Dancing Words - A Poetry Month Special

I forget poetry, but it doesn't forget me.

Dancing Words

Poetry rushed into my baby ears. Marathi songs. English rhymes. I heard Gulzar’s Dil Hoom Hoom Kare as Dil Boom Boom Kare. I welcomed words like warm milk from my blue sippy cup.

Religious verse. School prayers. Lyrics folded like prayers in cassette covers. Laddoos crumbled in my heart when I heard Kuchi Kuchi Rakkamma.

In 7th grade, I wrote my first poem. On cats. My English teacher didn’t believe someone like me — dull and average — could write a poem.

A glossy poster was stuck on our rusty almirah. A girl with silky black hair and a poem titled Why God Made Little Girls. It listed what girls offered to the world. My parents didn’t read poetry. Especially not in English. So this poem must have meant something. A blessing for the daughters they were raising.

One afternoon, I wrote a poem called Why God Made Little Boys. Then another — Why God Made Humans. I no longer believe in God. But this is how I started to believe in poetry.

My second poem at school got a standing ovation. The air shifted that day. The sound of clapping sealed it in my mind — I, dull and average, could move words to move people.

And yet, 99 out of 100 days, I forget poetry exists. Anthologies sleep on my shelf. When I land on a poem while scrolling, I flick it away with my thumb. Who has time for this ooh-ah bullshit?

But it is writing haiku that saved me from a soul-crushing job. I wrote poems when I was assaulted. When I had crushes. When I went bald. In pleasure, in violence, in illness and success — poetry gave me its rooms to lodge and board.

Suddenly, the first line of a poem falls in your lap. You mother it. Protect it. Feed it the protein of imagery. It sleeps in notebooks. Wakes up when I read it aloud. Then one day, it walks out and speaks its mind.

What an honour!

I keep poetry for later — for when I am wiser, calmer, more resilient. But my god, poetry is how I become that person. Accepting poetry means accepting how I’m wired. How much I feel. How I don’t conform to any kind of grammar.

Poetry is not pretty photography. It's a lens. Framing sunlit tomatoes. Watching yellow leaves fall. Spotting round rainbows in your filter coffee. A journalism of micro-miracles.

I wonder what I’ve done to deserve poetry’s hand on my back. Words obeying me, so I can disobey the world. I could have died dull and average. Corrupted by diseases. Overwhelmed by injustice. Why do these dancing words look out for me?

My job in this lifetime is to remind you—you too have full access to them. To unclench my jaw and recite my poems. Make you sigh. Drum up feelings that tingle your neck. Slow my breath so peace touches your skin. Poetry is how we will touch each other.

What does poetry do for you?

Discover the creative fire and hidden poetry in our everyday lives with Raju Tai and Vimal Chitra at The Rhythm of our Stories workshop.