'In a way, borrowing words is a rite of passage'

Manjiri Indurkar on her debut collection Origami Aai’, literary lineages, advertising and feminist narratives in poetry

- Aditya ManijJha

Manjiri Indurkar's debut collection, Origami Aai (Tranquebar), is a masterclass in negotiating nostalgia, trauma, and various kinds of coming-of-age, both personal and artistic. It also has a certain versatile playfulnessthere's room here for unironic expressions of youthful excess, while also occasionally deploying this tonality to highlight the horror of a grim scenario.

In Indurkar's skilled hands, parents and grandparents become wounded oracles, their words proving to be self-fulfilling prophecies ("If we can't have the Murphy Baby, you can't either, they all said"). Familiar objects and everyday visuals become portals to a largely imaginary past that slow-walk her towards catharsis ("I wonder if it is the hunger for milk or Aai's/stories that make Aaji return"). Her own body becomes the site for "kind cruelties" ("I carve out a name I cannot spell/ and honey drips out of my leg").

Edited excerpts from an interview with Indurkar about her book and approach to poetry.

For many writers, the act of writing is a way of stepping away from parental influence, both literally and as a way of referring to literary lineage. How easy or difficult has this been for you?

A lot of my experiments with poetry began as a way of saying things I couldn't have said otherwise-like the sexual abuse I faced as a child, my deep dark terrible secret that could be said through a poem.

People who wanted to see it would see it.

Others could just read a poem about my grandmother.

I bring up grandmother because my first phase of writing was with her. We had a turbulent relationship and I could easily write about the gifts and the curses I got as her grandchild. This was in my early 20s.