Ashok Niyogi This Himalayan spring, before the mountain goats went back over the high mountain passes, I motored up to Auli (inside the almost inaccessible Nanda Devi biosphere) in the Garhwal Himalayas bordering Nepal and overlooking the vast Indo-Gangetic plains. I have been motoring and walking in these mountains for more than five years. The mountains and the river see you rather than you seeing them. These are the poems I composed...

Ashok Niyogi kingfisher dives for fish when the tiger is coming the monkeys know from treetops oh so many greens on this ochre mountain such glorious parakeet pea-hen sit camouflaging peacock eggs jackal husband and jackal wife walk over rounded stone mellowed by river for a few moments someone weeps loudly in yellowed grassland interrupting the buzz of thousands of gnats and then we can hear the setting sun Ashok Niyogi was born in...

Ashok Niyogi tigers saunter in for Western Union from their non-resident children oak forests have walked away and left behind a two-blade ceiling fan a hundred years ago here Corbett shot a man-eating leopard in the kitchen garden the ‘India Post’ cottage on the ridge has an artist postmaster with gerbera and carnation in his hair grey with time deposits that fathers bequeath their sons and diesel fumes that the hill-girls now carry as...

Ashok Niyogi immediately after lunch though for ten minutes depression almost drowned me facing curtained French windows my blissful gods ebbed away women’s crooked feet walked over my face into my hair I could hold my expression no more I let the anguish bend my fingertips backwards and was conscious of hunger in the leaves of shade giving trees just then your mimicry of off-tune drums cracked cymbals and debauched voices came and took...

Ashok Niyogi that orphan child made a deal with her fairy godmother once back home after the excursion was over she would quietly lie in the darkness of an Indian noon and go to sleep with her mother such are animals riding toy trains in zoological gardens Ashok Niyogi was born in Calcutta in 1955. He has two published collections of poetry in India—Crossroads and Reflections in the Dark (both from A-4 Publications) and has one published...