September 07, 2026 11:41 am (IST)
Follow us:
facebook-white sharing button
twitter-white sharing button
instagram-white sharing button
youtube-white sharing button
Hindutva influencer Swatantra Bhardwaj detained after viral assault clip; Chirag Paswan’s party files complaint for ‘falsely’ naming him | Bengaluru horror: Woman stripped, assaulted and filmed over unpaid loan interest; 4 arrested | West Bengal CM's big warning: Teacher suspended over tilak row, govt employee punished for PM Modi post | Tragedy on Kerala Highway: 8 Tamil Nadu students killed after car crashes into parked lorry | Influencer Swatantra Bhardwaj, accused of assaulting CJP protester's father, detained in UP | Yasin Malik’s double shock from jail: Announces divorce, refuses to defend himself in Sarla Bhat case | Sonia Gandhi’s memoir finds new publisher as HarperCollins steps in amid Penguin row | 1,000 RSS-backed schools in Bengal? Suvendu Adhikari sets one-year target | PM Modi hails Giorgia Meloni on becoming longest-serving postwar Italian PM | HarperCollins to publish Sonia Gandhi’s memoir amid Penguin row
Poetry
Photo courtesy: Unsplash

This Indian diplomat in Europe is a poet. Read his verses on the emotional price of war

| @indiablooms | May 15, 2025, at 02:06 pm

Arun Sahu is a diplomat and writer who is presently the Ambassador to Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Earlier, he was India’s High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, India’s Deputy High Commissioner to Canada, and Deputy Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR).  He served as a Board Member of the US-India Educational Foundation and the Canada-India Centre for Excellence in Science, Technology, Trade and Policy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. As a diplomat, he has served in the Indian Embassy in Beijing, London and Tehran. He writes poems, fiction and non-fiction in English and Odia. His publications include “Trinidad and Tobago: A Diplomat’s Cultural Expedition”, Iguana and Other Poems

 

One of his recent poems is on war and its tragic consequences even for those who survive it. Read on.

Waitingby Arun Sahu

I waited and waited  
Until waiting turned to a prayer,
Faithless and bare.

Monsoon withered; leaves dried
And dreams turned to ashes
In the forest of fire.

In an early afternoon,
On a scorching summer day,  
You appeared in body and flesh.

I thought,
Perhaps someone had ended the war.

Moist in hand, I rushed.  
To embrace you, kiss and cuddle,
But, alas, you had turned to ice
Without any care.

 


(Ambassador Sahu can be reached at arun.sahu68@gmail.com).

Support Our Journalism

We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism

IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.

Support objective journalism for a small contribution.