By Mitali Chakravarty

The buoyant chatter in avian voices was so loud that the
park walkers were silenced.
The treetop was screaming out the city’s violence
that only birds could observe through the day.
Would they now debate, discuss, and advise policy measures?

(‘Parliament of Fowls’)

A gathering of birds on Malashri Lal’s Pilkhan Tree — a tree that can be found in her debut collection, Mandalas of Time (2023) — generates lines that encapsulate the mood of her new collection, Signing in the Air (2025). Though the poem reflects on the crimes that beset the city she now calls home, Delhi, the title refers to Chaucer’s famed poem of the same name. An award-winning writer, Professor Lal is an academic, editor and anthologist, well-known for her work on women, literature and culture so much so that in 2022, she was given the Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence.

As a probashi or migrant, she holds in her experiences shared cultures — of Bengal, of Rajasthan, of Delhi and more. These ripple through her poetry creating a shimmer of myriad hues. She mingles flavours while posing as a flaneuse who is at home in cities or in more rustic settings where snow conceals mysteries.

Reading ghost stories of
creatures who prowled the hills,
she’d be lost in reverie
far from the urban madness.
The spirits of phantom memsahibs and their beaus
seemed a better populace
for company,
And moti roti and rajma
more delicious than take outs
home delivered by jaunty city boys

(‘Phantoms in the Snow’)

She weaves her poetry with her erudition. Mythologies, literature and histories — you can find all of these in the tapestry of her words. There are poems on mythological women like Ahalya, Holika and even, Alakshmi, the elder sister of Lakshmi thrown out during the churning of the ocean for the nectar of immortality. Some of her most sensitive creations centre around street urchins she helped. From museums to street corners, her poems address all walks of life. There are touching lines addressed to an urchin she names Shanti (peace?). Shanti befriends a damaged teddy bear thrown away by an affluent parent and hugs it all night for comfort, for warmth —

With the nightlong shoving Teddy’s seams ripped open
and the belly full of foam spilt on the street’s edge.
Teddy’s empty skin was now a wrap of fur
around Shanti’s skinny shoulder.
She waited eagerly for the next fancy Mom to throw out a Teddy.

(‘Street Girl and her Teddy’)

And yet there is the dancing girl from Mohenjodaro in ‘Museum Shadows’, her titular poem, where her father’s spirit whispers —

There’s no ‘Aryan invasion’
We are all indigenous to the plains.
See the proof in the archival site
of rituals and rites de passage
of cooking utensils, water ways?
Forget the historical divides
Forget the rhetoric of hate
This dancing figure is an emblem
of a shared heritage.

I’m standing in a building dubbed ‘national’.
“Baba, does history remain locked in glass caskets of a museum?”
I sign my farewell in the empty air.

Thus, her worldview gives a fresh fillip to histories by transcending conventional bounds encased in ‘glass caskets’. In some of the poems, she dwells on her ‘shared heritage’ which helps her re-invent the darkness and find light. She finds inspiration from the past, from a grandmother who had an attitude similar to her own.

I’ve saved my grandma’s Victorian blouse
for its beauty and modesty
its artistry and aesthetics
but most strongly
the blouse is the assertion
of independence by the
educated nineteenth century woman
who believed in adapting to modernity while respecting her ancestry.

(‘Grandma’s Blouse’)

Through all her posturing as a flaneuse who moves across a variety of cultural landscape, there prevails the connecting thread of her support for women’s causes that extends from museums to grassroots as evident in poems lined with histories, like ‘Palna at Qudsia Bagh’, and those embedded in mythologies, like ‘Hidimba on Delhi Streets’

The police was pulling her towards a van with bars,
hindered by young Ghatotkuch
holding on to her dupatta.
Her crime: begging on the streets
Her ploy: bewitching the policeman.

(‘Hidimba on Delhi Streets’)

She has a poem on the heartbroken wrestler of the 2024 Commonweath Games fame, Vinesh Phogat, where she concludes that the former wrestler resigned herself to a fate of “Another Indian woman battered by patriarchy.” (‘Gold Dust’). Here, superficially, while the perspective seems to be similar to that of John Gray, the British philosopher who propounds that human nature has not evolved over time even though technologies have advanced, her words make us question the silent acceptance of divisive norms. However, in ‘Blind’, Professor Lal herself responds with full gusto – literally a punch — to molestations faced by women. Four powerful lines say it all— 

Blind, I had learnt to chop apples.
When that man groped me
thinking I couldn’t identify him
I awarded him the badge of a bleeding nose.

Her spirit is worthy of a brave warrior from Rajasthani lore, the culture that mingles in her veins with her Bengali upbringing, evidenced in her Tagorean poems like the one about her Santhali contemporary, ‘Champa’. The cultures and mores from across East and West congeal in her words to give a hybridity that is distinctive.

Signing in the Air has the vibrancy of diversities that led to the unique montage called India. The book is divided into five parts, reflecting seasons, cultural ethos and food, mythologies, meditations on larger issues and women who have wandered into Professor Lal’s poetic gaze. She has personal poems touching on her grandmother with the cultural sweep of histories where women pioneered change, on her mother who she still misses, her father who guides from beyond life, on parenting and for the granddaughter whose childhood she missed out.

A professor who held leadership positions in Delhi University, a daughter, a grandmother, a parent and a humanitarian who believes in equality for women and questions patriarchy — all of these personas flavour her poetry with lingering compassion. For many of her students, she was an icon and still is. The skills that made her an icon for many of us— giving us hope at our lowest ebb, the encouragement to be independent thinkers — is reflected in her poetry. Though in some of Professor Lal’s poems, the perspective seems to be similar to that of John Gray, the others take off by ‘signing in the air’. Taken as a whole, her book looks forward to a ‘shared heritage’ that holds humanity together with a sprinkling of verses from under the legendary Pilkhan Tree. As her former student, I am filled with wonder and amazement for a teacher who never ceases to impart life lessons to us. Kudos to Professor Malashri Lal and her inspiring words!

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Mitali Chakravarty is widely published. She has three collections of poems, the latest being From Calcutta to Kolkata: City of Dreams (2025).