Collaborate with the World and its People with Love

Sumitra Kumar reviews 'My Conversations with God, Life and Death.'

I have to tell you this. It’s your loss if you only sift through Anju’s latest work titled ‘My Conversations with God, Life, and Death’ just because you are busy.

 

Each poem is captivating. One feels guilty about reviewing her book without reading it from cover to cover. Anju has finely mastered the ‘show, don’t tell’ approach in her writing to give us an immersive experience. So I recommend readers to walk with her holding hands, imagine being her best friend, and take every step of her journey.

 

The cover pic speaks for itself with striking images in the foreground and background; metaphorical to the life in front of us, and the bigger picture we usually miss absorbing. Three of my favourite people from IPC (India Poetry Circle) have given her a blurb each on the back cover, and Anju is also well-deserving of the praise in their full-length forewords inside. After savouring her book cover, which I am told is a pic taken by her daughter Divya, I am ready for a nonstop engagement of Anju with her inner voice.

 

In the first section, which I am certain will stand out as her most popular poems, her conscience takes form and character. It presents itself at her beck and call, talking like a mature adult would to a child. These make for a heartwarming experience.

 

Anju’s God is full of gestures. Except for his gender, she does not describe his attire, his skin colour or the length of his hair. So the reader is free to imagine him the way he or she wants. The first two poems are breezy, refreshing tête-à-têtes. God is with her and within her. How else can you have such conversations? She is in a world of her own that’s big, broad and spacious.

 

Anju’s book review was ready on the date I promised myself to write it. Only the hardest part remained. Which of her poems do I quote to present as my favourites? It was this short list that made me procrastinate. So now I pick a few as they would for a lucky draw. A prize indeed, any which way, for the reader.

 

Her playful God is just around the corner, looking over her shoulder in ‘Faith Going Viral’ on page 29. I always believe that the number of gods equals the number of people in this world. In the hustle and bustle of our lives, our minds remain uncharted. As Anju writes this poem, God is even proofreading her lines, assuring nothing could go wrong having him in your heart.

 

A child will fear the dark

And grab his mother’s arm

Only until he learns to turn on the light

Will his terror last

 

So while it does, he says, pointing at my screen

Gesturing for a comma to be pressed

Let me hearken to his appeals

Before he figures a way out of this mess

And returns to his furcated godfulness

 

I often wonder if her poem, ‘The Greater ill’’ on page 44, points to an important question we should ask ourselves. Especially on externals that we have no control over.

 

Ok, how do you know that what you want

Is the right thing to want?

Right not only for you

but for everybody in the plot?

 

He folds his arms and cocks his head

When I don’t reply, he continues

 

In a play, is it a character

That decides the role of another?

 

In the sections after her conversations with God, my favourites are ‘Grief’ on page 67 (under the section Life) and ‘Empty handed’ on page 122 (under the section Death) that, I feel, will deeply resonate with all. I am sharing a few lines from both in the same order.

 

Every day

there comes a mile

that one walks alone

bearing on the back, the cross

Nobody’s smile is enough

to soften the rough edge

nobody’s shoulder enough

to lighten the load

 

***

my skeletal frame

will be pulverised

by dust

the water in my veins

will quench time’s flames

the rest

the air will claim

 

Good things, as all things, are fleeting and must be experienced wholly while they last. She describes loss in just a few words in her poem titled the same on page 88 (under the section Life).

 

A snowflake melts
between my fingers
I try to hold it
at my wrist
but it runs down
my forearm
and is gone…

 

On the next page, experience the starkness in her poem ‘Colour Blind’. An inexplicable, bottled-up grief explodes in countless ways…

Dyeing my hair red

sounds cool
for who does not like

to look in control
of what has long gone haywire
Ah well
a red hat would work just fine

A red hat with little red balloons
or glittery red tassels
so nobody would look downwards
from that shiny rim
into what a joker

really is within

 

In the end there is nothing to give and nothing to take as expressed in ‘Empty Handed’.

 

take me thus

i come unto you

with nothing

to give you

give me nothing too

in return

let’s settle scores

so there’s no more a me

and no more a you

 

Just collaborate with the world and its people with love in your heart and leave. We read poetry to enjoy and relate. Hearty congratulations, Anju, on your second collection. The poems are exquisite!