The Good Poetry Project

When we started ‘The Good Poetry Project’, the most difficult task for us was to define ‘Good’… .The project started when Covid was at its worst and our moods needed a balm. I requested our team…Ambar Saab, Nisha, Atul, Sahil and later Saurabh to look for poems that keep us hopeful and positive. Poems that remind us of our inner strength and keep our spirits high.

We did that, fifty-one times during the last year.

Many people who have been following our journey have written back to us, about how these poems in English and Hindustani have supported and encouraged them…which is what the project was meant to do.

With the worst hopefully behind us, we at ‘The Good Poetry Project’ would like to thank each of you for walking with us through this journey. We especially thank The CK Birla Group, Orient Cement, Mr Deepak Khetrapal and Mr Manish Dua, for standing behind this effort, and believing that Art can make a positive social change.

We will take a short break and be back soon with a refreshed and bigger ‘The Good Poetry Project 2.0’. Till then it is my absolute honour to present the fifty-second piece of this year’s collection. The same as we started with – Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s – ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’
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"I do not set out to be different; I set out to be me. People think it is different."
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Our need to belong, and be accepted by others is sometimes so high, that our choices start to reflect what may get ‘approved’, rather than what speaks to us. This reflects in our day-to-day choices and eventually becomes a pattern.
A conventional person is a great person, and yet, the world (at work, at home, in communities) is altered and improved by the unconventional individual. The uncomfortable-with-convention kind of person.
As part of the First Anniversary of ‘The Good Poetry Project’ by Orient Cement’s Art-to-Heart Initiative, we are bringing back some of our favourite poems. 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost (In some places also called ‘The Road Less Taken’) is a timeless masterpiece and reminds us to give life a ‘shot’ by listening to the voices that speak to us directly, and not just the noise we need to endure, because the risks we take will be worth it, even if things do not always turn out as we expected. This transcreation is called – ‘Doraha’.
We wish you Much Sunshine and Laughter; and remind ourselves that discomfort is a sign of growth, and the greatest power we may have, is the power of choice. Nahi?

P.S. - If you missed 'Fear' by Khalil Gibran and 'If' by Rudyard Kipling; they can be found on our channel.