“Mrigjal” (“Mirage”) is a Hindi-English book which delves into the short Urdu verse form called “Shayari”. While the primary verses - written by the author - are in Hindi / Urdu, the author has provided English transliteration and translation for each verse as well to make the book more widely accessible to the English-speaking readers.

Mrigjal invokes the metaphor of life being a ship sailing on the mirage of our fleeting existence, an illusion woven by Maya. It explores the tides which ripple on the false waters of life, buffeting the common man with its quotidian vagaries. The poor man rows his little skiff with all his heart on these choppy, misdirecting waters, convinced that salvation lies on the other side of this non-existent river. Many are the oars he employs to sail forward - love, anger, enthusiasm, friendship, quarrels, petulance, melancholy, nostalgia, hunger, jealousy, spite, greed, desire. Every dusk brings with it a celebration of these oars, a festival of all the vices and virtues. For some, the revelry meditates in the melancholy of inner thoughts; for others, it unfurls with abandon in drunken parties. In all such gatherings, sometimes the sommelier makes us quaff the wine of life, sometimes we turn the bottles on the sommelier. If intoxication is part of their lives, so is the sadness which flows out of the same bottle of grief.

Here, then, is that same paper boat, the same goblet of inebriated thoughts carved onto some blank pages. It is a minor missive from the author’s ship of ephemeral fancy to yours...