When slicing a capsicum
You can pause
Admire the geometry,
The architecture that houses the seeds

The seeds
Which you will eventually scrape off as indigestible, and
Eat the juicy and flavored ovarian walls
That the plant has offered to you

As fruit
In exchange for aid in
Propagation of its progeny.

I save the stalk
For the cow whose
Milk I buy.

…

Rinku Dutta lives in a stone hut at the foothills of the Dhauladhar Range of the Lesser Himalayas in India. She has been a scientist and educator, occasionally writing about her experiences. ‘Exploring the Roots of Harmony: India and Pakistan Conflict Transformation’ is a monograph of a selection of her essays that is the outcome of a Scholar of Peace Media Fellowship that she received from WISCOMP (Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace, Foundation for Universal Responsibility of his Holiness the Dalai Lama, India). She won the Scientific Indian Science Fiction Short Story Contest (2008) for her story Aski’s Choice. Her poem ‘Monsoon Rain’ won 3rd Place in the SMS Poetry Contest, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Bombay (2006). Her recent poems were published in The Friday Times. Her works have been published in journals like Himal Southasian, DesiLit, Newsline, and Hindustan Times. Rinku Dutta holds a PhD degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry jointly from Rutgers University and The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Jersey.