Kamayani Sharma is a media history researcher and writer on visual culture. She lives in New Delhi and writes most of her poetry in the metro.
Knowing People
One of the profound pleasures of reading
is the odd recollection of someone
whom you vaguely know in a distant
two-streets-down-neighbourly way,
as a fuzzy figure with a random
attribute or two. It could be something
as bland as what they studied in college
or what happened to their marriage.
Or it could be
some incredibly accurate detail
about their private life
like what they were eating on the night they died
or what the afternoon sunlight looked like
lancing through their bedroom pane
and fanning out by the window
into a dust-filled geometric design
a shade lighter than the wall.
And the completely comfortable realisation,
a second later, that this acquaintance
is a fictional character.