Notes to the Poems

1. Sandesh is a dry sweet, made in soft or hard varieties from a dairy product called chhana.
2. Petha is a North Indian sweet made from ash gourd.
3. Creek Row is a lane used as a shortcut between Upper Circular Road and College Street in Calcutta.
4. Chhana is the cheese-like reduction of milk curd.
5. Rustom’s is a Parsi restaurant in Delhi. Gajar mewa nu achar is a Parsi pickle made with carrots and raisins.
6. ‘Adil’ is the poet Adil Jussawalla. He lives in Bombay.
7. Kalbaishakhi are the brief April showers that occur in Bengal before the monsoons proper.
8. One of the meanings of ‘tapas’ in Sanskrit has to do with meditation, asceticism and spiritual practice. Pronounced differently in another context, it refers in Spanish to appetisers.
9. ‘Telebhaja’ literally means ‘fried in oil’ in Bengali. It’s the commonest form of street food in Calcutta.