Stray Birds now available on pre-order

Thanks to the good folks at Flipkart, Stray Birds is now available on a pre-order basis.

Get it here.

More on when the book is releasing, etc pretty soon.

Do watch this space.

When handclasps are ink

My mother took
my hand, borrowing my eyes
trusting her paining legs
to be led across the road.

That hand in mine, shrunken small,
could have been mine,
some thirty-five years ago.
Or, of my grandmothers.

So light, it felt
a butterfly had landed
or the down
from a bird’s fluttering wings.

Is this how, we know age?
In seeing time whirl
a pell-mell of sepia images
on the mind’s screen

Two generations, three women,
belonging, faith…
in the trust of a handclasp
and the desire to go home

To the togetherness of coming days?

Hope (after Emily Dickinson)

Hope is a thing with feathers,
a nestling safe,
a poem roosting

In the night dark, blank
pages of my mind.
O, that it fledges

To take wing and fly
blithe, buoyant, light…
and I will live with a dream…

That of its will, it may
as a thing unchained, wild
someday stray my way,

Into my waiting being.
Hope is a quest to see,
that precious diamond dazzle

Of bright sunglint
In a liquidly alive
droplet of an eye

And for an instant know
(Oh, but for an instant know)
what it is to be

Joyously free




(From "Stray Birds")

My third book, another collection of poetry -- Stray Birds

Considering the amount of time that I have devoted to the heartbreak of bird photography over the last three -- four (counting digital) years  and all the bird watching that has gone into it (a lens is no less than a scope and if you don't watch and learn to anticipate what the bird will do, you cannot shoot much that you can keep), a book around birds from me was bound to happen sooner or later.

So, here it is -- the cover of my third collection of poetry, Stray Birds.

      
Launching sometime in June this year.

The cover design is by my brother Sashi who had also drawn the cover illustration for my first book, Moving On. The bird is a Common Kingfisher (male) that allowed me any number of stunning photographs over more than three months during and after the rains.

May it stay common and may it allow me to get even closer!

Biryani, Bouncers and Boycotts

As someone who has lived close to a little less than half my life in Hyderabad and someone who considers it the only city he really belongs to and also calls it home, I consider myself a Hyderabadi. And you know how it is with us Hyderabadis (at least of a certain vintage), we love our Biryani, we love our Irani Chhai and we love giving earfuls to our Autowaalahs (who mostly deserve it) in chaste Dakhni.

Coming back to Biryani, mention that you are a Hyderabadi to anyone in places as far as Chennai, Delhi, Bhubaneshwar, Mumbai, Nagpur or Chandigarh (or wherever else) and you will be asked about Hyderabadi Biryani and also carefully quizzed -- "Isn't Paradise Biryani the best of the lot?"

Yes. Almost every second person who comes to Hyderabad (on work or otherwise) manages to make a beeline to Paradise at least once -- to sample the Biryani and enjoy the "experience". This -- things and public opinions being what they are -- have more to do with a lot of things that have nothing to do with the Biryani (Paradise is in Secunderabad and used to be more easily accessible to the lot who used to fly from Begumpet airport; Paradise has been the most forward-looking and business minded of the Irani joints, pretty much clued into marketing, advertising, etc and so on...)

No, I am not saying Paradise's Biryani is not good, I guess it does appeal to a set of people. Its just that I like my Biryani a bit more authentic and Hyderabadi (read spicy and honest) and haven't gone to Paradise in donkey's years preferring to eat at relatively unknown joints like New Green Bawarchi (a chain of Hyderabadi food joints increasingly growing in numbers over the last five or so years) or go to Bahaar (which is a fair distance from my place) when I feel like it or have company.

Also, its not that I haven't eaten or liked Paradise Biryani; for almost a year it used to be my go-to place for getting home a parcel (or two, like when I had 7 voracious puppies to feed) of Biryani and there have been countless times before when I have dropped in there as well.

But then, Paradise went for a makeover and turned posh and by the by I saw very less reasons to brave the traffic jams, the long waits, the far from courteous service and the hefty bills for what was still essentially simply Hyderabadi Biryani. Around that time, (I am also told) the food at Paradise ceased to be what it was. And around that time (though I am not sure when exactly -- probably some 5 years ago) the management also decided to employ bouncers -- to regulate traffic and parking, or (more importantly) to give the idea of being a top-notch and star hotel.

That was the proverbial last nail in the coffin, as far as I was concerned. Seeing beefy and over-muscled heavies strutting around on the main road (Paradise abuts the road and is the primary reason why that junction is always traffucked) and glaring at all and sundry and throwing their weight around (to ensure that only Paradise patrons got to stop / alight from vehicles there) wasn't certainly worth experiencing.

Common sense told me it was typical nouveau Hyderabadi overkill meant to impress customers that they are getting star treatment. And I was always like if someone thinks that means the Biryani is better, they are welcome to put up with all that.

Then, this happened.           

Disgusting to say the least, no?

I shared the link on FB and I am told that the concerned bouncers are not from an external security agency, but believed to be more or less in-house in all respects. That makes the management of Paradise, even more complicit in what happened. And it is high time they publicly apologize about the boorish and uncivilized behaviour of their bouncer and start concentrating on their Biryani instead.

I, for one (there is a huge furore about this incident online, across Social Media -- with many people calling for an outright boycott of Paradise) am not going there or referring it to anyone unless they change their spots.

I, for one am also happy about the response that has been forthcoming from laid-back and Nizami Hyderabad, mostly unperturbed about most things. Would seem, we Hyderabadis have our hearts at the right place and don't like bouncers and bullies.

Way to go Priya, thanks for calling this out!