CHENNAI: Human emotions are a beautiful conundrum which we ever-evolving Homo Sapiens have learnt to embrace gracefully. Two young authors, Nikitha Sathi and Pragadish Kirubakaran, have traced this path – an array of human phenomenology — through their recently launched book ‘Respiring Ruin’, a collection of poems that both, examine and convey the nature of our existence unabashedly. “A significant part of the poems are based on our personal interactions, significant events, and people we have encountered. Not all of it is from a fictional point,” shares Nikitha Sathi, psychologist.
It was while pursuing a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology in Bengaluru that Nikitha became acquainted with Pragadish. Narrating how things took a turn from then on, leading to the launch of her debut book two years later, she recalls, “He was working there while, I was doing my masters. We happened to meet each other and discovered that we had a lot of common interests.” But what connected them was their passion for writing poetry. “When we realised that we enjoyed poetry and writing it, we decided to work on something together. That’s how the idea for a book came about,” she shares. The duo began working on the book in 2016.
It follows dialogue poetry, a form where people explore not just their own but each others' thoughts. “We didn’t want to stick to the usual title-poem caricature and we couldn’t find many books which were made out of the dialogue poetry format. Since we were from the opposite gender, the ‘He-She’ narrative fell in place,” explains Nikitha who has also sketched the illustrations for the book. “The illustrations were Pragadish’s idea,” she quickly adds and Pragadish says, “Poetry has a very niche audience and we wanted to make it comprehensible to more people. So, the illustrations are more of a visual aid. You can see the illustrations and then read the poem or vice-versa, either way, you will understand the poems.”
As we flip through the 113-page book, gripping, thoughtful, and abstract illustrations for the 114 poems (57 each), ensure that we are treated both literarily and visually. “The illustrations took me more time than it did for the poems,” she quips.
The title for the collection of poems is quite whimsical. The words mean breathe, recover, and hope. The core idea behind it, Nikitha says, is to shed light on the forms of relationship between people and nature, how we live life without paying much attention to the simple joys and little pleasures of life. The title has a dramatic back story too! “Three to four years before Pragadish and I met, I had written the words 'respiring ruin' as part of a poem. Later, once we were acquainted, he shared a piece he had written on his blog. It had the exact same words! It was an ‘Aha’ moment for us. Those words are not very common and that’s when we knew what the title was going to be,” she smiles.
Ask them if there were any poetry battles during the course, and pat comes the reply from Nikitha. “Well, it wasn’t really a battle but, there was an instance when he combined two of my poems into one and gave a single response for it. I felt personally attacked when he tampered with my work and I asked him to not do it again,” she laughs while he shares that he sometimes felt challenged by her poetry, leading to a friendly face-off. “There was a point when it became all about delivering the best responses for her poetry. It wasn’t a conscious move. But, she figured it out and told me that this wasn’t the point of the book. And then we focused on the actual purpose,” says Pragadish who has two books to his credit.
“His prior experience in writing and publishing helped us sail smoothly through the journey. The whole process has been extremely pleasant and I feel quite thrilled to see the poetry which is usually in my mind, embodied in a hardbound book,” she enthuses. The duo also plan to come out with a second volume of the book. “Though it’s too soon for us to talk about it, we would love to work on a second book, with a similar structure,” adds Pragadish.
(Respiring Ruin is available on Amazon.in at `200)