Today, I fell in love with a
Pashto song.
I imagined the writer,
a handsome man,
his features Afghan
like I see on TV;
to me they all look like poets.
Thinking up beautiful lines.
in the mountains,
in the pleasant bitter coldness,
of Waziristan.
Now terroristan
if we’re to believe
the Americans.
He says,
he’d have grown
a carpet of roses,
if he knew she was
going to visit;
a thought co-opted by
Bollywood lyricists.
So that’s where that beautiful
idea comes from –
like the smell of roses,
wafting down the Hindu Kush,
unscathed by bombs.

Aarthi Gunnupuri has been an advertising copywriter and freelance lifestyle journalist. Her work has appeared in Vogue, CNN, Yahoo, Marie Claire, Hindustan Times, Open, among others. She also wrote the finale story for Femina’s UN award-winning series on gender violence. She currently works with an animal protection group and is a graduate student at the London School of Economics.