Javed Akhtar’s poetry speaks of the urban milieu that envelops him. Helplessness, hunger and homelessness, crowds and solitude, filth and crime, fame and obscurity, rock-strewn footpaths and glass-studded skyscrapers: this cosmopolitan world he inhabits seeps into the tone and tenor of his writing. Akhtar’s sharply observed poems stretch across time and space, articulate the extremities of hot and cold seasons, of walking barefoot on live-hot embers and the tenderness of kissing flowers drenched in dew. These are bittersweet verses from a man who has felt firsthand the sharpness of sensation. The themes he speaks of are universal, yet the timbre of Akhtar’s poetry is unique; it is not the echo of other voices.

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