If you saw her now, you would never guess. Full of panache and cheeks full of laughter, Brinda Roy is a young entrepreneur with two children, and a poet who surprises with unabashed love poems. Her first book of poetry that consists of a mixed genre of written word and visual telling, In Between the Lines grabs the reader’s attention from the get-go because of honesty and a rare quantum of courage. But it was not always so. “My childhood was not a fairy tale, certainly not one that all kids dream of. I come from a broken family, and I have seen my mother struggle day in and day out to manage the family, which consisted of me, my mother and my grandmother. Loneliness was the major reason why I turned to the blank pages of my notebook and poured my heart out. It helped me express my real heart to the person who resided within my own heart. At times, even now, those blank pages come to my rescue,” confesses Brinda.
Was she a lonely child? “I was never a party-going girl, nor a sports person. I was a member of the Bharat Scouts and Guides and was an active member of my school’s — Modern High School for Girls — drama club. Despite this, within my soul, the emptiness lingered as I cocooned back to my shell after coming home from school. My expressions found wings through my creative bent of mind and as a teen I could see myself pouring my heart out into my paintings and my verses,” Brinda states simply, though emphatically. Brinda’s story is inspirational because it is about facing the odds, falling down and then finding a path to stand up again, and roll with the punches.
Brinda’s poems of love are compelling, passionate, exciting and yet full of longing and loss. “My poems of love address the most beautiful aspects of love — loss and longing. Without loss, without pain, without suffering, one cannot evolve into a sensitive and strong individual. So, accepting the losses, one must start afresh to celebrate life. It is what I believe in. If I am in love with an individual, then what I will crave for is his or her time and qualities. We should try and understand and accept the colours that our partner brings with him or her, and the partner in turn should accept us and let us shine in our own ways,” she says.
A keen observer, Brinda tells us why she thinks young people are more comfortable texting than actually meeting and talking about their feelings. “The young generation nowadays is perhaps comfortable texting because they want to hide their feelings. The edit button is always there when one is texting. Talking in person is an impromptu act, while texting gives the liberty to choose one’s words at one’s own comfortable time. The facial expression and body language of an individual get hidden when one is texting. So it is a kind of social distancing that has unknowingly evolved within society where we share our feelings, yet we are hiding them from the very ones with whom we are trying to connect.” She adds, “The youngsters in our society are perhaps afraid of being their own selves because they feel they might be misunderstood and rejected by their peers or partners. So in the era of Facebook and Instagram we are all strangers to each other. And judging a person doesn’t define who they are; it defines who we are. The young generation has a lot of potential; it is just we who need to believe in them.”
Talking about her own life, Brinda shares, “The turning point of my life was when I became a mother. So the girl who had no friends as a child now thanks the universe for sending two mature individuals into her life who redefined her own identity and her understanding of the world every moment. Ekalavya and Ekantika, my two children, are like two strong pillars who balance my very existence.” She describes her relationship with her husband as “imperfectly perfect”. “We have both accepted each other the way we are, and in these 17 years, Prasun has seen me transform from a shy young girl to a confident entrepreneur,” she says.
The writer is an author of Dance of Life and co-author of the bestselling biography Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen. She has a PhD in English and South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto, where she taught World Literature and Postcolonial Literature for many years. She currently lives in Calcutta and teaches Masters English at Loreto College, and conceptualises and curates the Rising Asia Literary Circle