When words finally bloom…

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From childhood poetry to academia, Parliament and family responsibilities, Dr Deviyani Singh brings the many chapters of her life together in her debut collection “Rock Daisies”

Chandigarh, September 27

By day, there were classrooms, Parliament files, family responsibilities and the practical business of getting on with life. By night, sometimes, there was poetry.

Not the scheduled kind.

The kind that knocks on the door when the rest of the world is asleep.

For Dr Deviyani Singh, that knock has been coming since childhood. Her poetic musings go back to Class IV, and at 16, she wrote a poem that won her first prize. But poetry did not immediately become the centre of her life. There were other roads to travel, other responsibilities to shoulder and, quite simply, a life to live.

Born in Nainital in 1964 to an Army family, with roots in Haryana, Dr Deviyani spent her early years across different parts of India. She went on to earn a PhD in International Terrorism and undertook field work abroad after her doctorate. She taught at the Delhi University before moving to the Parliament Secretariat, where she worked for 12 years as an Executive Officer with the Committee on External Affairs.

Then came a different chapter.

She stepped away from the job to focus on family responsibilities, as her husband, also in government service, was subject to frequent transfers. The couple has one son. Today, based in the Chandigarh-Tricity region, Dr Deviyani edits an education magazine while continuing to work as a freelance writer, poet and storyteller.

There is another side to her that sits rather interestingly alongside the writer.

Dr Deviyani is a taekwondo yellow belt and has competed at State and University levels in swimming, hockey and badminton. She conducts Creative Writing and Skills Workshops, remains associated with literary and storytelling groups, and has received awards for her short stories and poems.

Clearly, the woman who spends time with words has never been afraid of a little movement either.

And somewhere through all these chapters, the poems kept gathering.

Now, they have found their way into “Rock Daisies”, her debut poetry collection featuring 190 poems written in surgical couplets and tight quatrains. The collection moves between war rooms and wilderness, geopolitics and the human heart, while making room for climate change, love, loss, quiet revolutions and the courage of women.

The title itself carries a little of Singh’s philosophy.

In one poem, she writes of daisies blooming in the cracks of arid rocks, with the sun pushing away clouds of gloom. There is something quietly hopeful in that image, beauty appearing where it is least expected.

Her poems move between the large questions and the small details of life. Climate change, the threat of war and the quiet courage of women find space alongside love, loss, quiet revolutions and everyday moments, like dust motes dancing in the light.

“I prefer when something stirs deep within,” she writes in her author’s note.

Dr Deviyani can write to prompts, but the poems that matter most seem to begin elsewhere, with something that refuses to stay quiet.

She describes her poetic musings as having been tucked away “like pressed flowers between pages”. It is perhaps the most fitting image for a collection that has taken years to arrive.

The flowers were always there.

They simply needed to be gathered.

Dr Deviyani also writes short stories, describing poetry and fiction as sister arts with shared roots. Both have brought her laurels in competitions, and she hopes her next book will be a collection of short stories.

However, “Rock Daisies” is more than a book assembled for publication. Dr Deviyani describes the poems as having once been scattered, “Some hidden, some trampled”, before she gathered them into a humble bouquet.

“I present to you, my soul,” she writes. “Simple and white like a Daisy but with a heart of gold.”

There is an appealing simplicity to the thought.

After all, not every idea arrives at a desk between scheduled hours. Some come while the world is asleep. Some stay tucked away for years. Some are written down and forgotten, only to return much later.

Dr Deviyani’s poems have taken their own sweet time.

The book is dedicated to her mother, with a line that carries both affection and wit: “For Mom, who told me to burn the midnight oil, not chapatis.” It is a fitting line for a collection born from late-night thoughts.

After years of being pressed between the pages of a busy life, the poems have finally been gathered.

And now, “Rock Daisies” is ready to bloom.