Shadow of life….

Glittering Shadows by Manish Ranjan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It has no form-no shape- no definite identity.
But still it has a specific identity- because it differs from person to person.
It does not have any death-it does not have any decay-it does know all.
When you like at the night sky-your mind wings to fly thousands of light years away- away from the milky way- away from galaxies-to the kingdom where zillions of stars sparkle like diamonds.
Are you really up there to the kingdom of stars?
But your wish has the speed to beat light- beat anything-to propel your shadow to the kingdom where there is no death- no decay!
In the words of the Gita
na jayate mriyate va kadacin
nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah
ajo nityah sasvato ‘yam purano
na hanyate hanyamane sarire
(For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.)
So a point comes where philosophy and imagination coalesces- where there is everything ‘ satyam ,shivam ,sundaram’.

It is all utopian-you may say! These are all dreams-you may say!
It is all imagination…..
I will say it is imagination-that is why it is beautiful. And truth is beauty- beauty is truth!
Glittering Shadows by Manish Ranjan is dedicated to the imagination of human soul. in writer’s words_”far beyond this realm there is a valley of roses, a river of peace, a mountain of serenity, an ocean of hope, and air echoing my words of perpetual love, a world of my dreams, where it is just you and me; a word where the days are bright with positivity and nights filled with festivity; a world where even pain has a love; a world where shadows glitter.”
The slim looking book is divided into three sub sections- love and be loved, life and reflection and womanhood and her crisis. In most of the poems dedicated to the first theme-love and affection is the central theme. That Old Banyan Tree is such a poem. The poem began with a poetical narration of a old lonely tree- rising high above all for ages-witnessing the story of the life flown around it-a silent spectator of many a drama of love ,pain, happiness maybe tears that were acted around it.
“It was aging, but it still had the majestic presence.
Its thick branches were spreading wide, as if willing to embrace me.”
Suddenly the narrator discovers the signs of an unfinished love story that was once acted around it. The unfinished etching of a love sign that displayed only the girl’s name has taken him to the past. The sign is now hard to read-probably due to time and perhaps like the characters who have played the protagonists of the story once. Or maybe it is silent love where the boy has expressed his love-and the girl never knew it?
What was the end?
“Did the girl herself engrave it? Or her lover anonymously professed his love?
I sat under for a while, thinking about the mystery and someone’s stupidity.”
The poem ended in optimism-optimism for a better world-optimism for light-where he found the name of the boy. Where?
It is the climax of the story-an eternal story that found its way on the pages of book!
Her tears are like the perfect shaped pearls of time-valueless but invaluable. It is a pain disguised in a smile-a mystic smile-that spoke a thousand words. Sometimes silence is more golden than words. Her ocean blue eyes are now moist with the sign of an incoming storm-in her eyes there are depths of Pacific Ocean.
“Those beautiful blue eyes now looked heavy, attaining scarlet,
Tears gripping together, composing an ample, ponderous droplet.”
Will her effort to conceal her pain will be concealed-or her trembling lips will say it all! Can our narrator-wipe away her tears?
‘I find these droplets special; it’d have taken an account of love full of swirls
To belong to that beautiful plaintive soul, and its turbulent vastness.
I envy them; I wish your pain belonged to me, withal those dropping pearls,’
Multi dimensional poems are true reflections of different layers of writer’s thinking. It is a story book-where the stories have been told in poems. Every poem speaks of a story- a story that is sometimes riddled with pain-sometimes smiling with joy.
Just like the story of life- because poems are the true reflections of life,

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