The Full Text of “Boxes”
The Full Text of “Boxes”
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“Boxes” Introduction
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"Boxes," by Sampurna Chattarji, tells the story of life in a tiny Mumbai apartment. The poem depicts a woman trying to cook dinner in a small space where she can hardly turn around and where she feels hemmed in by the noises and smells of the sprawling city outside her barred window. Big cities, this poem warns, become inhumane when they stop being built for their citizens: it's increasingly difficult to live a good life in a place where you can't find space or peace. This poem first appeared in Chattarji's 2007 collection Sight May Strike You Blind.
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“Boxes” Summary
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The speaker describes a woman's balcony in Mumbai, where an orchid (which she secretly brought home in her luggage from a trip to Singapore) grows. Its roots are hanging on desperately to the air. The blazing October sun is softer for just a couple of hours each morning, and it lies gently on the orchid's leaves. The woman's apartment is only nine steps across from the front door to the balcony. It makes her feel like she's a huge bug trapped in a jar.
On one side of the woman's one-room apartment, there's a stove where she cooks lentils. They smell great. The sing-song sounds of people's voices come in through the barred window. The woman's husband sits with his back to the wall next to a heap of quilts that looks like it's about to topple over.
There should have been a note on the door of this apartment declaring that it only offers enough room to sleep in, preparing you for cramped muscles. All you can do here is tumble inside and take your shoes off. At a right angle to this narrow room with a bed in it, trains roll past on their way to unknown places. Out the window, not blocked by the woman's curtains, you can see two huge black pigs (either dead or asleep) lying on a garbage pile.
The city just gets bigger every day, and it squashes people under its feet, crushing students, wives, lovers, and children. The apartments, meanwhile, only get tinier. The nearby ocean is just a memory of crashing waves and neon light, though it once sang out like a mermaid to the seven islands of Mumbai. The sky withdraws further inland as if striding on huge stilts, unable to be held back, blocking the light.
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“Boxes” Themes
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The Oppressive Nature of Urban Life
"Boxes" paints a picture of a Mumbai apartment barely big enough to hold a bed and a stove—let alone the woman who lives there with her husband. While this lady is doing her best to live a good life, decorating with flowers and cooking delicious dal, her housing is working against her: she's jammed into a tiny, unforgiving, and even oppressive space. Such an uncomfortable life is increasingly the reality for many people in Mumbai, this poem suggests—and for people all over the world. Through this glimpse of one apartment, Chattarji suggests that cities keep getting denser at the expense of their citizens.
The woman this poem follows has a lot in common with the orchid she's growing on her balcony, whose "roots cling to air" as it overgrows its pot. Like that orchid, she's doing her best to blossom in a space that's simply too small for her, a place where she can't comfortably put down her own metaphorical roots. Her flat is only "nine steps" wide "from door to balcony" and has just one room. While she cooks on one side of the room, her husband sits on the other side "with his back to the wall," apparently trying to stay out of the way. Doing normal, everyday things in a space this cramped is difficult.
The world around this tiny flat feels oppressive, too. The window has bars, the "sing-song" of voices comes through the walls at all hours, and the only view is of "two giant black pigs" lying in a "dump," either sleeping or dead on a heap of trash. These images suggest that the woman and her husband are living in a city where everyone is hemmed in, living on top of each other. (Everyone, that is, but the rich; it's hard to imagine that this couple's landlord lives like they do). Noise and smells constantly press in on tiny spaces. Moreover, the natural world (aside from those pigs) gets shut out and built over: even the "sea" around Mumbai is just a "distant memory" these days, invisible behind walls of buildings.
Not only is this living situation cramped, uncomfortable, and stifling, it's precarious. Like the orchid whose roots "cling to air," the couple seem to just barely be clinging to their life here. Repeated images of falling (whether it's "fall[ing] in" the door of the room or the unwieldy stack of quilts that "threaten[s] to fall" on the husband) hint that this pair are only just keeping their foothold even in this sub-ideal situation.
This, the poem's speaker laments, is just the state of things in Mumbai these days. "Every day the city grows taller," they say—and as it does, it "trampl[es] underfoot" its own citizens. The city's growth, in other words, takes precedence over the happiness and wellbeing of the people who live in it. And this isn't just Mumbai's problem, the poem hints. Wherever cities expand limitlessly, people end up living in increasingly inhumane conditions, unable to make real and comfortable homes for themselves in the tiny "Boxes" of space allotted to them.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-20
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Boxes”
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Lines 1-5
Her balcony bears ...
