The modern publishing industry is full of iconic writers who are engineers. The last two decades have seen many techies churning out Young Adult fiction and transforming the reading culture in the country. Ashwini Rath, the writer of Rising Petals, is one such techies who have entered the literary world. But going off the trend, he didn’t write much famous chick-lit romantic fiction instead he started his writing career with a poetry book.
The poet’s note gives insight into his mind and what propelled him to write this work. He talks about the anxiety of individuals and society as a whole with the overwhelming transformation of the world, engulfed by regressive thoughts and oppression of various forms. Reading his poems further with his note in mind gives almost a sufi zest to the experience.
Rath writes in a free-style Haiku or Senryu format - short poetry about nature and human foibles - sans its technicalities, leaving the readers with food for thought.
The poems don’t specifically talk about a single event but convey an emotion that makes the reader attach it or relate it to their own personal experiences, hence making his work have a unique impact on every reader.
Many of the poems in this edition can be interpreted as having political connotations if seen from a critical lens.
However, he has shied away from being explicit on his thoughts about globalisation, nationalism, religious dogma, capitalism and more and has used abstract poetry to guard himself - saying something about those issues and not saying it simultaneously.
It will be rewarding to find him being bolder in his upcoming works with his thoughts not curtained by poetry but coming out more unapologetically - provided that they meant to.
Outside of the literary world, he is a tech-entrepreneur active in the Information Technology industry. His other published work is an academic book, Cloud Computing - Facing the Reality.
