Poet, author, and translator Mani Rao was at the 2026 Hyderabad Literary Festival with her latest book, So That You Know (HarperCollins, 2025). After a stellar reading session and conversation with city-based academic and writer Usha Raman, Rao found herself surrounded by fans and readers captivated by her quick wit and charm.

So That You Know has been receiving wide critical acclaim. It’s a refreshing book that charts Mani’s contentious cosmos—a world where she speaks about love, marriage, career, and daily habits with intelligence, humor, and an almost self-satiric manner. The book is a clear, much-needed departure from the usual yardsticks that frame women’s poetry in English in India.

Jhilam Chattaraj: Congratulations on the release of the audiobook of So That You Know! I had the pleasure of listening to you read at the Hyderabad Literary Festival, 2026. Your voice is poised and gentle, especially when reading about the complexities of everyday life and decisions. You perform with such ease, almost creating a contrast between the content and the voice. How do you approach the physical act of reading your text aloud?

Mani Rao: I actually read as if there were no audience. How I might read it to myself, as if a soliloquy. 

The difficult truths, what you call “complexities,” are already realized, recognized, and one can only be neutral and even-toned about them. I mean, the writer is the observer of the self, it’s a bird’s-eye view, and you can only read it like something done and dusted, and the tone would then have to look at the matter with frankness and detachment. It is what it is. 

In some other poems, however, where the emotive moment is relived each time the poem is read, the voice carries the full dramatic tension, but even here it is not a projection for the audience—it is an expression and embodiment of the moment of that poem. I can feel it in my knees.

Chattaraj: The body appears in abundance—physical features, mortality, destruction and accumulated memories. The final poem speaks of “pain” coming to the body with “vengeance,” often bringing refreshing realizations. What does the physical body mean to you now, in the context of your poetry and life?

Rao: We need this body to experience the world; it is precious, a complex and purposeful system, with senses facing, processing the world, to get more intelligent, more resilient—well . . . until its finite time is out. There’s a certainty to it—both to the knowledge from it, and to its ending.

But while it is, there is a porosity, a two-way exchange between the body and environment. Through this process, I guess some data is harvested . . . elsewhere?

These don’t seem demarcated—physical body, mind, spirit, and so on. It all seems interwoven, forming a unique intelligence, and everything rooted in . . . cosmic soil? Remember the Gita stanza—ūrdhva mūlam adhaḥ śākham . . . the upside-down tree with roots above, branches below.

Meanwhile, as artists/writers, what we do is create another body—of imagination. 

Chattaraj: In this book, we meet your family, especially your mother, who seem to approach life cautiously while you seek “battles out at sea.” Would you be willing to share a little about your mother and her influence on you?

Rao: This is a tough question. It is less than a year since she passed away. If I have loved anyone, it is my mother.

For a long time, I saw her as a child, trusting and open to love—and at the same time, very attached. She was highly intuitive, had deep bhakti; had no patience with duplicity, was brutally honest. 

Her caution was mostly on my behalf, because she kept on trying to protect me, and I kept on tearing away. I rushed headlong into spontaneity and saw everything as an adventure, and she was concerned about the social context. We were both strong personalities, and ultimately she would have to give in, because she loved me more.

She was a genius! She could win a chess game while also conducting a conversation. She had a zest for life, and her beauty flowed from within. Sometimes I would just watch her, mesmerized. Observing her, I thought she was like a big cat in a small cage (aren’t most women?), and that really became my inspiration, my determination to break through barriers.

Chattaraj: Characters from history, literature, and mythology—like Sisyphus, Antony, Cleopatra, Hector, and many others—walk through your poems, especially in the section Sing to Me. How do you see the role of classical literature in your work?

Rao: Yes, Sing to Me is a book of poems on Greek myths. Mythology affects us because we recognize those archetypes and patterns in and around ourselves. And sometimes when we dig deep into ourselves and the world, out comes an archetypal memory, an underground spring! 

I am also interested in early Indian thought, and my field of interest and study is “religious studies” or maybe the technology of transcendence and bliss—but I’m not more partial to classical literature. I do read a lot of contemporary writing!

Chattaraj: Also, not every poem leads the reader somewhere; sometimes, we are caught in layers of ambiguity. Is this ambiguity a deliberate tool in your poetic writing, or does it come naturally? On that note, I was wondering about your take on “clarity” and “ambiguity” in poetry.

