An Olia of Urban Encounters

Ashok Mahajan

City of Stones comprises six parts. In Part One, the author vividly captures the rhythm and chores of urban living including even a daily milk-trip to the Mother Dairy. ‘

Bumbledom’ (Part Two), is an excoriation of our bureaucracy, none missed out in the hierarchy of redtape. In the ensuing section,

‘Metro Cats’, he displays a talent for mischievous wit to lampoon the distaff gentry in the capital.

In Part Four (‘A Misanthrope’s Folio’), he describes the malfeasant march to success, and material greed of our professionals but more than any of them, the abysmal venality of our politicians.

‘Salt of the Earth’, the poet crusades for the underdog, and in telling detail, narrates their existential struggles.

The final episode, ‘Voices in a Hospital’, purports to be a statement of human condition – man’s ineluctable passage from suffering to death.

An unsurpassed craftsman with words, Mahajan’s poetry bristles with images, chiselled phrasing and unique metaphors. For its wide exploration of themes and subject matter, for its epistemological depth and innovative diction, City of Stones may well claim for itself, perhaps, the foremost place in Indian English Poetry for all time.

FROM REVIEWS

‘… His lexical range adds, perhaps, a new dimension to Indian Poetry in English.”

Oxford University Press (Goan Vignettes & Other Poems, 1986)

‘It is really when Mahajan bumps into people that he springs into action, doing quick thumb-nail sketches… India Today

‘Mahajan is a poet with undoubted talent, an exciting vocabulary and an extrovert air about him. The poems hum with action…’ The Hindustan Times

‘…City of Stones is an elaborate exercise in dysteleology… No poet seems to have seen decadence at closer quarters, or expressed it in such distilled cadences …’ The Statesman

‘No one can say about Mahajan that he divides his time between Delhi, London and New York… The earthiness of his personae and the language to match, are the hallmarks of his achievement.’ The Pioneer

‘His poems insist on particulars – his observations are microscopic. The inferences drawn are logical progressions of poetic argument – and his sensibility is always rooted in the soil.’ Indian Book Chronicle

‘His wide canvas has enlarged the Indian reality. He has brought within his ambit, areas previously neglected. By accomplishing such a feat he will remain a major voice in Indian Poetry in English.’ The Week

Acknowledgements

Some of these poems first appeared in Indian Literature, The Indian PEN, Rashtriya Sahara and Indian Book Chronicle. A selection from the present volume was read out by the poet on All India Radio in their monthly programme ‘Verse and Voice’, and in their General Overseas Service feature, ‘The Creative Mood’.