Quioxitic Mani Rao – A Contemporary Indian Woman Poet

I first heard Mani Rao at the Pune International Literary Festival. Her musical voice, lilt as she read, introduced me to the importance of auditory aesthetics when it comes to poetry. She had carefully selected her words and arranged them to create music rather than words in her poems.

I bought her verse translation of the Bhagawad Gita, and for the first time, thought of the Gita as a poem. She inspired me to attempt my own translation of the Gita, as a summary, with Arjun’s perspective in poetry. My family and friends loved it, and my mom even demanded an audio version for her birthday!

Listen to Mani Rao reading one of her poems here. She has also got her poems visualized in some videos.

Consider the active verbs in this Mani Rao poem –

UNTITLED

My mother came home one day

without her uterus.

The doctor took it out.

Like someone heard me say

Let's act it out

act it out physically.

I was the baby who never cried

The snake on your breast

who stung you dry

The vicious pet

and yet you held

I shot past her knees past her hips past her breasts past

her shoulders, way past her wisps of hair, those rays

of grey light radiating from her shrunken head.

She had to look up to speak to me

She had to have wide eyes.

Life begins when the children are out of the house

and the dog is dead, I said.

She laughed

Dyed her hair black

Made me stay.

TIME BRINGS CHILDREN

THEY BURN HOLES IN OUR STOMACHS

POP OUR BELLY BUTTONS.

DEATH MAKES SENSE.

Weightless in your sticky fluids

too long you kept me in.

‘burn holes in our stomachs’ and ‘pop our belly buttons’ – What a strong way of describing the act of childbirth. Capitalizing the mother’s response was a clever way of giving her a distinctive voice – I could imagine her shouting.

Mani Rao has translated other classical works from Sanskrit, such as Kalidasa’s plays. She has also translated the Hindi poet Anamika’s work. Consider this poem by Anamika, translated by Mani Rao –

KITCHEN

I roll dough like it’s the earth.

As mountains roll volcanoes.

As houses roll earthquakes.

As the low ocean-tides roll silence.

Every morning when the sun rises

I lower my expectations,

release a bawl and roll dough

like it’s the earth.

The quotidian and the sublime – what a contrast! The poet’s voice comes through distinctively in Rao’s deft translation.

This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z.