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By the time I finished these pages, I felt a little more attentive — to people, to silences, to my own responses. That, to me, is the mark of writing that matters. It doesn’t demand agreement. It deepens awareness. … Some of the most affecting moments here are the gentlest ones: a memory pieced together like fabric, a life imagined as something that can still be redrawn, the suggestion that beginnings are always possible. These are not grand declarations. They arrive softly and stay, doing their work over time. — Padma Shri Prasoon Joshi

Bobby Pawar is a poet not by choice but by compulsion. A poet for whom breakups are beautiful and the best of goodbyes. He confesses that the end of one poem ushers in the next one. Here’s a poet of unusual realisations as ‘a thief’ who hastens to drink deep from life’s stream lest it goes still in winter’s embrace. Philosophy sits lightly on his words and many poems in this volume descend with ease from higher terrains in a deceptively simple language. — Sukrita Paul Kumar, poet, former editor of Indian Literature

Bobby Pawar writes poetry with beguiling ease yet presents an entire experience with a masterly finesse. The poet frames the process succinctly in ‘Some Break-ups Are Beautiful.’ In certain poems, he brings the immediacy of the experience in a nail-biting magical sequence, like in ‘My Daughter.’ Or like in the rather long elegy on the death of the speaking subject’s father — an honest take on an unusual father-son relationship. ‘An Empty Heart Is a Loaded Gun,’ ruminates on the terror acts that cap our recent memories, with all their macabre contours. ‘Bandra 1983’ holds within it, memories of a lost era. All in all, An Empty Heart Is a Loaded Gun, is a testimony to a sensitive soul’s voyage through life’s choppy waters.  — Dr A J Thomas, poet, former editor of Indian Literature

Bobby Pawar. Engineering college dropout. English Lit grad. Purveyor of f-bombs. Former advertising-man. One of India’s most awarded creatives. If you Google ‘Bobby Pawar’, it will show three people. One was in prison. The second goes by @jesus_is_life on Insta. You will find this Bobby dangling somewhere between the sinner and the saint. During his career, which spanned over 3 decades, he has created famous campaigns for many of the biggest brands in the US and India, which have won over four hundred awards. He is also a two-time Copywriter of the Year winner. Campaign Asia’s 2011 Creative Person of the Year for India and South Asia. International Advertising Association’s 2021 Creative Agency Leader of the Year. And he was consistently ranked amongst the five most influential advertising creatives in India. Not bad for a dude whose teenage ambition was to be a burden on society. After walking away from his first love, advertising, he turned to writing poetry thinking ‘I have written hundreds of jingles, how hard could this be?’ Turns out it was the toughest thing he has ever done, aside from learning how to become a halfway decent partner to his amazing wife. He hopes you like his effort and maybe even the grapes of that sweet labour. And he would like to add that if the imbibing of a good whiskey, or whatever your poison is, aids in that, cheers.