A Night’s Sail by Apurv Agarwal is his debut collection of poetry. This collection carries poem that are as fresh and pleasing as fresh flowers. Apurv is a budding poet who has clear moral and ethical vision and who has

“A thousand things to say,
But locked inside (my) heart, ‘do they stay…!’

If one goes through the preface, one would know the spring of poet’s inspiration to write “an enigmatic anthology” that contains the “voyage of a man in search of lost love” in a conversational tone narrating the  ‘ignorance of man and his negligence (though poet calls it silence) of the greatest truth in his life. The poet seems admitting fatalist view when he says, “There are fears engrossing him, fears of himself, fears of time, but he needs to battle them out. His fate needs to be conspiring against him in lonely chase…” (Preface) But there are things like ‘Dream’ and ‘Belief’ that make a man move on the path of Nishkam Karma.  ‘But there are his dreams and a belief in his Love that encourages him to move on, not knowing where these paths would lead him to….’ (Preface) The same idea of hope echoes in the prologue of the collection when Apurv says:

But why do I still have a hope, rising from the sea?
A belief still, in my love, my dreams, I still see
I don’t know, if ‘we’ can ever meet in future,
But shall this story reside in the arms of Nature. (11)

The collection carries 40 poems all bubbling with zeal and vigour of positivism and romanticism. Most of the poems written in subjective manner reflect the romantic self of the teenage heart who ‘could’, see ‘Her’ (beloved’s) soul sprint, like a bee, or ‘tremble’ of the ‘lips’ as ‘she talked,’ to the poet who wishes to hold ‘Her hand and fly free!’ The poet’s moon resembles his beloved when he says, “I see ‘Her’ in the Moon’ who ‘guides’, ‘inspires’ and ‘Lead’ the poet to his soul’. And when a fear shudders his innocent heart, another voice from within (to which poet stoically terms the words of his beloved) rise and he says:

I will always be within you
I’ll be there in your dreams,
I’ll meet you in your thoughts,
You’ll find me wherever you go,
We’ll be together,
Forever, … ever! (15)

The poems of Apurv are the articulation of desires that rise but sink silently in a romantic and passionate heart. ‘Had I been a …’ is fine example to the fact where the poet ardently wishes to be ‘Musician’ who would sing “Over the Ocean” and his melody of piano and guitar ‘would have flown ‘the air of harmony’, or a painter ‘in a world of my (his) imagination’ or a poet where his beloved ‘would have been’ in all his thoughts’. (19) And this constant search of ‘her’ culminates when the poet visualizes ‘all the nine form of navratra’ in her grace. (21) And the poet writes:

This sacred truth, with pride, do I embrace,
I saw ‘Her’ glimpse in the Goddess,
Was this an eerie way of the god to profess!
I saw the Goddess smile and bless my love story,
Was that night the most miraculous night of the history. (21)

To sum up, Apurv’s poem are refreshing and entertaining especially for those who wish to read love poetry and feel love as the supreme force that joints two hearts. However, the vision of Apurv needs to get matured as love does not last with man-woman or boy-girl love. The rich-poor, high-low, the marginalized and resourceful, young-old  even sometimes our self and countless other persons’ love and it is also not sure that they visualize God in man because symbols and imagery of modern poet is real, earthy and timely. Love is such a phenomenon which can occur anytime any place or at any relation and where sex hardly matter. But, it is pleasant to see the flowering of a genius, who has just crossed the boundary-line of teenage. God bless the poet.

A Night’s Sail by Apurv Agarwal, New Delhi: Sanbun Publishers, 2011,
ISBN978-93-80213-56-9, Pages-64, Rs. 60/-