Charles Dickens spent his last days writing his unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, at his writing table at Swiss Chalet, Gad’s Hill Place. For Anne Frank, a small wooden table was her "writing table," on which a private notebook transformed into one of the most significant historical accounts of the 20th century. Athira Unni’s poems “writing desk” and “craving coconuts” in the collection titled moon blooms focus our attention on a writing desk, which is a centrepiece that holds writing, memories, nostalgia, love and loss.
“my new writing desk is compact and low, placed near the window,
it looks onto the lagoon…”
The writing desk stands witness to the ‘pale blue and mellow’ waters in the morning, a poplar tree with ‘Y-shaped branching and the leaves glitter green’. The poet says that she writes at the desk on which ‘California sunlight falls…obliquely’. A stream of thoughts flow into feelings of waiting and wanting, and soon the reader realises that the poem is not simply an ekphrastic description of a writing desk, but much more.
“am I stupid to want you? these thoughts have a way of being latent
arriving months or years late, as if they’re visits by hesitant relatives”
Thus, there is a beautiful transition from the pictorial representation of the setting to people- the absence of someone whom the poet misses deeply coupled with the presence of distant relatives who arrive with ‘chakka, manga, thenga’, a common phrase to note the immaterial, yet necessary requirements of life. The words stand out, unitalicised, like ‘kaapi’ and ‘dosas’ in the poem “craving coconuts”. Writing the culinary in native tongue is nostalgic, but not drowned in any sentimental weeping.
“In “craving coconouts” we read,
new country, new writing desk
stands on wobbly kness, the jacaranda tree
outside my house is a soccer trainer.”
The ability to shift between ‘chocolate cupcakes on Fridays’ and ‘fascination for pancakes’ to ‘a spice box full of secrets’ shows the liminal spaces which the poet careful treads upon.
“writing table” ends so,
“I think of you like this, occasionally.
but on my writing desk, often and when the sun sets, and the birds roost
lulling the trees with succulent songs, filling the entire sky with lies,
I write about you again, even as another day without you dies.”
The writer is a poet, translator and assistant professor of English at BCM College, Kottayam