Kanupriya Dhingra is a research scholar at the Department of English, University of Delhi. She writes and translates in English, Hindi and Punjabi. Her works have been published in The Sunflower Collective, Antiserious, Guftugu, Indian Culture Forum among others.

hibernation

alas

each evening
during summers

tolling of the
temple bells
could be
mistaken

as from a

distant
ice cream seller.

*

Inside Sahitya Akademy Library

1.

The organized silence
contained by the reading room
misleads you to
believe that you’re party to
the secrets hidden
in the stacks of books
that boast of their
discipline.
Fans barely make the pages
brittle. The Air Conditioner
is indifferent to your needs.
It’s no OPAC.

2.

He comes early
every day and
every regular knows where he’d
park his reading list.
He’s possessive about either
the plug point or
Amrita Pritam

or both, at once.

3.

The old fruit-seller lady outside
does not wait.
The tattoos from her childhood
could not save her from getting lost.
She stays put at one place now.
She doesn’t have stories to tell
that could also hide, secretly,
inside Sahitya Akademy Library.

…

Image – Madhushree Basu