In Could You Please, Please Stop Singing, Sabyasachi (Sachi) Nag takes a step away from scepticism, blending humour with shock and surprise, seeking a return to childhood in “Mamuda’s Fries”, innocence in “Conversations with the Country Activist” and fractals for the future in the yet to be invented “Seedless Avocado”.

In attempting what Tomas Transromer calls “walking through walls”, Nag hurts and sickens himself with awe and rage. The title poem “Could You Please, Please Stop Singing?” purposely evokes the famous Hemingway line from Men Without Women and is central to the overall tonality of this collection, that straddles a path alternately mocking and dead serious, and that occasionally yields to contrary pulls between the banal and the sublime.