“Words from Within”
They are here because they are my presence within my essence, just as I felt them.
I share them without expectation, simply with heart.
Thank you for opening this space and reading with kindness
Between Shadow and Light:
These poems speak of what has moved through me—love, absence, belonging, and the quiet power of return. They trace the contours of memory and identity, shaped by distance and rediscovery. Each piece is a step along my path, a reflection of what I’ve lived and reclaimed. I offer them as one offers a hand—quietly, but with my truth.
On your back you will carry me
Through the skies you’ll tell to me
The legends of gods and fairies bright,
And I’ll be there, listening in delight.
Far from here you’ll take me away
To the dreamland of my heart’s sway,
Where a thousand lives will unfold
In your company, brave and bold.
Yes, little elephant, teach me now
Your strength, your wisdom, your joyful vow,
So I may become, like you, one day,
A friend to kings in every way.
1991
In the shadow of my past
There is no going back.
I dimmed the sunlight
On what once made me feel alive.
I turned to others,
Became one with them,
Embraced their emotions,
And felt their passions.
What I loved, I loved alone.
What I felt, I felt alone.
What I saw, I saw alone.
For there is no return
To the shadow of my past.
Yet a gift was given —
A thread of light,
to love and life.
In the shadow of my past,
There is a path back
To what once made me feel alive.
2025
These women of a thousand hues, so languid
Their gazes—dark, radiant, and laughing.
Their silken bodies bathed in shimmering light, Their voices—gentle, tender, fierce in flight.
Delicate beauty draped in Indian grace,
Smiles and hair perfumed with jasmine’s trace.
The scent of paprika, of cumin’s embrace—
A blend of weariness and quiet tears,
A hope that stings like blooming spears.
The longing for a land that burns and calls,
Where sun and moon, in rising, stall
To turn the wheel of karma—life’s dance.
Yet all of this lies buried, unseen,
In the shadowed folds of the forgotten.
Deep within myself, within my soul,
My melancholic heart begins to weep.
1993
I return not as I left
But as someone who has searched in every place
For something I could only find
In the dust beneath my mother's feet.
India does not explain herself— She simply is: Fierce and forgiving, Beautiful and fragile.
And somehow, so am I.
The path back to India brings me home—
No longer lost, no need to roam.
Alive in sound, in scent, in sky,
I close my eyes and cry.
For all I was and all I've been
Finds meaning in sacred strife.
India gives me back my life.
The rules make no sense—
And yet somehow, they set me free.
In this holy contradiction,
Where gods sit beside beggars
And noise carries wisdom,
I find my own reflection.
India does not ask me to be whole.
She holds my pieces.
She does not fix me.
She teaches me that I was never broken.
I came back to find a place,
But found a self instead—
A self that remembers how to cry without shame,
To feel with my whole body,
To love without translation.
The path back to India...
It is not just a return.
It is a remembering,
A reclaiming,
A rebirth.
India did not give me a new life.
She gave me back the one I buried and whispered:
"This has always been yours."
2025
