The colonizers left a large volume of literature about the hills, with innumerable accounts of exploration and adventure, escapades and gossip. As Indian writing became more prolific in the later years, perceptive accounts of sojourns in the hills were penned by well-known storytellers and essayists.
The irony proves pointed: species deemed threats to native ecosystems are the very fish Isha once knew, now providing sustenance and cultural memory in diaspora. The novel withholds its most startling revelations until late, interrogating the very nature of identity, memory, and kinship across temporal and ontological boundaries.
The next line reads: ‘This would never happen for English poetry.’ Indian poetry still retains its oral roots in its strong bonds with rhythms and music. The audience waiting for a Qawwali knows that it will transport them into the world of youth and romance.
The trope of memory has been used effectively by the poet through the lens of both the young girl and the mature woman. In ‘Wild’ she reminisces with tender emotion about the relationship with her mother. When she was a young girl, mother ‘struggled’ to ‘tame’ her curls, even as the ‘rebellious tresses refused to obey’.
‘In 2018, at a meeting in Meerut in the northern State of Uttar Pradesh, the chief of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat addressed one of the largest conclaves of RSS workers on a crisp February morning. In his long address to more than a thousand people, he said, “In India, one may follow a different eating habit, way of worshipping gods, philosophy, language and culture.
It began with a well-executed burglary.’ The lively poet at the festival is ‘lost and disconsolate’ when he sees the literary world ‘full of privileged hierarchies and lucky chances, of winning streaks and downward spirals of defeat and heart break.’