Festival Poems
Verses for the calendar's brightest days.
These poems move across different traditions on purpose, treating each festival's own rituals and small joys as worth its own attention rather than one generic celebration. For matching lines to post, see Captions.
Diwali is the night we reclaim the dark—
with diyas on every sill and step,
with the particular smell of oil and wick
and the old prayers collectively kept.
The children run with sparklers in the night,
making fire-signatures against...
Holi: the festival that forgets itself—
that forgets the formality and rank,
that throws its color at the usually untouchable
and laughs at the protocol it sank.
For one day the elder is the target
of the nephew's entirely aimed...
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The moon is sighted and the news travels fast—
house to house, street to street, phone to phone—
Eid has arrived, the fast is over,
and no one should be celebrating alone.
The sewaiyan in the morning,
the new clothes...
Christmas morning is its own kind of quiet—
the early dark, the tree, the anticipation,
the children up before the parents would prefer
in the particular, irreplaceable elation.
The gifts are not the thing—or not primarily—
the thing is the...
Life Poems
Nine nights of dancing in the deity's circle—
the garba that spins the devotion into art,
the ghaghra chania whirling in the lamplight,
the music that moves the feet before the heart.
Navratri is not only celebration—
it is the...
The fields went gold before Baisakhi arrived—
the wheat announcing what the date confirmed—
and the farmer who had waited through the winter
received the harvest that the patience earned.
Bhangra in the courtyard, dhol in the morning—
the whole...
They make the pookalam at dawn with flowers—
petals arranged in concentric rings of color,
each morning a new layer of the offering
to the king who returns, and to the wonder.
The boat race on the backwaters of August—...
