Asterkali: do you see the stars?

In poetry, I speak the truth. Or what is considered to be the truth. My words have given me the power to dig deep into the past, to find its reflection in the present, and to try to set course for the future.

Asterkali, do you see the stars is my debut volume of poetry. Propelled by my father, I began writing poetry three decades ago. The intense grief of his sudden death stirred me. Like the monsoon rain, words poured in. And as the years turned pages, my poems began to tell stories embracing the world around me. The poems trace the development of my mind as I grew to understand social and historical influences and connections.

Breaking stereotypes is the natural outcome of my poetic oeuvre. War, widowhood, myths, rural folk, contemporary social conditions are some of the themes that haunt this volume. The poems in this volume are my spontaneous response to life's true happenings. You may find the satire and irony sometimes difficult to bear. Conflict and violence have, historically, and in contemporary life, obliterated images of peace. We are not able to hear the nightingale in the concrete jungle.

Beginning with Asterkali, the old weeder, symbolic of the poet, to concluding with the child pointing out to the grandmother how to identify new stars on the horizon, each poem will absorb you in its somewhat harsh and querying overtone. It will challenge you to think again. The hope of a new world without borders is the promise through a call for change.

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Roopali Sircar Gaur, PhD. is a widely published multilingual poet-performer, editor, travel writer, novelist, mentor, conservationist and social justice activist. Roopali has had a dynamic teaching career at Sri Venkateswara College (Delhi University). As a prolific writer, she has written for peer-reviewed journals and served on academic conference panels worldwide. Deeply stirred by social conditions, her poems reflect the struggle of living amongst those who are left behind. Her areas of interest lie in gender, feminism, child rights, geriatrics, war, ecology and human behaviour.

Roopali's poems are housed within Stanford University's Digital Humanities initiative, Life in Quarantine: Witnessing a Global Pandemic. Roopali has edited more than 14 poetry anthologies and recently published her debut novel, Porridge and I: Growing Up with India (December 2024). She is a proud alumna of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Mount Carmel College in India. She now lives in Meerut – a historic city in northern India with her military veteran spouse and their tree rescued dogs, Oreo, Marshmallow and Jujube. This is her debut volume of poems.