Twinkles

A foreword by Bodo Vespaciano
(A Cuban origin Poet-Artist, U.S.A)

To arm our love, and ensure that it lives on forever, in other words, to safeguard a world of beauty, wisdom, duty and peace for the benefit of our children, our posterity, we should understand, first and foremost, that we are warriors in a struggle for survival…we have been engaged in battle. We have been forced, by those who hate and destroy, to fight in order to defend our values, our principles, our truth, which we consider to be Universal Truth…we have not invented this “truth”, and we have not shaped it or molded it to fit our designs. We, the ones who love, surely have applied ourselves to serve the Almighty and by doing so, we have followed the path of that invariable reality…

Rarely have I encountered, in my quests, artists, writers, musicians or poets who focus on the elementary, who cling to reality and who are willing to fight for the survival and ultimate triumph of those who love…

Few times have I had the joy of reading a collection of poems that have enlightened me and that have fulfilled my need to know, to profoundly understand that love can be a force, and not only an idyllic emotion that serves beauty.…LOVE is a revolutionary concept in the world today…yet, I am not saying that Dr. Ashok is a revolutionary, but that he is a Revolutionary, and his poetry shows it…I sincerely believe that he understands, as well as I do, that art is a weapon. Tholana has recognised that his love, for the human race, for the planet, for the Universe, for the Almighty, has to be armed so that those who hate cannot overwhelm it with their malice…My good friend from Hyderabad, India, has proven, with this, his FOURTH collection of inspiring poetry, that a battle can be a beautiful thing if it is fought with poetry, with words powerful enough to reach the soul and effect a positive change in humanity…

For me, to arm our love…a concept that perhaps is novel and that many may not fully understand…can be defined and can be explained in one phrase: Love is the motivation, the force that guides…but hate is also a strong motivator, another force that lamentably guides many others…there exists, then, confrontation…so, we, those that love, must be ready to arm our philosophy, arm our resistance to hate…for we do not look at LOVE as simply an emotion, a feeling shared by two people in bliss, we look at love as a guide, a lifestyle…I can see that for Dr. Ashok, poetry is a weapon, words are mightier than the sword, as it has been stated for centuries…in reading his new poetry collection, TWINKLES, I came to the immediate realisation that he is a man who understands the principles of love and also understands that such a revolutionary force has to be armed for its protection.

Tholana Ashok Chakravarthy, is a man who grew up in a modest house, sharing his life with brothers and sisters…he was educated, he is engaged in gainful employment, he lives life, provides for his family, and he writes…his objective, in his own words, is “simple living and high thinking”…he says that it made him what he is today…I am very proud to count him as a friend, a comrade, and I am blessed to have been able to read and ponder upon his poetry, which is his soul, bared for the world to know, for all to understand, and for me to admire…

Tholana is fascinated by spirituality, by philosophy…those are two of the mightiest weapons in the arsenal of those who love…I believe, and I have no doubt that Dr. Ashok will most certainly agree with me, that, we are not all the same under God’s blue skies…we are not the same as those who would use weapons of mass destruction, we are not the same as those who would utilise a car-bomb and drive it into a crowd of people at a market place…we are not the same as those who would incarcerate others and torture them and humiliate them…we are not the same as those who do not tolerate religious differences, lifestyle differences, economical differences…we are not the same as those who sustain systems of government and economics that do not provide justly and equally for all their citizens, we are different from those that advocate heartless super capitalism to the detriment of the majority of their citizenry, those that do not have health care, housing, education or the basic food items necessary to avoid malnutrition and disease…No! We are not all the same…We, those who love, reject and shun these practices, we reject evil…those who love, strive and work to develop a planet free of such iniquities…those who love are a species threatened with extinction and we realise that those who hate are gaining strength in numbers because they control the media, the news, and, therefore, the life of many. They neither have the time nor the energy to philosophically understand their plight and the danger that they face, and the danger that they place us all in…

Dr. Ashok, as a Revolutionary, has created for people a glimpse of love and the importance that we all must recognise that we have to protect that love with all our heart. His previous books, CHARISMATA OF POESIE, THE CHARIOT OF MUSINGS, SERENE THOUGHTS, I do believe, have led him along the path, and have brought him to this new threshold, this new book, wherein he writes:

“…poetry is a reliable weapon
which can soften any situation,
an effort, I craft on my own
to spread the message of unification.”
(fragment from “POETIC HARMONY”)

Tholana is a poet-person who looks forward…his compositions began back in his teen years, and over SIX hundred of them have appeared in international literary magazines…he loves music, jazz, the sounds of the drums, the flutes, and the thrill of a good science fiction movie…filled with fantasy, filled with poetry…therefore he can write in his new book words such as:

“Humanity is butchered on the streets
the thought of love and brotherhood;
seem buried and bulldozed in hearts.
The enemy within, be totally eliminated.”
(fragment from “WITHOUT SELFISH MOTIVES”)

I know a warrior when I meet one, and one with such weapons is one who I will always admire…I am delighted to have been able to say a few words about this poet, this member of the army of those who love, and I am touched by having read his words…

PEACE
Bodo, U.S.A