In his first book of poems, renowned publisher Naveen Kishore shows us—without holding back, and yet with compassion—grief, deep and bewildering;cruelties, public and private. He lays bare the nature of our outer and inner realities, using striking symbolism to reveal what humans are capable of doing to each other. The early part of the collection, ‘Kashmiriyat’, is a visceral monument to shadows, widows and unlived lives, constructed with one hundred and five stanzas. In the ‘selected griefs’ that follow, the wounds are intimate, everyday, but the images remind us of the world’s brutalities—and what, then, is innocent? By depicting large-scale human tragedies and familiar habits and hurts within the same covers, the poet tests himself, and us.