Author Riddhima Sen on her upcoming book – Tranquil Waves
Interview by Tanima Shaw
Riddhima Sen, an emerging voice in literature, shares insights on her solo book Tranquil Waves, a poetic exploration of nature andman mind. Through her 21st book, Sen delves into the serene yet complex relationship between the sea, waves, and human psychology, using nature as a metaphor for introspection. In this interview, she discusses her deep connection to nature, the personal allure of poetry, and the importance of hard work in honing writing skills. Sen’s work calls readers to reconnect with nature while reflecting on the duality of the human psyche through beautifully crafted verses.
Q1) What is the theme of the book Tranquil waves and what came to your mind when you started writing it ?
Ans: I have been writing mainly on nature and only once did I write in the psychological genre which was a novel. So, this is my 21st book and I am kind of going back to the main theme that I started off with when I started writing initially, which is nature. As for the idea which came to my mind when I started writing it, waves are absolutely and intricately linked with the sea and the sea is a part of nature. Nature, especially the beach for me, is something that calms my mind and makes me feel better on stressful days. I thought about writing a book which is a collection of poems which would focus on poems related to nature. They all have elements of the human mind, how human nature works and the duality of human mind, most importantly. I am trying to use the waves of the sea as a metaphor to represent human psychology.
Q2) You can write both short stories and poems . Which is your personal favourite and why ?
Ans : The first love in literature has always been poetry and poetry is something I really love because it is lyrical. It is also musical in nature, which means poetry can be easily converted to music. Also, poetry is something which is short in length, can be long at times like ballads but poetry is also something which is personal for a person . Poetry is my personal favourite as it’s crisp and short and it also conveys the feelings perfectly, and makes the readers feel whatever we are feeling while composing the poem. As for short stories, I started writing them much later in my literary journey during my first year in college.
Q3) There are poems about Nature in your book Tranquil Waves . How did you draw the inspiration to work on a book that has poems on Nature?
Ans: Basically, I would like to point out that the poetry anthology has the name ‘Tranquil waves’ and it is obviously centred around nature, the sea waves and the beach. But it also reflects human nature and it is basically a metaphor. So, here nature is not only the nature that we know, I mean it’s not the nature that we see around us like the trees, the green foliage etc. But it is also representative of how our mind can be portrayed in a book. The inspiration to write this book is nature itself because I always feel that as a person belonging to this generation that we are going away from nature because nowadays, most of the time we are on our phones or devices. We hardly look at the nature around us. Personally speaking I stay in a place where there is a lot of nature and I look at it as much as I can.The inspiration of the book is a very philosophical thought which came to my mind recently that maybe in life we have everything like family, friends, materialistic things etc but nature is the main thing because without nature nothing would exist. I wanted to make people understand that we should reconnect with nature sometimes.
Q4) What is one message that you want to give to the readers who are looking forward to reading your book in the Tranquil Waves.
Ans : The one message I would like to give to the readers of my book is that they should look out for the usage of the metaphors and illustrations in the poem because in certain poems I have used certain scenarios to depict how nature is . There are two aspects to nature – one is the calmer side and one is the wild side. My poems focus on both the sides and I have tried to link them with real life scenarios where there are both the aspects but that is how we are supposed to live. The message is that I think that the poems are matching with the theme of the book which I have decided upon and it would be great if the readers could actually focus on the thing I am trying to convey which is the greatness of nature and how self-introspection or looking into human nature is also important. I think our mind is really influenced by nature when we admire nature.
Q5) You have been writing for so many years , do you feel writing improves over a period of time ? Is it talent or hardwork that is more required for an Author.
Ans : I have been writing for two years, from 2022 and I don’t think it’s a long time. I think there are a lot of years to come in the future. To be honest, I think I have improved as an author over the years since 2022 because when I started off the poems were very different from the poems that I have composed for this anthology. I have tried my best to keep a basic difference between the nature of the poems I compose because I think there should be improvement in the writing journey. It also needs a lot of hard work because in order to be an author, you need to have daily practice of writing. Writing is a skill and talent ,because you need to have a knack to be able to write and love writing. There are people who can read books and there are people who can write well. Those who can read books have the skills for becoming an author but the only thing is they don’t have the knack to write well, they can be good critics of books and constructive criticism is also important for an author. So, it’s a mixture of 90% hard work and dedication towards the profession, and only 10% of talent. As an author you also need to have daily practice of writing to juggle your vocabulary skills and read books because I feel that if I don’t read books then I might be lacking somewhere.
