Poetry often attempts to arrest fleeting moments before they disappear into the currents of time. Spanning nearly five decades of writing and comprising 147 poems, this substantial anthology is less of a conventional collection than a reflective chronicle of a life lived with sensitivity, introspection and an awareness of time’s relentless movement.
The title itself serves as a key to understanding the volume. Footsteps on sand are visible yet transient; they testify to a journey even as they foreshadow erasure. Golani’s poems repeatedly return to this paradox of human existence—the desire to leave a mark and the certainty of impermanence. Throughout the collection, memory becomes both repository and refuge, preserving moments that time continually threatens to dissolve.
At the heart of the anthology lies a sustained meditation on life as a journey rather than a destination. Poems such as ‘The Past and the Future’, ‘Beginning and End’, ‘The Wheel of Time’, ‘Cycle of Life’ and ‘The Ravages of Time’ explore the cyclical nature of existence and the inevitability of change. The poet’s engagement with mortality is neither bleak nor despairing. Instead, he views time as both destroyer and teacher, a force that diminishes yet simultaneously deepens understanding. The reader encounters a mature sensibility that accepts impermanence while searching for meaning within it.
Love constitutes another dominant strand of the collection. Appearing in multiple forms—romantic, devotional, remembered and lost—it becomes a recurring emotional landscape through which many of the poems travel. In works such as ‘Love, Eternal Love, Love Unleashed’, ‘The Pangs of Love’, ‘Love and Lust’ and ‘Redamancy’, love is portrayed as a spectrum of experiences encompassing ecstasy, longing, fulfilment and heartbreak. Golani’s treatment of love avoids excessive sentimentality; instead, it acknowledges the inseparability of joy and pain within human attachment. Images of fire, thirst, wounds and union recur throughout these poems, creating thematic continuity and emotional resonance.
Equally noteworthy is the poet’s engagement with solitude. Poems including ‘A Lonely Walk’, ‘Solitude’, ‘All Alone’, ‘Loneliness’ and ‘Alone and Happy’ reveal a writer fascinated by the inner life. Here, solitude is not merely a condition of absence but also a space for introspection and self-discovery. The poet repeatedly suggests that moments of isolation often yield the deepest encounters with oneself. This introspective dimension lends the collection much of its emotional depth and philosophical texture.
Nature occupies a significant place within Golani’s poetic universe. The moon, rivers, rain, clouds, oceans, autumn leaves, gulmohars and birds appear throughout the anthology, not as decorative embellishments but as extensions of emotional experience. In these poems, external landscapes frequently mirror internal states. Rain signifies renewal, rivers evoke continuity, autumn suggests maturity and acceptance, while the moon serves as a silent witness to human longing. Such imagery enables the poet to translate abstract emotions into tangible experience, enhancing accessibility without sacrificing depth.
Beyond personal reflection, the collection also demonstrates a persistent spiritual and existential curiosity. Poems such as ‘The Quest’, ‘Dark Night’, ‘The Eye of the Storm’, ‘The Deity’, ‘Life and Questions’ and ‘Eternity’ reveal a mind engaged with questions that transcend everyday experience. The poet inhabits uncertainty with humility, recognizing that some questions resist definitive answers. This openness gives the collection a contemplative quality that invites readers into their own acts of reflection.
Although predominantly inward-looking, the anthology occasionally broadens its focus to encompass collective memory and historical experience. ‘Delhi Riots: 1984’ stands out in this regard, introducing social and historical consciousness into the volume.
The simplicity of expression in the poems is not a limitation but a deliberate artistic choice. The poems seek connection rather than display, reflection rather than intellectual exhibition. The recurrence of themes and motifs is not necessarily a weakness. Rather, it reflects the cyclical nature of human experience itself.
Ultimately, Footsteps on the Sands of Time is a collection distinguished by emotional authenticity and reflective depth. Its greatest strength lies not in rhetorical flourish or experimental innovation but in its capacity to articulate experiences that readers readily recognize as their own. Anil Golani reminds us that life is composed as much of quiet moments as of dramatic events. The anthology invites readers to pause, reflect and acknowledge the fragile yet meaningful traces we leave behind in our passage through time.
Usha Mujoo Munshi is Chief Librarian, India International Centre, New Delhi.