Poetry.

I want to give this book to the people I love, and say to them, memorize this, never forget. – Jeet Thayil Each poem promises the sharpness of broken sea-shells, the smell of brine. In this collection, Tishani Doshi inhabits the different homes: her childhood, the body, cities that were passed through, cycles of rain. There are poems of celebration and homages, as there are poems lamenting human cruelty and dispassion. This is also a book of travel and of homecoming, of familiar decay and startling, haunting discoveries of our oldest themes of love, grief, suffering and anger.

Contents:
Contract -- Summer in Madras -- Rain at three -- A fable for the 21st century -- What the sea brought in -- How to be happy in 101 days -- Fear management -- Ode to Patrick Swayze -- Everyone loves a dead girl -- Monsoon poem -- Abandon -- To my first white hairs -- Considering motherhood while falling off a ladder in Rome -- Love in the time of autolysis -- Jungian postcard -- Girls are coming out of the woods -- Strong men, riding horses -- Disco biscuits -- Honesty Hotel for gents -- My grandmother never ate a potato in her life -- Your body is not Indian! or, Where I am snubbed at a cocktail party by a Bharatanatyam dancer -- Saturday on the scores -- The women of the Shin Yang Park Sauna, Gwangju -- Tranås -- Encounters with a Swedish burglar -- Pig-killing in Viet-Hai -- Calcutta canzone -- Understanding my fate in a Mexican museum -- Dinner conversations -- The leather of love -- O great beauties! -- Clumps of happiness -- Meeting Elizabeth Bishop in Madras -- Grandmothers abroad -- Poem for a dead dog -- Find the poets -- The day night died -- Coastal life -- The view from inside my coffin -- Portrait of the poet as a reclining god -- When I was still a poet.

Also available as an e-book.