Aftab Seth’s I Do Not Know Why is an elegant collection of poems that resonate with emotions that the reader can empathise with

To give the reader some sense of the masterly execution of what the poet seeks to pithily but powerfully convey, perhaps one should first turn to his haikus, starting with the one titled ‘Early Autumn Rains’. Written when he served in Tokyo (he is fluent in Japanese and a hit in Japanese academic circles), it is illustrated with a moving painting of a Japanese boy gently crying as his tears drop on an autumn leaf: Early autumn rain/ Glistening leaves shine/ Silent tear drops.

And the lines he writes, filled with yearning nostalgia as he readies to leave Tokyo at the end of his diplomatic assignment, crushing underfoot the “ripening ginko nut kernels” in the walkway to his home: One is crushed underfoot/ And I wonder/ When will I get to smell/ That pungent odour again.

In our peripatetic careers — Aftab served in Beirut, Cairo, Hamburg, Karachi, Athens, Hanoi and Tokyo — we have learned instant recall through one unique memory of something transient — a scene, a taste, a smell, a touch, a smile — that brings back to mind everything else we will probably never again encounter as we move to far-flung lands. Aftab catches that beautifully in his passing encounter with a typically Japanese fruit: the ginko nut.

We shared two of these postings, albeit at different times: Hanoi and Karachi. His verses on a “typically dark Hanoi day/ Wet with dreary drizzle spray”, illustrated with a painting of the famous lake in the centre of the city, took me back instantly to the miserable morning I spent sobbing softly on a wooden bench overlooking this same lake at a brutal, bullying, unfair reprimand I had received from my irascible boss. But it is his poignant verses on the palatial mansion we successively occupied in Karachi that most resonate with me.

In retaliation for the Babri Masjid being barbarously dismantled, dome by dome, the authorities unleashed hooligans to enter the premises and wreak havoc, both physically and on our shared memories of happier times, of songs of “love and friendship/ Across the cruel frontiers of hate” that both of us, at different times, had exulted in. Where so many dreams were spun/Where poems were sung/And laughter heard, now remembered only in Those broken toys/ That splintered bed/ That mirror on the wall/ The gloom, the deathly pall, They tell it all!

The writer is a former Union minister