Month: December 2022

A lifetime of skies

As the run up to the book launch today evening, here is a review of the book. This is the last in this series, after which we return to the haiga.

Do come for the book launch. Hope to see you there!

‘Where Rivers Meet‘, is a convergence of incisive observations and learning made over time by a keen mind. Sketches borrowed from life itself. Having spent some time in the settings Rohini Gupta describes, the book is that much dearer to me, allowing me the luxury of sitting back, reminiscing and enjoying her unique lens and deceptively non-nonchalant penmanship.


A travelogue with a difference, the haijin traces her journeys all over the world, and through life. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual moments collated and presented with practised ease. Moments that draw out a smile and an ‘Ah yes’.

bird bath
the kitten lost in its
own reflection

Layered and nuanced, the book delivers a masterclass on haiku writing, amongst other things haikai, to the open and willing.


The Haijin says, “Haiku is what happens when you cut a diamond. You take a powerful experience, and you cut away everything but the essence. ‘No imagination, no abstractions, no philosophies. It is tough….to demand that you fit into that matchbox and then to demand that only your purest self go in so, there you are shedding those encumbrances – the kind which you collect as an excuse for worrying rather than living.”


A writer, writing about the challenges of writing and living. Yet, each word fits in place, like a complex jigsaw puzzle finally come together. Humble, unpretentious, poignant and light, ‘Where Rivers Meet’ runs the gamut of experience that has touched Rohini. And she shares them with complete honesty.

three lines
how to fit in a lifetime
of skies

Poet, artist, author, haijin, mentor, guide, Rohini lavishes the distillate of a lifetime of keen observation, learning and sharing. I can almost hear her reading out the back stories she has shared, especially in “Cloud Shadows”. The little quadruped who would guide her home through head high grasses, was well known to me. And I shall never forget trying to help one of her rescue cats by brushing off the fine layer of rain on its coat. Of course, it percolated through to the skin, leaving the cat vociferously displeased. In the very garden Rohini speaks of –

butterfly
if only I could replace
the flower I plucked

The book has some lovely illustrations as well to go with the pieces, sketches chosen from a plethora of quiet moments transcribed unto paper. Relatable and touching, this book will be my go-to solace whenever I think of the art deco building on the bay with its little garden and myriad cats.


Thank you Rohini for being who you are – family, friend, mentor, rock.

Dr Brijesh Raj
Editor, Café Haiku

Dawn Light

As the run up to the book launch this Saturday, here is another haiku from the book.

dawn light
the memory of one
who will not see it

Rohini Gupta,
Where Rivers Meet

In the soft beauty of dawn light, the poet finds an old memory. It is never easy to write about loss. Yet Rohini does write about it in this verse that brought with it a twinge of pain when it led me to experience my own memories of a dear one . In our path to reconciliation with loss and onto a further step of healing, memories come and go. Just when we feel that we’ve finally reached a place of strength, a memory floats in of sharing the mellow dawn light with a loved one who will never see it again. The sadness of them not being able to see the beauty of the moment is perhaps, as heart-tugging as the fact that we won’t see them again in this physical plane. Yet, the poet does not attach an emotion to her verse. She only lays the images in front of us– it’s us, the readers, who have to take what we want from the haiku.


That Rohini is a visual artist is evident in the photographic quality of her haiku – we are left standing at the same scene as the poet and then, gently led to connect with her words, with her predicament and of course, with our own truth.

Geethanjali Rajan

Freshly Haiku

As the run up to the book launch this Saturday, here is another review of the book Where Rivers Meet.

Short of climbing a mountain, perhaps the challenge of reading 100 books a year is the toughest. Most people do not last more than a couple of weeks. So here is a 14 year old girl, well on her way to completing the challenge in this last month of the year, on her 90th book. One of the books she read was Where Rivers Meet and it was her first exposure to haiku. This is what she says.

This year my goal is to read 100 books. I’ve enjoyed 89 till now. ‘Where Rivers Meet’ has been a wonderful addition to my list.


I’ve never really connected with long verses or sonnets of poetry, but haiku manages to define the depth of the poet’s thoughts in less than 17 syllables. Rohini Gupta has so beautifully conveyed this concept in Where Rivers Meet. Its a perfect starter-read for anybody with a passion for good haiku.


My favourite haiku from the book:


vacations end
my small black notebook
brings home the mountains


There are so many more that have touched my heart in the same way from the book.


The journey the anthology took me on was captivating. What enhanced the experience was the poet’s unique style of writing; shining light on the stories and moments that gave birth to the haiku.


