Rashi Bareja- End Term Assignment ( Prompt 9) and Self- Reflective Essay

9. 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.

1-  Love Laws 

If months were love laws, 

January would come as a warning of who to love, by how, and how much. 

February would remind you of Murakami’s words of how it will be a long process, and you will have to work on things slowly.

Just like the forgetting of Sophie Mol’s death which was almost,

never forgotten. 

March would seem a lot like homecoming, where

you’d start to feel like home around a person. 

Just like Estha felt when Rahel brought with her a kind of light that falls on you when you just wake up. 

It would be raining outside, but you’ll feel safe 

just like Estha did when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. 

April will be full of jazz tunes. Every word from their mouth

will sound like poetry. Just like the words of Velutha 

would have sounded to Ammu. 

May will bring you a lot of hope. You will wear flowers

in your hair and have the sky in your mouth.

Just like Estha would have felt when 

he listened to Elvis Presley. 

June would remind you why poets write about loss.

The lump in your throat will constantly

remind you of grief. Worse things would keep happening. You won’t get an answer to that. Just like Mammachi cried over the loss of Pappachi. Just like Estha silently endured his molestation. 

July would be full of rains and you’d understand why Small Things are important. Just like The God of Small Things. 

Velutha. Just like the smell of his cologne.

August would be full of realizations. Just like Estha realized: 

Anything can happen to anyone.

It’s best to be prepared. 

September would seem like a lot of acceptance. 

Like things can change in a day. 

Just like Rahel realized that Ammu 

loved her a little less in a day. 

October would make you want to 

include them in your poetry. But don’t. 

Just like Velutha didn’t leave any footprints, 

don’t leave traces of your words for them. 

November would be like Shahid’s verses. You’ll cry and laugh at the same time. 

Just like Estha and Rahel who made love

out of "hideous grief."

December would remind you

of the love laws again. Of who to love, how and how much.

But this time, you won’t care. 

Just like Ammu and Velutha who transgressed boundaries, 

You’ll accept loss out of your grief

and pick up 

a pen.  

2-The God of Small Things

My favorite book taught me how

we can find metaphors for almost everything. 

We live in a strange world where

only the small things are ever said because 

the "big things always lurk inside." 

So we millennials engage in small talks, 

tell our mothers how much we love them on mother’s day, 

don’t tell our fathers how we’d like if they spend more time with us 

because the big things always lurk inside. 

The other day, I saw a mark on my friend’s face, 

She snapped at me and started talking about the weather.  

It seemed as if she was talking in metaphors. 

It rained a lot. It was a November rain. 

My favorite book taught me that love

smelled like old roses in a breeze, 

like all the figures of speeches merging into one, 

like the sunshine falling right on your face, 

only it doesn’t burn 

because it’s a winter sunshine. 

That’s how love feels like. 

It’s funny when Ammu thought of home, it was always 

the colors of the dark and the oiled wood of boats. 

It’s funny how Ammu thought of

home as a person. 

Velutha.

Maybe this is how love has always been.

A metaphor. 

Love has always been The God of Small Things. 

Velutha. 

3-  Careless Words 

I am the all the books I read

All the music I listen to 

And all the movies I watch.

Especially in times of grief, 

I turn to books, 

For “books are safer 

than people anyway.” 

I once read in a book 

About how we think that 

We have enough time to 

Say things to people 

And then we stand there 

Holding the word ‘if’ 

But when I started using 

My words recklessly 

Was when I realized 

That “careless words 

Make people love you 

A little less.” 

I wonder how 

Would have Rahel felt 

When Ammu told her that 

She loved her a little less

Because of her words. 

Did she start holding 

The word ‘if’ after that 

Like me?  

We like to make homes out of skin and bones 

when we clearly know

we should not and then wonder 

why we never run out of poetry. 

We use our words carelessly

when we know the repercussions of that: 

People loving us a little less. 

We run to people

when books have taught us

that it will end in catastrophe. 

Clearly, 

Books cannot save us. 

Only we can do that. 

4- Where do the old birds go to die?

Where do the old lovers go when their love is over?

Does the sky look less pretty that day? 

Does it look like that scene in Masaan when

Deepak breaks down in the middle of the lake? 

