*Conditions Apply
Pages: 88
Year of Publication: 2014
Price: Rs 200
ISBN:
978-93-5045-084-0 (9789350450840)
About the Author
Shobhana Kumar’s first volume of poetry, The Voices Never Stop, was published by Writers Workshop, India, in 2012. Her poems have appeared in several journals in India, Canada, USA and UK and in anthologies like The Dance of the Peacock – An Anthology of English Poetry from India, edited by Dr Vivekanand Jha and Suvarnarekha – An Anthology of Indian Women Poets Writing in English, edited by Dr Nandini Sahu. She has authored five books of non-fiction, including Coimbatore: The Emerging Indian Cosmopolis, SIMA – A Journey through 75 Years, which is a detailed study of the textile industry with a specific focus on south India and Dr. P. C. Thomas in Conversation with Shobhana Kumar. Shobhana holds an MBA and, when she is not writing, she works as an advertising consultant, communications trainer and storyteller. She also runs Small Differences, with her husband, C. G. Kumar, an NGO that uses storytelling and other creative art forms to empower disadvantaged children and rehabilitate old, abandoned people in safe and healthy environments.
Shobhana and her husband live in Coimbatore with their two children.
Teaser
an elegy for remembrance
for how long will you remember me?
gone as i am already from the pages
of your newspapers
and headlines on your television
you will remember me of course,
in fleeting glimpses
when another like me is molested,
another girl child, drowned,
a mother’s foetus ripped
lest she births her own kind,
a bride’s cries stifled,
or set afire.
you will remember
when my tormentors
are brought to book,
when they are hanged
or sentenced to life,
if ever.
when governments swear by their children
and their mothers
to never let this happen,
only to play witness again
and again.
you will eulogize me
when you light candles in my memory
year after year.
but
you will also forget
in the mundaneness of your life
in the everyday struggles you must meet
in order to survive
you will forget
when you see beauty around you
happiness, joy and innocence
and you will then
foolishly believe
that life is still beautiful.
and that there is still hope.
you will forget
because it is scary to remember.
how many more of us will it take
for you to not just remember
but never forget?
Contents
52 poems spread over 4 sections