A myriad of thoughts and emotions
View(s):Once their skills are developed sufficiently as tools to help them forge ahead in achieving material success, reading, leave alone writing, becomes a forgotten pastime among most young people these days .
Gayendra’s burgeoning creative spark manifests itself clearly in this first book and bodes well, indeed, for a promising future as a writer. In this work of prose and poetry, Gayendra has struggled for self-expression, revealing his capacity for those rare qualities, acute observation and sustained introspection – two of the hallmarks of a good writer. He succeeds in conveying a myriad thoughts and emotions through the pages and his sincerity is manifest.
Understandably, he is at a stage in life where he is most concerned about emotional involvements with the opposite sex .His protoganist strives to come to terms with loneliness and disappointment in love, which invariably form the lot of most sensitive beings at one stage of life or the other – or maybe many ! The undercurrent of loneliness and pathos seeps relentlessly into one right throughout this book ( “I’m living in a universe full of hopes and dreams , but they are all speeding light years past me”….”today seems like the worst day of my life. Then again most days feel the same” – from Blind)
Even though the stories are not gripping as in – say – a fast moving detective novel, and could do with a little more vibrancy, there are sudden flashes of authentic exposure of a raw nerve here and there showing up Gayendra’s protagonist’s own past suffering to which, within us, feelings from our own pasts resonate.
Although the stories do not revolve around social realities, he is not insensitive to them. A heartening pulse of knowledge and concern about the disparities between the lives of the haves and the have-nots and the powerful and the weak emerges strongly in the book. We see this in his cynical observances on art and its commercialisation, in Pictures Of You, and elsewhere.(“There were plenty of people who traded their day’s wage for fancy art. Maybe they were hoping to capture a piece of history. An investment to cash in a few generations later. Maybe they didn’t want to waste their money donating to charity. Too many children left hungry, too many families left in poverty. Too many ugly-dirty problems they thought were too hard to fix.…..”- from Pictures Of You.)
His poem Broken Maps And Nowhere To Hide hits out at one, and one sees with clarity, Gayendra in all his youth and vulnerability. This poem though simple and short is highly evocative.
Often, Gayendra hits upon an expressive turn of phrase which nails an emotion that we have once felt but could not express (“ I walk past the shops, cafes, and tables knowing who I ’m going to meet but not knowing the person I’m going to find”..from Wandering ).Or hinting at something without being explicit. (I’m wondering how much her tattoos have faded” – also from Wandering – here he hints at past intimacy.) Beautiful, strong imagery emerges often ( “I’m staring at the setting sun…..falling in love again and again with the burning sky bleeding into the horizon” – “an inquisitive parrot flying over and listening to my thoughts” – “I could slip and go splat – fall on the road and see my pieces all over life.” – from Running.)
“Fragile” is intense ,explicit and authentic, about the trauma of breaking his right hand in a fall while running ( “Right about now my inner voice has given up on all rational conversation and screaming red hot bolts of jumbled words down my right arm..” – from Fragile – very expressive ).
Human Caffeinated takes us right into what appears to be Gayendra’s favourite domain of coffee from where he expands into a fantasy almost like science fiction. Power Plants In Space is yet another fantasy, an exceptionally imaginative account about the shape of things to come.
He (or his protagonist) does sound, though, as if he expected life to treat him better, because it owed it to him.( I hide my master plans so “life” wouldn’t mess it all up / I scream at the universe saying “Is that all you got?” – from Freedom ) But, I found, his observation: “but the small constants in my life keep me going”, extremely touching.
And last, but not the least, Gayendra’s ability to write without resorting to obscenities to stress a point, is greatly appreciated in these times of flying F-words.
The book is available on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00IQPMZNG)
| Book facts
Broken Maps to Miniature Flights, by Gayendra |