... in a jar.“Boxes” begins with an image of an orchid on a balcony. The speaker describes how it got there: an unnamed “she,” the woman this poem will follow, “smuggled” this orchid back to her home from Singapore in a duffle bag. This sounds like an uncomfortable beginning for a flower, and things don’t seem to have gotten much easier for it since. The orchid's “roots cling to air,” the speaker observes; its pot might be a little too small, and it’s overflowing.
It's also suffering under the “harsh October sun”—a detail that helps readers to gather this poem takes place somewhere very hot, as October sunlight is pretty gentle in many parts of the world. (Later, the speaker will reveal that the poem is set in Mumbai, one of the biggest cities in India—and in the world.) Only for “two hours / every morning” is the sun “tender,” or gentle, on the orchid’s leaves. The rest of the time, readers gather, this poor orchid in its too-small pot is sizzling on that balcony.
In all of these details, this orchid becomes a symbol for its owner. For, as the speaker reveals, the woman is also trapped in a too-small, too-hot space. Her apartment is only “nine steps” wide “from door to balcony,” and inside it she feels like a “giant insect fretting in a jar.” If she’s a bug in a jar, readers might wonder: who or what trapped her there?
That bleak metaphor sets this poem’s tone. “Boxes” will be about a person trying to live her life while crammed into an apartment that might as well be a box or a bug-jar. Like her decorative orchid, she’ll do her best to bloom here, but her circumstances will make it difficult.
The poem’s shape will mirror the woman’s predicament. Though it’s written in free verse (without a regular meter or rhyme scheme), the poem uses a rigid form: quintains (or five-line stanzas) whose lines are all the same length. The poem ends up looking like the apartment building it describes, with narrow, rectangular “rooms” stacked on top of each other.
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Lines 6-10
On one side ...
... threatening to fall. -
Lines 11-15
Sleeping room only, ...
... on a dump. -
Lines 16-20
Every day the ...
... out the light.
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“Boxes” Symbols
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The Orchid
The orchid on the woman's balcony seems to have a lot in common with the woman herself. As it makes a tenuous place for itself in a too-hot, too-cramped space, it becomes a symbol for the woman—and for anyone trying to make a home in awkward and restrictive housing.
"Smuggled in a duffle bag" all the way from Singapore to Mumbai, this orchid has been dealing with cramped spaces for some time. Now, its "roots cling to air," spilling over the edge of a pot it's outgrowing. For most of the day, it suffers beneath the "harsh October sun"; only for "two hours / every morning" is that sun gentle enough to feel pleasant on its leaves.
In all of these qualities, the orchid mirrors its owner. Like the orchid, the woman the poem describes doesn't have enough space: she, too, is trapped in a tiny box in the glare of the harsh sun. And like the orchid, she's doing her best to bloom, to live her life (and make it beautiful) in the space she's been given. The orchid's predicament thus feels especially poignant, suggesting that people keep on trying to live good lives even as their circumstances fight against them.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 1-4: “Her balcony bears an orchid smuggled in a duffle bag / from Singapore. Its roots cling to air. For two hours / every morning the harsh October sun turns tender / at its leaves.”
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“Boxes” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
Most of "Boxes" takes place in a few square feet: a "one-room" apartment with a stove, a bed, and two people jammed into it. The poem's imagery helps readers to feel the limits of this room, sharing in its inhabitants' claustrophobia. But it also captures flickers of beauty, a reminder that people forced to live in awkward, hostile spaces yearn for better things.
That mood might be clearest in the first stanza, where the speaker describes an orchid that the woman who lives in this tiny flat keeps on her balcony. This orchid, like its owner, seems to be just barely hanging on. "Its roots cling to air," the speaker says, an image that suggests the orchid is trying to get a toehold in an element that can't really support it: its roots are outgrowing its pot.
The balcony clearly isn't the most comfortable place for it, either. Only for a couple of hours in the morning does the "harsh October sun turn[] tender / at its leaves"; the rest of the time, the sun must just scorch the orchid. Here, the orchid's experience helps readers to imagine the residents' experience. They, too, are stuck in a tiny spot with the "harsh October sun" of Mumbai blazing in on them. And they, too, might only get a couple of hours a day of relative comfort.
They're constrained not only by the walls of their little flat but also by the sounds and sights of the outside world pressing in. Through their "window bars" (in itself a detail that suggests their room feels like a prison), they can constantly hear the "sing-song of voices high / then low in steady arcs." This constant chatter doesn't sound exactly unpleasant; the word "sing-song" even suggests it might be almost musical. But if the chatter moves in "steady arcs," it's also relentless. The metaphor of those physical "arcs" suggests that the sound of people talking forms a kind of cage around the room, just like the literal window bars.
