Book Excerpt: ‘Egrets, While War’ by Tishani Doshi

Book Title: Egrets, While War
Author: Tishani Doshi
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Number of Pages: 104
ISBN: 9373074644
Date Published: Jul 14, 2026

Book Excerpt

I See You. Do You See Me?
(pages 18-20)

Once I was a boy in a frock.
Once I was a girl, struggling to climb
out of a pool. I met myself at a seaside holiday.
Remember that moment in childhood
when you were innocent and then
you were not. Remember what it was
to look at the world
after?
How the doorway shifts
and you deposit both selves in a lost-
and-found box. The relief
of discovery of disappearing.
You see me, don’t you?
I’m the one hanging photographs in a dark room,
archiving the forest of myself.
There’s a gap between us
the size of a Sphinx.
In this feathery winter light,
the aerial prints of my life expose
all the secrets I wanted to hide.

Check out our latest Book Reviews

If this were a play, we’d be getting to the point
where you recognize me and I recognize you.
All the masks slip, and everything is remade.
Father killed, mother married.
But listen, this is not Aristotelian tragedy—
let’s not end in a bloodbath.
We could return to the kingdom triumphant instead.
After so many years of being lost,
we could be twins
with identical birthmarks,
climb off the boat and leave
our vests on the shore,
make mud images of ourselves
and return them to the sea,
the way an idol is immersed and sent home
after a stay with devotees.
There is always the promise of a night sky,
the what you are twinkle
of a billion stars and surveillance cameras,
a dizzying pixellated universe.
Our biometric futures miniaturized
on a grain of sand.
What could be difficult about saying
I see you I see you I see you

Excerpted with permission from “Egrets, While War“ by Tishani Doshi, published by HarperCollins India.

Books are love!

Get a copy now!