Which song of bravery knows
that mother, who, when she
sees him pick up the gun,
says “don’t come back a hero,
just come back as my son.”
For Ghazala Khan
Category: Akhil Katyal
Akhil Katyal | Love As A Retirement Policy
“But who will take care of you
in your old age?”
is the only question my parents ask that actually stumps me.
It’s the only one I have stopped finding reasonable-sounding answers to.
I lay down my arms with “I do not know.”
Under my breath, I still refuse to treat love as a retirement policy.
But maybe it is just that. Why should I stud it with moons and stars. Why should I bejewel a simple need.
Maybe all of life does come to “but who will take you to the hospital when you will fall down.”
I foreclose the thought under a violet moon.
September 16, 2018
Poetic Licence, TOI
Akhil Katyal | What Is My Caste?
One day, when he was
about ten or twelve,
he asked his mother
“What is my caste?
Some boys in the
school were asking,
I didn’t know what
to say.” The mother,
got up in the middle
of her supper, “Beta,
if you don’t know it by
now, it must be upper.”
Septemeber 1, 2018
Poetic Licence, TOI
Akhil Katyal | In The Urdu Class
I confuse my be with pe.
He asks me to write ‘water’,
I write ‘you’. Who knew they’d make them so close,
Aab and Aap Both difficult to hold on to.
September 30, 2018,
Poetic licence, TOI
Akhil Katyal | The Incredible India J&K Tourism Video
I suppose the most crucial role here is the editor’s;
so damn difficult to keep the
dead out. To keep
the green of the hills, the blue
of the lake, the
white of the snow, and still,
to keep the red out.
October 27, 2018
Poetic Licence, TOI
Akhil Katyal | When Farida Khanum Sings Now
When Farida Khanum
sings now
she does not hide the age
in her voice
she wraps it in paisleys
instead
and for a moment
holds it in both of her hands
before
drowning it in our sky.
When she sings now
she knows
at the end of that note
when her voice breaks
like a wishbone
he will stay.
November 17, 2018,
Akhil Katyal
Poetic licence, India, TOI
Akhil Katyal | Nusrat Was Theirs
He was born in 1948, so he’s
straight-up Pakistani, not some
pre-Partition guy we can claim
as our own. Now the trouble is,
how do I wipe clean all those
evenings, growing up, when
drunk on his voice, we heard
“Afreen Afreen”, losing all our
cares, not knowing Nusrat was theirs.
,
Akhil Katyal
Poetic licence, India, TOI
November 24, 2018
Torn Map | Naomi Shihab Nye
Once
by mistake
She tore a map
in half.
She taped it back
but crookedly.
Now all the roads
ended in water.
There were mountains
right next to her hometown.
Wouldn’t that be nice
if it were true?
I’d tear a map
and be right next
to you.
Translation by Akhil Katyal
Juvenilia 