Falling & Rising In San Francisco & Berkeley & Getting Handcuffed

Author: Michael Chacko Daniels
Illustrators: Aaron Bass and Michael Chacko Daniels
Pages: 134
Year of Publication: 2026
Price: ₹500 / $25 (USD)
ISBN: 978-81-995932-8-2 (9788199593282)

About the Author
Michael Chacko Daniels lives and writes in San Francisco. He grew up in Bombay, where he attended St. Michael’s High School, Wilson College, and University of Bombay’s Department of Economics. He holds a Master’s degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. His parents grew up in an ancient Syrian Christian community in the south Indian state of Kerala. In their middle years, they joined the Bombay Baptist Church out of conviction. His adventures in the United States include five years as a Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA); four as editor/publisher of the New River Free Press of Grand Rapids, Michigan; four as assistant editor in San Francisco at The Asia Foundation; and sixteen at Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living. He helped start the Jobs for Homeless Consortium of Alameda County in 1988 and to run it through mid-2004. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He has been writing for over five decades and this is the thirteenth book he has published with Writers Workshop, India.

About the Illustrator
Aaron Bass is an artist who primarily works in printmaking media. He has a Master’s in Fine Art from the University of New Mexico and is a Tamarind-certified professional lithographer. His prints have been exhibited in Japan, China, South Korea, Mexico, the U.K., India, Germany, and Pakistan, as well as across the U.S. Animism and folktales inspire his works. He lives in New Mexico and teaches printmaking at the University of New Mexico. Each of his illustrations in this book was made with India ink and pen on plastic sheets, where the images were further manipulated with razor blades, chemical washes, and airbrush techniques.

About the Book

Michael Chacko Daniels is the quintessential traveler. His life and his poetry move between worlds. His journey has carried him from his early years in Bombay, steeped in the traditions of an ancient Syrian Christian community, to San Francisco, the city he now calls home.

 

His traveler’s haibun is a confluence of those diverse influences. But it also embraces the world. Starting at Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral on the outskirts of the oldest Chinatown in the U.S., Daniels makes multiple leaps in time and places. His mind wanders to Rome and Paris. Yet also to his own past as a young immigrant from Bombay. The literary vehicle he chooses for his poetry is the haibun, perfected by Matsuo Bashō a continent away, more than three centuries ago. All this makes Falling & Rising in San Francisco a powerful travel narrative.

 

The haibun has often been used by travelers to tell their stories. Daniels turns to it as well. We join him as he walks down California Street, sits in Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral, listens to Debussy, remembers earlier life in San Francisco, and reemerges again into the city. Interspersed between each of these, Daniels creates moments brought alive by sensory details, historical context, and personal reflection. It is time that meanders and gives his poetry its reflective quality.

 

The poetic style interweaves prose with short verse. His poetry combines minimalist stanzas, single-line phrases, and vertical kinetic poems. Even as the prose sets the context, the poetry gives the haibun both its movement and melody. We are left not just with poetry, but the lyricism of a song of the road.

Christina Rachel Khalil, in her foreword to the book

Contents

One

Foreword / 12

In his traveler’s haibun, Daniels moves effortlessly across worlds
By Christina Rachel Khalil

Falling & Rising / 15

. . . From Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral
To a Blue Heaven and Back
With Claude Debussy on
Sancta Caecilia’s Feast Day

Afterword / 81

Vernon Dias’ Letter to the haibunist on
A Distilled Poetic Image

Two

The Haibunist’s Non-literary Works / 83
A Rising in Berkeley &
Getting Handcuffed