L-R: Tanuja Mullick, Jill Beckingham, releasing the book and special guest Ranjana Sinha, IAS

Certainly, in an age of abundant prose, temptation abounds for a reader to just consume stimulation. Reflection is an investment; one pays up front when words are used with greater economy. But on the first point, poetry writing often proceeds from an impetus, whether overflow or hunger, great or vague. And, even in conclusion, it is sometimes apt to leave none as part of the arrangement. The reader, on the other hand, often engages a work without much pre-conception - apart from whatever chord the title has struck - and often begins in a very different state of mind than the author, when the work was begun. It is a bigger challenge to start walking a new trail, not knowing what there is to behold along the way, or how to behold it, or what the sum of sensations will be at the end, than it is to blaze the path along the given contours of the time. This thought has remained with me since assembling a collection of my own poems in Between Now and Awakening, more than 30 years ago.

"WOUNDIKINS" by Tanuja Mullick. The book is a collection of over 65 poems on life, death and everything in between. Language is referential or representational. Poetry is a representation of the realities and substratum layers of human perception or imagination. The book has an easy rhyme scheme that any reader could relate to. Of course, to quote the poet, " poetry, like beauty, competence and a pair of contact lenses lies in the eyes of the beholder. Or, more appropriately like a hearing-aid in the ears of the listener or reader (poetry is more an audio medium)."

About the writer: Tanuja Mullick is a PhD drop-out, but is very thrilled with her International Diploma in the Montessori Method(Association of Montessori Intl). She has worked briefly in a School here in South Mumbai as well as in Wales in geriatric care. The ex–Governor of Maharashtra Shri Mohammed Fazal had made her the First President of the Raj Bhavan Club that he had founded. Having at some point in a time line, contributed small write-ups to the Indian Express (Pune edition), The Hitavada and Nagpur Times as well as Harmony (IAS newsletter), there were well-wishers who urged her to do something on a larger scale. This is a little book of poems she hopes to leave to those yet to be born, those who are born and those now gone, in her family and extended circle of fellow beings.