Seema Jain

Anita Nahal is a very talented poet and a very powerful poetic voice of our times. Her third poetry collection What’s wrong with us Kali women?” is an exquisite collection of poems written on a wide variety of subjects. Endowed with an intensely sensitive, empathetic and enlightened sensibility, her poetry raises the most pertinent humanistic and feminist issues around us in today’s world: be it exploitation of and discrimination against women in a patriarchal set-up, where men with duplicity, worship Goddess Kali, but indulge in brazen, evil acts towards women; crimes against women as in “Rape,” issues of colour discrimination as in “How easy it is for a black life to be taken?”; cultural conflict, challenges and assimilation into two cultures as in “Paying my debt in two lands” and “The fallacy of a single immigrant mom”; or the political revolution brought by Gandhi, as also the trauma of partition in “Gandhi’s Chaddar”; or the issues of patriarchy and feminism vi-a-vis love-making, and a whole lot of other issues. There is a deep sense of empathy, a compelling sense of immediacy and spontaneity, a bold, straightforward and unpretentious approach in most of her poems, that minces no words in exposing the sham behind many of our social and ethical codes. Anita deserves kudos for this amazing book that needs to be a part of every library and bookshelf. Best wishes for her next book of poetry and the upcoming projects!