SECRETS OF THE SOUL – A JOURNEY IN VERSE PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION

       SECRETS OF THE SOUL – A JOURNEY IN VERSE

       PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION

This is a book that will not sell. Not much of a marketing pitch to start with. But I am a wiser man now, after having written and published three books, and not really succeeding in convincing my friends and others to buy and read them. I am awake to the reality that there will not be many takers for this genre. Poetry? So why did I go through with it. Well, I wanted to see them in print and having decided that I was not going to incur any expenditure for the publishing I opted to have them published through the self-publishing platform Xpress of Notion Press (the publisher for my three previous books). What if I do not have an ISBN for the book (maybe later I shall have it done on my own) or the book not being made available on online store like Amazon etc, it will be still available in paperback from the publisher for purchase and I still get to order my author copies at the subsidized price. And of course, friends and others who are genuinely interested can order them from Notion Press at the link which is at the end of this post. This has been a thoroughly satisfying experience – going through the process of designing the interiors and the cover, of course Notion Press does suggest Templates that we can use, but the entire process of selecting the Font and Font size as well as ensuring that the layout comes out properly is our responsibility. Thanks to my daughter who gave me a painting of hers to use as the cover. In the final analysis, I am satisfied – a job well is done.

       PREFACE

In all my three books ‘I am just An Ordinary Man’, ‘Darkness and Beyond’ and ‘Autumn Leaves’ that preceded this collection of poems, it was an exploration of life, be it my very own or the lives of others that I undertook, to arrive at an understanding and accepting the reality of existence. But in a way the themes for these books were based on the diaries that I had kept and the jottings mainly in verses made over a period of more than four decades. In a sense this collection or rather a selection of what I still like to refer as prose-poetry is a means of recapturing the different phases of my growing up and thought processes. That is why I refer to this collection as ‘A Journey in Verse’.

       INTRODUCTION

Four decades ago, on one of those grey monsoon mornings in Bombay (Mumbai as we know it now), having kept awake for most part of the night troubled by my asthma and overdosed antispasmodic, I stood outside on the balcony trying to beat the claustrophobic indoors and as the first signs of light appeared uncovering the drenched roads from the overnight rain, drowsiness crept in and I made my way back inside, to my bed. As had happened many times before, I went to sleep and to a world of my own and to my dreams. I woke up three hours later, still drowsy. I had my morning coffee and took out an old diary that I had preserved safely in one corner of my cupboard and started to write -

Somewhere I hear a clock chime,

Marking the passage of fleeting time,

Somewhere I hear the motor whirr,

Slowly from my slumber I now stir.

On this grey and gloomy morning,

Like many other mornings I have known,

I see the faces of the dead walking,

This city’s streets up and down.

‘Ghosts’ was my first attempt at writing. I wrote about the city that I had explored over the last six months, during what I now call as a self-imposed sabbatical. I explored every nook and corner – from the multi-storied affluence and the pulsating rhythms of daily existence to the life on the pavements, the stench of the gutters, and the streets with looming dark shadows; life sustained by the hope that there will be a next meal, that there will be a shelter when the rains come, a fight for survival and a hope, that there will be a better tomorrow.

Ominous patterns,

A dreary grey smoke,

Weaves across a vacant sky,

Whilst a stifled city struggles,

And groans to stay alive. ……..

In the background there lurked something unseen: observing, but not intervening, leaving the happenings to play out as per the script.

There the ghost it starts its dance,

Freed of fetters and a lively trance,

Leaves no footprints on the sands.

‘Ominous Patterns’ which forms a part of ‘Ghosts’ is a snapshot of Bombay with its various shades of grey that never ever left my system, though now I can say that with the passage of time, the ghosts have been exorcized.

On a cold December night at Ellora, as I gazed at the Kailasa temple silhouetted against a star filled sky and the surrounding stillness, I found myself. A feeling of oneness with the world and joy was predominant. Even now when I try to recollect and revive that state once again, it does not happen. It was something mystical.  Not that I did some great writing, I have always kept it to myself and enjoyed reading it again and again. It has been something very personal. There have been other moments that have overwhelmed and drowned me in ‘Rapture’.

Sometimes when to these heights I soar,

I feel this fever more and more,

And in delirium I do rant,

All this fervor’s magical chant.

I love everything on earth,

That has given rise to beauty’s birth,

Every joy, pity and pain,

In my heart a passion gains.

In my rapture I had seen,

All that love that never had been,

Now once again I spread my wings,

As my heart in fervor sings.

There have been infatuations and experiences that pushed me into despair along the way, and I have emerged with a clearer insight of myself and my relationship with the external world.  ‘Rebecca’ symbolizes all that and more. As I stood gazing at the statue in Salarjung Museum in Hyderabad, the floodgates opened and all that had lain hidden for a long time, flowed out. The veil that had hidden many a mystery seemed finally to lift. I guess it was easier that way, from the first stirrings of infatuation to love, to an obsession, to unrequited love and finally to say,

Leave me, let me be,

Content in my fantasy.

Unshackled from the bonds of infatuation and having suffered the pangs of separation one moves through a sabbatical before he comes down to the harsh realities of life. The more my encounters in the external world, the more I started turning inwards to understand my relative existence. ‘Fragments’ is the result of these ruminations – from ‘Being and Nothingness’ to ‘Mere Words’.

‘Oh, I was young then!’ is an acceptance of growing old though reluctantly –

The forebodings,

Of approaching emptiness,

Follows me like an apparition.

