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The true voice
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Anindita Sengupta, who has just released her first anthology, City of Water, says that poetry is what she comes home to
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Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.
MINDSCAPE Life does not exactly work according to theoretical frameworks, says Anindita
At some point in our lives, all of us try our hand at poetry. Mostly in early years of school. With growing up, one grows out of it. Not quite with Anindita Sengupta, it was mutual — poetry stayed with her and she, with it. “I started writing poetry when I was 10. Of course, they are horrible versions which I would like to disown. But writing was always my calling,” says Anindita Sengupta, whose first anthology of poetry “City Of Water” has just been released by Sahitya Akademi.
Anindita's parents were happy about their daughter's passion for poetry; they were encouraging as well. Nevertheless, they never saw it as something that one pursued as a profession. In fact, Anindita recalls that her parents were mildly shocked when she announced her decision to become a journalist. “It was my husband who said that I should take up poetry seriously.” Sarita Vellani of Toto Funds the Arts was yet another person who insisted that she talk to other poets, share and discuss her work.
“Poetry came naturally to me. I did try to write bits of prose, inspired by writers like Enid Blyton. But I could not stay there. My attraction for poetry was not logical. It has always been something that I have come home to. Poetry for me is pleasure, and catharsis as well,” explains Anindita, who worked with Indian Express and Asian Age and has now settled down to being a freelance writer.
With passing years, Anindita recognises that her preoccupations have changed. There are many things that she has left behind. From her first book to now, she maps a clear shift in her outlook. “In my first book, I wrote about family, personal relationships. It was a collection of all the poems that I had already written. By the time I came to my second book, I had become more conscious of poetry as craft. I am thinking of my next one as a book right from the beginning. I am looking at things in a very nuanced way and it is a more conscious process. It has now moved beyond subject and expression. I also think about specific tone, voice, texture, tenor and about every single word that I use.”
Anindita runs a website Ultraviolet, which is a community of young feminists blogging on issues, challenges and triumphs that affect women in India today. “I started this with Usha and Indu of Hengasara Hakkina Sangha (HHS). But along the way I did not feel too comfortable with the fact that we were reflecting the HHS ideology. I like a happy cacophony of voices and we decided to part ways.”
As a woman writer, does it become imperative to have a feminist agenda? “For me feminism is to respect the woman and the choices she makes. I can't buy any school of feminism completely. I am interested in simple things. Life does not exactly work according to theoretical frameworks. Because in real life we negotiate relationships, motherhood… and constantly try to balance being a woman and a feminist,” she avers. But often, Anindita's writings have fetched her the tag “subtly feminist” and this is something that isn't particularly flattering for her. “My works will surely be informed by everything I am, but it doesn't have an agenda.”
Aren't websites of this nature both elitist and exclusivist? “It is true. But that doesn't make it a case for discarding and disowning these voices. What I am vary of is that people may see it is as representative. Hence, translations of lesser heard voices are extremely important. They work as bridge between different classes.”Anindita, recipient of the Toto Award and the Charles Wallace Fellowship, has written for several journals.
In the “City of Water” she visits several things; she even tries her hand at ghazals. Keki N. Daruwalla, in his foreword, says, “Sengupta is better at the ghazal than most Indian poets writing in English that I know of.” Anindita, working on her second book, wants to push boundaries. “I am not in a hurry. I am doing it leisurely, waiting for the best to come to me.”
DEEPA GANESH
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