SANTOSH BAKAYA, INDIA

Santosh Bakaya

Dr. Santosh Bakaya, poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, TEDx speaker, and a recipient of the Reuel International Poetry Award-2014 and Setu Award-2018 for ‘stellar contribution to world literature’, has written twenty three books across different genres, that include Ballad of Bapu, [Vitasta, Bapu’s poetic biography] winning international acclaim. Her latest books are: Runcible Spoons and Pea green Boats (2021), What is the Meter of the Dictionary? (2022), The Catnama (2023) co-authored with Dr.Sunil Sharma and For Better or Verse (2023) co-authored with Ramendra Kumar and Dr.Ampat Koshy.

IN THE RECESSES OF HIS SOUL

People always found him self-absorbed and pretentious.
Narcissistic too. Often brusque.
As dusk dawned, an army of anxieties crept towards him.
Grim faced, scary. Ominous too. He tried to shoo them away.
“No way”, they chortled. “We have come to stay”.

At night, when he lay in bed tossing and turning,
nursing a crick in the neck, a fire kept burning within him.
“Come on, buddy. Let’s get that fizz of yours in order”.
He heard a voice. It was in a talkative mood. It always was.
“Talk to me, talk to me”, it was the soul pleading.
He tried to probe the dark recesses of his soul.
What was brewing inside?

In the nocturnal solitude, his soul and he talked.
The soul cocked its head to one side,
locked eyes with him, and was shocked.
“Why are you carrying all that extra baggage?
This mammoth ego, these grudges, these negativities?
High time you banished them from your psyche, please.”

Morning came, bright and exultant.
Exhilarating, rollicking songs filled the air.
With the birth of the new dawn, he was reborn.
The soul- searching had done the trick,
Gone was the self- absorbing narcissism and the crick.

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Solitude of Soul 2023 :: Setu, March 2023