When a 17-year-old presents a collection of poems titled “Gnostic Ruminations”, one is forced to put your thinking hat before you start reading them. The book is dedicated to ‘the sapient species’ which itself, kind of, stumps me but prepares me for the book and its content.
Yash Raj Mehta admits in the preface of his book that this collection of poems was a part of the 21 Day Poetry Challenge by BookLeaf where he had to post a new poem every day for 21 days. One sees great influence of Greek Mythology is his poetry that’s quite mystifying. “Well, that’s something I have grown up with in a way. I always had the Greek Mythology book in my bookshelf…” Yash shares. How did that happen? “Dad had it because someone gave it to him and I grew up reading it, and it became part of my ideology and expression.”
Where the title of the book come from? “Well, why you see the themes encompassed by the book as discussed on the back page of it, those all come under this one branch. So this is basically the pursuit of knowledge, mainly mystical knowledge,” says Yash. “And so I view this like, reflecting on all these themes that I read for so many past years. And so that reflection is best conveyed by the word rumination. It’s a very deep kind of thought…That’s how I came up with.” And Gnostic? “That’s derived that from the world. Gnosticism, right. We spell it that way. No. Narcissism then. And so the derivative from that would be gnostic.”
Language used in poems is lucid and while some poems are just one page long, quite a few are much longer; especially the Catalogue of Serpents or Zeus Gioskronou which have, technically, two volumes. It is amazing to note how easily Yash uses serpents as an analogy to talk about his interpretation of the current situation in the world.
Have you ever thought about a longer form like stories or essays? “Well, truth be told, I do not think that stories or poet and poetry are mutually exclusive. You can convey a story with poetry,” Yash informs.
You are fascinated by poetry as a form? “Because it’s like art in the form of language you got. You got so much liberty with regards to how the poem flow, what, how the writing flows or grammar. You can use what syntax you can use. What images you can paint and I feel like that that’s just not quite present in prose.”
Gnostic Ruminations is a book that every youngster should read – not because of the name, but to enjoy the sheer expression of Yash’s emotions that he pens using simple language to paint vivid pictures and quite easily too.
Book: Gnostic Ruminations
Author: Yash Raj Mehta
Publisher: BookLeaf Publishing
Pages: 76
Price: ₹110 (ebook)
