POETRY

Collection Of Adult Books

Seven poetry collections spanning three decades of creative exploration.
A body of work reflecting memory, identity, human relationships, and the changing landscapes of contemporary life.

Publisher: Indian Publishers Distributors, Delhi

First Published: 1998 | Second Edition: 2017

ISBN: 81-7341-062-3

Poems: 63

Dedication: To the author’s elder daughter Vertica

ADULT COLLECTION

Conch Shells and Cowries

Indian Publishers Distributors, New Delhi | 1998

Rajiv Khandelwal's debut collection announces a voice simultaneously engaged with the Indian social landscape and alert to the formal possibilities of Indo-English verse. The poems move across satire, love, political observation, and the textures of urban middle-class life in Agra, drawing on a range of classical and contemporary reference that few debut collections sustain. Reviewers noted the collection's engagement with Eliot's literary precepts alongside its unapologetic exposure of social hypocrisy, placing Khandelwal from the outset in the tradition of Indian English poetry that inherits from the West while remaining distinctly rooted in its own ground.

View Book Details BUY NOW

Word

I searched for you in every corner under the sofa amongst the flowers in the Upanishads beneath the Kamasutra on the heaving bed couldn’t find I Looked for you amongst the weeping willows amongst the violently shaking leaves of the deeply rooted tall trees amongst the leaves of the calm grass in meadows Amongst the roaming Clouds I could sense you in my pleasures in my griefs softly vibrating in the quietness of the storms raging outside I couldn’t find I searched and searched and then at the end of the rainbow amongst the pregnant cows I found you, dear allowing yourself to be seduced

To a Darling Daughter

When we receive your letters and learn about hostel & school matters our eyes brim with tears and our heart fills with fear Our mind like a tape-recorder does sing Did we do the right thing? When we sent our darling Daughter into boarding Only time can tell Thoughts of your better future are with us Do not think that we are sore And love you no more Darling daughter We look forward to a bright letter Do the very best in your Class May you effortlessly pass

Child Bride

Will someone tell me? What is the point in fashioning like the potter creating an image sculpting each contour with chisels of time knowledge, patience and wisdom creating beyond beauty filling with vivid vibrant colours Then finding the statue desecrated at the altar of Child Marriage and dowry

Chasm

A wall big and wide as the great China wall existed yet its existence unknown except to a few orthodox eyes She Neither bound nor chained affected by no sorcery yet imprisoned behind the threshold boundary of her House At times her morning recital the Gita’s verses mix with his voice calling azaan whose echoes filter through the windows At times from the windows from the roof of their houses they would revel in the beauty of white pigeons flying around and find time furtively to glance at each other The troubled sunlight fidgeted and the shadows lay frowning The adjoining Mohallah periodically would resound with war cries of people in pain the atmosphere shrunk in the stillness of death When all doors had closed One opened between them A bridge of love connected the chasm Yet neither of them dared cross over

Publisher:Global Fraternity of Poets, Gurgaon

First Published: 2013

ISBN: 978-81-925838-7-7 (HB)

Poems: 100

Foreword: Reginald Massey, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts of the United Kingdom and Freeman of the City of London.

Preface: Bhupinder Parihar

ADULT COLLECTION

Love is a Lot of Work

Global Fraternity of Poets, Gurgaon | 2013

Published fifteen years after the debut, this collection of one hundred poems establishes Khandelwal as a poet of sustained lyric engagement with love in its contemporary, technocratic, and emotionally complicated forms. The poems draw on Greek, Chinese, and classical Indian literary traditions while remaining rooted in the immediate: the unanswered call, the motorbike receding into traffic, the lily pond where silences accumulate. The collection closes with 'Malhar', a poem that compresses the classical Indian monsoon raga, the wedding of frogs, and a lover's plea into eight final words, demonstrating the range of register across which the book operates.

