Gift from a dreamer

HYDERABAD: Last decade, educationalist and active member of the poets’ society of Hyderabad, Ketaki Mazumdar, published her first book of poems, Path of a Wanderer. Ketaki published around 200 copies of her book and distributed them among her friends. One of her friends, who was suffering from a terminal illness, wanted to read more of her works because they made her feel alive. As this friend was fighting illness, 74-year-old Ketaki was fighting with time to publish her second poetic collection. “I was late. She has read the poems before her departure but could not hold the copy of Woodsmoke and Embers in her hand,” Ketaki says.  

She describes her book a collection of emotions of love, yearning, passion, and spirituality. “I believe that poetry enlivens our spirit when we are down, feeling blue. It can stir thoughts. I write it for people, like my friend. Poetry is for people who lost fire but have a spark alive in them. Words have the power to ignite that fire,” she says.

Born in Kolkata, Ketaki began writing poetry at the age of eight. Her poems were published in magazines including Femina, while she was still a teenager. “I lived in a house which was close to the Hooghly River. I would sit on the terrace and spent the day watching it turn into night, brooding all the way,” says the poet.

She moved to Mumbai in her early 20s and spent her career as an educationist for 35 years, in three premier institutions. She also received the National Award for ‘Excellence in Teaching’ from the then President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, in the year 2002. Ketaki has now retired and indulges in her passion for writing poetry, gardening ad authoring children’s books.

“Although formally retired, I still write children’s books and spend an ample amount of time with children, because being with them helps me have a different perspective of the world, a child-like perspective. I still have that child in me which helps me write. My poem about how I used to collect flowers from the garden for my grandmother before she performs puja, remains my favourite,” says she who sounds like a young woman.