Review of A Different Story

By Amlanjyoti Goswami

Published by Paperwall Publishing, 2025

ISBN: 978-81-984437-9-3 (Paperback)

Price: 499 INR

Language: English, pp. 238

-Kumar Sawan

Amlanjyoti Goswami, a 2002 Inlaks scholar who went to Harvard Law School, is Chief, Legal & Regulation at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS). A Different Story (2025) is his third book of poetry after Vital Signs (2022) and River Wedding (2019).

Divided into nine sections, A Different Story presents poems that spell something more than what one can describe in words. He describes a poem as both “event and poetry”. As an event, a poem happens to a poet, an effect of the outside on the inside. The sustaining and modifying of the event in the mind and finally writing it, constitutes poetry.  If I had to use one word to describe the poems in the book, I would say— elusive. The imagery of the poems is dreamlike. The poems stay with the reader but only as a fading appearance.

As one begins to experience the poems, one is amazed by the simplicity with which the poet pushes his thoughts forward. In “Van Gogh at the Metro Station”, the deteriorating ceiling becomes a motif, a symbol that displays destruction but means regeneration and hope:

“When suddenly staring at the ceiling, he finds the right colour of music

In a broken patchwork of skin peeling off stucco.” (lines 29-30)

The reader never finds the final meaning of the poem. They only know that the poem is an anachronism: Van Gogh who passed away almost a hundred years ago, suddenly finds himself at a metro station in New Delhi. The metro station represents the cold, measured speed of modern life and Van Gogh brings a human, soulful perspective. He is the only one who draws and paints among people bound by “dinner and deadlines”.

Reality blurs before the readers. Myth, mystery, and memory take its place. And all of this unfolds in front of the reader like a camera zooming in and out in a film. The poet moves from the minute details to describing feelings such as human suffering and the peace that follows. “Graduation Ceremony” becomes an example of generation gap and aspirations that alter with time:

“Tiny grandmother nibbles little morsels

Alone at the table.

Little bird we call her.

Her granddaughter graduated today.” (lines 1-4)

One would find it a little peculiar that a poem about a girl’s graduation is beginning with the image of her grandmother eating at the table. Perhaps, it is a way of paying respect to the elderly who play a role in our lives that often goes unnoticed. The young worry about little things and achievements, the elderly strive to:

“Bringing warmth from the setting sun

Back to the heart.” (lines 15-16)

The last line of the poem simplifies the disparity between generations, what the older generation values and what the younger generation wants:

“Grandmom continues to find meaning in little nuggets.

Her granddaughter wants to change the world.” (lines 17-18)

Goswami does a meticulous task of curating references from India, ranging from oral traditions, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Vinod Kumar Shukla, surbahar, to Samaypur Badli, Guwahati, Mohenjodaro, and Durga Pooja. For these poems, a reader must come with a prior knowledge of literary traditions, local geography, musical instruments, and the even Hindi poets who rarely appear in Indian English poetry. “The Guwahati I knew” mourns two things at once, the vanishing of its social life, the “fun and games”, the discussion by parents of “translations of poems in the little magazines”,

“That Guwahati had fun and games, artists who ran cafes

Held up on bamboo stilts, near the ancient museum no one visited anymore.” (lines 17-18)

And the eventual leaving of the citizens due to increasing crimes and modernisation of the city:

“A cricket bat, mud splashed, stood slanted, stood slanted on the wall.

The wall burst with posters about blood and guts by morning.” (lines 29-30)

The poet says that the city now lives only in his poems and the heart of the people who once experienced safety and peace in their homes.

Ultimately, Goswami’s task as a poet, in this book, is to reclaim the past that is disappearing like a spectre in a world increasingly influenced by ideals of progress and capitalism. He mourns the fading of the shrines, the bedside lamps, the clapping clubs, the oral rendering of life stories, the sweetshops, the theatre companies. A poem is sometimes a revolt, and the poet, a revolutionary. By the act of writing, Goswami revolts against excessive modernization that has seeped into our very sleep and alters our dreams.

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About the Reviewer

Kumar Sawan is a Lecturer of English at Government Polytechnic, Bachhrawan and a Ph.D. scholar in the Department of English and Modern European Languages at the University of Lucknow. His research explores the intersections of literature, technology, and subjectivity in contemporary cultural narratives, particularly through the lens of Critical Posthuman Studies and Literary Criticism. He has presented his work at the Center for Research in Posthumanities at Bankura University, West Bengal, and at the University of Lucknow. His scholarly and creative work has been published in several peer-reviewed and literary journals, including Vernon Press, Madras Courier, Rhetorica: A Literary Journal of Arts, Contemporary Literary Review India, SPL Journal, Literary Horizon, Creative Saplings, Borderless, and The Teesta Review.