Delhiwale: The balcony poet

Cecilia Abraham’s balcony offers her a view of the world around her.

Her young son is named after the poet Kabir, and her daughter is christened April. Not because TS Eliot famously called that month the cruellest but because her naughty girl was born in that month.

Cecilia Abraham with two of her children. (Mayank Austen Soofi / HT Photo)

Cecilia Abraham’s third baby was born last year. She self-published her poetry collection Not Just a Housewife through crowd-funding.

We meet the poet at her home in south-west Delhi’s Raghu Nagar. Ms Abraham’s family includes her husband and her mother, who, incidentally, is also one of our links to the disappearing world of Anglo-Indian home cooking (Christina Abraham makes delicious meatball curry).

Ms Abraham’s balcony is equally lively. Standing there amid a dense foliage of potted plants, she points out her immediate neighbours, saying, “In that house lived a bedridden woman who used to like my plants… she told this to a rickshaw puller who disclosed it to me… she passed away last year… and see that house…they’re always loudly arguing there… I never feel bored standing in this balcony….”

Of her writing, Ms Abraham says, “I look at things and sometimes I feel a word coming up inside me and a poems begins to shape up.” She shares a poem with us.

Finding Pain

I had a nightmare
or was it a sweet dream?

All my pain left me
like a bird leaves from a cage.What would I be without pain?

I’m not masochistic, spineless or self flagellating
I just like to feel.Pain is the new pleasure.

I had a nightmare
or was it a sweet dream?