What is exile? An accident caused by the circumnavigation of a few boats. A novel being written simultaneously in the past and present. A desire for spices and tobacco finding a pathway through undiscovered dimensions of commerce, culture and greed.

War is a function of time, counting moments until our breathing ceases due to lack of satisfaction. War does not have a rhythm you can reciprocate.

She keeps Hesse by her bedside, Camus on her desk and Bukowski in her memory. In a tiny small one bedroom apartment on the edges of a new city, she gathers ammunition and fortifies herself while inching towards a generational war.

This is our land of love, where desires burn through broken fuchka into tamarind tragedies—for that curbside bite, mouth open, eyes closed and all consuming taste exists only as a momentary respite for all the hunger that‘s silted up.

At the Tropic of Cancer, red is the color born of blood, thickened by sweat and applied on lips to ignite conversations.

In the seconds of acceptance, she felt the weight of responsibility lift, one she had been carrying for years. Her shoulders alive, her breath free, her days suddenly hers.

A cacophony of drunkards wage war into the night. The fight in their veins building up for generations—crown after crown, their idols replaced by outsiders who cared not for their tomorrow.

The thing about rabbit holes is that they exist in their own neon universe, and only when one consciously traverses a landscape of doubt and uncertainty will they show themselves.

As the first child in his family’s generation, his mother had named him Prothom—or First—and only recently had he taken the weight of it on his shoulders. Names don’t make us who we are, he thought, but a part of him couldn’t escape it.

Our bodies are Churchill in the face of Hitler. We rest at Dunkirk awaiting our saviours, and we do not accept resolution that results in capitulation of our hopes.