By Promod Puri
They say every cloud does have a silver lining. It is natural. It appears along darkest of passing clouds.
But Vancouver-based poet laureate Ashok Bhargava himself drew that silver-lining by putting together his latest poetry while he braved through his fight against cancerous clouds hanging over his body and mind.
“Riding The Tide” is his latest anthology, which was penned in between the painful and exhausting regimes of chemotherapy. In contemplative moods, thoughts were his friendly companions and words were his ardent tools.
In his dreadful ordeal, Ashok survived the big C with often porous layers of infinite positivity. He promised himself to endure.
The victorious hero came out with the bouquet of his poetry as words, plenty of them, falling into their place in natural and divine order.
“…….showering of words
Pour down
Delicately
I am drenched.
“Swaying the elation
I forget the difference
Between pain and healing
Between light and dark
Between faith and doubts
Between promises our bodies make
And the ones they keep.”
During the lonely and dragging moments he spent in this tormented interlude of his life, Ashok sought and found that darkness has a light too. And that makes the “Riding the Tide” an inspiring and optimistic read with an abundance of hope.
“….Even waves lift me up
When I am about to drown.”
-Review by Promod Puri
promodpuri.com
