STARS & STRIKES (“A Handful of Stardust” by Dr Roshan Jacob IAS, published by Wisdom Tree, Newdelhi; pages 82, price Rs 199/-)

Poetry is something that emerges from both heart and mind, and sometimes merges with the soul. “A Handful of Stardust” by Dr Roshan Jacob IAS (36) falls in this genre. The thoughts expressed through verse are in a sense mystical, the play on words musical, and the persistent use of oxymorons is lyrical.

The poet, who originally belongs to Kerala, but is now in the U.P. cadre of the IAS, is presently posted as the District Magistrate of Kanpur, a city of 5 million. She has been handling this assignment with both tenacity and compassion. But the efficient administrator is strikingly absent from the stardust. It is more like looking at the world through the eyes of an innocent child, but with the critical awareness of an adult. That is why the book is a compendium of oxymorons – self-contradictory terms. The poet justifies her use of such oxymorons saying that life itself is full of contradictions.

A thread that runs through this anthology is that of deep pain, linked to the untimely death of the poet’s mother. It is a lingering ache that is not even overcome by the birth of a child, always a sign of hope, as Rabindranath Tagore would say. Another thread that strings together this mystical rosary, or lyrical glossary, is the unfulfilled yearning for the innocent childhood and uncomplicated life of Kerala. “Keralam” means the land of coconuts, and the poet is something of a coconut! Behind the hard shell of an administrator we discover the tender purity of the soft kernel within.

This book reminds me of the movie “Rockstar” featuring Ranbir Kapoor and Nargis Faqri. Kapoor is a struggling singer, but his chaiwalla friend (Modi isn’t the only one) tells him that his compositions lack passion, because he hasn’t experienced pain. The pain referred to is emotional, but the filmy hero mistakes it for the physical, and goes banging his head against a wall. But here the poet comes across as one who has experienced pain and expressed it passionately.

Another thing about these poems that fascinates me is the wizardry with words. In an era of SMS lingo and Bollywood Hinglish, it is a refreshing change to find one who has a complete mastery of the language, its medium and idiom. Talking of her mother’s sacrifices and toil she calls them “calloused hands soft as dew”. Her pain lingers when she says “I hug my dead mother in the night. Morning kills her again”. She feels like a “lost child of time, shipwrecked on an island”. She finds that “Day kisses dusk and night melts into dawn, but the lonely longings in our hearts never meet”. The contradictions of life are expressed in such oxymorons: “Eloquence of silence, aloneness in the crowd, loneliness of love, humanness of God, nearness of heaven”.

Dr Shashi Tharoor, then a Central Minister, had released this book. These poems need to be read over and over again, to discover their deeper meaning. Amidst the pain there is also hope as “That arrogant blade of grass, sticking its head out of the rubbish dump”. Look at the grass, not the rubbish, and you will enjoy this handful of stardust. These stars are striking indeed!