The Literary Mirror

Anand's second collection borrows the structure of a birding field guide — poems sorted by 'habitat', 'call', and 'migration pattern' rather than by chronology or theme — to track a relationship's end across four years.

The conceit risks preciousness and mostly avoids it because the poems themselves stay plain. 'Common, Widespread' compares an ex-partner's silence to a mynah's — ordinary, everywhere, easy to stop noticing — without once reaching for a bigger metaphor than that.

Not every poem in the guide earns its taxonomy; a handful feel filed rather than found. But the best dozen poems here are as good as anything in recent Indian poetry in English, and the collection is worth buying for those alone.

“Anand's grief has plumage. It is the strangest and best decision in the book.”