Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
When we were kids, F and I were told, run backwards, you’ll forget it. It’ll be undone.
He would laugh and take a few steps back. The act undoing the hurt in the doing. I was always
hesitant, looking back, never letting it go, needing to be dragged away.
I learned to write really early. My mother was a school principal, I would hold the pencil tightly, squeezing and manoeuvring it. The tips of my fingers would sweat in the middle of my second
word, invariably, I would be grasping at the shaved cone bit making the pencil jerk (this
phenomenon returned on encountering a Hero pen). But this wayward scrawl made the effort
ugly and I would start again.
First, I would put a strong strikethrough. Then, I’d begin this time more determined, the jerk
would happen but not so often, eventually.
In school, even for the exams, I preferred the strong strike over rewriting on white blotches.
I like knowing that I make errors and looking back, even striking it out, it doesn’t disappear. I
like gazing at spillage across the determined line. The haunting, the sureness, it provides.
Either ways, walking backwards seems much harder.