Voice of the Soul*
Namwar Singh
LIKHE MEIN DUKKHA by Liladhar Mandloi Rajkamal Prakashan, 2011, 107 pp., 150
February 2011, volume 35, No 2

Likhe Mein Dukkha (Pathos in Print) is a new collection of poems by a popular poet, Liladhar Mandloi Mandloi. He has simultaneously published three collections of poetry. This collection contains ninetyeight small poems. It is distinctly different from other collections in the sense that it includes a particular kind of poetry. One should confuse these poems with the genre of descriptive poetry. They embody the ideas and emotions of the poet. He has both imaginatively and effectively represented them in such a way that the readers are compelled to think about, understand and interpret them seriously. So one needs to read these poems as carefully as one can do.

This collection specifically draws our attention towards its content. Its range is wide enough to include many shades of reality which our life and times offer us in its entirety with all its contradictions.

The poet has given space even to such themes that usually do not bother the poets coming from the middle class.

After the small arms fire

There developed a dead silence

On a halfburnt tree

There was a water bird

In whose voice

Tree sounded like weeping.

Readers can also engage with the abovementioned collection in terms of its language. The very second poem of the collection happens to beBhasa2 (Language2):

My language is the cotraveller of my dreams

I saw the dream of a language tomorrow

Throwing fire from the sky

Today it is planting a tree.

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