- When did you realise your love for poetry?
Hindi has been my favorite subject since childhood and I was so fond of reading stories, poems, essays, drama, and all kinds of literary works I could lay my hand upon. Writing as a hobby for the first time emerged when I was in 8th standard. The day I wrote my first poem I felt a deep satisfaction within me which grew over the years. Ultimately I fell in love with this mode of expressing my feelings.
- How effective do you consider poetry to be when it’s about love?
When a poem is about love, it is the emotions inside which compel a writer to express his/her feelings. A poem is just a medium for a writer to take out his/her emotions and compose them into words. Thus a poem is already filled with emotions even before it is born inside. So there is no need to make any conscious effort to make a poem emotional because the origin of love itself takes place with the genesis of emotions.
- Your book “Prem Malang Ke Kisse” deals with the “waiting” aspect of love, what are your thoughts on that?
My book Prem Malang Ke Qisse is not related only to the waiting aspect of love. It has touched every aspect and stage of love we all go through. The poems in the book are not about waiting or absence of love but it comprises all the forms of it. The book is laced with every form of Nav Rasa.
- Love is a part of everyone’s life. How important on a scale of 10 is it in yours?
In my opinion, one cannot measure love on any scale. It is an infinite journey in which there are enormous moments and aspects to living by. I believe that our life is born out of love. It is so precious that I can not put it to any scale but in case I have to scale it anyway I will give it 100 out of 10 because I believe that love enhances everything so there could be no reduction in it.
- What is the reason behind you choosing this theme of love and life?
The biggest reason behind choosing love and life was because love itself is life and they are so intertwined that we cannot separate them from one another. Nowadays the spread of science and social media is so much that people are forgetting to live life as a human and we are becoming like Robots. The meaning of love is changing as well. Being with someone for the whole life is now a matter of surprise. Now our existence is so mechanical that we are forgetting to cherish the beauty spread around us. Love is losing its emotional aspect and physicality is getting prominence in relationships. This is what I have observed around me and it is necessary to change it otherwise after some time we all will roam around like robots with no promises in relationships and only having deals to satiate our carnal desires. So I considered this subject as an important topic to write my book on.
- Do you think this spiritual, “holy” perspective to love still exists today in a world of different individuals experimenting with different things?
Love is still sacred and spiritual but it is changing its course with the generations and it is getting reversed with the new generation but even in this situation, there is a struggle to maintain its sacrosanct status and it is impossible to love without any spiritual connection because without spirituality there would be no purity in it as love is a form of worship and to worship our mind, heart and every single particle of the body should be in tandem with each other and be fully engrossed in it. Spirituality takes love to the horizon where one feels like Radha or Meera, the epitome of love that is so deep. Even today it is possible to attain such a deep bond in this materialistic world.
- Everyone’s experience with love is varied. How was your emotional state when you wrote this book?
When I was writing this book, I was in the zone where one feels the love as worship phase and nature unfolded itself before me with all its elements reciting poems before me. Despite being in this outer world I used to be in another space that was full of love. So writing this book was more like living it which I had started with my pen and reams of paper.
- Did you feel any pressure to write your poems in a way that makes it heartwrenching?
I never felt any pressure while writing these poems. They were just flowing like rivers. I just tried to engrave love on paper in its full purity and passion and it emerged the same as I was feeling inside. I never felt that my poems should be heart-wrenching. I just wrote what I felt inside. My pen was in tandem with the feelings I had at any particular moment. When you are so deeply connected with your inner self then it becomes easy for you to go through with your writing process. So it was not a conscious effort to write something heart-wrenching because then artificiality takes place in your writing. But while writing every poem, it was just a wish that whenever a lover reads them, he gets the answers to his questions and he finds a way to move forward in the dimly lit alleys of love. And every bit of this world may be illuminated with this light.
- Which one is your favourite among the poems that you’ve written and why?
Though all the poems in the book are very important to me and my favorites as well. The one I like the most is poem number 4 in the book – Tum Humroz Hojao Toh Main Amruta Kehlaun. In this poem, the names of all the famous lovers are mentioned and so are their respective journeys of romanticism and perishing in chasing their love. The poem is so dear to me that I decided to name my book based on this poem.
- What is the most interesting thing about writing a book?
The most interesting thing according to me happened while writing the book was that I was feeling like being in love without having fallen for it. I am not in love but being in love is like diving in an ocean. I believe that love is like a bird flying in the infinite sky which cannot be kept under any restriction. That’s why you will see that there is not a single use of commas or full stops anywhere in any poem in the book. Not only in my life but I have not restricted love even in my poems.
- Have you ever been surprised or touched by something that you have written. What is it and how did that make you feel?
So many times after listening to these poems, people have asked me if I am in love with someone. That time I couldn’t understand why these people were saying this but once I got into the process of publishing the book I read those poems so many times and I got surprised one-day thinking…”Is it I who has written these love ballads? Not just one or two…hundred poems…!” It was such a touching moment for me.
- How much of your writing is a part of yourself? Would you say that whatever you write is a fragment of your life?
My writing is very much a part of me, of course, because even fictional tales happen somewhere in real life either in the present or in the future. I have composed all these poems in my imagination so that in reality they become a document of my love.
