Rajeshwar Singh ‘Raju’
“Tick tock…
tick tock.
It’s 12 am
I ‘m preparing for my funeral.
My bed’s all set.
Six feet under
this body will sleep.
The nails on my skin carve writings on my stone.
The black of the night fills ink on my sheets.
The letters of my name are lost in the sky.
an known grave
With a scar quite known,
My soul holds the shovel of my sound sleep.
The quiet sings a lullaby for a child in peace.
Out of the world
inside the womb
caught in the coffin
a child screams…tick tock”
These are the opening lines from the very first chapter “Closeted Graves” from the book “Eclipsed Suns and their Echoes” that has been ranked No. 3 on Best Seller chart on Amazon and is now back internationally with kindle edition after being sold out in just three weeks. Amazingly and proudly, this book–a fiction based on some traces of life events of the writer brings out many facets of poetry, art and literature which revolve around a journey of self discovery has been written by our own Jammuite.
About the Author
Deepali Sharma, an artist, author, fashion designer, regular contributor at Hubpages, slam poet and a craft documentarian who loves listening to classical English music and creating surreal artworks is a very young writer hailing from Jammu, who has the privilege of becoming popular in literary circles with her debut novel, ‘Eclipsed Suns and Their Echoes’. In a conversation about what prompted her to write such a wonderful collection of events packed with poetry-cum-prose and serve as a novel to readers across Globe through Amazon, Deepali who has been pursing Fashion Designing course at Noida says,” I have always been too much into art, regardless of what form it spoke of, be it music, writing, poetry, cinema or artworks. But to be honest, it had always been a search for direction, I could never find a way to put this urge of creating art in the right place until ‘PEARL’ happened.
Since to create identities and personalities had always given me some sense of high, I always knew that fashion designing was all I wanted to pursue. But the biggest misconception about fashion is that most people think that it is all about creating looks for brands and people, but the truth is that the actual meaning of fashion is ‘creating a safe place, a safe identity for your very own self to be naked, to be whole, to be complete, be invincible and infinite’. The basics of fashion start with subjects like visual culture and communication skills.
Here I learnt to dig deeper into the visual language through colours, words, textures and different materials. This exploration further led to a voyage of self discovery for me and that is how ‘Eclipsed Suns and their echoes’ happened and I found my very own Atman Sutra.”
About Book
The back cover of the book describes the contents therein in the book in an appropriate way that reads: “From Looking at a wound and wanting to dig deeper to dancing naked as a cheer to her still thumping heart, ‘Eclipsed Suns And Their Echoes’, is a cluster of words trying to capture the voyage of a young girl’s torment, her numbness and her recovery. With an urge to visit motherland, a place created by her father, she ends up coming face to face with its darkest realities. All alone in an unknown land and fighting to get back her once lost identity, she finds solace in poetry and art. Will this uncertain road of recovery actually bring her back home or will she end up losing herself once again?
The story deals with social issues like gender stereotypes, objectification of women, sexual assault and the irony behind Goddess worship. The combination of poetry and prose in a very creative way leads the reader to thought provoking experiences, who gets subjected to so many questions being raised so intensively by the writer. It’s in fact a beautiful work of putting forth the tender thoughts. It is a book speaking at length about life and death. It takes reader into an imaginative world but at the same time depicts the after-effects of inbred patriarchy, gender stereotypes and stands fiercely as a mirror to our society’s ironic mindset and is a celebration to the shattering walls of confinement and a flight towards freedom and independence.
It is pertinent to add here that all these qualities that make it a perfect fiction work have been instrumental in inspiring the readers and that is why it emerged among bestsellers on Amazon. It also talks a lot about the imaginative flights of thoughts and landing into beautiful words by the young writer. The way Deeplai’s book has been getting immense response is a proud moment for we all belonging to J & K state and Jammu in particular. It’s a must read book that has fresh content and unique style of presenting the innermost feeling of a young girl’s experiences at different phases of life.
Let us hope for some more peculiar creative thoughts getting converted into words through prose and poetry depicting the harsh realities of life and ultimately take shape in the form of books and hit the stands from Deepali’s pen in near future too. Let such books help in increasing the readership too as the visual medium has threatened reading, a very sad development.
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