If the residents glance out their window, meanwhile, they'll see this charming sight: "two giant black pigs l[ying] dead, or asleep, on a dump." Besides presenting the comical image of massive pigs sleeping like the dead in a pile of trash, this moment invites readers to reach a little further and imagine what this sight might smell like. Not too good, probably. In this tiny flat, all the inhabitants' senses are getting assaulted; there's no relief to be found.
Where imagery appears in the poem:- Line 2: “Its roots cling to air.”
- Lines 3-4: “the harsh October sun turns tender / at its leaves”
- Lines 8-9: “Through the window bars the sing-song of voices high / then low in steady arcs.”
- Line 15: “two giant black pigs lie dead, or asleep, on a dump”
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Metaphor
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Alliteration
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Enjambment
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"Boxes" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Fretting
- Dal
- Arcs
- Readying you for cramp
- Siren
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(Location in poem: Line 5: “a giant insect fretting in a jar”)
Worrying. The woman is a bug trapped in a jar, in this metaphor, anxiously buzzing between the walls of her cramped home.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Boxes”
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Form
"Boxes" is written in free verse and thus doesn't use a traditional form (like the sonnet or the villanelle), a meter, or a rhyme scheme. Its stanzas do, however, take on a meaningful shape. Chattarji carefully measures out the poem's lines so that they're all about the same length. Each of the poem's four quintains (or five-line stanzas) looks almost identical on the page, narrow and rectangular. That shape that mirrors the cramped, awkward "corridor" of a room the poem's protagonist does her best to make a home in. (The comparison feels especially apt because the word "stanza" means "room" in Italian. Plenty of poets play with that pun!)
The four of these regular stanzas piled on top of each other thus end up looking a lot like the Mumbai apartment building this poem describes, with tiny, narrow one-room flats stacked up high. Within that narrow form, Chattarji makes room for a lot of colorful description and homey detail (like the smell of lentil curry cooking and the sight of an orchid blooming on the balcony). The poem's copious imagery, packed into little spaces, also mirrors what the poem describes: people doing their best to live their lives, even in awkward and unforgiving spaces.
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Meter
There's no regular meter in this free verse poem. Chattarji creates the poem's rhythms through other means. For example, take a look at the way lines 6-7 use an enjambment, a caesura, and an end-stopped line to capture the atmosphere in the woman's tiny, cramped apartment:
On one side of her one-room home, a stove, where she
cooks dal in an iron pan. || The smell of food is good.The enjambment between "she" and "cooks" falls in an awkward spot, somewhere you'd never introduce a break or a pause in ordinary speech. That awkwardness in the rhythm reflects the awkwardness of trying to cook in a "one-room home" with barely space to turn around. The sentence gets out of bounds, like used cooking utensils overwhelming a tiny counter.
But the caesura midway through line 7—and the end-stop that brings the line to a close—allows this description to end with a more comforting tone. "The smell of food is good," the speaker declares: a short sentence in simple words that comes to a firm stop. That simplicity feels earthy and comfortable, suggesting that the people living in this tiny, inconvenient flat are still managing to make a home for themselves.
The changing rhythms here thus help to conjure up the poem's emotional atmosphere, in which a couple tries to build a comfortable life in deeply uncomfortable circumstances.
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Rhyme Scheme
There's no regular rhyme scheme in this free verse poem. However, Chattarji fills the poem with internal rhyme, near rhyme, slant rhyme, and even an occasional end rhyme, making the language feel perky, alert, and colorful. For instance, take lines 8-10:
Through the window bars the sing-song of voices high
then low in steady arcs. With his back to the wall,
a husband, and a giant stack of quilts, threatening to fall.Here, a hard repeated /ar/ sound connects "bars" and "arcs," perhaps helping to evoke how boxed-in the little room feels: the window bars and the constant sounds of neighbors' voices take on the same sounds. The end rhyme between "wall" and "fall," meanwhile, stands out: it's the only end rhyme in the poem, and it helps to highlight the comic image of the husband and the stack of quilts as just two awkward obstacles cluttering up this woman's tiny room.
In lines 16-17, meanwhile, an internal rhyme helps to suggest the way that cities oppress their residents with tiny, inadequate living spaces:
Every day the city grows taller, trampling underfoot
students wives lovers babies. The boxes grow smaller.The bigger the city gets, the smaller the apartments get—and the internal rhyme here underscores that oppressive reality.
