{"id":215,"date":"2018-02-07T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T07:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edict.ashoka.edu.in\/index.php\/2018\/02\/07\/an-evening-with-rupi-kaur\/"},"modified":"2019-03-17T13:43:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T13:43:27","slug":"an-evening-with-rupi-kaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/2018\/02\/07\/an-evening-with-rupi-kaur\/","title":{"rendered":"An Evening with Rupi Kaur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Varisha Tariq, Class of 2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Advice I would have given to my mother on her wedding day<\/em>
one
you are allowed to say no<\/p>\n

\u2014 Rupi Kaur<\/p>\n

I sit in the auditorium, waiting for her to arrive. The show is officially running late, so I switch on my phone to distract myself. I am in Delhi\u2019s Kamani auditorium, a six hundred-seater hall. The place quickly fills up by 5 PM, but it is only around 5.30 PM that the stage is set up. Everybody moves to the edge of their seat, anticipating her arrival.<\/p>\n

\n

Source: Eventshigh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There have been times when Rupi Kaur\u2019s poetry has been very hard hitting for me; some of her bite-size Instagram poetry posts are saved in a quotes folder on my phone. But they have never hit me hard enough to go online and buy her books. Still, I wasn\u2019t one to turn down a poetry night. So I bought my tickets and went. As far as I was concerned, it was either going to be good or going into my \u201cexperience list\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kaur\u2019s poetry has always been simple. She writes about subjects that are \u2018common\u2019 in the spoken word circles; her choice of these common subjects has garnered her a lot of negative reactions. Yet, when she performs, I cannot keep my eyes off her. She is hilarious and confident, with a voice made to recite poetry. Words and verses that seemed simple on my Instagram feed suddenly have a deeper meaning. I am so mesmerised by her performance that when she recites my favourite poem, \u201cLegacy\u201d, I forget that I can record it. Kaur\u2019s honesty on paper strangely becomes something more intimate\u200a\u2014\u200amore personal\u200a\u2014\u200aeven as she performs in a room full of strangers. It is like we are sitting across each other and talking about the struggles of being a brown girl, of being body shamed, of being slut shamed, of having a broken heart, or a broken soul. Her performance is absolutely riveting. Later, I keep looping the videos I remembered to record.<\/p>\n

\n

Photograph by Pritika\u00a0Gupta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also end up ordering both her books as audiobooks.<\/p>\n

To all those who think that her work isn\u2019t good enough to receive the overwhelming positive response it has: you should see her perform. Her voice holds an incredible amount of power; it flows like a song that hits right where it hurts.<\/p>\n

My advice? Buy those damn tickets the next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Varisha Tariq, Class of 2019 Advice I would have given to my mother on her wedding dayoneyou are allowed to say no \u2014 Rupi Kaur I sit in the auditorium, waiting for her to arrive. The show is officially running late, so I switch on my phone to distract myself. I am in Delhi\u2019s Kamani…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[27,168,191],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edictarchive.the-edict.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}