This is a lambent, heart-wrenching debut collection. Shikha Malaviya plunges through memories as child, lover, wandering bard and witness, in poems intensely alive. Passionately attentive and formally audacious, Malaviya swings between the horrific, the humorous and the humane: she delights with the play of languages. Afloat in her black silver country, on water red-tinted by communal carnage and family festivities, Malaviya never stops searching for the shared canopy of stars that blankets us in tenderness.
— PRIYA SARUKKAI CHABRIA, author, Not Springtime Yet