In the ‘Fair Seed Time’ young Shivram K’s ‘Pagali’ showed the making of a poet, his popular novel ‘The Scorpion Grass’ showed that this ‘Native Foliage’ had with his latest poetic creation ‘The Room That I’ve Found’ had reached the efflorescent stage which in years would bear rich fruits. True to what he has himself confessed:

The ink that
I poured on
these pages
is my secret
that I don’t intend to
tell anyone except
my paper.

‘The Room That I Found’ is an open book you can turn its pages, go through the sentences and stanzas over and over again, read between the lines, yet it is unlikely that one will fully grasp the meaning which appears always elusive as he writes:

“ there is an exotic world
that exists beyond your oceanic eyes ,
what I saw in your glance is a mirage”

The collection contains beautiful epigrammatic quotable lines reminding one of Emily Dickinson “ My psyche is not mine/ it is colonized by you” “ if you are physically caged/ I’m mentally …” “ I have lost my home/ somewhere in me”. How beautifully the baffling riddle of “ existential crisis” is solved:

the existential crisis is
your ( man’s) mindset
when man forgets
he is a tiny creation
in the hand of the Infinite
or,
your mind remains
always deceptive
its our heart
that leads our feet
on the
right track
give vent to the inner voice

But the best of course are the lines that sees the best in the worst:

I was broken to pieces
the day you decided to
walk apart
but I never thought
you were educating me
how to walk alone
without you
I found my precious self.

But while we celebrate his optimism he plunges us into despondency when he writes:

My song is my melancholy
-a lament
to the fourth generation.

In its fruitful bough ‘The Room That I’ve Found’ sings of the poignant sorrow, passion of strife,joy of spring, hope and despair that show for the years unborn, love and grief of earth and altering sky, human hunger, the sorrow of life in the sweetness of song, the fragrant peace of twilight and the mystic silence that men call death – thematically making it a well orchestrated collection. There is so much of depth sweetness, might and bliss, can such a cadence be resisted or ignored?