‘Changing, Unchanging’: Anju Makhija’s poetry is a quest for the restful

Anju Makhija wears many hats. She is a poet, playwright, anthologist, translator and columnist. She has written/co-edited 14 volumes which include poetry, anthologies, translations, plays and children’s books. Her poems from two earlier poetry collections, Pickling Season and View from the Web have won several awards. A Sahitya Akademi awardee for translation, her translation with Hari Dilgir from Sindhi of Shah Abdul Latif, the 16th century Sufi poet, Seeking the Beloved is regarded as an authoritative work on the mystic. She is also translating the 17th century Sufi poet, Sachal Sarmast. Her myriad plays include: The Last Train, a political satire (shortlisted for the BBC World Playwrighting Award, 2009), the popular, Meeting with Lord Yama and a musical with original songs, Off the Hook.

Besides being a biographical journey, it is this diversity of talent in multiple genres that is reflected in Makhija’s new collection of poems, Changing, Unchanging: New and Selected Poems (1995–2023). In her Preface to Mumbai Traps, 2022 (Makhija’s collection of six plays), Uma Narain, Founder of the School of Liberal Arts, Mumbai writes: “The characters in the plays are chroniclers of the follies and foibles of Mumbai life and the playwright neither evaluates nor judges from a moral high ground…The magic is created by familiarity with theatre arts, the poetic sensibility, a translator’s transformative power...

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