Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 1. May 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
This Could Be a
Love Poem for You
By Ranu Uniyal, Red
River, 2025
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Nishi Pulugurtha
Across the Divide (2006), December
Poems (2012), The Day We Went Strawberry Picking in Scarborough
(2018) and now This Could Be a Love Poem (2025) add to the poetic oeuvre
of poet, critic and academic Ranu Uniyal. This reviewer had the pleasure of
reviewing Uniyal’s third volume of poem some years ago. The volume under review
has 62 poems divided into three sections – Dust My Regrets, Be a Good Girl and
Thy Eternal Grace. “This Could be a Love Poem to You” is a small poem that
features in the third section and speaks of place, and of remembering. Written
in lines that flow into one another, the four sentences that make up the poem
create a feeling of holding on –
. . . I know
my prayers will keep you
safe and I
must wait with the
coffee and some
olive oil for your tired
feet.
Uniyal’s academic
training in English literature, her felicity with the language and the ease of
expression in the tongue is what characterizes “English in Me,” the first poem
in the volume –
English is as big as a
mustard seed
in my conscience.
I have made a living
all these years,
read and chewed
and sometimes failed to
digest
its embryonic juices.”
What she says resonates with several who use English as a regular
part of their worlds, both professional and creative. Hers is a language where
the regional seeps in, she mentions Sanskrit fusing with her English as she
uses the language. In spite of everything, it is her language. Kamala Das comes to mind as one reads the
poem.
“Dust My Regrets”
speaks of a poet writing, of the tugs and pulls of home and that of working
with words and thoughts – “I eat and sleep with one eye open. / My fingers
crave for company.” Places and their associations jostle for attention in
“Plums versus Pullum.” The reference to “Pullum” brings in the idea of
language, of pronunciation, of making words one’s one as in the case of “plums”
in the poem.
My mornings have a taste
of
the plums from Ranikhet
–
Aha Pullum – the
children
toss and twang
The
lockdown features in a short poem that reveals a poet in love with poetry, not
just the kind she writes, but the ones she reads as well. It is a veritable
feast lined up for a Sunday, “Lockdown Sunday Menu” –
I
had villanelle for lunch today.
Sonnet
for breakfast,
dinner
in free verse,
midnight
drink was an epic,
and
tea was all rhymes.
There are
several poems that speak of grief and loss, poems where the personal becomes a
starting point for thoughts and feelings. “Grief” is a poem written after the
passing away of her mother, “Home” speaks of pain too –
After
some time,
when
she opened them wide
she
found herself in a nursing home
In her Introduction to the volume,
the noted Hindi poet Anamika notes of grief in Uniyal’s poems – “Grief, aging
and death seep deep within us like the notes of Beethoven flowing from a window
up on the mountains as we flip through the pages . . . “. “Grief Does Not Die”
speaks of the persistence of grief in lives –
Grief
asks you not to surrender.
‘I
am here to stay,’ it taps on your chest
and
keeps you agog at night.
The imagery in the poem reveal the
rawness, the pain, the agony of grief – “it rips you open and as you/chug along
with crushed smiles/ for all to see”. The figure of the mother features again,
in the poem “Amma”. While there is a tinge of loss in the poem, it nevertheless
speaks of home, of lessons taught, of lessons learnt, lessons that have stood
the test of time, lessons that have made the speaker question values, questions
violence in the world and hold one’s head high.
In
you, I had the strength of a tree
bumming
with songs of Kali.
In
you was the courage to love with no chance
of
a return. You taught me to be myself.
In
several of the poems one hears this strong voice, that is at time muffled by
angst, at times momentarily overwhelmed by grief, and yet stands out strong and
steady, a testament to a life itself. There are several poems in which the
mother is lost in the folds of time – “The present, blurred and faceless, has
no challenges/ for you” (“Grandfather”). “I Cannot Answer” refers to this
blurring further, more specifically –
.
. . Pyramids of memory stacked
inside
the brain might soon
dissolve
into Alzheimer’s, then
my
own name would be less than
a
whisper.
What
characterizes the voice heard in the poems iscompassion, of trying to hold on
in spite of the circumstances that seem so adverse. ‘Listen to my voice,’ the
poems seem to say. The poetic voice is one that voices the personal and yet is
universal, in a simple, lucid style with a spontaneity that lingers on.
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