View Book Details BUY NOW

My First Memory of You

My first memory Starts with the party At your house In the room With wall-to-wall carpet Velvet upholstery Toss up pillows Braided drapes Ancestral portrait Over the carved table A tiered, what-not-shelf And on its top A stack of books From the likes of John Keats John Donne Robert Burns Elizabeth Barrett Browning Carl Sandburg Pablo Neruda Running to complete length In decorated focus And I Flush with romantic slush Recall Leigh Hunt’s “Jenny Kissed Me” And Walter Savage’s “Whoever Felt Like I!” And in the midst of all chaos You sitting Unaffected Like Beatrice Portinari And I Standing Like Dante in church

Love is a Lot of Work

It is irrelevant That devouring Medically prohibited Chocolate pastry Gave me intense pleasure It is irrational Not to find delight In the smiles Of the frolicsome children It is pointless To try and learn What the coat buttons Of each lapel Lying leisurely Over the beer belly Said to each other Immaterial That HBO Beamed Romantic comedies Like ‘Runaway Brides’ ‘You have got mail’ ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ And the likes All day long Still of no consequence Is the fact That the daily news channels Spoke about politicians’ insensitivity And slow to respond bureaucracy What is of dying importance Is why She did not communicate Today

Dust

Dust happens It’s as natural As turning and tossing Alone under blankets On a double bed Dust your furniture Or your TV Or the curtains Or the carpeting Or the ceiling fans Or the bookshelves It vanishes as casually As smiles from faces Of policy makers Entrusted with the job Of containing inflation Then in the flash of an eye It accumulates everywhere Persistently trapped In the place I must live Like you In my mind

Malhar

Large, grey clouds Appearing dark Hover Over the venue Where Local priests wed frogs In mystical weddings As frogs croak, peacocks cry The papiha sings its song of love Confused cows Lie perplexed in parched plains As half-naked women Perform plow rituals A lone village bard recites his laments In yearning loaded verses As rain clouds drift away Like them I pray Come back And stay

Publisher: Global Fraternity of Poets, Gurgaon

First Published: 2013

ISBN: 978-81-925838-6-0

Poems: 96

Introduction: Dr Som P. Ranchan

Dedication: To his mother Lalita, his wife Seema, and his daughters Vertica and Vernica

ADULT COLLECTION

A Monument to Pigeons

Global Fraternity of Poets, Gurgaon | 2013

Published in the same year as its predecessor and representing a significant deepening of thematic ambition, this collection extends the love poetry of Love is a Lot of Work into territory that encompasses family dynamics, women's experience in the Indian social order, communal tension, and the nature of poetry itself. The title poem sets the standard the collection holds itself to: a poem whose words do not combust on the page, do not agitate, refuse to stand on their own, is a monument of interest to pigeons only. Dr Som Ranchan, whose critical engagement with the work spans three collections, noted that the difference from the earlier volumes lay in a more sensitive and deeper engagement with issues, a style more dense and charged with emotion.

View Book Details BUY NOW

A Monument to Pigeons

For all I care You could write A recipe created Mould acceptable Poem Using Gandhian principles Mostly untenable In today’s world With orator words And Even if the poem has Beauty of form Emotive expression Change in pace But if the words do not combust on the page Do not agitate Arouse kindred emotions Refuse to stand on their own Fail to refer to anything Beyond Then You might find the poem For all its beauty A monument Of interest to pigeons

Mother’s Ache

My ache For you Felt in my dreams In prayers Travels Through several lifetimes Spent amongst fakirs Tribal doctors Specialist gynecologists Then tearing through Several disappointments Journey’s through Expectations Unfurling Like a drowsy village Coming to life The planning, The living With the new found happiness Pulsates with the wait As you Gradually learn To toss and turn Wiggle Then finally Kick and push Your way Into my world In which I stand Glowing Giggling Crazy in love With you My Heir

A Subaltern Sermon

Drawing from the flux Of human kindness Slowly petering out. I told a handicapped beggar With sincere compassion Do not lose hope The important thing is to go on Why beg? Come! I will give you a job The beggar, a mere child With a smile, a little mild Said “ Sahib - Even at lavish best Your job will only pay Half my current take That too when I work half shifts Why don’t you pitch your sales For the white collars Who even after graduation Are handicapped in your system If you can’t Refer them to me There’s ample scope in my line.”

