Book of Rahim & Other Poems

These involve Mehrotra inhabiting the voice and time of an ageing Ghalib; his revisiting Abdul-Rahim Khan-i-Khanan (1556–1627), a Baharlu Turk, an important figure in the Mughal nobility during the reigns of Akbar and Jehangir; and his discovery of objects and letters from his family home in Lahore. The result is a frayed immediacy that hefty historical novels find difficult to achieve.