Looking inwards, unfinished books & Jasmine Air
Returning to books half-finished, writing a summer poem and June being here my fav month
My favorite month, June is here! And, hopefully, the motivation to be consistent here as well ! * Fingers crossed*
My reasons for not showing up last month have been the same as before — Substack is turning into another social media app with its infinite scrolling and ‘hacks to grow your audience’. I find myself resisting. It would be easier to play along. To be compliant because at the end of the day, there are algorithms to promote what you write and help you find ‘your audience’, thus being rewarded. But the truth is, this space wasn’t meant for that kind of race.
We don’t write here for reach. We write to reach inward. To make sense of the worlds we carry, within and around us. When the rest of life is built on rules and the rigidity that comes with it, it is only in writing that these rules melt, and rigidity is replaced with something soft, something transient, and yet grounding.
So, let’s begin, shall we?
Reading Corner
Would the tens of Substack Essays count for Reading Corner? Lol.
I am returning to Flea Palace, taking generous breaks in between. I wouldn’t call it a delight, but the prose takes you in. It is poetic, the language flowing like a river, and would need your attention. It narrates the lives of people living in the BonBon Palace, a dilapidated building built next to a filthy-smelling garbage spot, and is above a cemetery built hundreds of years ago.
It is emotionally dense, we see the feelings of its residents on a microscopic level, feel their emotions deeply, and it made me look into my own heart as well. It validated a lot of feelings that I had been feeling myself, and made me aware of a lot of types of sadness and sorrow, myriad of them, and not just a singular type of sorrow that everyone defines as acceptable.
Writing Corner
Last month, The Paper Boat and The Alipore Post colloborated and a call for poetry submission was given. I wrote about my grandfather, a person without whom the summers of my childhood are hard to imagine.
Jasmine Air by Pratiksha Salimath
Only in my Ajji Mane, I dip bread in coffee,
In memory of my late grandfather.
Slurping slow, the flavors stay—
First comes sweet, then bitter grey.
And with a sigh, so full, so raw,
A loud “Ahh” escapes my jaw.
In memory’s arms, I slip once more,
To sit upon red oxide floor,
Cool beneath my scalding feet,
That wandered far through crowded streets.
To Saturday Santhe, through narrow lanes,
“Yaav ooru?” they’d call my name.
I was a little girl from Bombay,
But he, my Thatha, was something more.
A big man, bold—a tale, a song,
He could grow
A garden where no roots belonged.
And now, when jasmine scents the air,
I pause a moment, standing there—
To be with him, to breathe, to stay,
In memories that never fade away.
Learning Corner
Lounge Corner
Don’t forget to stop and smell the fresh grass!
Pratiksha
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