Life Inspires

I am starting this post with a promise to myself that this is going to be a brave and honest post. When I look at my past posts, I can see a trend that they are wanna-be brave and honest posts, but tend to end in cliched didactics or a trivialization of the entire subject-matter. I will try to ensure that this post does not yield to that trap. It should be easy, I think. But let's see. Just yesterday evening, I was with a group of friends - my old colleagues and friends. And  as it often happens during an evening spent with friends, an interesting topic came up - how one's perspective changes in a life-and-death situation. And this is the question that I want to examine in this post. I am not trying to provide answers, I am instead questioning the question itself. What is a life-and-death situation? And whether it does indeed bring you face to face with a greater truth? Some of my friends in that group have been through terrible accidents, where survival was a matter of pure su

Title: Shimmer Spring: prose and poetry Edited by Kiriti Sengupta ISBN: 9788194853848 Price: INR 2500/- | USD 31.99 Page: 124 Published by Hawakal Publishers (New Delhi | Calcutta) in November 2020 Reviewed by Vibha Malhotra (Review first published on Kitaab.org ) Hope, the entity we desperately try to hold on to in these unusual times of loss and repatriation, is light, some would say. And yet, the light also reveals the desolation and destruction. What is light then? Is it the beacon, or is it the whistleblower? In this context, Shimmer Spring , published by Hawakal Publishers (New Delhi & Calcutta), is an extraordinary collection, embracing both the temperaments of light. This hardbound volume—presented by recognized poet and editor Kiriti Sengupta, designed by Bitan Chakraborty, and embellished with vivid and fluid paintings by Pintu Biswas—is as enticing to the mind as it is to the eyes. In his introduction to Shimmer Spring , Sengupta states, “ light is a com