He mourns the loss of Shalu 

with silently trying to endure the death of his lover but 

soon the sky seems to split apart 

within him and he breaks down

Unlike Velutha who leaves no

traces of himself 

when the community doesn’t feel their love to be right. 

Deepak continues to live with

an inexplicable longing in his heart 

But Velutha dies, with no words

spoken by him for his loss. 

Maybe because the Small Things

always lurk inside, only the Big Things are ever said. 

Maybe Neil Gaiman was right when he said how "love takes you to hostages, gets inside you and eats you out." 

Velutha and Ammu were two old lovers

who didn’t know what to do with love

between two colors. 

For them, love didn’t know religion. 

But religion laid love laws

for who to love, how and how much. 

Things can change in a day. 

Religion became stakes to kill people in love 

with different communities. 

Things can change in a day. 

Velutha lost Ammu in the span of one day. 

When Zukas said in Book Thief, “ What will be the color of the sky when I will come for you?” 

For that matter, did the color of the sky change

for Velutha when he died under the very sky, 

for loving Ammu? 

Was the color of the sky blue 

when Deepak with his own hands

buried Shalu? 

There’s not much you can do when 

There are love laws laid 

For who to love, and how, and how much. 

When that happens, 

Things change in a day. 

Love leaves 

In a day.

Self-Reflective Essay 

As a child, I had always detested mugging up things and writing whatever I could remember in exams. English as a subject, at that point in time, came to me as a resue where I could write what I felt about and I think that was something which attracted me towards the subject. I remember that my favorite place as a child was the bookstore. I am 21 and there is no place that I would rather choose over the place which gave wings to my imagination and prompted me to write.

What attracted me to choose this course was exactly this. I didn’t know that it would create the impact that it did, but I knew that I would be able to do what I have always enjoyed doing: reading and writing. I will never forget the first class where Sir talked about the poem of Agha Shahid Ali, which happens to be one of my favorite poets of all times. I was amazed by the way we talked in class about the various themes and how the perspective of each and every student was taken into consideration. Coming to that, there is a graffiti in the AUD campus : ‘Liberate Yourself’, and this is exactly what I felt while attending the classes mainly because I could speak what I felt and I could voice out my opinions which is exactly what liberating yourself means to me and that’s when I decided to take up this course.

I could actually see a change in my process of writing poetry. Taking up literature as a field of study already made me realize that there were so many intricate details in a text than we realize, and this course helped me to polish that even more. It not only helped me to read in between the lines of a poem but also helped me realize WHY a poem was written the way it was. One of my favorite classes has to be the class on line breaks where we talked about Aditi Rao’s poem. I was almost in awe by how the meaning of the whole poem changed by placing even one word in the next sentence or breaking the sentence. It came as a sudden realization to me because I had never realized the importance of line breaks in all these years of writing poetry, but that day I did. I attempted a prompt on line breaks where I tried to incorporate some elements like surprise, sense, and syntax out of Wagner’s 6 S’ of a line break. I think I’ll always be grateful for having attended this class.

One of the things that this course taught me was to read pictures besides reading in between the words. Being someone who always liked to read things, I used to ignore the graphic details in a graphic novel because I came to a realization that I was unconsciously just focusing on the words and not paying heed to the images. When we were given creative tasks in the class of Maus was when I understood how graphics were equally important as words.

Poetry is something which has always been very close to my heart and it will always remain that way.  A course which allowed me to learn so many different techniques like describing a particular scene and repetitions for that matter will be something that I will always be thankful for. It made me realize that poetry was more than ‘spontaneous emotions’and prompted me to write using techniques like repetition and line breaks, something that would not have been possible if it were not for this course.

The God of Small Things happens to be one of my most beloved books of all time and it was very intriguing to learn about the various techniques of language that were used in the book. Those classes prompted me to write poetry on one of my favorite books and I don’t think I would have done it otherwise, and that is something which I will always remember: writing a set of poems on a text which I admire dearly.

Moreover, there are so many things that I absolutely loved about the course. The poetry workshop gave me an insight into writing poetry in a manner that was unknown to me earlier. The individual sessions where Sir gave feedbacks about our poems were something that proved to be very effective for me.

The best thing was that people who had never written poetry or short stories actually wrote it because of this course, and that's something really good. This course taught me to write poetry in a manner I didn’t think of, and I will always be grateful for that.