Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome Indian American writer and poet Varsha Saraiya-Shah, who resides in Houston. “At Home” forges an inclusive sense of community by acknowledging and claiming the earth as home, rather than being caught up in territorial thinking. “The earth never questions anyone,/ where they’re from. The earth// where you, too, belong. Where the heart is,/ yours and mine.” Varsha invites us to her hearth fire, to tea, to interact with each other as human beings. There are connections to be made which enlarge our experience and knowledge and make the world kinder. ““I brought my home with me from one land to another. From a motherland to a fatherland.” I’ve flown like migrating birds between the seas. Between languages and their distances.” Varsha’s wisdom and willingness to slow down and take in the essence of living is revealed in swooping phrases that sing to our better selves though gentle alliterative rhythms. The prose poem “Many Truths of Color Red” explores cultural dissonance. What means blessing and inclusion in one culture may signify hate in another. If humanity is going to survive, we have to find ways to navigate these dissonances without lashing out at one another. “I had to toss out that ambivalence, convinced I can dream in whatever colors I wish and still smell a crimson rose raised by our earth, our blue matriarch.”
Read Varsha’s courageous poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Belonging” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. Varsha will also be joining us for our “Identity” issue in March 2025.
Author of VOICES, a poetry chapbook by Finishing Line Press, Varsha Saraiya-Shah’s work is upcoming in Orchard Street Press’s Quiet Diamonds. She has been published in journals such as Borderlands, Cha, Convergence, and Soundings East; and featured in anthologies such as Echoes of the Cordillera, Ekphrastic Review, Equinox journal, and Pippa Ran UK book-Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians.
She has been a featured reader at Houston’s First Friday Reading series, Words & Artforum, Women in Visual & Literary Arts (WIVLA), and Archway Gallery. Her work has featured on international panels, Austin’s Jazz-Poetry performance event, Public Radio and a multi-language/century dance program: “Poetry in Motion.” She won first-places for her poem and essay in Gujarati, her native tongue, sharing a stage with two renowned Urdu/Gujarati ghazal poets in Dallas.
Retired from a finance/accounting career as a Texas CPA with an MBA from Cal-Poly, Pomona, CA, she loves exploring her first love, poetry. Poetry lets her practice the art of living, always in motion with its magic of discovery.
