This poem was inspired by the incredibly noisy neighbourhood I live in Mumbai. In my last trip, I realised, compared to Singapore, my home was super noisy and it took me a couple of days to push that noise to the back, but it was quite a difficult few days. Then coming back to Singapore, the silence also took some time to get used to!
The Sounds of Home
The sounds start early,
As the birds begin to wake up in the tree;
The ringing of the bell of the milkman,
The shouts of the newspaper man,
This is how we wake-up in good old Mumbai.
Then the real noisy business of the day starts their cries,
The children coming to the school next door,
Their voices eager and ready to soar,
The college students who congregate in the lane below;
Whiling their time between classes, ebb and flow.
Then of course, who can forget,
The noise of vehicles, that drive past like a jet,
This not including the general cacophony of sounds;
Like the cawing crows and vendors in the background,
These are the sounds that define my neighbourhood,
These are the sounds of my childhood,
All day, from morning to night, there is a steady stream of competing sounds,
Till they fade away from your consciousness as the noise resounds.
It’s only when you come back after a while,
You realise that your beloved city, your loved isle,
Is actually quite noisy, but you care not a tome,
You love it anyway, coz, these are the sounds of home!
Introducing Detective Inspector Darko Dawson: dedicated family man, a rebel in the office, ace in the field—and one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years. When we first meet Dawson, he’s been ordered by his cantankerous boss to leave behind his loving wife and young son in Ghana’s capital city to lead a murder investigation: In a shady grove outside the small town of Ketanu, a young woman—a promising medical student—has been found dead under suspicious circumstances.
This is the story of Maximilian Ophuls, America’s counterterrorism chief, one of the makers of the modern world; his Kashmiri Muslim driver and subsequent killer, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown; Max’s illegitimate daughter India; and a woman who links them, whose revelation finally explains them all. It is an epic narrative that moves from California to Kashmir, France, and England, and back to California again. Along the way, there are tales of princesses lured from their homes by demons, legends of kings forced to defend their kingdoms against evil. And there is always love, gained and lost, uncommonly beautiful and mortally dangerous.
