Catching up with the founder-editor of Ultra Violet , a leading website on feminism and winner of Muse India's Young Writer Award 2011, Anindita Sengupta, we found that she is now working on her (untitled) next book. “I wrote my first book, City of Water in 2010, it's been two years, a lot has changed and I have moved on from those thoughts. I am also pregnant, that has changed my writing a little bit. Everything has slowed down a bit,” she says. Anindita reckons herself more as a poet than as a writer; “So far, poetry has been the only genre I felt at home writing. It comes naturally to me .”
She says that her second book will be very different from the first. She wrote her first book when she was in her 20s, while she was dealing with a lot of identity issues and thoughts that were backlogged from her childhood. “The new book is outward looking and I think I have tried to experiment more with form and freedom within form. Instead of following strict forms and rhythm and I have let myself loose. I am braver in this book.”
As far as themes are concerned she says that home and belonging has been explored, “Shifting back to Mumbai from Bangalore was a big move for me. It was a decade-long struggle of getting over a place.” Some of the poems are influenced by things that are happening around us she says, “I have taken in elements like the Kosi Floods or the Kashmir war.”
Poetry comes from her personal experiences. Is she worried about exposing too much of her life? “When I am writing, I don't think about it too much. I started writing when I was in the typical angst-ridden teenage and I had no intention of publishing it. Self-censorship never came into the picture then. I never worried about exposing my family or the people, but now that I am going to be a mother, I am more careful and I can't afford to be cavalier. If I write poems about my child, I would think twice about getting them published,” she signs off.
