Film of Dust

A part of a larger project by the same name, Film of Dust is a meditation on Hindi film songs from the author’s childhood—songs his mother loved. Ekphrasis and translation converge in these poems to bring our attention to the visual and the vocal as they play out in the song from a Hindi film. A random selection of songs, played on ‘auto-play’ on Youtube is another way to approach autobiography, the author believes. For what is life if not a series of chance encounters? Both memoir and musical, the book is also a nod to the trope of the ‘double-role’ in Indian cinema, where an actor plays two roles at once. 

[publisher's note]