The freedom of chaotic joyfulness: Arundhathi Subramaniam’s The Gallery of Upside-Down Women

As someone who has followed Arundhathi Subramaniam’s poetry for a long while, I approached her new collection, The Gallery of Upside-Down Women, with excitement and curiosity. What would I find this time?

In When God Is A Traveller, she gave us poems that felt like delicate conversations with the divine, equal parts irreverent and tender. In Love Without A Story, the scale grew narrower, more interior, as if the poems were diary fragments polished into clarity. And with Wild Women, she stepped aside as curator, introducing us to centuries-old voices of women mystic poets who had blazed their own paths toward freedom. The women in her work hold centre stage.

Of course, in this book, they are not upside down only in body. That would be so unlike the subtle touch with which the poet wields her mighty strength. The women are upside down in spirit, too. And there is something freeing about it. I can see them, gambolling, rushing through barricades, shedding, elegantly, society-sanctioned restrictive garments and refinements, and hurtling towards freedom. In this chaotic joyfulness, we find what the poet seems to cherish the most — liberation, becoming, being.

The book is divided into three sections. Many of the poems in the section, ‘Cycling Hands Free On Air’, reflect a quiet contemplation of life during the Covid years. In ‘The World Takes A Breath’ she asks, “Who’d have thought/an empty hour/ was so much labour? We walk the day most times/ on steel girders/ of habit…”

We are plunged, headfirst, into the mystery of ‘What Stories are Left?’ as she laments the loss of “heroines/ who once arched an arabesque/ of arm to smooth sandal paste/ over burning acres/ of skin, running restless fingers/ through a liquefication/of hair, as they waited…”

In The Gallery Of Upside-Down Women section, (I wondered about why the word is hyphenated here and not in the title), we find the book’s ancestry. The women saints of the Bhakti movement are, of course, the original upside-down women. There is Meera, in ‘The Maker of Indigo Poems’, asking her beloved to, “Blue me./ And since the best gods spill/like vegetable dye,/ he indigoed me.”

And while Avudai Akkal, the 18th-century child widow and spiritual adept, asserts that, “This is about finding/ that others can steal/ your thunder/ but never your light.” (Unstained By White), Akka Mahadevi asks us to, “Unzip/the serpent skin/and go swimming, sister,” and to “Go skinny-dipping in youself.” (Questions For Akka Mahadevi).

Spirituality is never only solemn, and humour never trips into flippancy and facetiousness.

I especially enjoyed ‘What Do You Do With The Moon In Urdu Poetry,’ a touching tribute to the renowned writer and critic, Dr Tarannum Riyaz, and ‘When Two Women Drink Chai Together,’ a joyous ode to friendship.

Arundhathi Subramaniam’s voice has always struck me as one of amusement, with a hint of scepticism, and a wry sense of humour. In this book, too, her voice is luminous, mischievous, witty. In an upside-down world, would being dizzy help? Would it tip the scales of balance in a way we want it?

She is a poet of thresholds — body and spirit, intimacy and remove, faith and doubt. In this book, there is less to do with transcendence and more to do with human precariousness. In that sense, we are all a bit wobbly. There is a continuity here that unspools a thread to her previous work. Will we ever learn if we don’t stumble? Will we ever be if we don’t tumble? Sometimes falling apart is not a bad thing. It can be that first crucial step to a more honest alignment and engagement. Can seeing the world upside down be the most honest way of looking at it? Could we realign ourselves to be better versions of who we are, if we were to just… willingly tilt? And could we, someday, drink chai together?

World in Verse is a monthly column on the best of new (and old) poetry. The writer is a poet, teacher, voice actor and speaker. She has published three collections of poetry. Send your thoughts to her at [e-mail]