Prachi Behrani End term Assignment and Self-Reflective essay

 Prompt: Poetry: Write four poems triggered by your reading of Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things'. You can choose instances, characters, places or ideas from within the novel and explore them further in your poems.

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1. Does it count? 

Most mornings now

I wake up wondering,

If I see you in my dreams

do you feel my eyes on you?

I wonder

If you get goosebumps

every time I run my fingers

on your chest, in my dreams.

Do your legs still tremble

when I ask you to sing to me

and listen to your shaky voice

while I'm asleep?

If it hurts your skin

when I poke your arm

to see if you're real

for that's what my dreams feel like.

If you smile

when I run my fingers

through your hair

or nibble at your ear.

If you ache to 

touch me too

but can't have your will

for it's my dream.

And you're just

a body of whispers

skin painted with stardust

and a heart of dew. 

I wake up questioning myself

like Estha questioned Ammu

"If you're happy in a dream 

does it count? "

When she dreamt in late afternoon 

flying on heavy, shuddering wings

thinking of the one-armed man

the one who left no foot prints.

"If he held her

he couldn't kiss her 

If he kissed her
he couldn't see her"

Does all this count?

does it feel real to you too?

do you wake-up 

after meeting me in dreams too?

Are we together

for we were, 

in my dreams.

Does it count?

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2. The laws of love

I could never understand

the 'Love Laws'.

Never knew

who should be loved

and how

and how much.

Could never understand

why I was told

that I was too young to be in love

when I fell for

the boy next door

when I was ten.

Could never understand

how love worked

when mom told me once

'Talking to him all day long

would make him

lose interest in you.'

Could never understand

what was appropriate

when it came to love

when Dad warned me

not to let that boy

touch me inappropriately.

Could never understand

how much of myself

I had to give.

And ended up

losing myself every time

I found love .

Could never understand

when my friends said

that I deserved better.

If I loved fairy lights

who cared if

the stars shone brighter?

Could never understand

why I thought that

it was okay

to love someone

even if they didn't

love me back.

Every time someone

tried to teach me

'The Laws of Love'

all I could see was

'The Loss of love'

The loss

Of young love

when love wasn't a flower

but a bud

waiting to bloom.

The loss

of raw words

which you say in a daze

and regret

waiting for a reply

The loss

of the first touch

that burns your skin

and sends chills

down your spine

The loss

of not losing oneself

in the lover's arms.
Of not making

wrong choices.

The loss

of love

every time I followed

the laws

of love.

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3. From Rahel

Ammu said," that's what careless words do

they make people love you a little less"

And maybe, she was right

this is exactly what happened

every time words stung

even if you didn't want them to. 

Punishments and revenge

don't seem to work

whispered sweet-nothings

don't serve as balms. 

You can't stick back together

the pieces of a broken heart.

You can't make the eyes

swallow the drop of tear dropped.

You can't tie up

the bonds you break. 

You can't ever shorten

the distances you create. 

With each word that hurts,

the love keeps becoming

lesser and lesser and lesser

until one day, it disappears. 

I knew it when 

I saw him use his words carelessly. 

He threw them around

like crumpled pieces of paper.

the paper balls 

flying across the room. 

catching my attention. 

distracting me

even after they had fallen to the ground. 

I tried to pick some up

uncrumbled them

read between the lines

wonder what he meant

picked up more and more and more

but the pages, were crushed 

and words, blurred. 

The wrinkled paper

like mosquitoes now

buzzed right at me. 

Right in front of my eyes

some, half inside my ear

some forcing their way inside my mouth. 

The mosquitoes

turned into jets now. 

With a sleepy pilot

flying really high, but

crashing with a thud

on the mountain of  my hopes. 

Only, and if only I could

hear some more of his

carelessly thrown words

I could, maybe

love him lesser. 

If some part of my love

vanished, with each

crumpled ball thrown

on my face,

maybe, the millionth time

there would be no love to be lost.

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4.Great Stories

 had always wondered

what was the story of us

if there was one
and why, was it so incomplete. 

Until one day

Roy taught me

the secret of great stories was 

that 'they have no secrets'.

And maybe that

was exactly our story. 

I always knew, 

the end of it. 

Like great stories,

like 'The God of Small Things', 

our story too, had everything

laid down, right in front of us.

The time did stop,

we painted patterns

repeated our words

and dwelt in the past.

Each moment, familiar

like the 'house you lived in

and the smell of your lover's skin"

and yet, I wanted to live it all - again.

It's like knowing 

the touch of water beneath your feet

and yet wanting to 

dip your feet in the pool, once more.

Like knowing the peace of sleep

and yet begging for 

the extra five minutes

every morning. 

