Did You Ever Love Me? by Rithvik Singh is a tender contemporary poetry collection about love, heartbreak, longing, self worth and learning to let go. Its greatest strength is emotional accessibility: Singh writes directly to readers who feel intensely and care deeply. The collection offers comfort without pretending heartbreak is simple, though its simplicity may occasionally feel familiar to seasoned poetry readers. Did you Ever Love Me? Have you ever loved someone so completely that, after they left, you were left wondering whether they had ever understood what they had been given? Not merely whether they loved you, but whether they ever noticed how much you loved them, how much patience you offered, how many small things you remembered, or how often you chose to stay when leaving might have been easier. There is a particular loneliness in that question because it rarely arrives at a dramatic moment. More often, it finds you while you are doing something completely ordinary. Yo...
Over the holi long weekend, I was in Ludhiana, my birth place. We were driving down a road, which I used to take while cycling to school. The road has now been widened, and is much better but the majestic eucalyptus trees, that shaded me in hot summer months, are now all gone. In the maddening rush for wide roads, huge number of trees are being chopped down, not just in Punjab, but in other states as well. It does not make me sad as that is what the countrymen want. Wide roads. Everyone wants that, and politicians too realize the need of their vote bank. Trees don't vote. Where once they grew from a sapling to a an adult tree, they are now just being seen as a road block, an eyesore.
And who will speak on their behalf? The moment you try to speak against this shameless atrocity you would be branded as an anti development, activist. As if speaking for a bunch of trees is such a huge sin. The felling of roadside trees also does not affect the NGO types as well, who have much larger jungles to protect. The governments do try, at least on paper to offset loss on environment, by claiming to plant new trees somewhere else. But does that really serve the purpose?
Think about the times when you were stuck in a traffic jam. How many times it was because of an irresponsible driver or shoddy roads? Just so that we like our own people so much that we don't find any fault in them, we slaughter the trees who won't react.
Here is to every tree that's being uprooted for the fancies of people demanding wider roads. R.I.P.
And who will speak on their behalf? The moment you try to speak against this shameless atrocity you would be branded as an anti development, activist. As if speaking for a bunch of trees is such a huge sin. The felling of roadside trees also does not affect the NGO types as well, who have much larger jungles to protect. The governments do try, at least on paper to offset loss on environment, by claiming to plant new trees somewhere else. But does that really serve the purpose?
Think about the times when you were stuck in a traffic jam. How many times it was because of an irresponsible driver or shoddy roads? Just so that we like our own people so much that we don't find any fault in them, we slaughter the trees who won't react.
Here is to every tree that's being uprooted for the fancies of people demanding wider roads. R.I.P.
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