Better or Verse

“Publishing books is a normal call of duty for an academician,but publishing my first book of poetry some 40 years after I started publishing poems in Amrita Pritam’s magazine Nagmani and other leading literary journals of the ’70s is a thrill I had not imagined,” he says.

He recalls the times when his words would just not flow on to the paper. “Poetry returned to my life just as it had left me one day,and the result is this book,” he says. The book’s title comes from his childhood spent in the border town of Faridkot in Punjab. “It was the pre-Green revolution period and we used to sleep outside in summer. The shrill and sharp sound of the wind,like a woman or animal crying,filled my senses,and this is where the title comes from,” he says. The book begins with a section called Beej and the simple verses here talk of a life of play,ancestry and immediate family. More intense is the second section titled Wapsi,where the poet goes back to the town he grew up in. Ajnabi Sheheron Main is a section that many who have lived in big cities will connect with. “The harshness and dryness of these cities is what I have poured out,” says Brar.

Hamare Beech talks about personal relationships,while Kavita Ka Jeevan addresses the life of a poet and the act of writing poetry. Another section,Ankita is a self-reflection after reaching a certain age in life and looking back at it differently. A painting by Brar forms the cover of the book.