Randhir Khare is synonymous with an eclectic mix of writings — poetry, short fiction, travel, futuristic fable. The city-based writer, much awarded and appreciated, is now out with his new work, a collection of poems. Titled Written in Sand (Poems and Drawings), there is a freshness and clarity about his poems that reflects their inherent purity and strength.

So, why has he called his collection of poems Written In Sand? "I have now reached a stage in my life when I am ready to accept that change is all that is constant, be it emotional, physical, intellectual, social or environmental change. Written In Sand is my expression of letting go and living with change. It is my first step towards true freedom," answers the author, who also works on the cultural documentation of traditional and marginal communities in India.

"Coming from a multi-cultural background like I do, it has taken me a long time to shed my various conflicting identities and reach down and find myself. Like the great Irish poet W B Yeats once wrote, I must lie down where all the ladders start/In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart," he adds.

The motif of sand persists in his poems and forges thematic variations into an organic whole, giving the cycle of poems a defined completeness. Why is the 'motif of sand' so persistent in Written in Sand? Khare explains that when you pick up a palm full of sand, you see fine grains, ground from rocks, shells and all sorts of organisms that have lived and perished. "May be the dust of meteors is also mingled in it and so completely that you cannot tell the difference. Memories merge one into the other. The poems in this volume have been distilled from years of my own experiencing. There's a sort of classical calmness here and a harmony, like the curving waves of sand that sweep across deserts. And despite this harmony, each experience is still complete in itself — like each grain of sand — clear, precise," adds Khare.

Also included here is a selection of Khare's pen and ink drawings. So, what is the relationship between the drawings and the poems? "Drawing for me is an act of meditation. When I draw, I can feel myself becoming focused in such an intense manner that the only reality that remains is the reality of the lines the pen produces," he elaborates. "The drawings in the book do not illustrate the poems, they help stitch together the tapestry that I have developed; so that there are words and lines and the reality that they create together," adds Khare.