Neela Neela by Gautam Rajrishi – Book Review

Neela Neela, the second collection of poems by Gautam Rajrishi, one of the celebrated and famous shayar and poet writing in Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu combined), has become famous among the readers of the genre. Gautam Rajrishi has established himself as a shayar who is being invited to many poetry meets, kavi sammelans and shayari mehfils. In Neela Neela, Gautam has mainly focused on the part of life that we call love – various shades of it like sadness, happiness, beauty, loneliness, making love, feeling ignored and all that we can think as human beings. In his wonderful lyrics, the poet has celebrated all these emotions and offered his readers many lines to remember for a long time.

Gautam Rajrishi, as a poet, has been very simplistic and yet artistic in his approach to emotions like love and happiness in Neela Neela. Though there are many poems in the collection, most of the couplets can be isolated as a whole – two lines carrying a circle of sense, complete in itself and also independent. However, as a poem, many couplets are there to create one line of thought and this is what many of the shayars do, have been doing for a long time. Gautam’s lexicon is also very contemporary. He does not believe in taking the readers back to ancient times or compel them to have a Hindi-Urdu dictionary open beside them. He has used words that we use in our daily conversations very often and this decision, believe me, will make him more likeable among the young readers of Hindi-Urdu poetry and shayari.

If you are a reader of contemporary ghazals, shayaris and Hindi poems, you will be loving this collection because of the vividity in emotions on the display. Also, Gautam, as a captain in the Indian Army, has not left some of the army-emotions out of play. He has written about those who stand safeguarding our freedom and the motherland. However, as one can see very apparently, Gautam’s protagonists in the poems are more or less on the sadder side of life. They feel for their love which might be gone or no more with them completely… the poems exhibit a gloom that lingers over, perhaps constantly… still, it does not make any difference in the connection between the readers and the poetry. I enjoyed most of the poems and also memorised some of the couplets instantly because of the depth of emotions that they offer… who does not like telling many things in two lines?

“तुम हुए या न हुए हो जो हमारे…तो क्या
हम तो कब से हुए बैठे हैं तुम्हारे यूँ तो”

Gautam’s poetry is not limited in any sense. Though the theme of love (with its various ramifications) may be a constant thing in most of the poems, the emotions are scattered just like a seemingly yellow light scattered into 7 different shades once it goes through the prism. It will be a wonderful experience for the readers of Hindi-Urdu poems and shayaris.

You can get a copy of Neela Neela from Amazon India right now and enjoy reading the works by Gautam Rajrishi, who fits the description of a brave soldier with a Gun and a pen to write his heart out…

Buy the book from Amazon India – click here to get a copy

Review by Anand Shiv J for Literature News