A nest of unstuck feathers
Ashim Roy
June 14th, 2020
I was his roommate in design school, when we shared our youthful desires and dreams, sometimes in fragments of unfinished and unsaid poems .I remember the little poems he wrote on little papers. Now, as I read his poems, I discover a poet in the designer. I know as a designer he factors the emotional relationships that enmesh all hard problems, and has engaged with the creative process of changing both the product and the user. If this has made him a good designer, it did not end with designing .This creativity has slipped into poems . The pages of his book of poems — the first one I hope — are more like a diary of that impulse.
As I read, I glimpse the hidden nest he is nurturing in his mind , where he keeps his collection of unstuck feathers that he has been finding throughout his global journey in designing . It is in this nest that he finds his clarity. This poet within a designer has made him a good listener, listening to nature, listening to many reasons and multiple perspectives, and beyond reasons-though an atheist — to find god’s voice in others. For him , writing poems has become transcendental retreat, a source for humility
The title is well chosen, it is evocative of his being — the journey of a river across all lands. But there is lurking disquiet that a reader can read, does the designer still has an unfinished widow for an undecided home ? is this a desire for a frame that captures the view of the rock that has survived the mighty tides of history to give stillness of purpose
Though perched at higher echelons , he invokes the possibility of outrage of the people with dear CEO’s to bring out the distance of the expertise of the professionals from the truth in the wisdom of the people.- their people . In the horizon of his imagination people always remained , as if as a hidden destiny -to serve the people, that was the way of his parents- I met his mother first time in jail, in emergency , without him. The window of his house will always look onto a pathway . Will he walk that path and bring the magic of imagination of an alternative world. He will have to design a doorway first. I know the second book is coming….
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About the Author. Ashim Roy is a leading Trade Union activist from India. A grass roots level organizer, Ashim was one of the founders of the New Trade Union Initiative UNTUI) a trade union of informal sector workers.
