Monsoon is a poem of love and longing that follows the path of monsoon which originates near Madagascar and traverses the Indian Ocean to reach the Himalayas and back to Madagascar. As monsoon travels, the rich sights and sounds, languages and traditions, costumes and cuisine, flora and fauna, festivals and monuments, and the beauty and splendour of the Indian Ocean islands and the Western Ghats, East and North India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet are invoked. The poem weaves the Indian Ocean Islands and the Indian Subcontinent into one poetic thread connected by monsoon, offering an unparalleled sensuous experience through strikingly fresh verses which have the immense power to transport the readers to a magical world.
Abhay K. is the author of nine poetry collections including The Magic of Madagascar (L'Harmattan Paris, 2021), The Alphabets of Latin America (Bloomsbury India, 2020), and the editor of The Book of Bihari Literature (Harper Collins, 2022), The Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems, CAPITALS, New Brazilian Poems and The Bloomsbury Book of Great Indian Love Poems. His poems have appeared in over 100 literary journals. His "Earth Anthem" has been translated into over 150 languages. He received SAARC Literary Award 2013 and was invited to record his poems at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. in 2018. His translations of Kalidasa's Meghaduta (Bloomsbury India, 2021) and Ritusamhara (Bloomsbury India, 2021) from Sanskrit have won KLF Poetry Book of the Year Award 2020-21.
The idea of writing a love poem that connects India and Madagascar came to my mind in late 2018 when I was still posted in Brazil. My next diplomatic assignment as the 21s Ambassador of India to Madagascar was announced by the Ministry of External Affairs on 9th November 2018. Soon after the announcement I started researching reading materials online on Madagascar, The first thing I came across on the Internet was an article titled Chasing the rains from Madagascar to Tibet by Kamayani Singh, published in The Times of India on June 18, 2007. Here is an excerpt from the article-
"The south-west Monsoon travels thousands of kilometers from its birth off the Madagascar coast to Somalia from where it gets deflected to India to its retreat in Tibet in September and its final dissipation in Madagascar again a journey transcending continents, cultures, and different climates.
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