Vishakha Khetrapal
Vishakha Khetrapal is a writer, teacher, and social science researcher based in Pune, India. She writes in both Hindi and English. Her work has previously appeared in Kitaab International, Critical Edges, and Indica. Her writing explores themes of nostalgia, nature, and the everyday.
Shared Sky
Between cracked balconies—
a rope,
drawn tight like a purse.
On it:
saris, dripping with soap,
a school shirt, stiff with the heat,
amma’s petticoat, sagging like a mango branch.
The neighbours' lives bare beside ours:
a lace blouse, too bold for this lane,
a red towel
that never dries.
We don’t talk to them,
but we know their laundry.
We know
who bleeds,
who’s here on leave from the city,
or who’s stopped wearing colour
since the last war.
Each morning,
amma flings the wet cloth
with a snap—
and droplets escape
like doves set free in the sky.
She says
heat removes all germs.
I watch
as she folds my childhood
into the basket.
Now,
my clothes dry indoors—
over chairs,
in silence.
No neighbours.
No sky.
No dupatta brushing my shirt
in tenderness,
or rebellion.
Some days,
I ache
for a rope between balconies.
For the secret language
of shared sky
and
of shared love.