“A Blur of a Woman” by Basudhara Roy
Basudhara Roy‘s poetry collection, A Blur of a Woman, masterfully explores the complex, multi-layered existence of women, weaving a narrative of quiet resistance and fierce honesty.
A Blur of a Woman, the fourth poetry collection from Basudhara Roy, is a remarkable exploration of the complex, multi-layered existence of women. As noted by literary luminaries like Arundhathi Subramaniam and Menka Shivdasani, Roy’s poems inhabit a fascinating space between the generic and the specific, weaving a narrative of quiet resistance and fierce honesty.
This collection, as described by critics, masterfully balances broad, declarative statements with intricate, sensory details—a ‘tremor of bones’ or a breeze ‘starched with the smell of fish’—bringing the reader from abstract ideas back to the tangible realities of life. Roy’s work delves into the quiet assertions and unspoken truths of womanhood, offering a powerful, finely etched portrait that is both contemplative and intensely personal. This is a collection that promises to be a valuable addition to any bookshelf.
Here are a selection of a few poems from the book.
1
This Dark House
Sooner or later
everyone moves out
of this dark house.
It has no windows
they say.
All its windows open into night
I insist.
They dismiss.
Its walls are damp
they complain.
I tell them
these rooms were built to hold grief.
They shake their heads in disbelief.
They agonise
over hearing a constant humming.
I assure them
it’s only the floor and ceiling in conversation.
They remain unconvinced.
The house looks different all the time
they whisper.
I tell them
it is growing steadily each day.
They are bewildered.
Specks of light float here in mid-air
they announce.
I affirm
those are stars come to adorn its dark.
They incredulously stare.
Unlocking the attic door
I usher them in.
Perched like a pendant
on the dark’s clavicle
is an immense edible moon.
2
Woman at Twilight
At the day’s end
the woman
has nothing in her hands.
Everything on it
has been quietened to satisfaction
to rise tomorrow in mutiny again.
She doesn’t know
how many times this day
she has put her feet and fingers to use.
She forgets
how many laws she has upheld
or how many goodbyes she has said.
She is aware only
of having walked all day
and of not having covered an inch.
Ask her weary body or uncombed mind
what arrival means
and her eyes will startle you out of answers.
In her potholed being,
aches resolutely linger in pockets
like rainwater.
Come, find her at twilight
rinsing her day
of whatever it has drunk.
3
The Woman and the Sea
The breeze is starched
with the smell of fish.
Decay occupies the air
like a prophecy fulfilled.
You won’t know that in parts
the sea is turning into land,
the atrophy of abandonment
written in morse on her limbs.
Her glare is turned on herself today.
She is examining the silver
hemming her waves.
She asks if she has a third eye.
There is destruction in the breeze.
The sea smells cinder.
There are days you don’t
question the sea.
You let her brood over
what she has lost.
You let her build, abandonment
by abandonment, a storm.
There are days you only wait,
read her letter on last night’s land
where she spent herself
though no one asked her to.
There are days you remember
the sea is a woman
and will return when she has to,
no matter what she wants.
4
Childhood Dream
In my dream, I am always out of time.
And there is no place to go.
A stray note flutters on my bicycle seat
that, in blood, tells me how much I am loved.
Seven boys circle me later on a twilight street
demanding why I do not return love or blood.
My mother dislikes my adolescent blue jhumkaas.
She says they aren’t what respectable women wear.
That autumn, I tear all letters I receive
and dump the pieces with used sanitary pads.
In my mind, I keep his first poems intact
though I let his fragrant longhand rot in a well.
One who sat beside my window on a train
confessed I smelt of milk, and did I know that?
I can hardly forget how in blind man’s buff,
that milky smell always gave me away.
I am mostly afraid of what you will smell on my skin,
of what you will say. I fear the din, this uneven place in my head.
If you meet me in a dream, tether me to your wall.
I don’t know how fast gravity is calling or how to break this fall.
5
Post-Philomela
we have given up weaving.
As it is, water is too scarce
to farm cloth
and in this laissez-faire,
that art of our fingers
doesn’t count anymore.
But yes, our digits are nimble
and time is still scant
for we are occupied other ways.
Through the traction
of our nights and days
we now steadily whet
the blade of language,
hone its edge to prepare it
for the shock and welcome
of blood.
The day we are done
we will slit
your hubris with our tongues,
quite painlessly
to ourselves.
6
On Reading Shahid
In your eyes is a dream of roses undreamed.
Here at the ghat of the only world you say
you want from love only its beginning.
In your crushed arms I hear the beloved sing.
The watery assurance of rain in her voice
wipes clean this film of forgetting
your years have settled into. On the picture
postcard of your past, faith towers tall
like pines and trains always arrive on time
to keep an appointment with want.
The sky is weighed down with desire,
the earth’s skin creased with longing.
Every poem is a hymn calligraphed in memory.
In your unlit home, the air has holes.
I darn them as you sleep and come dawn
leave the sun with instructions to pour you grace.
In your dreams roses are rising from ashes,
charting routes to bloom where they first belonged.
Book Details:
- Title: A Blur of a Woman
- Author: Basudhara Roy
- Publisher: Red River
- Release Date: 17 November 2024
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 114 pages
- ISBN 10: 8197630445
- ISBN 13:978-8197630446
- Price: Rs 270 (
Rs 299) - Where to buy: www.amazon.in/https://www.amazon.in/Blur-Woman-Basudhara-Roy/
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