My Voice
My friendship with words is as old as my memory. There were days
when I found my self very lonely in my childhood; even in those
days words used to flutter within my closed fist. As soon as I
opened my fist, they used to fly towards the sky shining like
glowworms. I used to sadly watch them go far away, thinking “Why
did I open my fist? If I had not, the glowworms would not have
flown away.” One thing I could never understand, whether I saw
words or pictures? Some say that we see pictures in the shape of
words. But can we really? Pictures usually take shape in the
mind on recalling seen things. But I have perceived a number of
unseen things in my mind. Anyhow, words or pictures were my
friends those days, and the strange thing was that my words were
mostly colorful. They had some colours on their black bodies.
In those days during the summer holidays, we used to sprinkle
water in our courtyard to make it cool. Then we would put our
wooden charpai – beds covered with snow-white sheets in the
courtyard. Whenever I sat on the bed with its snow-white bed
sheet, a dark shadow of loneliness used to envelop me, its claws
hurting my chest. It would be difficult to breathe. Then a
number of words used to come to my rescue. They used to play
around me like juggler’s balls. I could perceive that words also
have colours. Moreover they have wings, they can take us
anywhere, anywhere we want to go. Only thing is that we have to
learn to keep them under our command.
Words are very clever and understanding, they change colours
according to the occasion. When our heart is sad, they dress in
dark colours and when the heart is happy, they take all the
colours of the rainbow and seem to outshine the rainbow.
Sometimes they are as pale as death and at other times they are
as dark as a night without moon.
Those days my eyes used to be glued to words just as ants stick
to sugar. Words could attract me any time; even while sweeping
if I happened to come across a torn piece of paper with words,
dust was free to enter the house as my eyes would be busy
reading those words. Then came a time when words started flying
off from my mouth. I could use them like a vendor selling tooth
powder. After that I entered a world where words used to come
like a marriage procession and returned without the bride. In
that world words used to stick on the dress like dead
butterflies. Words would blow up like balloons and burst
noisily. I used to yearn that the words would freeze in my
mouth. But shamelessly enough, as soon as they could get the
warmth of feeling, they used to melt. I was exhausted washing
them. Now they were my worst enemy. They haunted me like ghosts.
I was a prisoner of my own words. How can I explain, how much
they troubled me? How much clatter was there in my mind? They
even disturbed my sleep. Than I learned that like a horse
trainer who tamed even the wildest of horses, I would have to
command my words, make them run on my signal. Then once again
they would become cloud or sunshine or bird or smell for me.
Sometimes they tunneled into the earth like earth worms, and
sometime they would tunnel into my mind like mice.
I do not know how my control over words transformed them into
poetry. I know that readers and poets of Kritya must have unique
associations with words. So this issue of Kritya is devoted to
the world of words.
This issue is special as we are carrying paintings from a very
talented artist, Riva Sweetrocket. She is a contemporary
American representational artist based in Denver, Colorado. She
has been drawing and painting since age 3. Her recent work
consists of large-scale soft pastel paintings on paper. To view
Sweetrocket’s most recent paintings please visit -http://www.sweetrocket.com/paintings.html
This time we also have pencil sketches
from a very talented artist and poet Suresh Kumar Vidyarthi. The
original sketches were brilliant; it is very difficult to
maintain the standard of original work. But I hope readers can
get a glimpse of his talent.
In this issue we have some beautiful poems in the section-
Poetry in Our Time. Some of them are young poets, who will
certainly bring fresh breeze. Editor’s Choice is a great Hindi
poet “Agyeya” who is called the founder of new poetry in Hindi.
Mona Elizabeth has provided us translations of his beautiful
poems. In the section “Our Masters” we are recalling a great
Persian poet “Neema”. Persian poetry has its own flavor which is
very close to the heart of us Indians. There are some special
thoughts from Suma V. S and agro in the section-In The Name of
Poetry. Hope readers can continue the forum.
Dear readers, we are almost completing a year. All of you have
given us lots of affection; I think this is the power of Kritya.
With best wishes
Rati Saxena
