Meera Ganapathi Maps the Terrain of the Heart and Land

One can complete Meera Ganapathi’s How to Forget within a few hours. And during this time, the reader will feel like she has been on many a walk, some will be a leisurely stroll, others a rushed jog with little time to breathe. Some more memorable than others. With her sharp observations and lucid sentences (both in poetry and prose) Ganapathi handholds the reader through Mumbai and Goa, through city and village, through rain and sunshine.

Ganapathi’s 78,000-odd Instagram followers might be well versed with her life, where in artfully shot photograph and well-sculpted post she shares her thoughts and insights. In a post titled ‘I’m Learning’ (with over 2,500 likes) followers croon “your words are music”, and “i love love love this”. Her learnings include, “Perhaps I have always known this. The difference between love and grief is a single incident,” “I’m learning that it is easier to arrive at an airport early,” “An unfortunate learning; sometimes the saddest people are also the funniest people.”

Each poem, each ‘chapter’  of How to Forget feels complete in itself, each has been polished like a copper vessel, and in its shimmering surface you can glimpse your own reflection. As a reader/scroller you might even want to press the heart emoji to demonstrate your approval of the poem on the page, the photo in black and white. Bound together they are more chapbook than book.

Books about walking are aplenty. And over time the woman flaneur has become an entity rather than an aberration. Ganapathi (former advertising professional and editor of The Soup) raises some of the same questions, What is it to be a woman on Indian streets? Where does she walk? How does she walk? Who does she walk behind? Who has stalked her? Who/what has she encountered in both city and jungle? And how has this affected her movement through the world?

The reader can piece together Ganapathi’s life. How she (like a clan of urban creative malcontents) abandons Mumbai for a Goan village during the pandemic. Aged 37 “life is getting shorter by the minute” and it is getting tougher to make friends. She and her partner move into a picturesque old house, here they forge tentative acquaintances. When they enter a chapel playing music they are told politely by the locals to leave, making them realise that they are still outsiders. When she becomes pregnant, she walks through the village every evening. She writes, “I see the same people I passed by as people I know about. And we make our home here—with time; like those bitter-sweet mangoes, which are meant to be curried or pickled but never eaten immediately.” Village living teaches her that there are no shortcuts, the longer route might throw up a snake (dead or alive) and rabbit poop, but time brings with it reconciliation.

Walking through the village helps Ganapathi to make it her own. Similarly, walks in the book serve many a purpose. Walks allow her to “collect pleasures”. Whether this is noticing the flowers that anoint a parked car or speculating whether dressing like a cow is a foolproof method for a woman to navigate Delhi at night or how walks fortify both wellbeing and marriages.

How to Forget is a chapbook of affirmations. It is a book about the anticipation of motherhood and the responsibility of it; “I must belong to the world I will bring you into”. It tiptoes through love and heartbreak, womanhood and aging. It reminds readers to look closely and tread softly as both acts will open up the world. It is a world where one can aspire to be “less me, and more tree”. To be more tree is to be more still and patient, more receptive and grateful. To let one’s roots run deep while spreading one’s canopy. To give more and take less.

In its entirety, How to Forget can feel like a collection of resplendent social media posts and it serves to remind that “walks may work but it’s the memes that bind.” While seeking out tree time, the book is finally testament to Insta time, where we read to like and not to remember.

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