Rao: Writing is also about finding clarity. But what is clear to me may be ambiguous to the reader. Which reader, then, does one satisfy? So, it’s best not to worry about that. Anyhow, I believe the new poems in this book are much more thematic, and many have a narrative, even tell a linear story. 

Chattaraj: So That You Know breaks away from traditional themes often attributed to women’s writing, such as domesticity, sex, and social prejudice. What inspired you to take this fresh, self-satiric, and Tom Sawyer-esque approach?

Rao: So That You Know is a volume of selected poems, with a book-length set of new poems and poems selected from across all my books. So it’s just how I have been writing for decades. I’m glad you think it feels like a fresh approach.

Chattaraj: So That You Know swings between phases of the poetic self; in the preface, you clearly state that you seek privacy these days, then there’s a commentary on marriage through poems, distancing the romantic notions attached to it, and there are tender poems like “Address,” where trees “inhale birds” and the poetic voice waits to “perch” on “your arms.” How did you select the range of poems? Or was it an organic process? 

Rao: I chose the poems I liked, and then the editor, Dharini Bhaskar, chose the poems she liked. 

And thank heavens you do not find in it a uniform attitude toward love! In the course of one’s days, one would write poems of longing and also one would write of love warily and wryly . . . both are true, no? 

In the course of one’s days, one would write poems of longing and also one would write of love warily and wryly . . . both are true, no? 

Chattaraj: Your writing reminded me of poets like Elizabeth Bishop and Eunice de Souza, who have a distinctive blend of precision and emotional depth. Which poets have most informed or inspired your writing life?

Rao: Novels, films, music, poetry—so much has shaped my imagination, so any list will be incomplete. Ezra Pound, Rilke, Robert Musil, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Marcel Proust, Federico Fellini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lautréamont, Lars von Trier, Peter Høeg, K. L. Saigal’s voice, Mozart, Shailendra’s lyrics. There was a time I would devour anything written by J. G. Ballard.

Chattaraj: What insights have you gained about yourself from writing poetry over the years and compiling this book?

Rao: Insights—yes, that’s why many people read poetry. Surely it’s not just insights about myself, even though the world I observe is inseparable from me.

Overall, language has been my friend, as if the pen has a direct line to some realities, bypassing the masks and (self-)deceptions.

My writing reflects my way. I care for reality, and I feel for the angst of humanity, especially in youngsters. Human beings are capable of realizing pure love, but they can also be hopeless and helpless knots. Absurdity and limitations are only overcome by Love—impersonal love—this kind of love makes the world go around!

Human beings are capable of realizing pure love, but they can also be hopeless and helpless knots.

Chattaraj: Looking ahead, are there new themes or forms you’re eager to explore? Can you tell us about what other books or projects you’re working on? 

Rao: I don’t have any plans on themes or forms, as that always happens more organically. I sure feel much more focused than ever before. A four-book series on Upanishads that will be launched by year-end. The first book, The Book of Om, will be out in December.

* * *

Three Poems from So That You Know

by Mani Rao

Safe

When I tell my mother
I’m going someplace
She warns me

Of crocodiles that look like logs
Mountain lions behind rocks
Lonely roads and rakes
Tall grass, irritated snakes

One must never enter caves
Or go to the restroom
in large malls solo
She speaks without
word breaks

No wonder I am so fearless
All the panic safe with her

Peace Treaty

What if Helen died

Cuckold crows
Husband recalls
Body, face, rites

Once broad Trojan devils now
cower in the shadows of walls
Fearing skywitnesses
Quaking at birdshit

Our boy came back
from overseas with a
souvenir egg that ticked

A runaway wife’s a rotten prize
Unwanted alive
And dead
 

Tomatoes Reply

There are three kinds of people, I was told.

Those who take advice, those who learn from others’ errors,
those who only realize when shit happens to them.

I ate that scolding. Called her later from that grocery.
Let her know of three types of tomatoes.

Red all over, thick-skinned. Pesticides make them good
for photographs or soups.

Orangeish yellowish plucked green then gassed.
Tasteless, but a dash of lemon does wonders.

And those ripened on the vine. Expensive, but I said,
I would like salad today.