REVIEW of my creation - Agilia the forbidden truth - by Ashok Chikte

Goethe asserted that Literature is humanization of the world. The world we live is full of “Yang” and “Yin”. Therefore literature must reveal the hidden side of human mind which is always curbed by the elite norms and regulation. In the contemporary literature very few writers and poets date to unearth the lands of sins, suffering ad salvation. The new Indian poet Mr. Ajay Singh has took an oath to let the readers have a journey in those forbidden region. That are is beyond risk and comfort zone; and thus he tried to grant anonymity to both philias and phobias. The story is about the evil desire Agilia who challenges the omnipresent, omnipotent God and accepts His wrath as a gift ……perhaps a precious gift. It is up to reader to hail Agilia as a heroine or an antagonist.

Through the labyrinthine narrative the bard has almost touched and tickled the human predicament. It posed a threat to the world of darkness and ignorance. The story compels us to think to go beyond ‘good and evil’. Poet almost mocked the maze of binaries and dichotomies. The common reader will see here the world of claustrophobia whereas an advanced one will search here a rare combination of deep-rooted fantasy and latent desire. Perhaps poet wants to remain the message of the art a secret, so that we at least can swim in the river which has both shores familiar and bizarre. In one line it’s more than fable of skirmish between Light and Darkness. Here we can see theology mingling with philosophy.

Poet tries his best to disclose the alien world of passions and taboos, order and chaos, episteme and ignorance, materialism and spirituality , enlightenment and stupidly , dream and nightmare , this and that……I personally believe that this poem is an example of “ Art for Life’s sake” . Poet constructed here a world of astrology, supernaturalism, sadism, bliss, atheism, polytheism, and existentialism. Narrative is so sublime and mystic that sometimes we doubt that we are reading Milton’s Paradise Lost or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Gibran’s Nymphs of the Valley. Poet tried to decode the difference between sadism and acstacy. He has a different opinion than that of Browning or Hardy, he says- “Father was in Heaven and Hell”. Even the line like “The innocent were invincible for Agilia” says much more. Call Agilia a Feminine version of Satan or a Deformed Angel or look this work through the spectacles of “Postmodernism’, but poet has a message to convey, no doubt. One can experience so many symbols, motifs and epiphanies. Here desire and fire symbolizes beyond the conventional binaries.

One can visualize the glimpses of Asian mythologies in the disguise of spiritual matters. Here we can guess a Second Coming or a Kaliyuga. There is a blurring between a Redeemer and Avatar, Salvation and Moksha, deed and Karma and Maze and Jivanchakra.

Thanks for the time and overview.