.
The poet in me will tell you about
the beautiful intricacy of the Rubaiyats.
She will invite you over with poems about
Meghmalhar, Khamaj and Kalyani.
She spends her time writing odes to
Madhubani and Warli,
to Indian summers, Bengal tigers,
temples, minarets and stained glass cathedrals.
The poet in me will write about cash crops and greed.
She will sing songs that bleed Indigo blood;
Songs of the coloniser's fields.
The poet in me prefers faded gramophone melodies
to colorful pulsating tunes.
She'd rather write haikus about the moments
that disappear like butterflies,
than write epics about bustling cities that
cry of performances.
I'm not a poet of love songs and heartbreak.
I'm not a poet of the masses.
The poet in me is more old, browning book
than a glossy bestseller.
She is more subtlety than flamboyance.
