Engineer with a Poetic Heart from Canada recites People’s Story
Avneesh Gupta is an India-borned Engineer in Canada. What differentiates him from other NRIs is his passion for hindi and hindustan. A well known poet in Indian Community in Canada, Avneesh recently launched his collection of poems “Adhoori Muskaan”. “Adhoori Muskaan” is an expression of an engineer about the lives of people around him.
Avneesh is actively involved in social work in India and is building an NGO to uproot poverty.
Readit India team takes a dive into mind of this budding poet and philanthropist.
Kumar G. S: Tell us something about the Adhoori Muskaan.
Avneesh Gupta: “Adhoori Muskaan” is a collection of my poems written during the period 2002-2007, a period when I was experiencing the twists and turns of my life. There was nothing so different in my experiences from anybody else’s around me. But, the difference was that I decided to view them from a different perspective and pen them down. I saw people busy in their daily course of life. I just tried to portray a shade of everybody’s life including mine in a way a painter does with his brush.
Kumar GS: What motivated you to write this book?
Avneesh Gupta: To me, the question is same as “What motivates you to write the poems”. It is constant journey for me, days and nights, hours and minutes. My eyes haunt for characters, tales around. Initially, I started writing my own experiences in my personal diary during my childhood and early teenage. But, there was always an inclination towards expressing myself in fewer words. This finally turned into poetry writing. I never thought about writing a book. I was just expressing my feelings in different poems in my personal diary, it was all getting accumulated in my diary. When I was in my third year of my engineering degree, I was coordinating some literary activities in the annual fest ‘Utsav’ in my Institute. I was working tirelessly for that event. Just 3 days before the event could start, I woke up with a dream that I am inaugurating my first book on the same annual fest stage. That dream filled me with extreme ecstasy. I instantly borrowed some money from my friends and went to the nearest printing house. The printing press owner almost laughed at me at my childish act of getting 50 copies of the book ready in 3 days. But, I was mad. I almost had no sleep for 3 days. Finally, I was successful in printing, inaugurating my first book “Mujhe Manzilon Ki Talaash Hai” in those 3 days and in fact, sold out most of those 50 copies during the fest. I never stopped myself after that. In February 2008, I had to move to Canada for a long term assignment from IBM. I gave the script of the book to many publishing houses in Delhi before moving to Canada. Mr. Azim from General Press agreed upon publishing “Adhoori Muskan”. I am very much thankful to him. Interestingly, I could see the first copy of my book after 6 months of its release in Indian market.
Kumar GS: Does it have any inspirations from your personal life?
Avneesh Gupta: Of course, it has quite a bit. There are many reflections from my personal life in my poems. I grew up in a much disciplined environment. I was characteristically more influenced from my mother than anybody. It is she from whom I inherit the power of keenly observing personalities around from different perspectives. My hindi teacher “Zulfikar saheb” in Islamia College, Shahjahanpur encouraged me to participate and win speeches and debates at college level.
If you talk about inspirational characters in my life, basically my own failures were my inspirations. These prompted me to do better. There are several other characters who inspire me everyday like – a Rickshaw puller in my hometown who had five daughters, was working tirelessly day and night to get them married; a tea-seller at Hazratganj crossing in Lucknow, who is awake all night to prepare tea for outsider students in order to make a living for his family. Just a remembrance of such faces fills me with energy everyday. If they can do so much hard work with so much dedication then why can’t I, who doesn’t have to address even a part of the obligations they have to. At the level of thought processing, I put myself in such characters and try to live them. It makes me realize the real pain and agony of one’s life and therefore give me the true words for that feeling in return. It pinches me every time when I see something, which has emotions, feelings in it. An insatiate mind and heart prompts me to drench the thirst of my soul. Then, I just take out the piece of paper which is always there in my pocket and unburden my mind of those emotions through these verses. You might feel strange but I consider myself as a women, as a beggar, as a newborn, or as anything I may want to let myself feel. It involves a great observation and power of changing yourself to befit into other’s soul. You have to refrain from what you are and then, dissolve yourself into that character. Realize nothing but him.
Kumar GS: What are your future books?
Avneesh Gupta: These days, I am focusing much on social activities than just witnessing and writing the agony of the people. After years of writing, I felt that I can create more beautiful things than these verses by earning some real, genuine smiles on the faces of people. To realize it, I recently opened an NGO – AKSHAR (Activists for Knowledge Stimulated Harmony and Advancement in Rural areas). It aims at providing quality teaching experience to poverty-ridden children in Rural India. We recently opened our first school. We recently got in touch with “Azim Premji foundation” and obtained animation software from them to teach AKSHAR kids with the latest technology. Parallely, I am creating documentary videos to create awareness so that people, who are well off, could be motivated to donate a very small part of their earnings in making life of such kids better. In short, my dream is – ‘I want to see India at least 95% educated before I die’. The word ‘educated’ here does not refer to producing ‘Literates’, who can just make their signature or read and write, but they should be able to understand the world around with logical thinking. And I know that I am still not contributing even a millionth fraction to my dream, but I believe a similar million efforts out of a billion population can make this dream 100% possible.
Coming back to your question, though I am not focusing much on writing; But, Yes, I am planning for a few more books in future. One of them will portray different experiences of womanhood right from her birth till death. Other one is in English and is almost complete. It is based on social issues and poverty in India. I am revising its script these days. Though, I have slowed down my pace in writing to focus on other activities, but once the establishment of NGO is firm and self-sustainable, I will come back to writing in full pace.
Kumar GS: How do you manage time to write poetry from your job?
Avneesh Gupta: To tell you the truth, after an average of 8-9 hours of software engineering daily, you are mentally and physically exhausted and have almost no energy left with you to be creative or even doing anything on that day. But, then I have to stand up and give myself an extra push thinking that there is no ‘tomorrow’. Everyday, I have to imagine myself like a soldier who has to fight until his last drop and has no other option but to fight. I believe in effective and worth usage of every precious moment given to us by god. Many a times, it’s painful. But that’s called life!!
Kumar GS: Thank you Avneesh for sparing your precious time for this interview.
