Ramya's verses

I really do not know when exactly I started following Ramya. For a long time, she was moimystique to me – a faceless, ageless girl tucked somewhere. It was some time after I came to Gurgaon that I discovered her blog and her tea leaf poem was probably the first I read. I do not know how I chanced on her blog – whether she chanced on mine –

I have had a history of anonymous friends – met over chat and emails – even random phone calls – that have torpedoed to an intensity and then suddenly come crashing down to nothing. I have enjoyed the anonymity, the facelessness of it – a couple of times I met them and decided that I should not have. Something about the watery shapelessness and possibility of their thoughts now confined to a shape.

I think it’s been only a few months that I know her name, her age, her face – the part of her confined to a biodata. I have even heard her sing now - though very faintly. The unfettered words, once darting and rambling boundlessly, now contained in the fence of that identity.

Ramya, all of 22, has compiled a list of her poems and come out with a beautiful, albeit thin, book called Inklings. My own contribution has been that I have been consulted on the shade of the green of the cover – thanks for listening, moimystique, it looks beautiful.

Here, she has been profiled by Deccan Chronicle – I only wish they had only shown her hands resting on an open page – but her pretty smile certainly takes nothing away from it.

I do not read verse. Ramya is perhaps the only poet I have consistently read. I do not have the words why I have liked them – perhaps a vivid expression of our everyday lives, urban yet profound – I believe the anonymity of her talent made it possible. Perhaps you’ll discover the same stirrings and order her book.