The Rajasthan government has removed all Western poems and Urdu words from its school text books. For instance, it has replaced TS Eliot’s poem Macavity the Mystery Cat and Edward Lear’s The Kangaroo and the Duck with other poems, among the titles of which one, My First Visit to The Bank, particularly stood out for me as did The Glory of Rajasthan.

Both my parents loved poetry and it was a routine presence in our home, with Urdu (yes) and Western poetry quoted sometimes playfully, sometimes reflectively. This gave me a means to recognise poetry, and a way to relate to the Hindi poems we were learning in school, despite the dour teaching style they were being flattened by. It meant I could compete with the Urdu and English poetry at home via a pious rendition of ‘charu chandra ki chanchal kiranen’ etc. while everyone looked impressed (or pretended to look impressed while secretly laughing at me in the accurate and tragic version of my childhood).