To be honest, poetry was never my forte. In the past, I used to make tomfooleries of myself by concocting whimsical sentences, stringing together ten at a time, and playfully labeling them as poems. I would gleefully send these creations to friends, who surprisingly, or perhaps regrettably, praised what I wrote. Some even went so far as to share my verses with their relatives or friends, garnering encouragement from unexpected corners. I reveled in that prideful moment, but little did I know that my poetic knowledge was close to a novice’s grasp of the alphabet.
Much like a tipsy sojourner returning to an abode, my dalliance with poetry survived for a while. At the time, I yearned to write beautifully, with the sole motive of bringing joy to people who indulged in my musings. No, I don’t want to be an author, I just want to be a good writer. In 2017, there was this friend who remarked that I use complex words and it steals away the meaning I was conveying. He gifted me a poetry book, which still lies on my shelf. It wasn’t until later that a friend, well-versed in literature, both Indian and Tamil, quoted: “A good poem starts at the ending.” I truly experienced the profundity of this insight only when I stumbled upon this book—picked impulsively alongside “Ghachar Ghochar”.
Structured in verse, the poems weave a captivating narrative. My mom always says, teeth have to be like pearls, arranged neatly without even the slightest of misalignment. That way, even the poems fitting to the title are arranged like pearls one after the other with increasing order of its beauty. Growing up in Kerala with two siblings and deficit parental indolence or presence, the author leaves trails of words for her siblings and her disjointed family when she herself is suffering from a heartbreak.
With such beautiful metaphors throughout the book, its a beautiful gander of excruciating pain that comes because of love and people who you love; friends or family, admit that you are growing old and the vulnerabilities that comes with it.
Read it not just for the verses, but for the exquisite metaphors and the love meticulously poured into each page.