The Invisible River

In summer, the Phalgu
vanishes under the sand
for half a mile
near the temple town of Gaya.

As a tourist there in May
(India's cruellest month),
with an empty water-bottle
and a parched throat,
I was at the end
of my trek
and my tether.

I scooped out four or five
handfuls of dust,
and there it was:
water clear as memory
under the smouldering sun
and delicious to the lips.

There is a legend
that the recalcitrant river
was cursed by Sita,
immortal queen of Ayodhya,
to flow beneath
the ground under her feet.
Or so says Valmiki
in the Ramayana.

Perhaps mythopoeic poets can divine
the sources of invisible rivers
without dowsing rods,
without the solipsistic necessity
of heat and thirst.

Gerrymandering in an Indian Summer

The soil is patterned
into a map
by the cracks of summer.

The margins mesh together,
an intricate jigsaw
of revenue districts, vote banks
and dry river courses.

The sun bakes them all,
with impartial ruthlessness:
not so the government,
with its distribution
of drought relief
entangled in red tape
and politician's whims.

^

Biography

I am a (male) journalist, economist and poet working in a newspaper in Calcutta, India. I was born in Calcutta in 1973. I have graduated with
honours in Economics from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. I was also enrolled at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics.
My poetry and prose have been published in newspapers, journals, magazines and webzines in Greece, India, Israel, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA. These include The Telegraph, The Statesman, Indian Express, The Journal of the Poetry Society (India), Snakeskin, Ariga, donga, Eclectica Magazine, Voices, LitNet, Poetry Kit Magazine, Poetry Greece, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and The New Miscellany. My first book of poems 'Occam's Razor' (Writers Workshop, Calcutta)
received the SALT literary award from John Kinsella and a literary trust in Melbourne, Australia in 1995.