Karan Kapoor: “Dida (my paternal grandmother) was sick for six months before she died, three years ago. In that time, I moved between weeping, massaging her feet, and writing. That death inspires poetry is not new. Whether as journalistic expression, ritual purgation, or literary experience. When I began working on my collection of poems for Dida, I found myself shifting through these three states. I wrote to survive her death. The strict form of the ghazal allowed me to channel (and give structure to) the chaos that severe inexplicable illnesses bring to a house. I started with 21 couplets and brought them down to 14. While traditionally a song of longing and love, and at times political advocacy—the ghazal—mastered by Agha Shahid Ali in English—is a form that defies what we think is possible in poetry today. At once dramatic, self-aware, subtle, musical, excessively emotional, and then quietly metaphysical—it is emblematic of poetic community. Death, too, does not happen alone. Especially in India—it brings together families, beliefs, doubts. Nor is writing truly a solitary act. All poems remain unfinished if unread.” (web)
