Rati Saxena

When did I devolve  love for poetry? I don’t think I loved poetry much as a student. Even in the college while  reading Kalidas, Bhavbhoti etc,I could  not develop the passion. Now I feel that was due to bad teaching of the poetry. Our poetry teachers explained the poetry, in place of let us getting in to the layers of the poetry.

Still I was writing some thing, which was not the poetry in my dictionary, as was very different than what I was read. I was not the student of contemporary literature like Hindi  or English, so was not very sure, what do I write. In place of poetry  I loved the philosophy, culture, history All credit goes to  our poetry teachers J.

My whole passion was with stage performances, like debate, Elocutions, and Dramas,I starting  in Hindi than in Sanskrit. I don’t know how I used to lean big duologue with ease. And I always enjoyed the stage. I started this journey of stage performance at the age of 11 as debater.  In upper schooling I was more on the stage than my classroom. J

In colleges, ( I was moving from one city to another because of y fathers job) early college time only I was away from stage, that is because I think that college did not have any culture programme of good slandered . once I return to my own city Jaipur, I was again busy in the debates, but  this time Sanskrit debates, alas,,,, no theatre.

In university I was doing lead roles in Sanskrit theatre. Oh yes, I was writing also, but did  not knows what was that . Once I showed my writing to our teacher- Hariram Acharya ji, and he declare it poetry.

Suddenly world became upside down for me… an era of my life started, here there was no space of words from books; the whole knowledge was travelling around the things, which were not never known to me.

There was a new language, a new family, a new thinking and a new society. Here I learnt that gossiping is a social entertainment, the jokes can be red, blue and green, and so many new things.

Oh God, this is a tough acting, I thought. In this stage, you leave your own self; you are not acting as an artist, but as a monaster. Because when you act a role as an artist, you are honest to your self and the person, whom you are presenting on the stage, but here every thing is artificial.

I was restless, strangely the notebook scrabbling was giving me some relief

And thus poetry or some thing in name of poetry saved me from  this artificial world,

I went back to re-education, in the world of words, and in a time, my whole family was talking about literature, politics, social culture systems, in place of gossiping.

Poetry came to me from my back door, and remains with me until today.

Now I can say, the poetry is the best therapy

Officially I took poetry only in my forties, and  journey is always on, reading, writing, and talking to poets, taking part in poetry festivals, and so on.

The Kritya is journey of poetry like me, and several others.

Poetry can save any good or bad time, only thing to go to her with open hands