Kabir Deb on The Vagabond by Vishal Prabhu on Facebook.
In our life, various agents play significant roles in making it worth living. They can pulsate the negative thoughts or the positive versions of our personality, but the impact remains. The miniscule form of something that exists around us can bring out gigantic consequences and its aftermath becomes our blueprint. We can multiply all of them and witness the kind of life we lead. Vishal Prabhu’s collection of poems, ‘The Vagabond: Poems from the Margin’, published by Red River is an amalgamation of what society refers to as small moments or tiny instances. Its beauty lies in how it wisely draws a line to tie these moments and give us a reality we always try to escape.
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These poems speak about good and bad; secrets and freedom; oppression and dominance, by staying mindful of the subjects. Sometimes the approach works in favour of the reader and the poet. Sometimes the approach appears forceful. In this collection, we do find references to our daily life, but the poet does not take his art as the responsible carrier of reality. He simply delivers us a message and then drops the ending suddenly to tickle our nerves. The rest is left with us. Poems, if written by keeping experience as the axis, provide us with what we need but don’t expect. They can be disturbing, melancholic and non-conforming. But the question: what is liberation if it is not born out of chaos? What is courage if it has not developed the skill of not conforming to monotony?
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Vishal Prabhu’s collection gets into our system in the form of a pill. But then it sticks to our tongue and bitters our mouth. The taste can either make us vomit the pill out of our body. Or it will make us think of the various ways to reduce its bitterness. Vagabond is not a word that can only be used to address a person who doesn’t have a permanent address. It is also used to define the human mind, which even in the state of rest, lurks towards a thought. This book is not just about the margin. It is also a commentary on what thrives beyond.
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A must buy! A must read!