Running right into a 1,000-odd pages, this anthology is each an audacious endeavor and an amazing labour of affection. It “spans 37 Indian cities, that includes 375 poems by 264 poets, translated by 90 translators throughout 20 languages” as Moin factors out in his introduction to the tome.
Thankfully, he lets us in on what transpired behind the scenes. He writes, “The function of an anthologist calls for carrying many hats: the aesthete whereas studying poetry, the hawker pitching the manuscript to publishers, the detective monitoring down copyright, the therapist and negotiator with estates, and at last, the curator, assembling all of it right into a coherent version.”
The e book is structured by metropolis: Mumbai-Bombay, Pune-Poona, Ahmedabad-Amdavad, Kochi-Cochin, Bengaluru-Bangalore, Delhi-Dilli, Kanpur-Cawnpore, Kataka-Cuttack, Kolkata-Calcutta, and so forth. Through this poetic mapping of India, Moin offers us an opportunity to marvel at how huge and numerous this land is.
An imposing unfold
While approaching a piece that’s so encyclopaedic in scope, it appears higher to pattern and savour than gobble in order that one is ready to do justice to the flavours, textures and aromas on supply. Amir Khusrau, Narayan Surve and Amrita Pritam share house with Agha Shahid Ali, Imtiaz Dharker and Linthoi Ningthoujam right here. Surdas, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and Sarojini Naidu co-habit with Jibananda Das, Tishani Doshi and Kynpham Sing Nonkynrih. The editor has managed to sew collectively an imposing quilt from items of poetry representing completely different generations, ideological affiliations, and geographies.
It is tempting to think about what a mehfil (gathering) with every of those poets in attendance would look, sound and really feel like. Would they encourage one another with an “irshaad” right here, a “waah-waah” there? Or would they pull out their smartphones to seize brief movies of their friends reciting their favorite traces, after which share these as Instagram tales? This is a relatively optimistic view maybe provided that poet and English professor Eunice de Souza — in her poem ‘Meeting Poets’ — as soon as cautioned us that it’s best to fulfill them of their poems.
Since many of the poems on this e book are pretty brief, they reward shut studying. A.Okay. Ramanujan’s ‘Poona Train Window’ juxtaposes the scatological and the chic. The speaker within the poem is a traveller whose gaze falls upon a person defecating on the railway tracks. This sight evokes the speaker to ponder over the symmetry of human buttocks whereas sipping railway tea. The poet takes an abnormal incidence and transforms it into an surprising supply of amusement.
Asiya Zahoor’s ‘What Dal Lake Wants to Tell Me’ is offered as a dialog between a human being and a waterbody. The speaker within the poem, plagued with existential angst, and the burden of tradition and historical past, is advised: You usually are not… a ship, weed, a leaf, a path within the sky,/ an embroidered almond, or a concubine./ You are a pawn on a chessboard —/ Learn the artwork of being irrelevant.
A dwelling, respiration entity
Robin S. Ngangom’s ‘Gangtok, February 1998’ evokes the stillness of a monastery that has been the seat of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism for hundreds of years, and witnessed quests for liberation in addition to battles for energy. The speaker notes: In the aquamarine afternoon/ Rumtek turns sluggish prayer wheels/ which cuts throughout the axis of earth/ to generate compassion for a cold-blooded world. Rumtek is the place actor Kabir Bedi’s mom Freda Bedi aka Gelongma Karma Kechog Palmo acquired non secular instruction from the sixteenth Karmapa, and laid the inspiration for the transmission of Buddhism to the West.
This e book reminds us that cities defy standardisation though the identical malls, espresso retailers, pizza chains and multiplexes look like popping up in all places. There is extra to them than the concrete jungles they’re believed to be. They are made and unmade by the individuals who reside in them, daring to reside one other day regardless of the playing cards that life has dealt them. Moin’s e book isn’t just a literary compendium; it’s an archive of how city India thrives and breathes.
The reviewer is a journalist, educator and literary critic.
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