You and Me in Love

Love is about sitting at your specific sofa seat Willingly loosing remote To view English war movie When a popular Hindi serial was the social must see It’s all about baking in the car With polite patience and tolerance Taking in traffic-in-transit While she market hops and window shops As time agonizingly drags She eventually comes out without carrier bags It’s surely and purely not about long walks Or filling in the silences with deep talks Love is heart wrenching Rage filled realistic relationship It’s about compromises As automatic As drinking coffee when all you ever take is tea It’s when someone entirely embezzles your heart And sitting together Words exchanged are barely few and restrictive, constructive Not even filling a scrap paper Yet begets atmosphere addictive With so much left unsaid Love is in the knowing Good or bad weather We will still have unfinished business together

Publisher: The Poetry Society of India, Gurugram

First Published: 2017

ISBN: 978-93-83888-85-6

Poems: 67

Foreword: Reginald Massey

Preface: Bhupinder Parihar

Dedication: To Dr Som Ranchan

ADULT COLLECTION

A Time to Forget

The Poetry Society of India, Gurugram | 2017

Of the sixty-seven poems in this collection, fifty-six appeared in established poetry journals prior to publication, a measure of the critical reception the work was receiving internationally. The collection is formally more restrained than its predecessors, working through compressed lyrics and a sustained engagement with the lily pond as a site of memory, desire, and reflection. Indian imagery is woven throughout, including mehendi, sindoor, chimta, peepal, and the Radha-Krishna devotional tradition, alongside philosophical references from Aristotle to Jung, producing a collection that is simultaneously specific in its cultural location and broad in its intellectual reach.

View Book Details BUY NOW

Beauty in Ordinary Things

When I think of you And ideate Invariably I opine You are like the “5 Scoop Ice cream cone” Each scoop A point of perfection I may not have told you, You have a finely chiseled lovely lithe body Adorned with soft attractive luscious lips, lush breasts Straight long lustrous jet black hair Hanging over mesmerizing oval eyes Hint of floral scent that relaxes. Voice, soft and caressing, soothes pain Keeps me from sleeping You are like Hypatia of Alexandria Cool like sword cut water A bundle of strength like fluttering tricolor; Level headed, wear the perfume of wise parliamentarian Sometimes as complicated as a mathematical equation At time as effervescent as a chemical reaction You are my princess From the ‘Palace of Perfection’ Did I ever mention In your freshness I see beauty in ordinary things That there have been innumerable times When a decision Was waiting to be made

Tonic

While I took my morning walk On an autumn day Clean crisp cool citrus breeze Not too hard or perfumery Shakes some leaves free, off peepal trees Fresh bold and sharp lime green flower ‘envy’ Amongst vibrant green foliage Are heavy with droplets of dawn dew Sidewalks are loaded with shrubby ornamental Dalmatian sage Amidst chirping birds, just a few As I take my morning walk Desire you were here for some small talk A moment away from you And meaning of life misperceives Happiness Stands poised like birds in flight Separation pain settles like dead leaves As I take my morning walk All the while Wish and hope You are free today for talk

Symphony

Visitor’s bench Sits in solitude Against the backdrop Of the lily pond Where Natural beauty Serenity Mingle with unbridled license As I wait Sings solo songs silently The placid murmur of silence Brings Barriers down Builds Spellbound intimacy Waiting for your call Teaches Patience Your anticipated call Teaches The Art of Living

A Ritual

Four decades Of blood, sweat and toil Lay raped For just a pinch of mehendi and sindoor It ought to have been An easy test But demands Veiled behind simple sen tences “Forget to tell .....” “Not enough.......” Struck smack in the face In the din of the suddenly silent shehanai The parental cheeks Stood ashamed with folded hands For just a pinch Of mehendi and sindoor Mumbling mattoid responses

Publisher: The Poetry Society of India, Gurugram

Published: 2020

ISBN: 978-93-89213-19-5

Poems: 75

Foreword: P C K Prem

Preface: Sanjukta Dasgupta

Dedication: To his father Shri Bhagwan Das Khandelwal, to the memory of Dr Som Ranchan, and to Dr Bhupinder Parihar

ADULT COLLECTION

Dwelling with Denial

The Poetry Society of India,Gurugram | 2020

The fifth collection extends the social conscience of the earlier work into its most sustained engagement with contemporary Indian reality, addressing bonded labour, human trafficking, communal violence, surrogacy legislation, and the erosion of civic trust, while maintaining the intimate domestic register that runs through the body of work. Critics described the collection as contemporary, well-crafted, ironic, pensive, and unforgivingly realistic, constituting both a litany of unvoiced dreads and a tribute to the human urge to assert the right to love and heal. The collection also contains a sustained sequence of poems on the nature and craft of poetry that would later form the core of the sixth collection.

