“The Gallery of Upside Down Women” by Arundhathi Subramaniam

Indian English poet Arundhati Subramaniam’s latest poetry collection The Gallery of Upside Down Women brings together pieces about women from Indian myth and scripture across regions and languages, women in general, and glimpses into ordinary lives rendered fresh and extraordinary through evocative expression. Subramaniam is among the best known Indian English poets and for her work on women saint poets. The poems dedicated to these devotional voices live up to her previous work about the poets and the light in which these poets deserve to be seen.

Evoking Meerabai, the 16th century saint poet, devotee of Lord Krishna, one poem says about the nature of her devotion:

The only difference

between me

and those who said they loved him

is that they tried to get spotless,

while I only wanted

to get stained.

Subramaniam takes the most well-known things about the gods and these saint poetesses and weaves them into metaphors that make beautiful sense in English. Krishna, for instance, is known as the blue god. Here Meerabai touches upon the “shyaam rang”, the blue colour of his skin:

Woo me, I said.

Blue me.

And since the best gods spill

like vegetable dye,

he indigoed me.

Asking Krishna to colour one blue, essentially asking for a union with the Divine, is an everyday expression of devotion. “Blue me,” as a plea and as a verb  in English because of the way Subramaniam phrases it. finds a succinct expression, almost like a slogan.

Karaikkal Amaiyar was a 6th-century Tamil mystic and devotee of Shiva, remembered for her skeletal form.  This poem is written from the perspective of her husband who let her be, and took another wife when he realised he could never possess her as wife:

They say she sings songs

to outcaste gods, stirs tsunamis

into her rasam, shares mangoes

with the ghouls, laughs

in charnel grounds by night.

And when folk from distant lands

come to seek her blessing,

she offers them the same counsel:

‘No need to flee to the forest, seeker.

Stay right here in the madcap town.

Do exactly what you’ve always done.

Just do it upside down.’

While gods are talked about from the eyes of the women, here is a note from an anonymous idol worshipper:

Gods weren’t cooked

to be frozen.

Gods were made,

like we were,

to melt.

Women should be allowed to just be, having a good time with each other:

There will be time to love our men

but not when caffeine meets estrogen.

The defence budget and the state of AI

must stand aside as earth meets sky.

Ours is not to question why

teaspoons tango and hippos fly

      When two women drink chai together.

There will be a time when both god and beast

are included in our cosmic feast,

and one day it won’t be out of line

to quaff a martini or a bottle of wine.

But right now, friend, it’s been too long,

oolong, oolong, oo-bloody-long,

      since two women drank chai together.

What’s poetry without love? Not very distant from idolatry and devotion, one poem refers to love:

I know love doesn’t live in doing either.

It lives

where longing ends

which is not always in union.

Love is everywhere in the volume. Here is love for words:

Doors open when you tell words you love them,

Reader.

Love a word you don’t understand,

and place it

in a great hush of white,

then prepare to fall

into a place

that feels

irrefutable radiant free.

A place that feels not like one or two, Reader.

More like three.

The most touching poetry is about teachers:

Some teachers happen

to remind you of seasons

when lotuses bloom

for no single reason at all—

not just because of gardeners,

distracted or zealous,

or sun or wind or mud or rain.

But because of all of it.

      And more.

The poem ends with:

Forgive teachers …

It gets easier

to forgive yourself one day.

The Gallery of Upside Down Women centres on women but goes on to bring varied subjects into its fold to include things that concern men as well. It’s a gallery of an upside down world and its thrills. Because it is difficult to pin a volume of poetry down to a unifying theme and poems are perhaps best enjoyed as individual pieces, this one too is best read as exercises in pause and reflection.