There is a glowing orange coal between the ash and the as-yet unburnt stick of incense; Chatterjee’s haiku are like that coal, quietly intense and subtly moving. His poems take us on strolls through morning markets, where we note and care about the tea sellers and vendors. In Scattered Leaves, we pass through the fields and holidays of India, and encounter the sharp edges of modernity poking through. Chatterjee’s poems linger, like whiffs of incense that curl in the upper corners of a room, adding a new dimension to the air we breathe. ---~ Kit Pancoast Nagamura is an award winning haiku poet and photographer and a regular contributor to the ‘Japan Times’. She conducted the ‘NHK haiku Masters’, a program aired on NHK TV, Japan’s official TV broadcaster.