Born in love and pain
I started writing poetry in 1981 at the age of 13. I had returned home to live with my parents, after a harrowing year at a very well-reputed girls’ boarding school in India. My father was a career diplomat and my parents were at the time living in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
I did not realise it at the time, but I had been the victim of severe bullying at a very vulnerable age for a girl, and it took me almost 4 decades to get over it, to regain my self-confidence and heal, and to step more fully into my own power.
The trauma unleashed the poet in me. Needing an outlet to express my emotions, I started writing. It came naturally. The topics I wrote about were very personal, private and at times, dark:
Unrequited love, desire, pain, betrayal, and my budding sexuality.
Throughout my writing was a thread of spirituality, as if I recognized, even at a young age, the link between love, suffering and faith. The catalyst for many of these poems seems to have been a deep pain of some sort, which needed an outlet, release and ultimately, redemption.
I wrote actively and copiously until the late 1980s, when I got married at the age of 21. I was now in my early twenties, and the everyday existence of being married, getting a university degree and starting a career took over.
At the age of 34 our son was born, and motherhood became my primary focus, alongside a full-time career.
The hand-written poems were forgotten, stored away in cardboard boxes, testimonies of another time, another identity.
The poet re-awakens
A few years ago, I suddenly started writing again, after a hiatus of more than 3 decades. Even though pain was once again the catalyst, I was immensely relieved and grateful that I had not lost my inner voice, and that the poet in me was not dead.
During the corona lockdowns in 2020, I found myself with more time on my hands while working from home.
Inspired by my most recent spell of writing, I decided the time had come to type my hand-written poems, before the papers disintegrated or got lost.
My idea initially was to save the poems for our son and his future family, so they would know who their mother and grandmother had been.
I purchased a laptop and started typing the almost 40-year-old poems, during our annual family holiday in France in June 2020.
At the back of my mind, I also had a hope of publishing my poems one day. My late father, who strongly supported my poetry writing, had tried to get them published in the ‘80s, but it was not meant to be. But now, with the advent of the internet and modern technology, this goal was within my reach.
Typing the poems and revisiting them was a cathartic experience – I, now a woman in her ‘50s, felt strangely comforted by the writings of a teenage girl. I felt at peace while typing, as if I was talking to a friend, someone who knew me well and who understood how I felt.
I marveled at the wisdom and depth of that young girl, and how some of the emotions had not really changed in the years between us.
I was also confronted by her darkness, and at times I found myself unable to type more than two or three poems at a time, overwhelmed by the pain and intensity, finding myself gasping for air and needing to get away.
And the dream begins…
In December 2020, I gingerly shared one of my early poems with friends and family on Facebook.
It felt like a moment of truth and a plunge I had to take, laying myself bare. I needed to make my voice heard and to claim it.
The tremendous positive reaction was very reaffirming and made me realise something important:
That my poems could perhaps resonate with people beyond my close circle of family and friends.
That they could bring comfort to others in pain. That some themes are universal, and that my voice deserved to be heard.
I made the resolution then and there to publish my poems in 2021. This dream became stronger and more vivid during 2021, as I continued to type the old poems. This poetry blog is the first step towards realising my dream.
I hope this blog brings you comfort and joy, dear Reader. Thank you for visiting this page and reading my poems.
Please do leave a comment, it would make me very happy to hear from you.
Much love and blessings,
Vanita
November 2021
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank my sister, Vatsala Shukla, Karmic Ally Coaching, for her invaluable support in setting up this blog, and for her role as my coach through many years. She has helped me to find and use my voice and to step into my power again.
I thank my mother, Kusum Shukla, whose talent for writing poetry has rubbed off on me, and who has kindly allowed me to share some of her beautiful paintings from kusumshukla.com with you.
And I thank my father, the late Ambassador (Rtd) Ramesh Chandra Shukla, IFS, who believed in my poems back then. I wish he could have seen this blog. He would have been very happy and proud, indeed.
Finally, I’d like to thank my husband Jens Hork and our son Rohan Shukla Hork for supporting this effort, and for making sure that there are happy times in life, as well!
Continuing the journey – published books
My mission is to make the voice of my younger self heard. After launching my blog in 2021, the next step was to start publishing collections of my poems as books. The first book, Pain, was published in November 2022 just a few days short of my 55th birthday.
All books are available on Amazon and are free on KindleUnlimited. I will be publishing more books of my poems written as a young girl. I invite you to join me on this journey.
