The Lounge Chair Interview: 10 Questions with Sonnet Mondal

By Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?

I have been a witness of sharp and frequent vicissitudes of life. Whenever the road of life seemed downy to me – some deadly obstacle made me comprehend that I am in a capricious voyage through unknown waters beneath stranger skies. From day one of my scribbling and entry into the self-revealing world of poetry to my present, poetry has been an accompaniment for me and I am less concerned about what others feel about this sublime supplement of my life. The best part is we have frequent quarrels and sometimes we stay apart but at the end of the day, it is me opening a bottle of wine without using a corkscrew for my accompaniment, Poetry.

Tell us about your most recent book or writing project. What were you trying to say or achieve with it?

Among my most recent projects there is a book titled Karmic Chanting – Poetry in Folds. It can be considered a collection of large mystical poems containing smaller poems folded inside one theme. Some of the poems in this project will also be performed on stage in conjugation with the Kathak dance form later this year in another of my upcoming projects titled “Echoing Shadows”.

I am literally trying to achieve nothing through this but at the same time my inner self longs to pen down my major self-realizations thus far and impart whatever good in them among the compact and strong poetry-reading masses.