Neelam Saxena Chandra, INDIA

Exclusive: Best of Women Poetry: Edited by Padmaja Iyengar-Paddy

MY CASTLE

I keep building my castle

In which peace, repose and happiness reside,

Where selfishness, greed and anger

Have been barred entry,

Where the only voices that can be heard

Are the chants of “Aum”!

Building my castle

Hasn’t been an easy task

For it isn’t simple to discard these vices

And they keep knocking at the doors

Every now and then.

One or the other

Is at times, more unsettling

And arrives deviously

Through the windows and the ventilators,

Annihilating the entire process

And I stand alone with my ruins.

There is a burning light inside me

Which refuses to douse

Despite all storms

And impetuses me

To restart again

Building my castle!

Neelam Saxena Chandra, a 1992 batch IRSEE officer, has written 4 novels, 1 novella and 5 short story collections, 27 poetry collections and 11 children’s books. She is a record holder with the Limca Book of Records for having the highest number of publications in a year (2015). She has won an award in a poetry contest by American Embassy, Rabindranath Tagore International Poetry Award, Freedom Award by Radio City for her lyrics, Humanity International Women Achiever Award-2018 and II prize for her poem by Poetry Council of India, 2016. She was listed in the Forbes list as one of the most popular seventy-eight authors in the country in 2014.

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Best of Women Poetry -2020 :: Setu, March 2020