Anandita Patil, age 14.

Through the Eyes of Haiku

As the run up to the book launch this Saturday, here are three editorial reviews of the book Where Rivers Meet.

There unfolds before our eyes a quiet but powerful drama of an Indian poet’s chance encounter with haiku and a totally different kind of journey it has ushered her into for the last 15 years. Tired of conventional poetry writing or meaningless vacations, Rohini Gupta ventures out on new trips without a map, planning or even destinations but led only by this newly-discovered form of poetry which is also a new way of looking at things. They take her to various unknown and unknowable roads and places, ranging from somewhere deep in the Himalayan mountains and valleys, through ruins of an ancient temple in Kumbhalgarh, to Japan, Ireland, USA and countries in Europe, and even to non-physical journeys in her expanded sensibility and in cyberspace. She also ‘travels’ through our daily lives from feeding stray cats to the lockdowns of COVID-19.


It is by no means an ordinary haiku anthology, nor is it a textbook, and not even a travelogue. What it is is an intriguing and personal notebook, recording what haiku has done to her sensibility as a poet, to her life as a city dweller and to her whole universe where haiku has given her a new eye to see thing differently. Driven by the incredible power of haiku, she voraciously delves into other areas of haiku literature as well such as renku and haibun. Hers is an exciting story about getting a grip on and gaining mastery of all these areas. It is told in her concise language as a wordsmith and flows swiftly in short-sentence prose with pleasant rhythm, which is by itself a pleasure to read. At its heart lies her unblinking eyes to see truth, deep appreciation of beauty and a warm sense of humour. Her haiku wells up from somewhere deep. It is born, not contrived. The book provides self-satisfied haiku poets, especially seasoned ones, with refreshing stimulus, new insights and style, and those still to come with one of the right ways of starting haiku.


Susumu Takiguchi

Rohini Gupta presents us not only with a series of fine haibun and haiku but also with an account of how she came to write these. This is from both a prose description of how the particular poem was born and an in-depth discussion of the theory, practice and origin of that poetic form. She draws on a rich variety of experiences – travel, daily life, temples and mountains, birds and cats, nature and the city – Mumbai her domicile. Unusually, she brings us into her publishing history and how she came to haikai poetry, drawing the reader into her world. She also includes the Covid outbreak and some of the ironies of that, as if nature had “put us in detention”. The grounding of the fruit – the poems – in the soil of experience and root of composition makes this a guide not just to her work but to Japanese verse forms. Her haiku, she writes, is not about the red fruit of the apple but about “change, and seasons and life itself”.

A delightful irony is that although Rohini laments the city as not being the best setting for haikai writing, this collection is testimony that the urban phenomena does indeed inspire a haikai poet. “Once upon a time life was intimate with nature… But times have changed. Many haiku poets are urban.” She observes. An example here is a haiku about a building in Mumbai: “behind the world’s/ most expensive high rise/ the moon.”

Perhaps more than this dichotomy of urban and natural siting, it is the poetical creed of a haikai poet that underlines the search for “stillness” and “surprises” in amongst the “monotonous, daily routine.” She gives us a splendid tapestry of such surprises in this astutely observed and passionately articulated collection.

Sonam Chhoki, author of The Lure of the Threshold:
Chapbook of Bhutanese haibun, Éditions des petits nuages, 2021

Rohini Gupta invites us into a world she shares with cats, dogs, birds, rain and mountain mist – one that we cannot resist. Her journeys across the world find their way into haibun and haiku that are gentle, unpretentious, and flow like the waters at a harmonious confluence. A much-published author, poet, editor and artist, Rohini tells stories that sometimes make us smile and at other times, leave us longing for a time of travel that has perhaps, slipped through the gaps of our fingers. This unassuming haijin gives us poems that are fresh, truthful, karui (light) and illustrations that are vivid. Where the Rivers Meet is truly a coming together of simplicity, love of nature, humaneness and a traveller’s joy in the individual moments that intersect lives.

Geethanjali Rajan

Summer Roads

As the run up to the book launch this Saturday, here are some haiku from the book Where Rivers Meet.

summer road
the freedom of not knowing
where you are going

    Rohini Gupta shares her experiences of road trips and travel in her book, Where Rivers Meet. But in this haiku, through creating the tangible image of a journey on a summer road, she leads us into the abstract world of freedom.

    What does freedom mean to each of us? Is it the possibility of a peace-filled life? Is it the freedom of choice, of deciding our own path? Is it the choice of career we want, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the people we love? Or is it just being able to write or paint, undisturbed, in a quiet place? Rohini brings us a beautiful and different picture –‘the freedom of not knowing where you are going’. Through the act of letting go of control and going with the flow, the poet finds a slice of satori.

