Immortal poet John Keats in his poem \u201cOn the Grasshopper and Cricket\u201d has so subtly mused: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
That is the Grasshopper\u2019s - he takes the lead
In summer luxury - he has never done
With his delights, for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed,
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket\u2019s song, in warmth increasing ever.
And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost,
The grasshopper\u2019s among some grassy hills
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThese immortal words have become eternally true that so long\nas man exists with his natural surroundings, the \u2018poetry of earth is ceasing\nnever\u2019. I imagine myself to be a humble\ngrasshopper and a cricket among the galaxy of world\u2019s eminent poets including\npoets of our sub-continent. Though, our\ncountry cannot boast of Keats, Shelly, Wordsworth or T.S. Eliot in English\nlanguage but India did produce Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Tora Dutt,\nNessim Ezekiel, Dom Morris, Vikram Seth, Dr. I.H. Rizvi, Keki N. Daruwalla,\nKamala Das, Imtiaz Dharker, Jeet Thayil,\nVijay Nambisan, Dr. Hyder Nayab, Ruth Vanita to name a few. But India’s\u2019 contribution to poetry in\nSanskrit, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and other languages are no less than that of any other\nlanguage. The best of philosophical\nthoughts and gems in poetry are found in Indian languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the contemporary Indian scene, we have galaxy of poets like Dr. Krishna Srinivas, Editor \u2018Poet\u2019\u00a0 Chennai, Dr. M. Fakhruddin, Editor \u2018Poets International\u2019 Bangalore, Dr. H. Tulsi, Editor \u2018Met Verse Muse\u2019 Visag, Dr. Simanchal Patnaik, Prof. R.S. Sharma, Prof. K. Jagannathan, Editor \u2018Brainstorm\u2019 Chennai,\u00a0 Dr. Syed Ameenudin, Editor \u2018International Poet\u2019 Chennai, Harza Singh, Pronab Kumar Majumdar, Editor\u00a0 \u2018Bridge in Making\u2019 Calcutta, Dr. D.C. Chambial, Editor \u2018PoetCrit\u2019, Pradip Kumar Chaudhari, Editor \u2018Poetry Today\u2019\u00a0 Calcutta,\u00a0 Prof. C.S. Srinivas, Dr. Shiv Prakash, Editor \u2018Indian Literature\u2019, Jyothi Lata Girija, Srinivas\u00a0 Rangaswami,\u00a0 Dr. Ms. L. Lobo Prabhu,\u00a0 Dr. S.N. Tripathy,\u00a0 Dr. K.V. Venkataramana,\u00a0 Ms. (Dr.) S. Radhamani to name only a few from among a galaxy\u00a0 of shining stars & rising meteorites. To claim company among these famous poets would be an act of indiscretion and folly on my part.\u00a0 It would again be presumptuous to claim myself to be a poet of any stature.\u00a0 But human failings compel an individual to express his feelings in lyrics & verse, to muse at the pathos and sufferings, to sing songs of joy, mirth and laughter.\u00a0 I claim to be a victim of this human\u00a0 failing and\u00a0 have dared\u00a0 to raise myself to\u00a0 hop like\u00a0 a \u201cGrasshopper\u201d, and not\u00a0 to remain\u00a0 as\u00a0 a\u00a0 frog in\u00a0 a\u00a0 pond,\u00a0 but allowed\u00a0 my urgings to pen in\u00a0 verses.\u00a0 I Though, I cannot claim to be a rose\u00a0 in a\u00a0 garden\u00a0 or be\u00a0 \u201cFull many a flower\u00a0 is born\u00a0 to blush Unseen\u201d\u00a0 and allow\u00a0 myself\u00a0 to \u201c….Waste its sweetness on the desert air\u201d.\u00a0 Yet I have embolden myself to pen verses in my collection.\u00a0 I may have failed\u00a0 miserably to come up to the strict standards\u00a0 laid down by syntax, semantics and poesy, yet\u00a0 with all the apologies to the past and existing poets, I present\u00a0 my fresh collection of poems.\u00a0 I have named it \u201cIn Golden Times\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The New Millennium is spoken of today as\u00a0 \u201cgolden times\u201d for all the scientific marvels, it has presented to mankind, with all the security, freedom and openness of mind & soul for free wanderings anywhere in the seven corners of the Mother planet.\u00a0 The spirit is free to soar higher and higher, but the materialism of the times and slow waning of the hold of ancient culture is making us all to muse along with Percy Bysshe Shelley:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought<\/pre>\n\n\n\nMy musings began in June 1997 in my mother tongue Urdu, but\ngradually expressing more spontaneously in my second language English, during\nthe New Year 1998, to continue unabated. \nNow my diary of poems is to its brim. \nI have emboldened myself to initially publish one hundred and one poems;\nHaikus & Tankas in this collection. \nI hope to publish my second & third volumes \u2018In Golden Moments\u2019<\/strong> and \u2018A Search from Within\u2019,<\/strong> with equal number of poems in each\nvolume in future course of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My love to my parents, grand parents, wife and children, brothers and sisters, teachers and friends, relatives and colleagues, have always was constant;\u00a0\u00a0 also to my \u201cguides\u201d, (\u201cPeers\u201d in Sufi terminology, who opened my mind to esoteric and mystic aspects of Sufism).\u00a0 They have all helped me in one or the other way to understand life and its vicissitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I specially thank my friend Dr. M. Fakhruddin, who took special interest in first publishing my poems in journal \u201cPoets International\u201d, Bangalore and also to introduce me to Dr. Ms. H. Tulsi (Editor, \u2018Metverse Muse\u2019) who, earnestly replied to my letters and encouraged me by accepting my poems.\u00a0\u00a0 Also to Dr. Krishna Srinivas, Editor \u201cPoet\u201d, Chennai\u00a0 for\u00a0 so readily agreeing to go through my manuscript and write a foreword. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. (Ms) H. Tulsi has added her golden touch to my collections to enable my poems to gleam.\u00a0 For which, I am deeply indebted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My colleague & friend Shri V.K. Ashtana, Member (Technical), CEGAT has been reading my poems, as soon as it used to emerge. He has been a continuous source of encouragement to me.\u00a0 At this bidding, I have taken\u00a0\u00a0 upon\u00a0\u00a0 myself\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0 task to\u00a0\u00a0 have my\u00a0\u00a0 collections, \u201cIn Golden Times\u201d published.\u00a0 I also thank my P.S. Shri P.B. Muralikrishnan, Shri R. Janardhanan Pillai, Shri G. Shridhar, Shri D. Somasundaram and Shri R. Kumar, who have all been so helpful in typing my poems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I take leave of my readers and urge them to forgive me for my failings and accept me, wherever I have been able to muse too their satisfaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With profoundest wishes for happy reading. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Immortal poet John Keats in his poem \u201cOn the Grasshopper and Cricket\u201d has so subtly mused: The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-517","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/Payx4D-8l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/517\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slpeeran.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}