Imtiaz Dharker is among those rare English language poets from India who is unabashedly and overtly ‘political’— not in any demagogic or rhetorical manner but political in terms of seeking social justice and combating the tyranny of the State and the degradation of human dignity.

These concerns are eloquently and powerfully amplified in a sequence of three poems called ‘These are the times we live in’ in which she encapsulates exactly what these times are in which ordinary citizens are hounded by an omniscient ‘Big Brother’, by religious bigotry, racial profiling and gender bias.

Expatiating on these themes are grim exposures on the complex tableau of terrorism.

In a singular poem ‘The right word’, the identity of the figure ‘Lurking in the shadows’ changes from ‘terrorist’ to ‘freedom fighter’, from ‘hostile militant’ to ‘guerrilla warrior’ and ‘martyr’, ultimately driving the tragedy home, as it were, with the lines ‘lost in shadows / is a child who looks like mine.’

 But Dharker’s prognosis is by no means dark and unremittingly bleak. She is ‘still here’, unbroken and defiant: ‘you look at yourself in mirrors, / in panes of glass dimmed to black ,/ in shop-windows when the lights are off / in bits of chrome on cars, / …I know what it is: / Not vanity. / It’s just to reassure yourself / you are still in place. / Still here’.

There are some other very fine individual poems, notably ‘Seville’, ‘Anarkali Lahore’, ‘Bombay, Mumbai’ and ‘Sari’.
A few seem overwritten but Dharker is always dexterous in her use of internal, inter-locking rhyme and sprung rhythms.

As in her other books, her poems are accompanied by some striking drawings.

Good poetry does not need the crutch of other art forms, but Dharker is also an accomplished artist, and the drawings appear as a natural corollary to the poems, existing pari passu and mirroring each other.

‘The terrorist at my table’ by Imtiaz Dharker; Penguin Books, N Delhi; Rs 200; Pp158.