    My question to you, dear reader:
    Not knowing where you are going – does that make you happy?

    Geethanjali Rajan

    An Oceanic Viewpoint

    As the run up to the book launch this Saturday, reprinting this interview.

    An Oceanic Viewpoint:

    Interview with Rohini Gupta by Raamesh Gowri Raghavan

    RGR: What was the journey that led you to haiku? Do you think it is the easiest or hardest of all poetry genres?


    RG: I had been writing poetry for a very long time when I discovered haiku about fifteen years ago. I was browsing the net and found a haiku poem which made a huge impact on me. It was by Matsuo Basho but I had not heard of him at that time. That was on a Friday so I got out a notebook and wrote all weekend. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know a good haiku from a bad one. That was the hardest part – recognising what makes a haiku good, and what makes one great.


    It took me a long time to learn. Like every artform it looks simple- until you start to write it. In the beginning you don’t even know that you don’t know. The shortness of a haiku is deceptive – it’s not an easy form to write.


    At that point, when I started, I knew no one who wrote haiku so I just did what writers do, read, write, write, write and submit. I wrote obsessively, read all the online magazines and submitted my poems. They were awful but I was blissfully unaware of that. They all got rejected of course, but one sneaked through. My first haiku was accepted by Heron’s Nest, one month to the day after I discovered this beautiful genre. That gave me the encouragement to fill in a few more notebooks.


    My poetry background did help. I knew what to look for while learning this new form. I don’t think the genre matters – to write a good poem is tough even for the best poets. You have to write a lot of rubbish to find a gem.


    RGR: You love writing cat haiku. What about cats brings you such hai that you have written so many ku? What inspired you to bring out a book?


    RG: I think I blame the cats for that. It was not planned. I had two dogs at the time and one rescued three-legged cat. I also feed stray cats, and a few resident cats live in the garages in my building. I had actually planned a collection of my haiku but the small, fierce, big eyed creatures somehow subverted my plans. They kept creeping into my ku. I have one or two dog haiku but the catku just flowed – enough for a book. Cats are small but they have such huge personalities and quirks. Somehow the book, whiskers and purrs, just wrote itself. I might even do a second volume of catku someday because I have more haiku.


    RGR: I’m a dog person, so out of curiosity I want to ask if there is a dog haiku book coming up.


    RG: Probably not haiku. For most of my life I have had one or two dogs and they do show up in my work. I wrote about my experiences with them in Monsoons and Mayflowers but, I don’t know, cats and haiku just came together. I have many dog stories I want to tell but they will most likely be in prose. Maybe a second volume after Monsoons.


    RGR: You live with a magnificent view of the sea. How does that come into your haikai writing?


    RG: Every morning I look at the changing mood and colour of the ocean. Evenings, I get to watch the sunset fireworks above the water and, in monsoon I love watching the rain advance over the waves. Naturally the ocean does show up in my work but probably not as much as the mountains. Every chance I get I like travelling to the Himalayas or the Sahyadris. My second choice of a place to live – after Mumbai – is in the hills.

    RGR: You’re also a writer of free verse and short fiction. Do you see them influencing your haiku, or being influenced?


    RG: I have not been writing much poetry lately but I love writing fiction. I am very close to finishing my first novel. I guess writing fiction teaches you to always look for the story and haiku has a little story which unfolds line by line, from the first line setting the stage to the surprise of the third line. One thing is the same – both in fiction and haiku it’s the tiny details, which might otherwise go unnoticed, which make all the difference.

    Read the rest of the interview Here

    CH Book Launch – Where Rivers Meet

    The Date – 10 December 2022, Saturday

    The Time – 8.30 to 10 pm IST (Indian Standard Time)

    The Venue – online on Zoom. Drop us an email to ask for the link at inhaikumumbai@gmail.com. If you have attended our sessions before we will be sending you the link.

    The Book – Where Rivers Meet by Rohini Gupta, published by Red River. It is a book of haiku and haibun profusely illustrated by the author’s pencil drawings.

    Available on Amazon as both ebook and print but only the print version has the illustrations. Copy this number into the Amazon of your country for the print version – 9392494122

    The program –

    We will begin with a short introduction and the book launch followed by conversations with the author about the process of writing, haiku, drawing and of putting a book together, along with reading a few pieces. At the end, all those present are welcome to ask questions or make comments.

    Please do join us in this book celebration.