Of beautiful poems and a grandaunt who reads them to you

I have a grandaunt who reads me poetry.

Less than two months ago, when I met Lata Mami at her Mumbai apartment, she proudly showed me her little library that’s probably among the most carefully curated collections of Marathi poetry in the city.

We ran out of time for her to read me poems that day, but decided to pick it up over a WhatsApp call after I returned home in a few weeks' time. What was meant to be one call has since blossomed into a weekly poetry reading session.

Every Thursday evening, as I start to wind down on an inevitably crushing week, listening to her read me poems is just what my spirit needs.

“Poetry is my reason to live,” Lata Mami says matter-of-factly.

As I only recently discovered, she lives and breathes poetry.

She reads me Marathi poets she knows are my favourites before introducing me to other poets and writers. Each session sees Lata Mami cherry pick three or four poems with utmost care (not more).

“Let’s read a few so you can really savour their flavour. We could be greedy and read more but then you won’t enjoy them the same way.”

She has a point. Sometimes, she explores one poet per session. Other times, she curates a selection of poems by different poets with a shared theme. No doubt she spends a good deal of time mulling just what makes it into that week’s poetry reading.

Listen to Lata Mami read a poem by Marathi poet Shanta Shelke

Over the course of eight or so weeks and as many poetry reading sessions, I have savoured and learned more about Marathi poetry than I have at any other point in life.

I learn that Indira Sant writes evocatively about an intense, abiding kind of romantic love that you can’t tell apart from devotion.

I am amazed by Vasant Bapat’s ability (as a man) to capture the rich, inner world of women and female friendships as he does in a poem that imagines an exchange between Priyamvada and Anasuya, two characters from Shakuntala, a Sanskrit play by ancient Indian playwright Kālidās.

I am in awe of Padma Gole’s ability to write of love and female desire with the same zeal with which she writes of Gandhian and feminist values that come to define her life. Her poetry embodies a feminine essence that’s at once soft and fierce.

Sahityakalp’s illustrated tribute to Padma Gole’s Chafyachya Zhada (The Champak Tree)

I discover that Shanta Shelke is among Lata Mami’s favourite poets too.

An untitled poem by Shanta Shelke

Over the past two months, quite a few poems and poets have stayed with me.

Padma Gole’s Lakshmanresha (Lakshman’s boundary) and Chafyachya Zhada (The Champak Tree), Namdeo Mahanor’s nature poetry, and more.

Beauty, terror and love, all come to me through poetry.

If we are the universe experiencing itself, poetry is that universe describing the beauty of living to itself in exquisite detail.

Poetry eases the knots of big feelings. I feel things with a searing intensity only to see their very essence burning with ferocity in a poem that the poet seems to have written just for me. I remember Maggie Smith’s Bride came to me at the precise moment I was beginning to embody the poem.

People and poems find you when you most need them.

You draw in experiences, people and art that resonate at your frequency. There’s no magic there. But it’s all very magical.

And maybe, a Lata Mami reading us poetry is just the kind of ‘WhatsApp University’ we need more of in our lives.