- Kindly introduce yourself.
Greetings, I’m Dr VedVyas, Im a doctor who’s specialised in Emergency Medicine, a poet and a painter. I live by two personas. The physician for half a day where I’m Dr Vyas. And once I leave the hospital the poet and artist VedVyas emerges
What inspired you to dedicate this book to your mother, the Great Goddess?
As a spiritual practitioner, I know for certain that anything or any aspect that is involved in creation, is feminine. It’s that divine feminine who guided me to my work (and to my belief any artist). Who continues to be my muse, and my mother is that very extension of the “Great Goddess” as I call her who recognised my various talents, moulded, shaped and breathed an air of life into them.
You mention that life’s unpredictability led you to sacrifice a lot. Can you elaborate on the key sacrifices you made
My life can be viewed more from a very different lens. I didn’t get the ability or the basics of a life most got. I seldom lived with family, I was in boarding, then med school abroad, then a career that took me away from home to many different locations. It was Family life which was offered at the altar of sacrifice, and I also had to lose love and relationships along the way. Finally embracing solitude.
It’s a single life of my choosing, and by the choice of circumstance.
When my characters and imaginative journaling became my best friends, there was no looking back. I knew I’ll never be alone
How did pain and suffering shape your writing style and poetic expression?
More than pain it was the sheer absence of a vent. My parents weren’t close to cry to. Or neither did I have any friends to mope with. I carried my pain single-handedly, with a smile on my face that told everyone, all is well. When all was hidden behind that smile which I continue to offer society. My pain did need a channel however. And that channel was poetry…
Was there a specific moment or event that made you realize poetry was your way of finding solace?
To be honest I don’t recall one. I was always a writer. Even at the age of 10 I would make up stories in my head in boarding school, and write detective stories or biographies of “say a library book”. There was always a scribe that was born on my very first day on this earth. That scribe is who I carry with me despite having a very different career in real life.
Emotions flowed in the form of poetry, there was no rhyme or reason, time or season.
Do you see your poetry as a form of personal catharsis, or do you hope to connect with and heal your readers as well?
It was a deeply personal catharsis. And I’ll be honest, with my work out there, I know I’m being heard. Even if not by everyone, then by a select few. I’m not a perfect being, so whatever mistakes I made, whatever lessons I learned and what pathos I continue to undergo is framed between the lines of my book. My readers can perhaps visualise the boy that never grew when they read between the lines…
Some of your verses reflect, while others offer insight. How do you decide the tone and direction of each poem?
I honestly leave the decision to my pen. And the muse of the day. If you notice no two pages reflect the same kind of poetry.
Just as two different days or different times or different periods made me pen different verses, some as I said were days of solitude and introspection, some days were me observing something and deciphering insight based on my own thought process. Hence the diverse aspects of my work.
Why do you believe some stories must be told and some silences must be shattered?
It’s not just me, but many many people who share a life with stories untold. I do believe some of us have endured far greater hardships and have won. But most don’t know what they went through or how did they break the glass ceiling. This is why I wrote, for the benefit of others, to heal and progress eventually, some stories are to be told and some silences are to be broken.
