Life, O Life

Life, O Life is a big collage, as big as life itself. There are word-pictures in it - poems one may call them - some vibrant, some grey and sombre and yet some others, dark, the shade of a bleak night. Singly, each of the poems is complete by itself, tellingly evoking an aspect of life that might be downright mundane or subtly profound. But they - all 113 of them - ring true; there is not a false note in any of them. It has to be, since the poet does not feel constrained by any set convention, nor follows the rutted path. In simple words he says what likes to say, in the manner that he likes to say. Life, O Life presents, in translation, the world-view of a veteran Dogri author and poet, Ved Rahi.