Santosh Bakaya
Recipient of the International Reuel Award, for her long narrative poem, Oh Hark, 2104, Setu Award for ‘stellar contribution to world literature’ [2018], Eunice Dsouza Award, 2023,[WE Literary Community], Universal Inspirational Poet Award [ 2016, Pentasi B Friendship Poetry and Ghana Government] , Bharat Nirman Award for literary Excellence, 2017, Poet Laureate, 2017 [Poetry Society of India, Global Fraternity of poets and Earth Vision Publications,] for her mini epic in verse, Ballad of Bapu, long poem, Oh hark! And Where are the Lilacs? [Peace poems] Tejaswini Award 2017] by the Aagman and Literary and Cultural group [DELHI]
Laasya Award: A Winning Woman [Subh Power Collage Consultants, 2017]
First Public Relations Council of India, Chanakya Award, 2023,
A die-hard believer in Martin Luther King’s Dream and John Lennon’s Imagine, academic, poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, Tedx Speaker, creative writing mentor, Santosh Bakaya, Ph.D., has been critically acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, [Ballad of Bapu] and Only in Darkness can you see the Stars.

Her TEDx Talk on The Myth of Writer’s Block is very popular in creative writing Circles.
Refusing to be intimidated by any mythical Writer’s Block, she has written twenty- four books across many genres. Her works have appeared in anthologies worldwide, her poems have been translated into many languages, and she has also edited many critically acclaimed anthologies.
She writes a weekly column, Morning Meanderings in Learning and Creativity. Com
Her TEDx Talk on The Myth of Writer’s Block is very popular in creative writing Circles.

She justifies that streak of madness, which she believes, she was born with, by holding on to the renowned filmmaker, Akira Kurosowa‘s words, “In a mad world only the mad are sane” and Robin Williams’ quote, “You’re only given a spark of madness, and if you lose that, you‘re nothing. Don’t ever lose that ‘cause it keeps you alive” So, she spends most of her time wreaking havoc on paper, trying to keep that spark of insanity in her alive.
What is the Meter of the Dictionary? is her latest solo book of poetry.
Her writings have appeared in Atunis, Different Truths, Fasiihi, Glomag, Learning and Creativity. Com. Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Kashmir Newsline, Kashmir Pen, Narrow Road, Poets in Nigeria, Our Poetry Archive, Pangolin Review, Piker Press, Rhyvers, Setu, Scarlet Leaf Review, Spillwords, Window Journal, Yugen Quest Review, The Shadow Pond Journal, Bangalore Review, Café Dissensus
Her reviews have been published nationally and internationally in [Setu, Bangalore Review, Different Truths, Kashmir Pen, Fasihi, The Wiseowlmagazine]
She has been on the Jury of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize for two successive years, 2020 and 2021

Awards:
International Reuel Award, for her long narrative poem, Oh Hark, 2104,
Setu Award for ‘stellar contribution to world literature’ [2018],
Eunice Dsouza Award, 2023,[WE Literary Community],
Universal Inspirational Poet Award [ 2016, Pentasi B Friendship Poetry and Ghana Government] ,
Bharat Nirman Award for Literary Excellence, 2017,
Poet Laureate, 2017 [Poetry Society of India, Global Fraternity of Poets and Earth Vision Publications,] for her mini-epic in verse, Ballad of Bapu, long poem, Oh hark! And Where are the Lilacs? [Peace poems]
Tejaswini Award 2017] by the Aagman and Literary and Cultural group [DELHI]
Laasya Award: A Winning Woman [Subh Power Collage Consultants, 2017]
First Public Relations Council of India, Chanakya Award, 2022

Books:
Where are the Lilacs? [Poems, Authorspress 2016]
Flights from my Terrace [Essays, Authorspress, 2017 ]
Under the Apple Boughs [Poems, Authorspress, 2017]
A Skyful of Balloons [ Novella, Authorspress, 2018 ]
Bring out the Tall Tales [short stories with Avijit Sarkar, Authorspress, 2019 ]
Only in Darkness can you see the stars [ A biography of Martin Luther King Jr, Vitasta, 2019 ]
Songs of Belligerence [ Poems, Authorspress, 2020 ]
Morning Meanderings [ Kindle, Blue Pencil, 2020 ]
Runcible Spoons and Peagreen Boats[ Poems, AuthorsPress, 2021]
[About this book The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 2022, says that ‘this curatorial breakthrough makes a generous dip into the memory archive, to create pen portraits of both people and instances from her childhood days in Kashmir.”
What is the Meter of the Dictionary? [Authorspress, 2022]

Collaborative Books:
Bring out the Tall Tales [short stories with Avijit Sarkar, Authorspress, 2019]
Vodka by the Volga [Blue Pencil, 2020 with Dr. Ampat Koshy]
From Princep Ghat to Peer Panjal [Blue Pencil, 2021, with Gopal Lahiri]
A Mélange of Mavericks and Mutants [Blue Pencil, 2022, with Ramendra Kumar]
A Sonetto for the Poetic World. You heard the Scream, Didn’t you?
[Dr. Koshy AV and Santosh Bakaya, AuthorsPress, 2022]
The Catnama [AuthorsPress, 2023, with Sunil Sharma]
For Better or Verse [ Authorspress, 2023, with Ramendra Kumar and Ampat Koshy ]

The Interview

Q:1. How would you describe your “streak of madness”?

