Thayil's book of English poems
lies soaked in my flooded house,
flooded because the kitchen drain
malfunctioned and vomited out
whatever shit it was overfed with
for the past three years. Its pages
are soggy, stuck like lovers making
love for the first time, translucent
with words peeping, moving like ants,
floating like ghosts, here and there,
from pages far beyond the first one.

I heat up the iron and press its face
against Thayil's words. They quiver,
sizzle, as if a needle is pricked
against the skin. Vapours of his
words, from the section ACHE
where he talks of his dead wife,
escape from the book and slither
into the sky in search of the muse
who mothered those memories.
The page, warm but no more soggy,
reads the poem's title that says:
T{e Air H~re Is Crowd♧d.

- हर्ष स्नेहांशु