कही-अनकही

Some things are spoken.

Some remain unsaid on lips.

And some become poems.

कही-अनकही, an anthology of 76 poems, journeys through the intimate landscapes of love and estrangement, family and memory, ageing and loss, before opening out to the wider world. The poems move from the deeply personal — the unexpected gift of a flower, the moon brought home, a mother's hand, a daughter's departure — to larger concerns of environmental destruction, social injustice, violence, exploitation, faith, and questions that defy easy answers.

Written in a supple Hindustani idiom, the poems move effortlessly between lyric tenderness, colloquial warmth, irony and social observation. Drawing from lived experiences as well as the rich musical and poetic traditions of Hindi and Urdu, they weave together the personal and the universal, the intimate and the unsettling.

At its heart, कही-अनकही is an unfinished conversation between the life we have lived, the life we have aspired to, and the life that still remains to be lived.

Because, after all the poems have been written,

बातें कई हज़ार हैं।