The sky to the west and overhead is mired in darkness; but to the east, light is gleaming out like a jasper stone, as clear as crystal.

Elen would tell you how her hatred for her sister was so intense that she didn't know who she was without it.

On summer days when the sunlight falls through the trees it scatters into a play of light and shadows on the ground. My memories of Fareed are like that.

Szilvia Reif, a student of mine from the (indicatively named) Gandhi School in Pècs, Hungary, wrote a poem that tells what it feels like to be a ‘Gypsy (properly Roma).

Mother sold him and he never knew a father; Born adult, as though he never had a childhood.

I killed my lover. I killed the love of my life and watched the life drain out of her eyes. Eyes that were golden brown turned pitch black; as if her soul left the body taking away all the colours of life.

It makes me wonder if the entire show gets too swept up with its political correctness.

Martyrs and-slash-or heroes they call us Is it worth all the fuss? While they celebrate We ache to recuperate

There is an element of the unexpected in the twinning of fiction and ecology. A sense of unease of sorts exists in the pairing together of fiction, a form of narrative that is untrue, with the imminent ecological disaster, an environmental inevitability that is true.

I am a god when I am asleep, I am found to be inside the shimmer of water as it fights against the brilliance of the screams that emanate from the sky

For iftar during that month we were served milk with rosewater which I found quite delicious, and gulab jamun served as dessert. When some girls didn’t want or didn’t finish their portions they would give it to me and I would accept happily.

You must read like a reader and not like an academic student. If the book you’re translating is a general book, it’s going to be read by readers. Intelligent readers perhaps, but readers nevertheless.

The blissful-morning journey’s begun; it leads ahead to the light; The journey’s started in the twilight; setting out to the joyfulness; The auspicious rallies are all around; they’re processions of felicity; Man, your universe is now a stretch of a glorious millennium.

London, once the centre of the empire where the sun never set, dates back to prehistory with evidence of structures from Mesolithic times.

It's time to take care of ourselves, both mind and soul, To live a life that is complete and whole.

The pleasing melancholia of Friday morning hovers through the window as a heavy gloom and sways within the fake plastic daisies lying on Marium’s table while the smell of burning spices filled her entire house. Marium’s mother couldn’t care less about the condition of the kitchen now. Her husband has just collapsed to the floor.  

Like a wounded bird, my songs/ tumble down at your feet, my love.

She impales the bodies of chickens she prepares for a feast— My mother holds taut the fat clinging to the meat, By the sleight of her hand, separates it, And hurls it into the bin by the kitchen sink.

Once on the road I could see that Lahore was bigger than I had imagined. The trees were large and red dust, like that from the desert, billowed in wide avenues.

A dream of me in a sea of green.