Like knowing how

chocolate melts in your mouth

and yet  fighting 

for the last bite

Like knowing that

your pizza would be cold by now

and yet opening the box

to savor it again.

It's like, knowing the end

knowing "who lives

who dies and who finds love"

and still reading a book. 

Like I knew, 

at the end if our story

it'll be us, who live, us, who die

and us, who'll find love

We'll connect the story like dots

complete it, with an extra chapter

and if anything, remained incomplete

we'll turn, to say 'Naaley', Tomorrow.

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Self-reflective essay

The ‘Ways of Reading’ course has been an enlightening journey. It didn’t just teach me, the ways of reading (as the name suggests), but also the ways of diving deep into different kinds of texts, be it poetry, graphic novels, fiction or non- fiction. It has taught me, the way of seeing the world, and the words with a critical eye, to comprehend the text better and to work on my own way of writing.

I have always believed, as Wordsworth said, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from the emotion recollected in tranquillity”. However, this course has taught me, that poetry, may not always be an ‘overflow’, it may be, a deliberate attempt to create, keeping in mind the techniques, the poetic devices, and the right words, that may touch the heart of the reader.


Reading Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, opened up a whole new world for me. Her poems like “Mrs Midas” and “Mrs Tiresias” taught me how, the mythology could be explored, and re-created in my own words, leading me to create poems like ‘Ahalya’ and ‘Ila’, something I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do on my own. Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘ The Fish’  and Mark Doty's essay 'The Tremendous Fish', taught me, the role of intricate details and the art of description in a poem, something I have been trying to adopt in my own works as well.

Though, quite naturally, I’ve using line-breaks in my poems, reading ‘Learning the Poetic Line: How line breaks shape meaning' by Rebecca Hazelton , helped me identify my faults, and how line-breaks were more important than I could have ever thought, when it came to the poem’s essence and meaning. Learning about devices like repetition, syntax and rhythm, helped me further polish my poetry. I don’t think my poem ‘Voices’ would have been complete without the kind of repetitions I used, the impact was stronger, and the emotions clearer.

Aditi Rao’s workshop 'Of Boxes and Stone-Coats: A Workshop on Metaphor and Image', was very illuminating as well! It made me understand the importance of imagery, the way colours, shapes, sounds and even smells could be used to portrayed emotions and express feelings. It helped me understand the types of metaphors and the correct positioning of tenors and vehicles.

I’ve loved writing poetry, for as long as I can remember. But this course made me realise, what my art was missing. From the feedback I received, and from the works of other artists, and my classmates, I could identify, that my poems lacked specifications and spoke to people in general, terms. How, they had more of romanticised phrases, and less details. However, I believe, that I worked on my short comings, and could see a major difference in my own poems. This is something, I’ll always be grateful to the course for.


We also read Graphic novels, a genre I had never read seriously. However reading.  Art Spiegelman works: 'Maus: A Survivor's Tale: I: My Father Bleeds History' and 'Maus: A Survivor's Tale: II: And Here My Troubles Began’, I realised how interesting this genre was. The gripping text, the little but essential details in the graphics, the use of symbolism, all grabbed my attention. Learning about the shift in panels and the transitions, was particularly interesting! Though I believe, creating graphics is beyond my creative abilities, but the fact that it taught me to appreciate a whole new genre, has opened up for me a possibility of discovering many more similar texts in the future.

Reading Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’, was a beautiful experience as well. When I read it on my own earlier, I could only cherish the beautiful language, the way it was written, the story-line and the literary techniques. But the class discussions, helped me explore, the missing elements in the novel, where we could add our own words to the world of the story. I could also understand the politics behind the novel, something very essential, and to which I would have otherwise, not paid as much heed to. The book with its poetic language, also encouraged me to write poetry, inspired from the story.

I had never before, read a book like John Berger’s 'Ways of Seeing', and I believe, I would have missed out on a lot, if I hadn’t. Since, ‘seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.’, and the ways to look at art works, with a literary eye is something the text taught me.
I believe, that through this understanding, I can draw my poetry, on art works as well. Getting insights from what the picture directly shows, what it doesn’t and what could have been presented to us, I understood how to ‘read a picture’.

Most importantly, this course has taught me, that reading, isn’t as simple, or as easy as people assume it to be. It involves as much effort as writing, or painting or photography. It, is an art which involves checking for minute details, repetitions, line-breaks, rhythm and poetic devices, with their significance in poetry, or checking for the intricacies of language in prose, or creating words out of pictures. The art of reading, is not done, just for the sake of reading, but also for learning how to write, how to get inspired from art, to create art.  I’m glad, and very grateful that this course, could teach me so much, and allow me to work on my short-comings.