Book review: How to Forget by Meera Ganapathi

Just finished reading the most delightful book of ruminations made while taking short as well as long walks, HOW TO FORGET by Meera Ganapathi, HarperCollins Books.

This book resonates, how it resonates!

The reader matches step with the poet-author, accompanies her down her route,  takes in the sights that float into her ken: a still-silver waterfall ( that) trickles down despite everything, finally spilling its despondency onto an orange packet of Lays potato chips; trees that engulf the city and caress it in shade; breeze fill(ing) the contours of laundry hung out to dry; broken, torn, worn-out slippers across empty streets that become a symbol of the longest loneliest migration in modern times; the urgent kindness (in Mumbai) that fills empty spaces and familiar loneliness with shared food; uncles who walk on ahead, leaving their wives behind… you`re not walking ahead, you`re walking away, says the poet.

There`s a pronounced but light feminist angle to some of the writings, as in the poem `Moisturise the night,` where she points out the ways men walk at night without caution or fear. There`s soft sentiment in some poems, as when she writes `My mother appears in the way I fold my shirts and in how I bang-shut cupboard doors` or of friends who are friends because they can`t help being friends or how her phone suddenly connects to a building she`s walking by, where resides  a man she met and interacted with intensely but briefly.

There are poems as well as prose passages. There are b/w photographs of stuff she stops to stare at  while walking. For the reader, walking besides the author becomes an act of reaffirmation, of reflection, of introspection, of meditation.

This book isn’t just a keeper, it`s a book you will buy and  gift all your friends.