Night Charge Extra

Description:

Author: Akhil Katyal
Pages: 92
Year of Publication: 2015
Price: Rs 200
ISBN:
978-93-5045-107-6 (9789350451076)

About the Author:
Akhil Katyal is a writer and translator, working in Hindi and English. He was born in Bareilly in 1985, spent his childhood in Dehradun and Lucknow, graduated from Hindu College and St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. In 2014, he was selected by the Indian magazine, The Caravan as one of the five best emerging writers in India and was invited to participate in the Writers of India festival in Paris that year. As a translator, he has translated the works of poets like Amrita Pritam, Om Prakesh Valmiki and Langston Hughes. At present, Akhil is based in Delhi where he teaches literature. This is his first book of poetry.

Teaser:

Moments before she died
Delhi 29.12.12

It is the night of foreboding

her skin is again
translucent

and all the past is a story
without a moral

this night refuses to rest
on little promises

recalling again the promise
the coral stone of a world
very different from the one we live in

this night remains
like shell-shock

lies like a fetter –
this waiting for bad to get worse
for it to get better

this night hangs in the air
like the deserter
who has seen through the war,
his world is now refusal

(that night, the first thing she asked
when she was conscious again
was whether they had been caught)

she lived each moment she died
each

and this night remains
because she has offered her sleeve to hold
but we are not bold enough
to reach.

[for Jyoti Pandey]

Contents:
64 poems