Five poems in Scroll.in’s January 2, 2025 feature, “‘We’ll survive somehow’: Five poems by Indian poets to ring in the new year,” approach renewal from different directions: grief, connection, return, spiritual reflection and memory. The selections are an excerpt from A Time For Change: Songs of Hope and Resilience, edited by Jerry Pinto and published by Speaking Tiger Books. They are not all simply upbeat poems; together, they offer a varied reading for the turn of the year.
What are the five poems?
The poems below are identified by title and poet in the Scroll.in feature. Three selections are explicitly credited as translations; the other two carry no translator credit in the excerpt.
| Poem | Poet and credit | What the excerpt emphasizes |
|---|---|---|
| “Koel” | Eunice de Souza | A speaker’s grief set against a vivid morning, ending with the title’s survival refrain. |
| “Stay with the Song” | Mamang Dai | Afternoon, evening, night and daybreak frame song and connection amid change and uncertainty. |
| “After the End” | Ashok Vajpeyi; translated from Hindi by Rahul Soni | Persistence and the possibility of return after an ending. |
| “The days are cool, the nights hot…” | Muktabai; translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto and Neela Bhagwat | A devotional reflection on flow, force and the arrival at understanding. |
| “Night found your lost memories…” | Faiz Ahmed Faiz; translated from Urdu by Keki N Daruwalla | Images of spring, desert wind and recovery. |
How the poems approach hope
Grief and endurance
“Koel” places grief beside the brightness of morning rather than pretending sorrow is absent. Its ending turns survival into a refrain, making endurance feel hard-won instead of guaranteed.
Connection through change
In “Stay with the Song,” the passage from afternoon through night to daybreak gives the poem a sense of time moving forward. Song and connection offer something to hold onto while circumstances remain uncertain.
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Return and understanding
“After the End” imagines persistence beyond a conclusion. Muktabai’s compact devotional reflection takes a different route: its questions about flow and force lead toward understanding rather than a simple declaration of optimism.
Memory and renewal
Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s selection brings together lost memories, spring and desert wind. Its imagery suggests recovery, but the poem’s focus on memory keeps that renewal connected to what has been lost.
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Where the selections come from
Scroll.in published the feature on January 2, 2025, as an excerpt from A Time For Change: Songs of Hope and Resilience, edited by Jerry Pinto and published by Speaking Tiger Books. The source page provides the five selections and their listed credits; this guide describes their themes without reproducing substantial copyrighted poem text. Read the original feature at Scroll.in.
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