‘Moments of Happiness’, portrays the temporality of happiness -

These are certain moments and they pass me by,

They remain etched in my memory, as I try

To understand what is my quest,

To perpetuate these moments, try my best.

‘Stillness’ explores all those moments which stand frozen in time - those moments of joy, ecstasy, of alienation. It is a snapshot of all those pictures, While I seek the stillness therein -

When will these moments ever last?

Is it when I find,

The silence in my heart,

And in the stillness of my mind?

‘Illusions’ defines the ultimate purpose in life as I have understood it–

Life is just a river that flows,

On its way it winds and grows,

To settle down in tranquillity,

To finally merge with the sea”.

Finally, in ‘Secrets of the Soul’, the imagery seeks to mingle the inner world of dreams and awareness with the happenings in the external world of things and events, seeking answers to the turmoil going on within. Here again the presence of the ghost is felt.

I wrote, sometimes in spurts, sometimes in rhyme. Since all the writing was done after what I would call ‘my awakening’, a good portion of them have been recollections. I have rearranged them in five parts – Ghosts, Rapture, Rebecca, Fragments and Secrets of the Soul to reflect the various stages of my journey and that is why I call it A Journey in Verse. It took me a long time to write down my thoughts, in bits and pieces, and it has been one long journey, but the secrets that I seek to understand never really end.

I stand absolved,

Of all the guilt and shame, that eroded,

The entrails of my conscience,

As I shake the shackles from my ankles,

Break away from the bonds

That held me down.

https://notionpress.com/read/secrets-of-the-soul

MILK TEETH by Amrita Mahale BOOK REVIEW

MILK TEETH by Amrita Mahale

BOOK REVIEW

Matunga the year is 1997, a muggy evening in late April.

The milky clouds of the past weeks had curdled into thick cheese, blotting out the evening sun, raising hopes for a spell of unseasonal rain. The air felt slightly stale. Being outside was like taking an evening local train cramped up against a mouth breather.

When I started reading Amrita Mahale’s book ‘Milk Teeth’, a wave of nostalgia swept me back to a monsoon day in 1973.  I remember that I used to keep awake after a late-night bout of asthma, sometimes till the morning dawned with the clanging of the milk bottles, and Bombay slowly woke as I slowly moved towards my bed. The mornings in Bombay were always grey and by 7 am the road was already populated with people, office goers, and the frenzy increased as the peak hour approached. Another passage from the book –

A light sleeper at best, Mumbai opened its eyes by 5 a.m. to the arrival of milk trucks on the streets. Local trains started to ply around the same time, carrying fisherwomen, flower sellers, and sleepy revellers up and down the arteries of the metropolis. And along these arteries, Mumbai awoke in slow waves, the farthest suburbs stirring first, readying themselves for the long battle that was the day ahead.

At times there was nothing to say about Mumbai. More often than not, work had become one routine story braided into another, this meeting and that scheme, delays and excuses.

To me it is still Bombay, and so will it be remembered by people of my generation. It is a relationship, an intimacy that is shared by everyone who has lived there. You may choose to hate it, but you will still love it with all its shades of grey. My time, of course, goes back more than a decade before the author was born, but it is the skill with she has been able to capture the passing years. Matunga of 1967 had yet to give way to vertical growth but with the growing population the movement to the suburbs had already begun and I did stay in one such suburb Chembur. Her description of Matunga, King Circle, the South Indian restaurants and the most important of all – the Irani Café famous for its plate of pastries and the distinctive Chai, where one could spend time meeting up with friends, evoked memories of evenings of many a summer and monsoon spent there. Thanks to her brilliance as a writer she has brought to life ‘Bombay’ (Bombay became Mumbai after 1995).

The story itself is simple, at the same time her probing of the psyche of the main characters makes the reader identify and empathize with them. there is no melodrama and she has maintained her integrity as a writer throughout.

In the beginning, I was intrigued by the title of the book Milk Teeth. The first inkling of what the author was trying to convey comes out through the following passage –

So for most practical purposes, the communal violence that started after the Babri Masjid fell came to an end after the blasts, but the spell of peace that followed felt like hate was only shedding its milk teeth.

For me, I have understood it on a broader canvas – the shedding of one’s frailties and emerging as a stronger individual who has accepted his/her perceived aberrations and moved on towards living and finding authenticity in life.  The character of Kartik has been handled with great sensitivity and is perhaps the highlight of the book, a brilliant individual struggling with his own ghosts. The most telling passage in the book is towards the end, where the author leaves her mark as a powerful interpreter of human emotions through metaphorical images -

The receding wave reveals the debris the sea had kept hidden. Scattered on the rocks under our feet are plastic bottles, snack wrappers, a soiled diaper. Refuse that the water had obscured like love does. The walls, Kartik called this spot. The name sounds familiar, but I am not sure where I have heard it. In a magazine, perhaps? I feel the unpleasant tug of a sour memory. Ananya comes to mind, but why? The walls. The walls. In the distance, large oil tankers stand still. Closer, fishing boats bob up and down, anchored but still moving. It’s ten past six, sunset is at least ten minutes away. The Walls. Oh.

Kartik has changed his mind. ‘Ira,’ he begins, ‘I am sorry.’

To talk more about the book or the storyline will be unfair to the author. I leave it to whoever reads this review to buy and read the book in its entirety.

With her first book, Amrita has shown her talent as a writer who I am sure will find her own place on the Indian literary scene. Wishing her all the best.