Word on the street

A delightful collection of poems on Indian cities pulls together verse by former emperors, modern-day activists, soldiers, sages, Nobel winners

- Bhanuj Kappal

It began with a bout of homesickness. While studying for a degree in economics at Yale in late-2020, Bilal Moin began to feel a yearning for Mumbai. He sought refuge in poems about the city, initially turning to classics by Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla and Dom Moraes.

After a while, he cast his net wider. Entering keywords into the university library archive, he discovered poets he had never heard of, in journals long-since defunct.

Over snow-laden evenings in Connecticut, he expanded his search further still. He was now looking for poems on Kolkata, Delhi, Bengaluru. By Spring, he had collected over 600 poems set across 40 Indian cities, spread across 2,000 years.

In 2023, he mentioned his "document of homesick scribbles" to Shawkat Toorawa, a professor of comparative literature at Yale. "He pointed out that, pretty much by accident, I had put together an anthology," says Moin, speaking from Oxford, where he is pursuing a Master's degree.

Last month, that collection was released as a 1,072-page hardcover anthology: The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City.

It holds 375 poems by 264 poets, translated from 20 languages.

Readers can explore the very different Mumbais of the Jewish playwright and art critic Nissim Ezekiel and the Dalit activist Namdeo Dhasal.