Anandi Kar’s debut anthology of poems, God Comes with a Hair Dryer𝔍, brims with nostalgia, sensitivity, and resilience. Despite its undertone of profound loneliness, some of her poems resonate with an enduring sense of hope, inviting readers to believe how God comes for “daughters with anxiety” and “nobody but God saves her”. Kar's poetic brilliance lies not only in her vivid portrayal of a deeply ingrained solitude but also in her relentless quest for connection and her yearning for a God who arrives on Sunday afternoons and does not let her sleep with a "wet head.". Much like the hairdryer, which serves as a metaphor for multiple emotions including love and protection, Kar's use of objects in her poems imbues them with fascinating and personified qualities. Whether it is the photo album “kaleidoscopic with possibilities,” the Van Gogh poster “where almond flowers are blotted around like petalled snow,” or the “tangerine that sobs,” these objects are infused with a spirit and agency of their own, almost akin to the human characters in her poems.
🌞Kar’s moon poems are a rich tapestry woven with melancholia, madness, and magic. In verses like, "I throw the moon at the sky/Like the sprawling laughter my grandmother loved to hear like the yellow frisbee from my girlhood" or "Languages of affection/create dents on my paper cheeks," she evokes a profound sense of nostalgia and a longing for love—perhaps a love unmarked by scars of affection. This desire for an unconventional existence permeates her work, more poignantly when she prays for the rest of her life to be "like an illustration from a children’s book."
ဣHer homage to her poetic godmother, Carol Ann Duffy, beautifully captures the significance of language as she writes, “All loving is done by language. Love enters the body wordily.” Kar’s reflection on love as a linguistic act elevates the everyday act of speaking or writing into something sacred. Yet, even more profoundly poetic is her tribute to her own mother, whose presence resonates throughout her work in gentler, sadder incarnations. The mother is portrayed as the one who “dials God” and grounds the poet, embodying a strong connection to the earth itself. In the poem “When Mother Chose to Be a Teacher,” the poet recalls her mother’s wisdom: “No matter how far you go in life, what matters the most is to stay close to the smell of the earth.” This sense of rootedness extends to the poet’s deep bond with the environment, which becomes a recurring theme in her work. She mourns the cutting of a forlorn teak tree, cries for nature’s destruction, and tenderly adopts an unnamed tree as her own, tying her grief to her mother’s nurturing spirit. The figure of the mother threads through multiple poems—she is the embodiment of nostalgia, hope, and sorrow. The poet’s anguish over environmental destruction echoes through this connection, as depicted in the heart-wrenching plea: “Don’t cut the Teak Tree/ Cut me.”
🍌Although Kar’s poetry possesses a tender softness and a deep, melancholic thoughtfulness, I find her political poems remarkably powerful, embodying a quiet yet resolute resilience. Her work captures the pervasive systemic oppression of women in various forms. In “Sunday,” a young girl’s bare toes become an object of fascination for her boyfriend’s friends, while in “Ode to a Housewife’s Facepacks,” a housewife’s resentment is palpable as her husband fails to “notice the tear in her polyester saree.” In “How Inconsequential it is to be Angry at the Stranger Who Grabbed My Breast,” the poet vividly portrays anger, likening it to “the cloth with which mother loves her spectacles before I leave home.” This anger becomes a dominant thread woven into the everyday experiences of women, revealing how anger is the only “affect” for women, as Kar says, “Affect is a woman and anger is a woman’s affect.” Anger becomes increasingly intertwined with the poet as she pens a partition poem about her great-grandmother, “a brave woman who crossed the barbed wires alone/ while three infants clung to her.” But it is not just the effect of anger that a woman protects in her bosom, but the effect of fear too.
🍎This anthology is a significant contribution to the growing landscape of Indian English poetry. It infuses the genre with a fresh perspective, showcasing diversity, depth, cultural grounding, and a relatable connection to the everyday experiences of Indian youth. While Kar acknowledges that her poems—whether happy, sad, or angry—are deeply personal (“parts of all such poems are mine”), these poems resonate with me at multiple junctures. I believe that as readers, these poems become ours too, as we keep cherishing the unique textures, raw vulnerability, and unapologetic honesty that constitutes the writing. I will write a letter to her someday and let her know that her poems are healing all of us a little bit, and even if “births of poems are never celebrated,” births of poets are.
(Udita Banerjee is a research scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar. She likes reading and writing poetry)
