Journey To The Beloved

By Anne Brink, *SIPA grad embarks on poetical journey in 'The Sufi’s Garland'* - Columbia Daily Spectator - New York, NY, USA; Monday, March 21, 2011

Very few poets get published, let alone in the International Herald Tribune when they are 12 years old. It is somewhat amusing then, and perhaps a mark of the humbleness of poet Manav Sachdeva, SIPA ’03, that he does not remember the incident.

What he does remember is that his father had heard from teachers at school that Sachdeva’s handwriting was “horrific” and made him practice lines. Sachdeva smiled and said, “I found it oppressively boring, so somehow I started playing with words.” A career in poetry began and now “The Sufi’s Garland,” Sachdeva’s first collection of poems, will officially release this Friday, March 25, from Roman Books.

“The Sufi’s Garland,” which chronicles the journey of a nomadic fakir, has emotional and spiritual undertones reminiscent of the work of 18th-century American greats like Emily Dickinson.
Yet poetry is not Sachdeva’s primary profession: he is a consultant to the United Nations. His two job roles, that of poet and that of humanitarian, “are not interrelated in a perfect sense,” Sachdeva said, but “they inform one another.”

At the School of International and Public Affairs , Sachdeva concentrated in both poetry and politics. “I have always felt that poets have an impact on policy,” Sachdeva said, adding that poets can “write lines to inspire nations, whether it be revolution or oppression, or to inspire minorities of the population.”

“The Sufi’s Garland” has been 15 years in the making. Sachdeva began writing the now-published manuscript long before he came to Columbia for graduate school. Yet it was here in New York that he began to consider his poetry more deeply, after talking to renowned poets at the School of the Arts like Alice Quinn, an adjunct professor in the writing division.

Sachdeva’s poems, in fragments and pieces of various languages ranging from English to Hindi to Pubjabi, were strong in content, but needed to be edited and combined to form a whole.
The poems that survived the revision process are strikingly all in English, but not without explanation from their author. Sachdeva sent his original, multi-lingual manuscript out to American publishers but faced a series of rejections. “I was making a mistake of sending to American publishers in different languages, who couldn’t understand why,” Sachdeva said.

Sachdeva has found success writing in English but still has plans to print a future collection in his native languages. For now, he is content to bask in the satisfaction of being a newly published author.

“The Sufi’s Garland,” while literally following the journey of a nomad, is also a journey within Sachdeva’s own mind. “In a way, this was a reckoning to accept different kinds of philosophies, and different hearts, and different ways to receive the world,” Sachdeva said. “I was getting afraid of how many places my mind was going, and I reached a point where I accepted that the mind is an uncontainable act ... It is alright not to judge the mind.” “The Sufi’s Garland” is an acceptance of that belief.

When asked what he would like the reader to take away from his poetry, Sachdeva recalled a song about pilgrimage. “It’s sort of what I would like them [the readers] to walk away with, to try to keep this as a journey to the beloved,” he said. “It’s sort of as if you were walking, that part of your own spirit or life, but that love has no destination. It is the destination itself. You have to walk with love itself.” This is what Sachdeva seems to mimic in his own life, whether it be at the U.N. or through his poetry—there is no destination, but only a path to walk.

Picture: Manav Sachdeva. Photo: Courtesy of Nigora Sachdeva.