Jeeja Ghosh Nag doesn’t remember a time when poetry was not a part of her life. Having grown up listening to her mother read out Rabindranath Tagore’s poems like bedtime stories, the influence of the Bard’s words seeped into Jeeja’s life from a very young age and would go on to influence her writing later in life.
Having come into the limelight a few years ago when she was forcefully disembarked from a Spice Jet flight, Jeeja, who has cerebral palsy, is one of the forerunners among disability activists. After a long writer’s block, 2015 saw Jeeja get back to writing poetry. Now, two years from when she first began writing again, she has released a volume of poetry — River of Time. “I was asked to write a poem on disability and empowerment, and I was sort of forced out of my writer’s block, especially when I was fine-tuning it. Once I had written one poem, it all came back to me and poetry began to flow. Wanting to hold on to my creation for a longer span, I thought of giving my collection of poetry a different shape. In more youthful times, I had often dreamt of publishing a book of my verses and now I thought that I bring that dream to fruition,” she elaborates.
It was when she was in class ten that Jeeja first began writing poetry. She recalls that she simply started on a whim, and continued to write whenever something struck her fancy. “I have always been a night owl. When you are awake at night while everyone else is sleeping, all sorts of thoughts flit through your mind. It was on one of these nights that I thought I’d pen a few verses, so I did. They were immature and childish, but I still cherish them,” she recalls.
Once she began working at the Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, however, poetry took a backseat. The medium still remained her first love. “My sister and my mother both supported and critiqued my writing. In fact, I consider River of Time a humble contribution to my family and the many friends who have supported and encouraged me in my creative voyage,” she signs off.
