I was static, the city moved.
It travelled beyond Worli blues, beep-beep news, smashed-now-proud-once cotton mills,
beyond the coccus-shaped prison where a butcher ate fictional biryanis.

For some, this land was Bollywood Dreams, for others it was Still Life.

Juggernauts terrorised jaywalkers, towers showed off Xuzhou crowns. Cuboids
were carved out of megaliths to be peddled by
erstwhile Miss Worlds;

a new realty soared over Nanometre Joshi Marg.

Sahana Ahmed

Listen to Sahana reading ‘The Homes of Others’ (0:43).

 

Sahana Ahmed is a fiction writer and poet based in Gurugram, India. She is the author of Combat Skirts (Juggernaut Books 2018 and Quignog 2018). Visit her online at www.sahanaahmed.com.

© text and audio 2020