‘The Best Is Yet to Be’ is a collection of 51 Poems by Dr Indu Nautiyal. She published her poems after retirement. A stage when the poet within her refused to accept that the voyage of her life was over… and the path before her was closed, the provisions were exhausted, and the time had come to take refuge in the silent obscurity. Retirement is not the end of the road; the road itself never stops but takes a turn towards new avenues. Because in the garden of life, ‘Count your garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall’. In the book’s preface, words of positivity and future optimism set the tone for the poems you find inside.
FULL OF MOTIVATIONAL SIMPLIFIED POSITIVITY
The poems reflect her thinking and many experiences without the constraint of a theme or chronology. But a consistent thread of positivity, optimism, motivation, love and care runs through them. A push to look at the bleakest moment from a different perspective of opportunity.
There are many references to learnings reflected in motherhood and nature itself. There is a degree of satisfaction and gratitude towards life and what it offers. Indu Nautiyal then projects for the readers to feel. And most of the time, she succeeds in doing so. However, too much sugar, happiness, opportunity, positivity and brightness, satisfaction and gratitude make you dizzy. It makes you question your perspective; maybe that is Dr Indu Nautiyal’s purpose. However, it makes it difficult to read the poems in one go with their monotonous approach. I personally would have loved some variety.
Are they spontaneous writings or tactical and topical to the event triggering them? Because Count your days by the golden hours, don’t remember the clouds at all.
Sometimes you feel her trying hard to make sense of the situation from a reader’s point of view. However, there is a bit of hurriedness in not wanting to miss the moment or the expression. Many poems are like notes to self for future reflections when one may e down.
SOME STEREOTYPICAL EXPRESSIONS.
There are many stereotypical representations and references to life stages and events. Marriage and Bidhai, new year celebrations, Covid, mothers’ day or fathers’ day.
So, never let hope leave you,
Even when bruised by despair,
For the sun is sure to heal up,
Every hurt of rain and thunder,
And the thought finds another expression later.
So, new leaves will appear very soon,
Flowers and fruits will follow in time,
Wayfarers too will approach as before,
And birds as always will come to nestle,
However, using these expressions and objects to communicate the expressed positivity becomes too repetitive. I wish for variety, a twist and thought that could stop the reader and push the reader to think of a different point of view.
Maybe like here, the ambulance and hope are used.
The sound of hope can be felt,
In the siren of an ambulance,
Rushing to save precious lives,
At the spot of mishappening,
or
The sound of hope is pronounced,
In the thunder of dark clouds,
Appearing in a corner of the sky,
At the peak of burning summer,
Above are two examples of rain, sun, thunder and clouds, which are stereotypical but with different expressions and impact. And that is the beauty of simplicity and iterative thoughts.
FORMAT.
The book and page format could have been better. There are pictures – visuals with a few of the poems. And there is no logic as to why other poems are deprived of these additional impressions. Lack of chronology or themes or sections makes the reading tedious.
A bit of cheat on the point size or the line space may have helped reduce the number of pages and avoid widow paragraphs on a few pages. But, that is a choice of the editor and the poet and does not impact the experience.
NET-NET
‘The Best is yet to be’ is the poet’s note to herself on positivity and motivation. A window into the perspective of Dr Indu Nautiyal. You may or may not agree with her viewpoint… and that does not matter … as ‘The Best is yet to be’ tells you, ‘Count your garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall’. There are enough instances within the poetic 51 expressions for you to rejoice and think over. Go ahead, pick the book if you love poems… and dive into the simplicity of language and the ease with emotion-finding expressions.
‘The Best is Yet To be’, Collection of 51 Poems by Dr Indu Nautiyal. Published with Notion Press. INR 445. ORDER HERE
BLOG/057/2022 To connect, send an email, join on Twitter S_kotnala or subscribe to the weekly update.
And if you have a book, you want to be reviewed by sanjeev kotnala- connect.
To connect, send an email, join on Twitter S_kotnala or subscribe to the weekly update.
