The unit of Shalim’s Betelnut is an experience. We experience Guwahati as space and as people, as roads and as rivers, borders and strings, in fish and bamboo, in father and mother, in cheeks and hair, in Ulubari and Cotton College, in Ambari Masjid and Dighalipukhuri, in ‘hills melting like jaggery’ and in ‘rice bubbling in mad milk’. In Betelnut history and poetry come together, as they always must—these poems move like a ceiling fan in a small town. SUMANA ROY