Dr. Mukesh Nangia
M.D. · Poet · Illustrator · Buffalo, NY
A physician who writes funny poems, draws his own illustrations, and prescribes laughter alongside everything else.
The doctor
Forty years of medicine. Poetry the whole time.
Dr. Mukesh Nangia has practiced internal medicine in Buffalo, New York for most of his adult life. He has seen patients through the full arc of it: the ordinary check-ups and the hard conversations, the chronic conditions and the sudden ones. He is the kind of doctor who remembers your name and actually means it when he asks how you are.
He has also, for as long as anyone can remember, been writing poems. Not as a side project or a retirement plan, but as a steady, private practice. The same instinct that makes him good at medicine, noticing what is funny and what is human about a situation, is the one that runs through every poem.
Laughter is the best medicine. This book is being prescribed to you by a doctor.
Back cover, It’s A Jungle Out ThereHe writes in two languages. The English book found its way to a publisher. The Hindi collection, Tarane Zindagi Ke, waits for its moment. Both come from the same place: a doctor who pays attention.
The book
It’s A Jungle Out There
One hundred and two poems. Every illustration drawn by hand. The subjects range from dentists and dragons to algebra and old age, from spiders to dentures to the particular indignity of a necktie. The tone is warm and mischievous throughout. The humor is the kind that does not require a target.
It was written for readers twelve and under, and for the adults reading aloud to them, and for anyone who could use a laugh on a Tuesday afternoon. The prescription is non-refillable but the reading is free.
Buy on Amazon →The illustrations
He drew every one of them himself.
The illustrations in It’s A Jungle Out There are not the work of a hired artist. They are the work of a man who learned to draw the way he learned everything else: by doing it, for a long time, for his own reasons. The animals are slightly wrong in a way that is entirely right. The humans are recognizable and a little absurd.
The drawings match the poems in exactly the way you would want. There are no borrowed images and no stock art. What you see is what a doctor who writes poetry also draws at the end of the day.
The family
Two dogs. Two languages. One son who built this website.
Dr. Nangia lives with Taco and Chiku, who are dogs and who do not appreciate being left out of the acknowledgments. He cooks, he photographs, he pays attention to things that most people walk past. He is, by all accounts, a remarkably good father.
This website was built by his son Abhi, as a gift. Abhi runs reweave.org, an organization working on economic mobility. He thought his dad’s poems deserved a proper home online, so he built one.
About reweave.org
A portion of book proceeds supports reweave, a nonprofit working to expand economic opportunity. If reading these poems made you smile and you want to do something with that feeling, a tip to reweave is a good place to put it.
Learn about reweave →The Hindi book
Tarane Zindagi Ke
Dr. Nangia also writes in Hindi. His second collection, Tarane Zindagi Ke (roughly: tunes of life), exists and is looking for its moment on this website. When it arrives, you will find it here alongside its English counterpart, in the same prescription pad, same saffron stripe, same handwriting.
If you are here from that part of the world and you already know these poems in Hindi, hello. We are working on it.
102 prescriptions, free to read.
No appointment necessary. No insurance required.