Breathing Spaces

 (A I Patel)

B.com-II , Semester – IV

MODULE -V

B) Breathing Spaces

                                                                                                         - Rana Nayar

About the poet -

Professor Rana Nayar (born 1957) is a translator of poems and short fiction from Punjabi to English. He is also, a budding145 Indian poet of great promise. He worked as a lecturer in the faculty of English at Punjab University, Chandigarh. He translated two of Gurdial Singh's novels, Night of the Half-moon and Parsa. He has more than forty volumes of poetry and translation works to his credit. He is also a theatre artist and has participated in a number of full-length productions. His first collection of poems Breathing Spaces has received critical appreciations in Indian literary circle. In 2007, he won Sahitya Akademi's 'Indian Literature Golden Jubilee Literary Translation Prize' for Poetry.

About the poem -

 In the present poem, the poet beautifully evokes the touching memories of childhood and feels happy that he still carries part of it in his heart.

In this poem, the poet beautifully evokes the touching memories of his childhood. He feels happy as he derives some happiness from them. These memories are the breathing spaces in his hard and routine life of today.

The poet remembers the village where he has spent his childhood. He remembers the old big peepul tree and feels that it has guarded his childhood memories from the termites of time. He sees the small sun-burnt boy standing in the bright daylight holding his hand over his eyes to shade off the light. He remembers the old broken well and how it was canopied by the branches of the tree. As a boy, he thought, ghosts danced under the tree at night. Now the ghosts of memories have crowded his mind. He remembers how his mother loved him and he almost felt smothered under her love. There was a red brick wall in the field. It was as red as his strict father's anger. Unlike the peepul tree, the poet has shifted to another place, a city leaving his green fields and the brick wall behind. But he has carried a little garden in his heart. There blooms a white rose in it and it gives a great happiness and relief in his present hard and routine life.