Varun, the poet, opens up

The other side

BJP parliamentarian Varun Gandhi showed a lesser-known side of himself at the Poetry Festival on Saturday. Thro­u­gh the poems he had pen­n­ed, Gandhi expressed his th­o­ughts on religion, love and loss.

In a poem entitled ‘Winter Gardens’, he speaks about the loss of his ‘Nani’, his maternal grandmother. Written during a visit to Uttarakhand, several years after her death, the poem shows how Gandhi suddenly felt her absence in the serene winter of the hills.

In another poem, he expresses his dislike for organised religion and later explains that to him, religion is about surrendering to a power that is greater than oneself. Gandhi said that he was working on his next collection entitled ‘Surrender’, his previous collections being ‘The Otherness of Self’ and ‘Stillness’. He concluded with a message that “The only truth is love and kindness.” Aman Rathi, a writer and software professional who attended Gandhi’s poetry session, said, “He used a lot of political analogies like comparing past to resistance. Every poet’s work reflects the atmosphere they are living in. In Gandhi’s case, the use of expressions like ‘transfer of power’ and ‘empire’ reflects his political background.”

Few had known Gandhi, the poet. Divya Kesri, a poetry enthusiast, said, “I was surprised when he recited so many poems. Some of them were very good but most of them were not so.” Not everyone was impressed. A poet himself, Reijul Sachdev, said, “His poetry was run-of-the-mill kind but his take on certain things was interesting.”

However, someone seems to have liked Gandhi’s poems a little too much because in the chaos of signing copies of his book for fans, the folder carrying his poems went missing. A search of the place did not yield anything.