 The first poem I'm going to read is called Dare India and it's an epistolary poem, so it's a letter. Dare India. This letter is being written on a blue aerogram, the kind they used back in the day, the kind that had us airborne as soon as we ripped its blue edges with our brown fingers. Why don't we write letters anymore? People are forgetting the art of anticipation. Instead of mangoes being plucked from trees, they're being sprayed with sulfur and shoved in the belly of a plane, all in the name of imported. Some things are best had after traveling across several oceans. And don't you hate that uncle who has lived all his 55 years in a 3 BHK-MIG house across the Yamuna in a city that is another acronym, Noida. He tells you how life in America is from that one, yes, one trip he took visiting bread factories on behalf of his company. Our bread is from the latest U.S. technology, he claims. It arrives each morning freshly baked on the back of a cycle. There's no high-tech without the low. The neighborhood dog and cat will agree, eating U.S. technology bread soaked in daisy milk for its supper. And don't you hate it when people say, to be honest? Does that mean they weren't being honest before? To be honest with you, the traffic isn't so bad, the heat is bearable, and the pollution has improved after introducing CNG. But I won't lie. Does that mean I was lying before? I miss you every day. The Moazans early prayer call, the chaat stall with tickies sizzling in a giant tawa, and the intentional clang of the chaat wallah's spatula. I miss it all. It's too quiet here on Silicon Street. It's so quiet that I hear the palm tree sway. My neighbor sneezes as he drags his garbage in front of the driveway each week. We've said hello only twice this year. I do the silliest things to bring you back to me. I open empty pickle jars and inhale them. I make cushion covers out of empty rice sacks that claim grown in the foothills of the Himalayas. I open old letters out of which Akshat and Roli spill out, along with the goddess's blessings. We're never good at getting at the point. One look at a jalebi and, well, you know what I mean. I've tried to tell you how much I love you, but you never let me. You never hear me. You're always brushing me off your shoulder saying, jare, jare ur jare panchi. So here it is in writing. So the next poem is called, What Happens When Men Never Ask for Directions? He sails west but thinks east, knocking down signs when the sun blinds his eyes, screaming indio as he spots a lip of land and lobes of gold. It is the ninth day and the native smile, tanned skin, white teeth, gifting him cotton and parrots, trained to chant, Colombo, Colombo, night and day. On the journey back home, the parrots drive him insane, squawking his name, no clothes, no silk, just the sun in his eyes and warm bodies stored in the hull, in crooked lines as royal promises burn through a magnifying glass setting all maps afire. So this next poem is about, you know, I was really disturbed when I heard about the lynchings, you know, of Muslims because they were eating beef and I wanted to really write something about this. And I normally don't write in form, but for some strange reason I decided to write a sonnet, which is about it. So Holy Cow Sonnet. If our Lady of the Holy Bovine Order could speak, she would say, India, you've lost your way. She would say, where is our Satyame Vijayte? She'd lie on her side and offer all four teats, give the skin off her back with a side of beef. Go Mataki Jai. Praise the cow that leads us astray. Come out, come out, all zealots in play. Which type of meat did the Muslim eat? Drag the sinner by his leather-clad feet and beat him till his last breath escapes? Become the world's largest exporter of beef. Yet ban it within your own states. Suspicion of eating steak. Now Trump's rape. The Holy Cow watches quietly and weeps. Thank you. And the last poem is a found poem. I am sure many of you have heard of the documentary India's Daughter. And I was really incensed, which I'm sure other people who watched it were, to hear how the lawyers and the police, they were so misogynistic in their comments and it just disturbed me so much and I decided to take what they were saying and turn that into a poem. This is in the form of a syllabus. Botany 101 for India's Daughters. Course description. Introduction to good-looking, softness performance, pleasant flower. Flowers in relation to gutter and temple. Lecture slash laboratory course. Three hours worship slash lecture. Three hours gutter slash lab. Pre-requisite, birth as an Indian girl. Upon completion of this course, India's Daughter will understand why a female is just like a flower. Why a flower always needs protection. How if you put that flower in a gutter, it is spoiled. How if you put that flower in a temple, it will be worshiped. Why a man is just like a thorn. Why a flower is given less milk than a thorn. Why Indian society should never allow its flowers to bloom after 6.30 or 7.30 or 8.30 in the evening with any unknown thorn. How under the imagination of the film culture, a flower might feel they can bloom for anyone. A flower means immediately putting the sex in his eyes. How in our culture, there is no place for a flower. Why only 20% flowers are good. How flowers and thorns are not equal. Why housework and housekeeping is for flowers. Not roaming in discos and bars at night, doing wrong things, wearing the wrong pedals. How a thorn will put his hand, insert, hit, create damage. Why when being raped, a flower shouldn't fight back. How if a flower disgraces herself, a thorn would put patrol on her and set her alight. Registrations now being accepted on a rolling basis. Thank you.