The meaning of love ricochets between the perceptions of love. Delhi-based poet Madhu’s debut collection is book of love poems by a millennial for the millennial.
Love is set in the divinity of Kabir’s dohas, Namdev and Tukaram’s abhangs, Thiruvalluvar’s thirukkurals, baul geet to the mortal blue tick marks of WhatsApp or the swag of a mohawk hairstyle. Love sticks out like the tongue of Kali, suckles like a baby on a mother’s breast, trickles like raindrops from leaves, rolls down like beads of sweat, drives at 200 mph without a seatbelt, and faints at nothing.
This is the romance of our lives, distilled in unforgettable images.
Madhu’s poems are simple, direct and sensuous. They teach us to reclaim the romance vanishing fast from our busy and selfish urban lives governed by the monotony of speed. K Satchidanandan, poet
There’s freshness in these poems, like the smell of rain on parched ground. It rises from the lines of poetry and makes itself felt with an insistence that is unusual in so young a poet. Madhu has, early in his poetic career, created a voice and vocabulary that is uniquely his own. Rakhshanda Jalil, writer, critic and literary historian
Madhu’s poetry encapsulates most of what we love about poetry. He uses poetry like a white cane and also as a magic broomstick to reach the full moon of love across the dark night of human existence. His metaphors are aesthetically lyrical and candid at the same time. Danish Iqbal, playwright and theatre activist
I fell in love with the title. Aren’t we all starving for some wholesome love? So I ventured into the pages greedily, becoming a pilgrim, diving into the village pond, enjoying the gentleness, the wit, the naughty glint in the eye. Onir, filmmaker