Authors Electric

March 21st, 2019 was World Poetry Day. For those of us lucky enough to be at Lit Books that night in Malaysia, it was a feast of poetry at The Noise of Time - Readings on World Poetry Day . Pusaka  organized fourteen poets to read poetry in 11 languages (Malay, English, Mandarin, Bengali, Arabic, Persian, German, French, Spanish, Malayalam and Russian...with translations into English). Led by organizer and emcee Pauline Tan, the room resonated with the words of Omar Khayyam, Wang Wei, Paul Eluard, Cesar Vallejo, Else Lasker-Schüler, Bei Dao, Mallika Sengupta, Goenawan Mohamad and many other voices, both ancient and contemporary. I chose to read a Bengali poem by Mallika Sengupta, translated brilliantly by Amit Mukerjee  titled Prithibir Ma (Mother of the Universe): Unbound, my hair spread over the sky created dark stormclouds. My green dhanekhali sari became the lush fabric of forests. Stealing the melody from my throat birds chirped into morning s...

My first blog for AE was about my brother's accident. What a bittersweet year 2016 turned out to be, with accolades for my writing coming at a time of terrible personal tragedy . It has been two and half years now since my brother, Professor Amit Mukerjee, was hit by a bus in Kanpur while cycling with a group of students. As the days pass, the hopes for a complete recovery diminish. He is able to move only a thumb and forefinger in response, and is under 24 hours nursing care in my parent's home in Delhi. Over time, we have started to accept that he will never be able to teach in his classroom again; it will be a miracle if he is able to sit up and feed himself. We dream about a day when he will be able to turn the pages of his beloved books again. Hope springs undaunted, as long as he still breathes. Earlier this month, the family finally made preparations to bring his belongings to New Delhi from Kanpur, closing that chapter of his life. The truck with his belon...