Aksar Aisa Kyon Lagata Hai, a sublime collection of poems by Jitendra Upadhyaya makes a fabulous reading. The anthology comprises of seventy plus poems that make readers spellbound. Jitendra Upadhyaya is a keen observer of life, and he records his experiences of life in his poems faithfully. Life, death, melancholy, and social irony are the chief themes that pervade almost his entire oeuvre. Sometimes, melancholy appears to engulf the poet, and he finds solace in poetry. His poetry reminds me the famous line of P. B Shelley, the great romantic poet:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell us the saddest thoughts.
Poems from this collection are not an outburst of a leaky cistern but a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. They are infact an epic of melancholy, emotions, and feelings. The creative genius of the poet transforms his personal experiences of life into universal ones. The journey from personal to universal is so smooth that the reader never knows when he would have to cross his personal barriers and when he would enter the universal ones. Reading his poetry is a pleasure one would never like to miss. To me, it has been an excursion to ideas and a very rewarding one.
I believe this anthology is bound to strike a chord with the readers and will leave indelible imprints on their minds.