
"Pandemic" by Aditya Chincholi
Scouring hands search,
For soaps and masks,
While the feet scurry,
Desperately along the borders,
Of crowded subways and markets,
Preferring to pace up and down,
On the carpets of their homes,
Where the food is stocked and loaded,
And barrels of alcohol are rubbed,
Every five minutes,
On palms bearing silver spoons,
And tables bearing hot coffee mugged.
If fear can strike at the heart,
Of this fortified castle of glass,
Where behind closed doors,
And these towering walls,
Lie thee cowering unsheathed,
Then spare a thought.
Spare a thought,
For those from the war-torn lands,
For those who flee,
The drought-hit bands,
And most of all,
For that shed across the street,
Where a family lies huddled together,
With no soap, no sanitizer,
No money for extra food,
No paid leave either.
For its not thee who will die,
From the disease or unrest,
Thou only dies from fear,
Money can buy you the rest,
But spare a thought,
For they who cannot buy,
For they who, for your sake, must die.

An Untitled Limerick by Devatrisha Purkayastha
Amidst the quarantine blue,
The online meet was at two,
The shoddy connection
Made me listen,
While you sounded like a cockatoo.

"The Virus" by Shiv Vitthal
In the dead of the night,
A wheel turns, fortune.
Under the blue of the sky,
A virus churns, deaths.
In the serenity of lockdown,
A River flows, skin-shedded.
In the length of corridors,
Minions move, headless.
In the echo of an order,
The Hunger walks, footless.
In the cold of the space,
The Earth sighs, relief.
In the quite of the morning
A Bird chirps, hope.

"Unsaid" by Aditya Chincholi
Lost in translation,
In the midst of times,
Hundreds of thousands,
Number the conversation,
But the message,
It stays between lines.

"The Void" by Indra Narayan Chakraborty
1/
Time, settled down like dewdrops
on a silent bench.
The park,
was embracing the darkness.
2/
Those gloomy nights
Those distant days
while the shades flew away
the white stands still.
A lit up canvas
swirls into the dejection of
a not so distant reality.
3/
The little girl was dancing
In front of the open window.
In the midst of an afternoon silence
The old tree saw a flower blooming.