'Changing, Unchanging' By Anju Makhija: Molecular Metamorphosis Of A Poet

It is the nature of poetry to stem out of observant minds. When the observation becomes one with the poems, they change with the reading sessions we choose to pursue. For a collection, the same can be followed only when we get to read about the impenetrability and vulnerabilities of the poet. Anju Makhija바카라™s book, Changing, Unchanging: New and Selected Poems (1995 바카라“ 2023), draws us towards poems which contradict and complement each other. But, at the very end of the day, what remains with the readers is a journey from the core of a seedling to the vision of a plant. Even then the plant does bend towards the sunlight to keep the metabolism active and to not eliminate hope. This kind of phototropism in a human being is an impossibility. But is not difficult to bring the same activity in an individual바카라™s works since they drive through limitations by leaning towards hope. 

There are poets who speak about poverty from air-conditioned rooms. It is not bad in a democracy but it can be toxic when poetry becomes a rant. Bombay/Mumbai grows in Anju Makhija바카라™s poetry. It does not have a single identity and dwells in the grey. The binary construct of any city can be an easy cup of tea, but like tea depends on the leaves that have been crushed for it to reach our lips, cities offer us certain raw components. They can be made of flesh and bones. Or they are made of permanent landscapes. Makhija writes about both to keep the city alive and desirable for the readers.

Similarly, the language of a poem decides its reach. It is like the steel of a knife. One can either feel the chilling surface or the pain when it pierces through our tissues. The poet바카라™s language provides us a visual, a necessary idea and a chunk of her heart through her verses. They can touch us only when in times of comfort. Makhija바카라™s poetry is not directed to ruffle our basic contentment. 

The collection is divided into three parts to give us an idea of the poet바카라™s evolution and the versions which stayed as permanent companions. In the first part, we get to read her recent poems where the poems are a little calm, not confounded by morbidity and takes the bigger picture into concern. In her poem Approaching Matrimandir, Anju speaks about the core of an enlightened thought that is born out of experiences and a liberated mind. It accepts diversity of faith and embraces a belief that resides with seeking. Here, the poet both associates and dissociates herself from the reality to become an observer. So, when she says: 

The downpour keeps us in, 

searching for our God. 

He is not ours. 

Fishermen breaks coconuts 

celebrating their God. 

He is theirs    

 바카라¦it shows the clarity that the poet grew by living many lives in one. Similarly, in her poem Vanishing Text, the poet erases the fog spilled over the idea of letting go of moments. She sheds nihilism and accepts how everything is going to work in the perfect time. We get to see the growing up phase of the child in her mind who innocently follows the thought of idealism. It cannot be coined as evolution. It is rather a phase where the poet deliberately allowed her present to outshine her past. Sometimes this is what we do when life becomes a cheeky next-door-neighbour. 

She braces the next-door-neighbour by writing: 

Stockpile the papers, 

turn on the tap, till the ink bleeds, 

till blood feels like water, 

flowing easily between 

impervious niches. 

To include dramatic verses in a book is undoubtedly an interesting decision. But the decision does justice to the genre only when the verses do not turn into conversations in prose. Anju Makhija succeeds in breaking the bridge between the two artforms. Meeting with Lord Yama is a bold attempt to bring out the personal self before the God of death. We always strip our bits and pieces before the conclusion of life or a story or even a rubbish conversation. It is how we shed the weight off our shoulders. The character in this dramatic verse initially goes into understanding her life and where will she reside after her death.

Her conversation with Yama is where the conflict between death and life starts to hover. In this particular part, we get to see the desire she has for freedom, fearlessness, and to seem confident when her back is against the wall. She has a life to lose but she has a death to live. The poet바카라™s mind is peeled through the character she establishes as her own manifestation. To explain something dark and grim, as human beings, we choose messengers or agents to deliver our words. The concept of Avatara was born for this specific reason. 

She writes: 

I am here now, where 

I never intended to be! 

I am dead, though life 

does not appear to leave me. 

Desire is an important element of poetry. It holds pain and pleasure in their most absolute forms. Flight is a dark and seductive poem that does not refrain from being raw and yet romantic. The metaphors used in the poem has the tendency of being gross but not disgusting. It stands on the borderline and anyone who is drawn to disgust and darkness in love is going to remember this poem. It is sad in parts and also builds the atmosphere of loneliness. The nature claws through the rise and hollows of this cry of desire. Here, memory is deciphered like the smell of a lover바카라™s armpit. It can be accepted only when lust claws with love in the tip of its nails. The erotic flow of this poem has been embroidered with moments, the components associated with them and with the extremities of a relationship. The poet explores this theme with a surreal beauty.  

She writes: 

I look at the fields, 

hear a bird cry, 

further at the burning ghat 바카라“  

this is where I may die 

and ants will carry me single file, 

to that sacred place 

where lovers still play 

in long-forgotten ways. 

In the poem The Tara Dialogues, Anju Makhija breaks the fourth wall of humanity. The breaking allows her to write about things which can churn someone바카라™s stomach. But that churning is required when it comes to framing exploitation, discrimination and oppression of women in a write-up that disturbs our sound mornings and evenings. The poem explores the extreme kind of devotion in times of distress and the anger the soul exerts over the body. The deity in the poem is a metaphor of resistance inside a woman. The deity also places the idea of conflict and chaos which becomes obvious inside a disturbed mind. Existence or non-existence of a God or many Gods is still under question. The devotion is mostly a part of our psyche where the development of this concept gives us a warm comfort. The poem explodes the horror and disgust to then drink both to bring a balance. This homeostasis is required to complete the moment with a bitter or pleasurable ending.  

 Anju writes: 

Tara blamed Tara. 

Tara clawed Tara 

Both bled and where the red dried, 

the villagers built a shrine 

for the two who refused to let go 

of life and death.  

Changing, Unchanging is a necessary collection of poems to understand how a human being grows with a new perspective towards life, death and everything beyond them. The ferocity gets calm; the bare seduction is toned down by the experience; the knife metamorphoses into a spoon. The poet wants us to look what the spoon is holding and to do it, our hands should proceed towards the steel. Our body should walk towards it and the tongue has to leave its warmth on its body.