A distinct poetic sensibility and rhythm, emotion and images all coalesce here to achieve something quite beautiful. Life walks on the edge of a knife, tips over into the unspeakable, rises at sight of a flower, sinks again, rises again, walks on. Black Wind extends the scene a little but the world outside is not very different from the madhouse in The Silent Scream.

These poems constitute a direct and honest female voice speaking of suffering, madness and pain. They deal with broken relationships, abortions, lost chances, city riots, love, suicidal thoughts, friends from the film world now lost, and very occasionally, the possibility of beauty and joy. The Silent Scream, comprising twenty-four poems, is the outcome of a stay as an observer in the mental Ward of a hospital, and evokes powerfully the dread, freedom and horror of life within. We are made to see the life of those we call mad, something of what drove them mad, the cruel treatment they endure, the sense of being stifled, the experience of gang rape, re-enactments of lived horrors, and occasionally, a delirious freedom from masks.

These poems together offer a sustained view of the other side of life’s tapestry, sound a new note in Indian English poetry, one that startles the reader into attention.