And still the flowers bloom.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Wars are raging in West Asia and Ukraine. And yet, flowers continue to bloom—even along city roadsides. (Sometimes surreal sights of discarded bouquets are encountered in most unusual sites—see photo, snapped in Gurugram’s Jacobpura). Indeed, beyond the news headlines, our lives in Delhi are going on (relatively) unaltered, for now. So is the case with poet Jonaki Ray, who commutes four days a week to her day-job at an IT multinational in Noida. Recently, she moved to an apartment in South Delhi’s Alaknanda, close to Jahapanah City Forest. She has yet to unpack all her boxes of books, but she has already written her first poem in the new home. It is about… find out yourself.

All We have Is this One Life and One Earth

Once, as a child, you trapped fireflies in a bottle
and watched as their wings’ emergency fluttered.
In your dreams now, the lights of the air strikes
and the reels of the dead are those waves for help—
dots, dashes, and dots, again and again, everywhere.

You think of the children who have never known
the skies to be blue, or the grass to be green, or what is home.
Of the ashes on their clothes, their hair, in their eyes, everywhere.
Of their mothers keening, bent over, while crowds surround
them, muttering prayers—of solace, of peace, of the afterworld.

You think of those ashes soaring through the skies, riding the oceans,
turning the air slick with smoke and burnt oil, stunting trees and people alike,
as the channels talk about investigations and operations and us versus them.
Outside, the traffic swells and ebbs, bills get paid or unpaid, dishes are washed
or unwashed, jobs are found or lost, homes are built or destroyed, everywhere.

The Bougainvillea and Jacaranda, themselves migrated, uprooted, replanted,
still unfurl their petals, while the Semals bloody the streets every day. And rain
turns leaves into sun-trapped gold, everywhere. A friend talks about keeping
a ladybug inside a box, and one day coming back from school to find it gone. You think
it escaped and lived a long life. After all, we are still here, bruised but alive.