Sutanuka Ghosh Roy
Anju Makhija is a poet, translator, and playwright based in Mumbai. For years now, Makhija has been writing poetry that crosses boundaries and explores astonishing and uncategorisable experiments that question the contours of poetry. Changing, Unchanging, her latest collection, has a spread of verses that establishes her voice as a redoubtable force in the contemporary poetic scenario. The volume is divided into three sections: Newer Poems {2012-2023}, {1995-2012}, and {1990-1995}. In the Preface to the collection, Sonia J Nair writes, “This collection represents a milestone in the life of the poet.” Changing, Unchanging invites the readers to respond to the older and newer poems of the poet, the storytelling on life, and delves deep into the disturbing possibilities at the intersection of the two. The opening poem, ‘Abandoning the Farmhouse’, projects an alternative, all-too-familiar truth of contemporary times:
Thorns pierced the skin,
tore flesh apart.
We were forced to depart
like weeping village daughters.
…
The blithe greenery
coaxed us to stay.
Unable to pick up the threads
of our lives, we left.
The poem has a pendulum motion and takes us back and forth in time. The same hypnotic effect is carried over in another poem, ‘Building a Farmhouse’: “Again and again, we leave./ Walls give way to walls/ and mad hatter’s tea parties.”
‘Hung’ exposes with shocking brutality the relationship between power and abuse: “Could it have happened? / … grappled to articulate/ the fate of Gaza victims,/ fraught with chaos,/ locked themselves in a disk./ Time out,/ the CPU commanded./ Words stood numb.”
‘Meeting with Lord Yama’ is riveting even as the gruesome crime-thriller-like structure of the poem remains intact. Dramatic trickery and dual realities add startling poetic textures to this unusual poem that ferments from amorous interactions of a lady—Brinda, a 33 year-old KG teacher—with Yama, the lord of death, who turns out to be quite a ladies’ man, and Brinda learns the trick of life: “Like a child keeping away from fire,/ I’ve learnt to evade getting burnt.”
Changing, Unchanging add layers of journalism and personal narratives with poetry to question traditional notions of gender, femininity, and the brutalities of the patriarchal society. The poem, ‘The Tale of the Young Bride’, is immersive; it focuses on the intricacies of the body as politics, the shocking botched-up disappearance of a young bride—with a forceful proposition of what it means to be caged, and ensures that the urgent entreaty is not lost on women who experience it: “This is not a tale without an ending, for all tales end./ One night, she disappeared in a crowded bustee,/ never to be found, never to be offered,/ never to return, or to be returned again”.
‘Last Hours’ is themed on death, examined through different lenses, and remembrance. Makhija explores the conflicting emotions in the processing of grief: “To a subliminal state I imagine you’ll go,/ forsaking bouts of laughter and silences,/ the beginning of a twilight journey,/ a midnight tryst in Cinderella’s world.” This is a gut-wrenching poem that brings together poetry, physicality, and the ancient practice of keening into a compelling poem of great thoughtfulness and imagination, kneading the personal and universal. It offers a lens through which the ideas of consent and agency are examined. Further, the poem subverts the narrative of one of the many neglected women of our time.
‘The Last Train’ has a hilarious and scathing tone at once, when a VIP’s missing head finds an unlikely replacement. The poem homes Makhija’s movement vocabulary of slow, serene, and weighted stillness. She works with text, sound, and pens a political satire, breathing separate lives into each layer, which provides a lens to all the characters—Gopal, Naresh, and Rajesh.
Our enterprise will diversify
to bathroom fittings, denture fillings,
Computers, cartridges, clones…
Bill’s technology, Musk’s vision
as only true genius can envision.
Makhija has complete control over her medium. Her mastery over poetic form is evident from how she turns memories, loss, love, despair, and hope into fluid dramatic compositions. An inclination to flirt with physicality and a flair for uncovering deeper resonances in crevices of the mind has become her signature in Changing, Unchanging. In ‘An Order for a New Head,’ she writes: “Brandy, I, and the third eye. In the moonlight…/ coconut trees, omnipresent Gods; two Gods too many./ Papayas, pulpy breasts, squeeze them dry./ Falling twigs, a shower of snakes;/ swallowing them, I emerge Medusa!”
With Changing, Unchanging, Makhija enters darker layers of human psychology, and that too in style, showing signs of brilliance in all the poetic departments. The cover painting by Ratnakar Ojha is a stunner of a watch. The book is a must-have for poetry lovers.
The book can be purchased from Red River here and from Amazon IN here.
Dr. Sutanuka Ghosh Roy is an Associate Professor of English at Tarakeswar Degree College, University of Burdwan. She has published widely and presented papers at National and International Seminars. She is a regular contributor of research articles and papers to anthologies, and national and international journals of repute like Text, Journal of Writing and Writing Courses (Australia), Kervan International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies (University of Turin, Italy), Fiar (University of Bielefeld, Germany), Muse India, Setu, Lapiz Lazuli, The Times of India, The Statesman, Life and Legends, Kitaab, etc. Her poems have been anthologised and published in Setu, The Piker Press, Harbinger Asylum, Teesta Journal, etc. Her books are Critical Inquiry: Text, Context, and Perspectives, Commentaries: Elucidating Poetry, Rassundari Dasi’s Amar Jiban: A Comprehensive Study, and Ashprishya (translated into Bengali, a novel by Sharan Kumar Limbale). Opera is her debutant collection of poetry. She is also a reviewer, poet, and critic.
