Outlook Anniversary Issue: A Dot In Soot

Bluebells sway,

their arched mouths

Tracing like fins

the perimeter of the fist.

The forgotten house

lurks in the creeping hedge

Of eyelashes—a plump memory.

Guava trees host the limbs

Of children as they scour

the bones of the trees and lick

The crepe fruits. Each room

hugs another, mimicking

The embrace of a child and

father. Creepers entwine

Into robust visions—the pigtails

of a small child. Home is

Where thoughts take root. Grow

into the naked soil and emerge

As bulbs. Home is where dreaming

mouths overlap in sonorous circles.

Sleep tying them into unity. Home

is where the letters of intimacy

Swiftly knit into one another. Home

is where one first faces oneself,

Becomes oneself—the mirror to a

conclave nature. Home is where life’s

Nascent blood first purred.

Home glistens with memory,

Now the black pimple

of ashes and debris.

Castle

A splinter in the mouth. Like a dream. A forgotten dream. She tries to pluck it. Cauliflowers of pus. The cogs unwind. Howl’s Moving Castle. A dream is in motion. It’s no longer a hospital bed. The wispy sheets don’t envelope the cyan haze of the body. The body is unfettered. The debris has grown into a face. A face with a clown nose. Laughter runs through the intestines like an eel in motion. Colour arises behind the eyelids.

Everything that had fallen apart starts to stir. The memory of the house. A living, breathing engine that stitched all its members together. The kettle that blew off steam against the pastel curtains. The cat that purred beside the pile of books. Crayon thoughts are now reconstructing in the choking mind. Gathering and gathering as if to smell a hibiscus once more. As if to touch brother’s wool hair once more in sleep. As if to cut through the damages and bandages and mould like clay around sister’s face. Her jaw fitting perfectly into the C jelly of the palm. Embedded perfectly. A dream within a dream.

Ghar ki Vaani

Entire alleys. Caps and huts. Doors and knuckles. Stretched skin and bricks. The mind burns with threaded tunes. Each house has its own music, each hour its own rhythm. Max Richter’s sleep as the mushroom skirt of night unveils itself. Blue siphoned from the sky’s navel. Each mind connected like dots. Snoring, sleeping, purring, and joined as the collective subconscious floats like bubbles in the eyes of the abode. Constellations in a cup of liquid. The house penetrates the rhythms of sleep. Ruichi Sakamoto’s dream as the afternoon light melts in each corner. The house—measured breaths, an incantation in the mouth of an infant. Chopin’s etudes as the stove’s holy blue flames keep hunger at bay. Satie’s twilight mirth that stitches all religions, all minds, all hands together in a moment of caramel delight.

Aakriti Kuntal is a poet, writer, and visual artist from India whose work has been published in various literary journals. When she is not daydreaming, she is immersed in classical music and taking afternoon strolls.

This article appeared as ‘A Dot In Soot' in Outlook’s 30th anniversary double issue ‘Party is Elsewhere’ dated January 21st, 2025, which explores the subject of imagined spaces as tools of resistance and politics.