Roaring Contemporary Indian Woman Performance Poet: Megha Rao

I first encountered Megha Rao last year, on the bookshelf of Café Sienna in Kolkata. I read a page from her book at random, as is my habit.

It resonated with me, so I wanted to buy it. A friend bought it for me and said she'd borrow it when I was done, which is yet to happen.

A performance poet, Megha Rao’s poems confront difficult emotions for women, like anger.

Here’s one of Megha Rao’s poems –

Lost Jewels

Those who have seen me burst into whirling dervishes.

Robes spinning in meditation, they are reborn to my name.

To acknowledge me is to acknowledge the soil. To marvel

at black cardamom, cinnamon, fried okra. To honor the slender

coat of turmeric in the light. To revel in bodies that are not

white marble, but the mane of lions. To drink the perfume of

spices and not burn. To walk on the Bay of Bengal coast and

wear the scent of dried fish—

Because in my land, I am how ittar is made.

Musk, amber, saffron, that’s how I taste.

My skin is a tea garden fresh from the rain.

When he sees me raging through the rubber plantations, the

messenger of the clouds

forgets the damsel he was meant to reach. Kalidasa, the

classical poet, vows to write about me, instead. The earth

forgets to spin around its own axis & begins to circle my waist.

I am the daughter of the Western Ghats.

My throat is the sky.

The sun rises in memory of my golden limbs.

Those who have seen me renounce the world for the

symphony of my anklets. To witness the tapestry of my hair,

rich in silk & coconut oil. Those who have given up stargazing

& silver doors & royal liquor need no horoscopes to believe in

a truth like me—

To know the Taj Mahal has to take but one look at me &

announce that

all her lost jewels have been found.

You can also listen to the audio at the link.

Her language reminds me of the lushness of Arundhati Roy’s prose. Megha Rao also does workshops on poetry. I follow her on Instagram, and marvel at how close we are to poets today, compared to say reading Margaret Atwood in college. Although Atwood is also a contemporary woman poet, social media makes the young poets more accessible to their readers.