Author: Sunaina Jain
 
Pages: 104
Year of Publication: 2024
Price: ₹400
ISBN: 978-81-979136-2-4 (9788197913624)
About the Author
An Assistant Professor of English at Mehr Chand Mahajan DAV College, Chandigarh, Sunaina Jain holds a doctorate in English from Panjab University, Chandigarh. Besides conducting various workshops on creative writing, and language and communication skills, she has published many research papers in national and international journals. Her poems have featured in a number of literary journals like Muse India, South Asian Ensemble, Nuances and Dialog, and international anthologies including Shout It Out (Lost Tower Publications, London, 2016), Tranquil Muse (Authorspress, New Delhi, 2018) and Aquillrelle’s Anthologies: Selecting the Best (USA, 2018). Her translated stories feature in the collection Vignettes (Sahitya Akademi, 2018). She has contributed chapters to The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature (2022), Narratives of Trauma in South Asian Literature (2022) and The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (2024). Some biographical entries written by her have featured in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Indian Writing in English (2023). She co-edited Happiness: An Eternal Quest of Being (Authorspress, 2018). She has reviewed books of various genres for Muse India, and guest-edited the special May-June 2022 issue of Muse India on “Ethics and Politics of Cultural Memory”. She has a penchant for pursuing diverse creative arts including singing, painting and cooking.
Teaser
Some portion of the sky
I have lived
under some portion of the sky I could claim mine.
 
I have experienced
love and hate – their unending puzzles, paroxysms,
caprices, enigmas and bizarre forms.
The walls closing in at times;
the barriers of choking norms.
 
I have listened
to the faint whispers of the wind,
the screams of the incisions made
sometimes in the flesh,
sometimes on the soul,
the warm sighs of passion,
the gale and its unruly fashion,
the eerie echoes and the muffled sounds,
the twitter of birds and the grunting hounds.
 
I have witnessed
the ripe fruits dropping from the branches,
the young ones waiting to be plucked from the ranches,
the tom-tomming of morality law,
the belly cries under the piercing claw.
Despite the fair share of highs and lows,
bouquets, brickbats and blows,
above and beyond all this,
I still want to live a little more
and surrender myself to the one
whose name and contours
keep coming alive day after day,
night after night,
as if she has always been a tiny
but intrinsic part of me,
yet to be conjoined
to my being forever.
Contents
55 poems across 3 sections