Meraki: My Dark Inklings by Reshmi Rose Tom is a book of poetry full of teenage passions, unrequited love of a restless heart baring pathos of longing and betrayal. In deed, time is a bitch, she says!
True to its title, Meraki (passion) poems encase teenage girl’s first love, passionate longings and roller coaster emotions.
Encased in 75 pages is poetry and prose, musings and solitary rumination, girlish thoughts with the strain of a woman in and out of emotional control.
With 32 entries, the author, a fourth semester student of MA English pens her first time life experiences free of parental control. She bares it all expressing a whole gamut of topics including, mom, dad, brother and the heady experience of first love as an undergraduate student away from home.
The book has a forward by her dad who claims his girl “treads the path of confessional poets like Emily Dickinson, Sylivia Plath, and Madhavikutty.”
True. The poems are a solid picturization of human life especially of a woman in a society which dictates the construct of womanhood.
A major chunk of her poems deals with college life away from home alluding to the agony and ecstasy of youth and the craving for carnal relationship. Her poems are confessional in the sense that they convey infatuations, frustrations, heart aches, dreams, and secret longings.
Author does not shy away from penning an epic on her understanding of Greek heroes conveying rich layers of meaning.
In her anthology, Reshmi wields varied themes, like conservation of nature, ravaging Covid-19 that brings humanity to its senses, pandemonium of modernism and modernity, along with nostalgia, friendship, man-woman relationship, and even the reality of death – ever transforming her thoughts into feelings with vivid literariness.
Hailing from Kerala, Reshmi’s life and schooling in metro cities like Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore have made her explore the discipline of classical dancing coupled with life’s lessons learned in multicultural and multi religious society.
Meraki is sprinkled with philosophical thinking of the early adult mind where love and passion finds its climax and anti-climax, tears and happiness overflow into a valley of thoughts making the content relatable to both young and old.
The book published in 2021 by Xpress Publishing, Chennai is available in amazon.in.