CLN is delighted to present Siddarth Achaya’s first book of poetry.
In this digital world, where learning and entertainment is governed by moving images and sound, and attention spans have reduced to seconds, the written word has taken a backseat. While prose struggles to stay abreast and be of relevance to the younger generation, the struggles of poetry are more desperate. Poetry, as taught in schools, has largely ignored the beauty of structure, choice of words and musicality, and focused on forcing poor students to memorise long poems and reluctantly recite them to a bored audience of fellow victims. The average person thus has a guarded revulsion to poems and poetry.
In this mileu, along comes a little nugget, Juvenilia, a compendium of poems by Siddharth Achaya, an architect based in Bengaluru, that seeks to upend this attitude.
Siddharth Achaya spent his early years growing up in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru. Trained as an architect, he continues to work in the field, with a focus on ecological architecture.
His interest in shortform storytelling has previously been expressed through blogs, comics (now graphic narrative) and film. His “Design Thinking” pieces for the architectural publication Biome Diaries (2021) combined comics, poems and illustration to reimagine expository text as descriptive content. He also created a quirky short film Dr B. R. Ambedkar: Urban Folk Art Icon in 2023 , as part of the BLORE visual narrative series by the Bangalore International Centre.
Juvenilia is his first book of poetry.
Juvenilia has been published by Writers Workshop, a 50 year old publishing house from Kolkata. Writers Workshop has the credit of being the first publisher of authors and poets like Vikram Seth, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Ruskin Bond, Anita Desai, Nissim Ezekiel and several others.
The poems in Juvenilia were the outcome of long hours of commuting on BMTC and Namma Metro (the Bangalore City bus and Metro services respectively) over a period of several years. So instead of indulging in road rage and strangling irate conductors and co-passengers, Siddharth chose to sublimate his irritation, boredom and tension by composing short treatises on life, love and loathing on his phone!
Juvenilia consists of 60 short poems. The poems are characterised by pithy examinations of daily issues, musings on different aspects of life and the occasional reflection on politics and human frailty. They are structured verses, and surprisingly for these times of open verse, follow a rhyme pattern. The play on words and puns, delight with their quirkiness and clever structure.
Several, like Cage, force one to think beyond the here and now, and explore that part of one’s psyche that isn’t reached usually:
Cage
Is it suicide
If you die of boredom?
Is it a nightmare
If your eyes are open?
Is it tomorrow
If nothing changed today?
Is it free will
If there’s no other way?
Is it obvious
If no one even asked?
Is it worth it
If it’s not meant to last?
Could you tell me
Or don’t you know as well?
Good to have you
With me here in this hell.
Some others are light and humorous, like the first stanza of Rebel:
I hung my chuddie on the rope,
I hung it there with so much hope,
“Please don’t fly away”, I begged,
“Sorry I’ve hung you here unpegged.”
All of the poems, whether they are dark, angry, playful or humorous – compel the reader to ponder, to retrace and reconsider.
Siddharth Achaya is the son of Pattamada Hemanth and Protima Achaya.
Juvenilia is priced at Rs. 430 including shipping charges within India and can be purchased online at https://www.monographmag.com/product-page/juvenilia
For purchase outside India, please contact Siddharth Achaya on his email [email protected]
Congratulations Siddu…going through CAGE tempts me to buy the book….
It is very heartening to see a newspaper in Kodagu encouraging young poets and readers to appreciate poetry. After all in our oral tradition where Dudipaatkaras sang our verses to a rhythmic beat. These songs were essentially poems about different aspects of our culture, landscape, beliefs, Okkas and so on.
Being Writers and Poets ourselves we are looking forward to more such posts!
I am so much inspired by the poems and poets too. LAPSE was a masterpiece. CAGE was breathtaking.
I especially like the poets raw and gritty way of expressions. Hats off to CLN. Keep growing.
Thank you. The article prompted me to purchase the book.