My parents recently sent me photos of a few of my published works from adolescence, poems both in English and Bengali. The unfaded, uncreased magazine covers gave away the care with which they had been curated over the years. Seeing the words in print brought back memories of sun-drenched afternoons, yellow flowers weighing down boughs of the muchkunda tree in my window, the soft patter of bike tires on the paved path. “To Success”, a poem I wrote when I was twelve, was awarded the President’s Silver Medal at the Shankar’s International Children’s Competition. I am intrigued and amused by the realism I expressed that early in life. The Bengali magazine in the picture is Sandesh, a word that means both news and the milk-based sweet that is integral to the Bengali cuisine. Established in 1913, the magazine is still going strong and has now reinvented itself in digital media. When I was a subscriber and contributor, Sandesh was coedited by the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray. My Bengali poem shown in the picture is about the dilemma of choosing between a simple life close to nature and one that is futuristic, driven by technology. Back in those days computers had the memory of a floppy disk (remember those?) and we could run a slow mile before the slow behemoths booted up. So the ambivalence left me scratching my head. Hindsight is supposed to be 20-20, I think it is just that the lens changes. Like revisiting old haunts, rereading old favorites always evoke mixed emotions in me. Would like to hear about your “Yarrow Revisited” experiences.