View Book Details BUY NOW

Petition

Dear, this is just to update Yesterday in the temple I lit a thousand diyas Then put in a review petition Before God Requesting a stay order On the cancer gnawing away my vitals Today, the red flag from the doctors Revealed My petition has been rejected The gods have not commuted the death sentence You know dear As long as I am here My body and soul belong to you You alone So, Come Come soon Wipe away my tears I do not want to face this anxiety alone All alone Bring faith and joy As I wait Hot, wet and not weary To give you pleasures Beyond measures Come before the glass hour sands drop down

Puja

Business had been going Through a rough patch So, we decided to do a puja In prescribed ritualistic manner Replete with religious discourses But as happened with sage Vishwamitra When Menaka came to seduce him And nullify the sage’s penance Happened to me No. Honey! It was not your thoughts That broke my meditation But the back-side itch That created a minor trouble Then graduated to a stinging itch Moving around the back Uncontrollably Unpredictably Irritating and annoying Just like the bothersome Kashmiri youth stone pelters And as luck would have it Broken attention Probably broke the dream Of attaining desired results Through this puja

Wandering Thoughts

As always When I am alone And my thoughts Wander That’s when I see in you Dear daughter The reflections Of bits and pieces of myself And I fondly admit That you are my pride and joy As always When I am alone And my thoughts Roam aimlessly like a typical window-shopper That’s when I perceive I love you very much As always When I am lonely And sitting with your thoughts only Erratically Your thoughts Vaporize As fast as over poured petrol In sweltering heat And that’s when The drifting musings Bring in your mother As silently as the breaking section of the iceberg sliding into the sea And losing myself completely I discover I have never loved Anyone As much as I love your mother And the thought popping into the mind Says: These are not words that every husband tells his wife But it’s quite like a blind person’s yearning for eyesight

Her Hands

Wizardry Of her roving Exploring Hands Flipped switches Ignited Places That I never knew existed Body rattler sensations Like rabid jackals in heat Spiraling out of control Came Like torrential rainstorms Guttural noises Flowed As effusively as whisky out of the bottle An unending ecstasy Like a game show contestant Who had just won place For the next slot Ramped up Thoughts That fed of each other Let loose Were up all night Painting the town red

Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing

Published: February 2024

ISBN: To be confirmed

Poems: 52

Foreword: Dr Neelanjana Pathak

Dedication: To Dr Bhupinder Parihar and Dr Shobha Diwakar

ADULT COLLECTION

Khandelwal's Poetic Process

Ukiyoto Publishing | 2024

The sixth collection is a departure in conception: all fifty-two poems take the art and craft of poetry as their sole subject, making it one of the rare volumes in Indian English literature to sustain a single thematic concern across an entire anthology. The poems range from the comic, as in the observation that a bad poem is like the fixed-landline-designer-phone placed by the one-flesh-union-wife on the side-table near her side of bed, to the philosophically serious, examining what makes a poem combust on the page, earn applause, survive its moment, and find its way into print. Dr Neelanjana Pathak, in her foreword, situates the collection within a global tradition of poets writing about the making of poems, from Sir Philip Sidney to Ted Hughes to Carol Ann Duffy, and notes that Khandelwal's engineering background likely informs the precision and structural clarity with which he handles the subject.

View Book Details BUY NOW

The Poem Unborn

Every day Morning is forked out Reading about Rape – Rape of minor by minors Rape of elderly by elderly A politician beating someone Economy going downhill Sponsored terrorism going uphill Someone demanding facilitation fee Someone facing corruption charge Every day is run-of-the-mill Same sulking stories Same political speeches Same trite expectations Same lurking obsessions Served in divergent shades In this conflict-driven distressing planet Each exhausted day Covets the prospector’s pleasure Of finding an elusive utopia And penning an all-consuming passionate poem But each night The unfinished tired poem Goes to bed With the pen To wake up once again To the same mundane routine

A Bad Poem

A bad poem Is like the fixed-landline-designer-phone The only phone in the house Placed By the one-flesh-union-wife On the side-table Near her side of bed A bad poem Like a bad connection Conveys ‘Okay-give-it-a-try-I-don’t-think-it-will-work’

Poem Arrives Naturally

When the idea of a poem Glints with intensity In the poet’s intellect Wells up And cries for an outlet And when, with charm and poise On the blank page The expressive poet Via a fragmentary recollection Of a surcharged moving feeling Or stored up experience Colored by his impression Tantalizes and spurs imagination Playing along with meter And weaves the thought content Neither difficult nor elusive But concrete and clear Appealing, absorbing and arresting Through imagery Perfectly poignant and clear Shines out Stimulates reader’s mind And sparks his senses Then the poem arrives naturally Without the poet’s anxious wait Like a non-caesarean healthy male-child And fulfills tense expectations Of publication

