al Poddar 






Let's dive deep into Kushal's writing process.

" I I sketch when words arrive late. I write when my mind cannot draw a straight line." 
 I remember Kushal Poddar wrote somewhere. But I have seen him perpetually scribbling and doodling.
 
I do not know whether Kushal qualifies as a genius, but he is gifted with extraordinary creative power. Every day, I  find myself doffing my hat to his creative ingenuity. 
He is, without doubt, a trailblazer. 
 Sketwriting. 


It is so heartening to see Kushal and his six-year-old daughter teaming up. 
When the father sketches chess pieces, he also listens to her nuggets of wisdom.
They also exchange stories about ghosts and witches, and I bet she also gives him creative suggestions.    





 Santosh: Can you recall that precise moment when poetry beckoned you?
Wed, May 13, 2:33 PM
Strangely enough,  yes. It was after reading a translation of Alice In Wonderland.
 I was six, in the first standard, slightly dyslexic.
I know the breathlessness  and fear of the unknown, but cannot remember the rhyme or poem
 I had penned.

Santosh : The world of today is broken and bruised , does poetry have an antidote to it ? 
Can this dystopia transform into utopia by the magic wand of poetry ? 

 Kushal:  No. There is no magic. It is real. Poetry can make you pause. 
Poetry read in a pause can make you move.
It is a weapon, and like any other, a wrong hand can teach wrong things using it.
 What is wrong? That changes as the society does. I still believe in peace and equality. 
Those frame my utopia. 

Santosh : Does your poetry start in staccato bursts or in one unstoppable gush ? 

Kushal : It appears like any other human and flesh and blood thing.
 It appears on time, unstoppable, divine because to decipher its source is to lose it.
Santosh:  You sketched the cover design of my book Din about Chins. It was flawlessly published by Penprints 
  Maybe , the book sold well because of the cover art. 
I love that you loved that sketch. I sketch what I love most amidst a narrative or lost in a photograph or a scene in front of me.

Sketches, in my own experience, are a short story. It is frozen. It wants the viewer to roll it out its frame using his imagination. 

It is beautiful.  Not the art itself, but how a viewer makes it his own is beautiful. 

 

Santosh  What is that emotional terrain that you usually love to tread on

 and keep coming back to with fresh perspectives?



Kushal : I have a frequent subject. It is a gully or back alley leading towards a river.
The time my poems often depicts is gloaming. Both ends of a day.
The melancholy is powerful. The truths we must face are humane.
They demand to answer or solution to any problem. 

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