Well, I believe, I lost part of my head when, I fell from the tree in our lawn!
I was only ten then.
Ever since that moment, much to the chagrin of my parents and siblings , I have been up to some prank or the other. With the dawn of maturity, it was hoped sense would prevail. But , alas, it did not.
Now, I started splashing my mad streak on paper, and started loving it.
My mad streak is the fact :
that I can work on ten manuscripts simultaneously.
That I can churn out a poem and a story at the same time.
That I can write on any topic, and enjoy every moment.
That I can be wide – eyed at midnight, my battered head whirring with bright, new ideas- much to the irritation of the sane family members.

Q:2. What ongoing themes can you see emerging from your immense productivity?

Ten of my manuscripts are already complete. I am going through all of them very minutely for any editorial gaffes.
Three of them are novels – one is a humorous – satirical take on higher education. Two are breezy, fun-filled romances.
The fourth one is a murder mystery in verse, where there is an interesting character – a know – all talkative parakeet.
The fifth is a poetic narrative with a twist in the tale.
The rest are collections of my award winning short stories, poems and essays.

Q:3. How important is humour in your writing?

Literary awards boost you, encourage you, and prod you to touch greater heights of creativity. I have never hankered after awards, but I cherish the awards that have come my way, and are undoubtedly very dear to me.
Awards also subtly exhort me not to rest on my laurels, so I am always ploughing forth with more dreams in my eyes , and a sure- footedness in my gait.
I am not being humble, but merely truthful when I say that the creative satisfaction that I get from finishing a project is a great award for me- and I always look forward to such an award.

Q:4. How much does your prose feed into your poetry, and vice versa?

Basically I am a wordsmith. I love to play with words and what shape the words take, depends on the whim of the moment. My poetry is always intruding into my prose and vice-versa. Just the other day someone while reviewing my novella A Skyful of Balloons, remarked that it is basically a long poem masquerading as prose.
At heart I am a story teller, so my poems also relate stories.

Q:5. As a “storyteller” is your poetry more dependent on narrative than images?

Narration and images both are equally important in my poetry.
In fact, most of my poetry is anecdotal where images play a very significant role.

Q:6. How important is form in your poetry?

I hope you will excuse me, Paul. I think this answer is going to be long, as this is something which I love talking about, and have delivered many lectures on it.
Form has always been important to me.
In fact, the first poem that I wrote [ in the sixth grade] was a limerick, and I went on to write many limericks,
so much so, that my poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu has been written in the rhyme scheme of a limerick- aabba.
People have asked me many times how I could have adhered to the aabba rhyme scheme throughout its 300 pages – was it not difficult?
Well, honestly speaking, it was not difficult at all for me – because limericks came very easily to me.
My International Reuel award-winning narrative poem Oh Hark! has been written in rhyming quatrains- all 100 pages of it.
In the contemporary literary scene, rhyming poetry is not thought very highly of, but I continue to hold rhyme and meter in high regard.
Besides limericks, I have written many sonnets and villanelles.

Let me reproduce a few stanzas from Oh Hark!
“Was some theatrist searching for some new forms and themes?
And had come to the jungle with his heavily made-up teams?
Absolutely confounded, he looked around in unease.
In trying to get hold of ground realities, his brows did crease.

Had he inadvertently stumbled into Alice’s Wonderland?
Of which kind of weird humor was all this brand?
Under ‘The Greenwood Tree’, someone was singing the same refrain.
He suddenly had a splitting headache, which could be a migraine.

“No enemy, but winter and rough weather,” sang the voice.
Ears pricked, he heard the song, but did he have a choice?
Someone screamed, “You stand guilty to the charge,”
A woman appeared, looking exactly like Madame Defarge.”

Readers have liked Oh Hark! so much that, I have received messages from schools and colleges that their students
enjoyed enacting scenes from it!
Needless, to say, that has been very edifying. The immense popularity of it has been due to the crazy rhymes!
The Roseate Sonnet form is a form created by Dr. Koshy A V in 2012. It has gained a lot of popularity in recent years.
Poets from all over the world have written very well-received roseate sonnets, and there has been an entire anthology of roseate sonnets.
[A roseate sonnet has two quatrains, first, followed by a couplet, then the last quatrain that starts the first line with an R,
and the last line which begins with an E, forming the acrostic ROSE].
Again, I have written an entire poetic narrative employing the roseate sonnet, “You heard the scream, didn’t you?”

