India comes alive in the vibrant, colorful poems of M..K Ajay in his newest collection of poetry, Sweetness of Salt. It’s a slim but very good volume containing 46 poems ranging on a variety of topics - the memories of the author’s childhood in India, memories of his grandfather, his perceptions of life in America, even Alexander the Great’s horse, Bucephalus.

Ajay’s poetry is sometimes serious, such as in “War Against Terror,” but throughout the collection, one can detect a sense of playfulness and joie de vie, such as in “An Indian In Manhattan,” where he thinks back on advice he received in India before coming to America:

“New York is a bit like Bombay, just more
cosmopolitan, more expensive, more chic,
more happening, more rude. And yes, the
cab drivers are mostly Indians”.

Fingers melted into woods
bones into ashes
nails blossomed into globe amaranth
his voice became
a meteor’s last hissing fall.

A bicycle left under a banyan tree
is a distraction, a black skeleton thinking
of its cooling metal and this hamlet’s aloofness.
Hercules, it was called, this bicycle;
an ancient machine, it was said at school
as raindrops hissed at classrooms
bound by slate and teacher’s dictum.