Poetry that urges the reality and need for remembrance in the cycle of life and thereafter
I have no words that can truly express the inner recesses of my feelings after reading the thoughtfully curated, heart-touching memorial poetry book by Swati Pal, Living on. I have felt w hat some of the poets in this book might have, not all, as each person's bereavement is different. I have felt parental loss experienced when my parents passed when I was thousands of miles away in a different land. The emptiness that sits later inside the body is unexplainable. It just sits there. Refuses to budge. I try pulling it off, every now and then, but it finds a way to keep its hold tight like a cruel, scab that refuses to fall off.
I understood that it would not be easy to read the poems in Living on. There is no passport, or flight, or train, or roads leading to the unfamiliar realm where our dear ones now reside. Yet, I knew it was essential I read the book cover to cover. I would request everyone to do so. Poetry by nine poets in this volume shakes our core, it unsettles our comfort, it faces us headlong, like a fatal accident in the middle of the night on a badly lit road. Yet, its critical we read these poems, so that we can quietly, setting aside any qualms, place little nuggets inside us of deep and keen awareness about other people's grief. For that is life. If we want to be in touch with reality, with loneliness, even if it's not ours. It would make us more caring individuals, I hope.
Poems in Living on are by individuals, each of whom has encountered personal woe at the passing of a child, parent, spouse, or sibling. Each poem has a face to it which makes the certainty of the passing painfully tangible. This book nudges us to be softer and to be empathetic creating everlasting recollections of people who we don't personally know but who will meander into our memories because of these poems. In turn the poetry instinctively urges us to fold our hands in prayer for those left behind. Isn't that what we want for ourselves? Just a few words of concern, a tight hug, an autumn fallen leaf of remembrance.
I find the poets in Living on very courageous. How tough it must have been to sit down and construct the words, the lines, and stanzas. I salute each one of them for their willingness to create heart-touching verses to share about their amazing, cherished, beloved ones. I cried during and after reading each poem.
I would like to say a few words about the cover design that unassumingly yet clearly leaves markings of footprints of gone precious ones. I can almost see their feet walking away in the faint lines on the jacket as we follow them in the soulful poetic creations of the magnificent lives they led. I also see tears shed by family and friends drifting in harsh and unspoken winds in this dimension, tween the etchings on the jacket.
I would like to thank Dr. Swati Pal who curated this volume. It must have been an emotionally challenging task to request others to write these poems, to lead them, to inspire them, amid her own pain and sorrow. As she honestly says in the introduction, "I could not sit by and see the misery…let the anguish annihilate the souls of those whose affliction I understood keenly. They held my hand and I theirs." And we readers hold your hands, Swati, and those of the other poets, in our heart, always. This pressing, beseeching book reminds us that we are not to forget those no longer with us. We will remember, we will indeed remember, Ananya, Col Surya Panda, Akul, Divya, Tejaswee, Manorma Singh, Ananth, Rishikesh and Reba Dasgupta, Brig Mahadeb Pal, and Divakar (Mohan) Sinha. We will not overlook them and your emotive poetry about them. Both will remain with us as we celebrate their beautiful lives forever.