Written by The 2024 Sahitya Akademi Awardee author Easterine Kire’s poetry book ‘Freerain’ allows glimpses into the mind of a writer who is keenly observant and receptive to the world around them.
“Perhaps happiness is just this:
a boy
pulling a stone
tied to a string
and trailing behind his father
on their way to the forest.”
The lyrical quality of Easterine Kire’s writing—the cultural rooted tales with emotional depth; the mastery of her subtle storytelling; the scintillating narration and verses that can be unvarnished but which invariably spellbinds her reader; the cultural and historical context with oral storytelling influence —is a given. The most echoing thing about Kire’s writing is its profound emotional responses while delving into intricate themes of identity, culture and human condition. Be it ‘When the River Sleeps’, ‘Mari’, or ‘Spirit Nights’, Kire’s writing is rooted in the landscapes, traditions, and histories of the Naga people, yet it resonates with universal truths about the human experience.
“Life is a hard taskmaster pulling me away from the things I have grown to love”
To drive home the point, Kire’s recent poetry book Freerain is a gold mine of nostalgia; longing; the sense of being; the liberation of the soul relishing in the ‘small things, small joys’ of life (like the sound of the rhythmic patter of rain against the tin roof, for instance). Freerain celebrates the simple and the ordinary allowing the poet’s soul to remain open and accessible to the reader. It isn’t surprising, perhaps, that Kire seems, in most of the poems, infuses the poignant yet invincibility aspects of longing and yearning. Loss, the inevitable; memory, the unreachable are rhapsodized in forms of verses and lyrics.
“Food is the most important thing and if you go and feed a dozen hungry, homeless young and a handful of old people, old you will find out it is food, not love that is important thing.
But what Freerain does, best of all, is to remind us to slow down in this fast-paced world where everything seems to be moving in lightning speed, devoid of emotions and thereby forgetting the essence of true living. It is in the most ordinary of things that one finds the meaning of life and that, Kire does not fail to reiterate. Give this poetry book its own time and let it save you in time of need.
For My Son
Someday you will ask
Why the birds no longer sing
Or the flowers smell as sweet
As I said they used to do
Why the rivers no longer have fish
Or the trees, green leaves,
And wonder where all the rainbows went.
One day, my son
When you come to ask me what colour was the sky
Before it turned grey
I will no longer have the answers.