Lately, I have started writing free verse, but strangely enough, even my free verse rhymes!
Norms are changing, but even in the free verse that I write, devices like assonance, alliteration, metronome, and consonance come organically to me.
You know, under one of my rhyming poems, a reader had written, “How old school!”
Well, call me old school, call me juvenile, I am robustly convinced that some sort of rhythmic cadence should be present in a poem
to differentiate it from prose.
In fact, just yesterday, there was a very invigorating discussion in my creative writing class, regarding Free verse versus rhyme and Metre.
I don’t know whether the students learned anything, but I learned a lot from that enthusiastic class.
Why does one remember nursery rhymes? It is because of the lyrical cadence, the inherent rhymes- that is what is appealing, I guess.
The Fog, another long narrative poem of mine, that sticks to form, has just gone to the publisher.
No matter what others say, I continue to believe in rhyme and meter. Yes, I AM OLD SCHOOL!
But, let me also reiterate that my rhymes are not at all contrived – I know what I am doing -and I have always done my thing – my way!
So, like me or lump me!

Q:7. Congratulations on getting your work taught in schools. What do you think your work can teach the students of today?

My works are not part of any school syllabus, but some schools have book readings and literature festivals and I am often invited there.
My two biographies – Ballad of Bapu ( a poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, and Only in Darkness can you see the Stars ( biography of Martin Luther King Jr) can be found in many libraries, and these books have been very well- received.
These biographies of two great peace icons throw light on the significance of peace and non-violence in the present topsy – turvy world, and can teach the students why peace is the need of the hour. They can draw home the point that in a bruised and battered world, peace can always be given a chance.
My other twenty -three books are novels, poems , essays, short stories, and those who love the written word can enjoy going through their pages.

Q:8. What do you enjoy about your collaborations with others?

I have had many collaborations with prolific, multi- talented writers – Ramendra Kumar, Avijit Sarkar, Dr. Ampat Koshy, Dr. Sunil Sharma and Gopal Lahiri. These collaborations have been very enriching and intellectually stimulating, leading to Amazon # 1 bestsellers. Some collaborative books became so popular that readers wanted a sequel. I am looking forward to more such collaborations I have had many collaborations with prolific, multi- talented writers – Ramendra Kumar, Avijit Sarkar, Dr. Ampat Koshy, Dr. Sunil Sharma and Gopal Lahiri. These collaborations have been very enriching and intellectually stimulating, leading to Amazon # 1 bestsellers. Some collaborative books became so popular that readers wanted a sequel. I am looking forward to more such collaborations I have had many collaborations with prolific, multi- talented writers – Ramendra Kumar, Avijit Sarkar, Dr. Ampat Koshy, Dr. Sunil Sharma and Gopal Lahiri. These collaborations have been very enriching and intellectually stimulating, leading to Amazon # 1 bestsellers. Some collaborative books became so popular that readers wanted a sequel. I am looking forward to more such collaborations in the near future.

A:8.1. Thankyou for your answer Santosh. You do not tell me what you “enjoy'” about these collaborations?

Honestly, speaking, I ‘enjoyed’ every moment.
Every day used to be a new challenge, which we, the co-conspirators, looked forward to,
The collaboration took place amidst a lot of banter and bonhomie, and a harmless exchange of sallies and quips .
Thankfully, these duels were limited to wordplay and not swordplay.
Even the readers ‘enjoyed’ these collaborations so much, that they requested more enjoyment in the form of sequels.
We are in the midst of bringing out sequels

Q:9. When you write do you know what form the finished piece will be from the beginning, poetry, novel, essay?

When I write I have no idea what the finished piece will look like.
While writing a poem, novel, or essay, I have only the broad outline in my mind,
as I start fleshing it out, more ideas, more memories, more character traits creep into the piece,
consequently, the final piece is different from what I had in mind.
The characters start evolving, more imagery creeps into the poem, and some moments buried under the debris of time,
suddenly resurrect and become part of the essay.
Novelists can be categorized as planners who believe in developing outlines before beginning to write
and pantsers, who write without any kind of synopsis. The Planner and the Pantser debate is forever present in literary circles.
I think I am a bit of both- trying to inject some sense into the chaos that my mind is forever churning with.
There are snatches of dialogue whirring in my mind, some character traits of people I have seen in real life- I sprinkle them into my stories- and magic is unleashed. My award-winning Oh Hark ! a hundred-page narrative poem was written on a lark. I had absolutely no idea what I was writing, but I WROTE something, which readers really liked! Its initially bewildering nature gradually started making sense.

Q:10. How much memoir goes into writing an essay?

One of my books, which readers liked very much, was Flights from My Terrace.
It was a collection of 58 essays, first published on Smashwords as an ebook.
Due to the immense popularity of the book, it later had a printed version too.
Most of these essays were personal essays, which had autobiographical elements.
My essays are basically memoirs- at least eighty percent of them.

Q:11. Having read your books what do you hope the reader will take away with them?
My books cut across various genres, but one element that remains with the reader is the feel-good factor.

Although I touch upon various topics, I don’t sermonize, and try to end my pieces on a positive note, I think that appeals to the readers..