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Book Review
A different light
"What time is the next train?" questions the author. This slim
version of verse talks to the reader in a language that is simple to
understand. She wants to know when the next train is arriving after
visiting a page from the past, old town, old memories and older self.
There are twenty two poems, mostly with a link to life and its many
manifestations of how people tend to comprehend. Lessons for us to self
learn and consolations that spill out saying "not only you, but I too
have erred."
"For that proud beauty has yet to walk, the same aging path." How
true, in a world of the young of pomp and pageantry, to glimpse at the
far end of life and realised the fleeting years that we will all face
and in some way be prepared for the transformation, that is wise
reading. Or, note page sixteen, "a child sat by the road and wept, an
old man stumbled, no one bothered,' the tragedy of life, insulation from
the trails of others that we have learnt to adopt and isolate ourselves
in cocoons of 'me and mine', where does that leave us, the human race?
 This is a book you take out at a bus-stop to open a page and read and
is compensated for the delayed bus. Maybe the man is making your
'koththu roti' with the 'taka taka' rhythm and you have a few minutes to
spare till he finishes and packs your dinner, time to read a poem, read
Buddini, she got some nice things to say.
'My dreams were dawning,
But turned out faulty
Now I am praying
For a corrected copy.'
Aren't we all? Looking for corrected copies?
Sometimes I wished the book was more, but then, this is all the
author had to say. Why fatten for the sake of fattening? That could have
been her question. Better be on a diet and express only the essence.
I enjoyed 'A Different Light' and is that kind of a book you keep in
a shelf and in moments of little time intervals just draw out and
randomly turn a page and read then maybe answer the phone that rings to
take you away from poetry.
But the lines will remain, if not in full, at least in parts.
'The winds that blow forever,
have not aged as much as I.'
Yes, I remember that part - that's good enough.
- Capt Elmo Jayawardena
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