The Absent Color is to language what Annihilation of Caste is to politics. For the absent Other gains justice only when that which calls itself color is made colorless. A/nil writes with an intense conviction about Babasaheb and his politics, in a time when both are receding into infinity, red-shifted, like colored dots on an expanding balloon.

A/nil is god’s favorite bastard. He hymns god’s colorful absence.
A-Nil is an impossibility. He is the real. He is the absent color.

His poems are like the scholia Borges made in the books in the infinite hexagonal galleries of the Library of Babel. Anil is as erudite as he is witty. The Absent Color is full of questions. Answers can be found if we are willing to work for them, indulging in the risks he will have us take. What you know meets what you don’t, and you want to know more till your knowing is no more.

A Nil will lead you down a rabbit hole—to a place of magic and strange logic. You will be in the dark. You may feel foolish. You will see light. You may feel wise.

I am not a poet like me
Nothing is complete for now
Even now is in the middle
Like a Bible without punctuation

a/nil, A-Nil, A Nil aka Anilkumar Payyappilly Vijayan was born in 1976 in Thrissur, Kerala. He is an associate professor of English at the Government Arts and Science College, Pathiripala, Palakkad.