PANKHURI SINHA

 

PANKHURI SINHA

 

An Administrative Post

 

It was an administrative post

Being his lover

Beloved

Or there was no love equation

At all

No equations of love

In that relationship

With that unmothered boy

An ungrown

Uncouth

Unmannered

Unfathered boy

Who became so dear to my teachers?

Their dearest pupil

My oldest spy

How should I catch you?

 

Stealing Prayers

 

Stealing Prayers

Demeaning my gods

Somewhat

Elevating the priests

All old politics

Old corruption

Old tactics

But stealing

My prayers

Leaving my god too

Hungry

Leaving his worshipper

His disciple

Bloodied

Bruised

Stealing my prayers

And turning it around

Bringing some prayers of their own

And bringing some prayers from within families

Prayers of settling family feuds

Even

Prayers that spoke of robbery

Openly

And

In topsy, turvy ways

Prayers that wanted to take away

Prayers that talked of repentance

In ways in which

The priests had usurped all purity

And the vengeance seeker

Had usurped all sense of righteousness.

 

Making Everything About Money

 

To put it quite simply

The visa you were on

Allowed you to study

Allowed you no work

Well fine and good

Allowed you to study

Applying

Even reapplying

Might or might not be a necessity

But a new game arrived

A new math

It said

Your husband lived here

He worked

The house was his

And so the credit his

The teacher even began to stand

In the doorway

With a rectangular purse

This was graduate school

Graduate politics!

 

PANKHURI SINHA

 

PANKHURI SINHA: Bilingual young poetess and story writer from India.  Two books of poems published in English, ‘Prison Talkies’ and ‘Dear Suzannah’. Two collections of stories published in Hindi, called ‘Koi-bhi-Din’ and ‘Kissa-e-Kohinoor' with Gyanpeeth, one of the most prestigious publishing houses in Hindi, and two more coming soon. Five collections of poetries published in Hindi, and many more are lined up. Has been published in many journals, anthologies, home and abroad. Has won many prestigious, national-international awards, like the Girija Kumar Mathur Award for Hindi poetry while studying for her Bachelor’s in 1995, Chitra Kumar Shailesh Matiyani Award for her first collection of stories in 2007, Seemapuri Times Rajeev Gandhi Excellence Award in 2013 for outstanding writing, First prize for poetry by Rajasthan Patrika in 2017, Pratilipi Award for poetry in 2018, Mathura Prasad Gunjan Award for her second collection of poems in Hindi in 2019, Kumud Tikku Award for a story in Hindi in 2020. Her script for the UGC documentary ‘Cobra-God at Mercy’, won the best film award in 1997. Her poems have been translated in over twenty five languages, and some translations have been published in magazines in Serbia, Romania, Spain, Czech republic, Macedonia, Peru, China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Italy, France, Venezuela, Tunisia to name a few. She has also published her original poems in English in magazines and anthologies in India, in the UK and the USA, Romania, and the world over. She has set up an international group of poets called ‘Poets Without Borders’ and regularly organizes theme-based poetry readings. She won the best correspondence prize for her short story in the first Chekhov literature festival, in Yalta, Crimea in 2019. She has received awards from Albania, Romania, Nigeria, Tunisia, among other countries for her writings in English, and won the special jury award in the Premio Besio International Poetry contest in Italy in January 2021. Most recently, she won the Galateo prize for poetry in mother tongue in Italy on 3rd June 2021, ‘Sahitto Excellence in Literature’ Award in Bangladesh on the 30th of April and 3rd prize for her poetry ‘Chekhov in my Heart’, in the category, geography of Chekhov’s places, in the Chekhov Literary festival Yalta, Crimea. She has been regularly participating in zoom reading events in the UK, India, and other places. Her writing is dominated by themes of exile, immigration, gender equality and environmental concerns. After doing her BA from Delhi University, and PG diploma in Journalism, from Symbiosis Pune, Pankhuri did her Master’s in history from SUNY Buffalo, and has an unfinished Phd from the University of Calgary, Canada. She has worked in various positions as a journalist, lecturer and a content editor.