by Paulami Sengupta
Elsa Mathew left us this October. It is difficult to write a few lines around this sentence.
I first met her a decade back, when she was a regular at Moonweavers, a Delhi-based poetry group founded by our friend Rati. Elsa believed in writing, especially in poetry. She always spoke her mind.
We gradually lost touch as we changed jobs and cities. In 2023, I got to know that she was fighting cancer. It was heartbreaking, scary and unfair; she was young. Not knowing what to do, I just dropped a ‘take care’ on social media. Surprisingly, she herself got in touch with me after my poetry book came out, asking if she could review it. We spoke and chatted on a few occasions after that. She made it easier, the stronger one always assuring me that she was taking each day as it comes, focusing on lines of treatment, diet and medicine. But writing was the adamant adhesive that held our conversations together, how she reviewed books and wrote poems whenever she could. Just as loved ones do, I hoped she had time. So, I was not prepared for her demise. It just happened, and I got to know about it after a few weeks.
I will remember our sky-hued poetry sessions at Coffee House and Attic in Delhi. I will remember her love for writing and poetry.
This is a poem Elsa wrote for the May issue of The Dreaming Machine this year.
The chemo flowed like
A river
Through the body
Toxic, impure, sick
Eroding the organs
Killing the good
And the bad
And yet she emerged
Pure and strong
Like a dip in the Ganges.