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“Boxes” Speaker
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The speaker in this poem is an omniscient onlooker, an observer peeking in on a woman and her husband living in a tiny Mumbai flat. Perhaps, however, this onlooker has something in common with the woman, who stands at the stove cooking dal. The speaker mostly sticks to the woman's perspective and feelings, noting that she feels like a "giant insect fretting in a jar" in this tiny space—and only mentioning her husband in passing, listing him right next to a "stack of quilts," as if he were just another piece of clutter getting in the woman's way. This humorous dismissiveness helps to capture the woman's frustration with trying to live a life (and get dinner on the table) in a space this small and awkward.
However, the speaker does pull away from the woman's perspective toward the end of the poem. In the final stanza, they take a bird's-eye view of the city where this couple lives, watching while the "city grows taller" and the "boxes" in which people are expected to live "grow smaller." While these ideas might also be read as the woman's thoughts and reflections on the city where she lives, they also feel like a grander pronouncement on an increasingly inhumane urban landscape.
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“Boxes” Setting
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Sampurna Chattarji has lived in India for most of her life, and this poem is set there. The mention of dal (a lentil dish) cooking on the stove, the juxtaposition of urban trains with livestock (those "giant black pigs" sleeping on a dump out back), and the reference to a quick trip to Singapore all help readers to figure out where this particular tiny apartment might be.
More specifically, the reference to the city's sprawl, the nearby ocean, and the "seven islands" that make up its terrain all suggest the poem is set in Mumbai, the coastal city that is one of the biggest in India—and in the world, for that matter. (Mumbai was originally seven islands, but got combined into one landmass by British colonizers in the 19th century.)
More specifically yet, the poem is set in a minuscule apartment, only "[n]ine steps" wide from "door to balcony." Inside this cramped space, a woman is trying to cook dinner while her husband sits with his "back to the wall," trying his best to stay out of her way. That's no easy feat in circumstances this cramped and awkward. While this couple are doing their best to make a home, they're truly boxed in: by the walls of their tiny flat, the noises of their neighbors, and the unlikelihood they'll be able to find any better lodgings than these.
The circumstances the speaker describes—cities getting bigger and bigger while the "boxes" people are confined to only get smaller—are truths worldwide. This poem quietly criticizes an inhumane housing market at the same time as it paints a sympathetic picture of one couple at home.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Boxes”
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Literary Context
Sampurna Chattarji (1970-present) is an Indian poet, translator, and children's author. She was born in Ethiopia, where her parents had been working as teachers. But when she was only eight months old, her family moved back to India. She has since lived in Calcutta, Darjeeling, New Delhi, and Mumbai. This poem's portrait of housing in Mumbai comes from her direct experience of that vast city.
"Boxes" appeared in her first collection of poetry, Sight May Strike You Blind (2007). While Chattarji is multilingual, she mostly writes her poetry in English. Of the role of English vs. Bangla in her work, she has said:
My school years were dominated by English (the medium of instruction and my chosen language for dreaming, writing, reading), with Bangla playing out a parallel soundtrack at home [...]. I read and was read to in English, but I imbibed Bangla through conversation, recitation of poems by parents, recordings of my grandparents singing, my brother reciting Sukumar Ray in a solemn voice. [...] When I think back to those years, I don’t recall the sound of English. I recall the Bangla-sound which seems to surround an English that was inside me as natural (and unnoticed) as breath.
Chattarji's artistic influences are likewise multilingual and cross-cultural: she names the American poet Louise Glück and Indian children's author Sukumar Ray as some of her favorite writers.
Historical Context
"Boxes" paints a realistic picture of cramped, inadequate housing in Mumbai in the early 21st century. Chattarji (who lives in Thane, just outside Mumbai) depicts a world she knows here: one of the world's biggest cities, and one that's growing rapidly.
Modern India is seeing a major population shift. As the country's economy evolves, rural people are moving into the cities, and those cities are getting taller and denser all the time. As this poem observes, such rapid change has a serious effect on the way people live. Developers build apartments smaller and smaller and skyscrapers taller and taller, trying to cram as many people into their buildings as possible.
This poem's depiction of one flat in Mumbai isn't just about life in India, either. Increasingly, this is a portrait of life all over the globe in ever-expanding cities.
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More “Boxes” Resources
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External Resources
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Chattarji's Life and Work — Read a short biography of Chattarji to learn more about her life and poetry.
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Chattarji on Poetry — Watch a short video in which Chattarji discusses writing poetry for children.
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An Interview with Chattarji — Read an interview with Chattarji in which she discusses the influence of her multilingualism on her work.
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Sight May Strike You Blind — Learn more about the collection this poem comes from on Chattarji's personal website.
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