Poem: Taking a Knee for George Floyd
By Umang Kumar
This is how it kills, George
like a knee on the neck
bearing down
to crush you
constricting breath
Poem: They say train tracks sing of home
By Umang Kumar
they say train tracks
sing of home
let us lay our heads down
lulled to sleep
in a steel cradle
Playing the subaltern: Irrfan Khan as the migrant worker in ‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’
By Umang Kumar
Khan allows the viewer to enter the unvarnished world of the migrant worker and struggle along with him each moment – buying biscuits at the kiosk; sipping chai; doing sit ups as his coffee is drained; taking his family to the mall, dressed in a fresh, untucked bush-shirt with a kerchief under the collar; trying to participate in the new India by indulging a whim for expensive perfumes, as if to reclaim something the city and the society owe him.
Poem: I am almost home, baba
By Umang Kumar
See, your Jamlo is almost home!
I am not going back there anymore, baba.
Covid-19 and the Unfierce Urgency of Now
By Umang Kumar
The rest of us still remaining do not know who among us will be selected next. None of us believes it will be us.
The Soul of India abides in the Sole of India
By Umang Kumar
Cities come up, all glass and steel, roads are built to connect malls and offices, markets spring up to provide necessities for the residents of the city but the people who painstakingly assemble the city lego-block by lego-block and keep it running, are its forgotten architects.
