Indian expatriate is author at 24

 

By a staff reporter, September 29th 2002

A YOUNG Malayalee working in Sharjah has released a book of English essays and poems penned by him and spanning the decade of the 90s to the turn of the millennium.

The pseudonymous compilation of writings called Egoptics first appeared on his web site www.jaihoon.com. Jaihoon is the pen name of 24-year-old author, a graduate in business administration, currently employed as a marketing and sales officer in a Sharjah government organisation. The title formed by conjoining the words ego and optics, “is a self-coined word to describe the sum total of my observations and experiences,” Mr Jaihoon said. The name Jaihoon referring to a river features in a couplet of Dr Allama Mohammed Iqbal, who is the young poet’s inspiration.

“The publication of Egoptics has a dotcom history behind it, as almost all of the writings have appeared on my web site, which is a hobby of mine,” he said. Online audiences encouraged him to put them together into an anthology. “I have not followed any particular style, rather violated existing ones,” he adds in the preface to the book.

Neither has he dwelt on any particular subject, but written whenever something has moved him, as is evident from the eclectic verse titles, from the sublime When you hear my prayer! to the mundane Sneezing vs yawning: some mixed feelings.

A good number of foreign words, especially from Arabic and Urdu, have crept in and have been retained, “in order to preserve the richness of the experience, and not to dilute the mystic content with a translation,” said the young poet, who was brought up in Sharjah emirate.

 

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