Kanika Ahuja | Ghazal for Mourning a City
Silence is another word for dukh in Delhi.
I carve the rain for my share of sukh in Delhi.
The sky turns orange--a ripe mango dripping pulp.
Lately, I can’t help but feel bhavuk in Delhi.
I walk this city’s soundtrack––footsteps ambling
over the memories of Shahrukh in Delhi.
Chandni Chowk lanes melt like ghee on paranthas, criss
crossed like intestines growling with bhook in Delhi.
Mama gives me driving lessons at sunset. Traffic,
she says, leaves no room for the nazuk in Delhi.
I want the world. Each echo becomes a reason
to leave, my life packed in a sandook in Delhi.
Once a city happened in love, Kanika,
slowly in the arms of a mashook in Delhi.
______________
Dukh - A syllable for sadness, Sukh - A carefree happiness, Bhavuk - A kind of nostalgia one can almost taste,
Shahrukh - Shah Rukh Khan, the King of Bollywood, Bhook - A hungry knot in the stomach,
Nazuk - someone with nerves, Sandook - Trunk full of memories from a life left behind,
Mashook - A beloved remembered with longing.
I carve the rain for my share of sukh in Delhi.
The sky turns orange--a ripe mango dripping pulp.
Lately, I can’t help but feel bhavuk in Delhi.
I walk this city’s soundtrack––footsteps ambling
over the memories of Shahrukh in Delhi.
Chandni Chowk lanes melt like ghee on paranthas, criss
crossed like intestines growling with bhook in Delhi.
Mama gives me driving lessons at sunset. Traffic,
she says, leaves no room for the nazuk in Delhi.
I want the world. Each echo becomes a reason
to leave, my life packed in a sandook in Delhi.
Once a city happened in love, Kanika,
slowly in the arms of a mashook in Delhi.
______________
Dukh - A syllable for sadness, Sukh - A carefree happiness, Bhavuk - A kind of nostalgia one can almost taste,
Shahrukh - Shah Rukh Khan, the King of Bollywood, Bhook - A hungry knot in the stomach,
Nazuk - someone with nerves, Sandook - Trunk full of memories from a life left behind,
Mashook - A beloved remembered with longing.
Kanika Ahuja is a poet and educator from New Delhi, India. The winner of the 2023 Thomas H. Scholl and Elizabeth Boyd Thompson Poetry Prize at Purdue University and the AWP Intro Journals Project 2022, her work appears, or is forthcoming, at The Margins, Puerto Del Sol, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Lafayette, Indiana, where she's an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Purdue University.