Heart to Heart:A Poem’s Triumph

When the energetic subconscious Lifts the curtain From powerful hidden thoughts Underlying theme Bursts forth From the ‘sub-text’ in memory Frenzied feelings are freed Like snorting, storming bulls on Spanish street In that Brief fervent span of time If words Craft a tale Of nail-biting emotions As felt by an engaged soldier Boxed-in by the enemy Under constant threat of shellfire When the verse Piped-Pier like Captivates readers’ hearts Their experiences Clearly sucked dry Is heartfelt Then the sketched poem Earns applause

Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing

Published: 2025

ISBN: To be confirmed

Poems: 65

Foreword: Gurdev Chauhan

Dedication: To the memory of his father, to his mother in her ninetieth year, and to all those who find light in loss

ADULT COLLECTION

Crystalline Tidings

Ukiyoto Publishing | 2025

Dedicated to his father's memory and to his mother in her ninetieth year, the most recent collection marks a significant thematic shift toward mortality, ageing, grief, and the textures of a life lived fully and examined honestly. The poems range from the tenderly observed, as in a mother who wakes in the small hours to listen to her grandson singing on WhatsApp across time zones, to the politically urgent, addressing surrogacy legislation, radicalization, cyberbullying, and the slow erosion of human connection in a digitally mediated world. Reviewers across India and abroad have described the collection as the work of a mature poet working sensitively with language and images, noting that everyday situations undergo dramatic transformation in Khandelwal's hands, the familiar rendered startlingly fresh.

View Book Details BUY NOW

The Tea Mug

The yellow rim Reminds Of freshness Of the sensuous lips That once used this mug And the deep liquid depths Metaphor Of joy Its solid handle With its bold hues Signified a series of prospects Till the cracks Started Appearing

Hopes

The Greek-Roman god Janus Pondered all plus and minus Plans to send all a message He will now close passage To fear, anger and sadness Doors closed to current madness Will proclaim a new beginning All mankind will be grinning With joy, love and inspiration Tears will face acute starvation There will be happiness, prosperity As Janus plans with all sincerity In New Year, He will make earth a heaven With bated breath I wait this transition

Creeping Darkness

Some elders have departed long ago Younger brother has also left One peer left for his heavenly abode today The population Slowly of the “we care” tribe Is shrinking Now-a-days No one cares The young are busy in their own lives Those near and dear Who still carry the burden of “we care” Have left Live continents apart I am left with my emptiness Slowly learning to live with loneliness The party-crowd that used to gather around me once Has shrunk in age Now gather around their peers And I silently stand in a corner Nursing a drink Learning to embrace solitude With a no-grumbles, no-complaint air I now live with diabetes Cardiovascular blockages Hypertension Who stay as permanent house guests in my frame Are now coaching me As to how to make friends with the disorder Sometimes When in a melancholic mood I wish the creeping darkness advances faster

Death of a Parent

The WhatsApp call From the neighbor Informed the death of father Before I could absorb Involuntary reflex impulse Wished, father should have postponed dying Provided at least a six months extension For being in a new country With new job Survival Is not easy On top of it Covid restricts Intercontinental movements Due quarantine rules Micro moments later The gloom Of shock, numbness, denial, sadness Despair engulfed And I lived the loss Felt by a paralytic Who literally has his body Yet nothing The untamed grief Longed for the sea

Collection Of Adult Books

Conch Shells and Cowries

Sample Poems

Word

To a Darling Daughter

Child Bride

Chasm

Love is a Lot of Work

Sample Poems

My First Memory of You

Love is a Lot of Work

Dust

Malhar

A Monument to Pigeons

Sample Poems

A Monument to Pigeons

Mother’s Ache

A Subaltern Sermon

You and Me in Love

A Time to Forget

Sample Poems

Beauty in Ordinary Things

Tonic

Symphony

A Ritual

Dwelling with Denial

Sample Poems

Petition

Puja

Wandering Thoughts

Her Hands

Khandelwal's Poetic Process

Sample Poems

The Poem Unborn

A Bad Poem

Poem Arrives Naturally

Heart to Heart:A Poem’s Triumph

Crystalline Tidings

Sample Poems

The Tea Mug

Hopes

Creeping Darkness

Death of a Parent