Supriya's Banter
Between the Shadow and the Soul
Author: Sonal Singh
Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing (2 June 2025)
Language: English
Paperback: 130 pages
Singh is a gifted poet. The poets and verses strung together to make this book prove it beyond doubt.
Flipping through the beautiful verses felt like tuning into the medley of emotions that, though, is always playing in the background but seldom takes centre stage. It’s like watching the sky change colours as the days glide, seasons turn, and life passes by in a whisper.
The shadows creep as companions, and so do the silent echoes of pain as you glide from one verse to another. The sun, moon and stars become witness to deep heartache and yearning. You hear love surrendering in the night or whispering under a drunk moonlight night.
Singh leans on metaphors that breathe life into the sketch of words her poems create: grief and loneliness become confidantes, heartache sounds like a distant echo of a broken dream, and memories hover like tendrils of mist at dawn. And before you realise it, you are unravelling in the mellow hum of the emotions.
Singh skips effortlessly across 61 poems, each one a stepping-stone from pining to acceptance, love to grief, life to longing, much like variegated rocks sitting by the sea weathered by waves, tinted by winds and coloured by years that shaped them.
In the first section, you dip your fingers in many shades of love that Singh spills over the canvas. The heady redolence envelops you in an addictive warmth, but then, when you get used to it, Singh switches gears. Her tone turns a tad serious in the following sections. The sections called Life and Grief are brimming with gentle words that cut deep.
I had many favourites—Home, Longing, A Silent Conversation, A Damp Evening, and so many more.
Singh explores themes like the pang of loss, the haunting loneliness, the layered nuances of grief with deep sensitivity and raw vulnerability. Her words spiral you back into those moments in your own life and leave you sometimes with a choked throat or welling eyes.
Singh guides us into that liminal space where pain and hope overlap.
Not every poet has the expertise to depict pain, love, grief and loss in sombre yet beautiful shades or decipher their quiet echo. Singh does it with an expertise that is a mark of a seasoned poet.
Between the Shadow and the Soul is like dusk—gentle, reflective, layered. One that requires you to sit back, take a deep breath, and feel a whirl of emotions building around you.
Trust me, you’d not want to miss that feeling. A must-read for all poetry aficionados.
