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Kamal Gurtaj Singh emerges in her new avatar with her soon to be released compendium of ten poems, The Blue Saga to be released by the SG...

Kamal Gurtaj Singh emerges in her new avatar with her soon to be released compendium of ten poems, The Blue Saga to be released by the SGPC on Baisakhi day as part of the tercentenary celebrations of the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib. The book consists of ten poems centered around the ten gurus. The poems portray the history of the Sikhs through verse, simple but poised.

Starting from the birth of the Khalsa where Guru Gobind Singh made the panj pyaras8217; drink out of a common bowl, to the martyrdom of guru Teg Bahadur, to the martyrdom of the four sahibzadas8217; of Guru Gobind Singh, the volume moves on to the court of Ranjit Singh. The poems present a heightened sense of spirituality and thus create a panoramic effect of the history of the Sikh ethos. What comes as a surprise is that all these poems with such a deeply Punjabi flavour are written in English, which is an unusual practice. In fact, it goes to Kamal8217;s credit that she is able to communicate even with the non-Punjabi reading public.

Though a Sikh, Kamal writes only in English and in The Blue Saga she has deviated from her usual style of writing poetry by writing in blank verse.The only child of her parents, Kamal is a double post graduate in Home Science and English literature as well as an M. Phil. in American Drama. Her love for nature attracted her to the romantic poets. A dreamer, she pens down the complex thoughts and feelings in a disciplined manner. Her first poem was A Prelude to Nature,8217; which appeared in a local English daily ten years ago. And ever since Kamal has been as industrious as an ant. She writes every day, honing and developing her style. She also writes on issues and themes which interest her, like education and health.

Kamal has been awarded for her poem Dawn by the North American Open Poetry Competition 1993. She is also a member of the Poetry Society of India. Two anthologies of poetry, Mind Scapes 1993 and Letters to a Son and a Daughter 1994 have been published by the Writers Workshop, Calcutta: Filigree and Flint 1998 has been published by the Minerva Press London. Kamal also features in the Lines to a Rainbow, the Sahitya Academi8217;s who8217;s who of Indian writers.

The opening poem of Mindscapes concludes:
A seven-in-one band of blended hues
Painted across the blue canvas.
All that the Artist needed Was a deft stroke of brush
A stroke of colour And that completes the Divine Painting.
This ethereal enigma !

Of a conservative bent of mind, Kamal prefers to write in the standard meter of poetry. She sticks to the paradigm of verse, though blank verses are also favoured by her. quot;I do not ramble. My poems combine my love of painting and poetryquot;. But as yet she has not illustrated any of her poems. quot;I follow a fixed routine, and make it a point to write everyday for three to four hours. After dinner I make it a point to read every day.quot;

Poppy Poesy in Fling and Filigree reads:
Poppy !
A banner of red!
Crinkled and papery,
Shimmering and seductive !
The opiate of all dreams !
Somnolence in red guise !
O pretty Poppy.

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Very much her own person, Kamal prefers to express herself through non-fiction writing and poetry. There are not too many people who read that much of poetry, though. quot;We need to have more poetry clubs and library facilities,quot; she suggests.

As a creator of verses full of beauty, hope, strength and love, Kamal gets inspired by the purity of nature all around. And it is this love of nature which inspires her to do her evocative water colours. She is now experimenting with pen and ink drawings. Though the English language has always been her medium of expression, her other love is food. She adores cooking, and Kamal has written extensively on cuisine too.