Him and I and You
Jyothi Justin
Chapter from the book: Menon, N et al. 2023. Indian Electronic Literature Anthology: Volume I.
Chapter from the book: Menon, N et al. 2023. Indian Electronic Literature Anthology: Volume I.
The poems Him and I and You were written in the years 2016 and 2017 respectively during my undergraduate days. The poems share the admiration and love for an imaginary romantic interest. They stem both out of a sense of insecurity and knowledge that the other does not belong to the speaker. Yet the later poem is written from a general perspective without assigning any gender to the speaker and the listener/reader. This poem also has the potential to transcend romantic interpretations to represent a more innocent or even complex human relationships. Though never a great admirer of poems, I had to read a number of poems for my coursework. This together with the teenage infatuations prompted me to undertake the task of writing these short writings that I love to label as poetry. I had just begun blogging then and had written mainly book and film reviews. This was my first creative writing attempt for the blog in which I used pen-name ‘Nanditha’ (after the famous Malayali poet). I chose to add these writings online as it gave me a sense of security (being anonymous then but now I have added my real name as well). By publishing online, I was also able to receive criticism and comments from my close ones with whom I had shared my writings.
Justin, J. 2023. Him and I and You. In: Menon, N et al (eds.), Indian Electronic Literature Anthology. Indore, India: Indian Institute of Technology – Knowledge Sharing in Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.57004/book1.q
This is an Open Access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (unless stated otherwise), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).
This book has been peer reviewed. See our Peer Review Policies for more information.
Published on Dec. 13, 2023