Dr Alok Mishra’s Thoughts Between Life and Death is a work of steady philosophical assurance married to a lucid lyrical manner. The collection thinks through love, grief, solitude, knowledge, and metaphysical justice without losing sight of the human scale. It invites the reader into a long conversation rather than a brief outburst of feeling. What distinguishes the book is the way it keeps returning to first principles through crisp images and apparent ironies, and how it does so with a disciplined ear for cadence. Dr Mishra rarely declaims. He proposes, questions, and lets an image carry the argument. In what follows, I trace the principal lines of thought and craft in the collection, quoting extensively from the poems to demonstrate how the book substantiates its claims. I hope you will like the review.

The keynote is struck by the opening piece, We two parted?. The title’s interrogative gesture immediately unsettles the Byronic echo and clears a space for Mishra’s own stance. Separation here is not a theatre of wounds but a test of spiritual maturity. The poem insists on an absence of spectacle:

“there was no agony in either
of the two
who
lived all our lives together.”

The lines lengthen and contract as if marking breath taken and released. The effect is to quieten the reader’s expectations. Death and separation will be treated without romantic excess. The relationship is described as “so close and near, / and so, so dear / one could hardly guess / one from the other.” The repetition of “so” and the gentle chiasmus of closeness and indistinction suggest a union whose measure cannot be the noise of parting. From the beginning, Mishra prepares us for a poetics of restraint and clarity.

Time, regret, and the wish to relive an instant enter in The Lost Battle. The poem begins with a blunt verdict: “Time has wasted itself / doing absolutely nothing!” The use of exclamation is rare in the collection, and here it registers the rueful shock of recognising time’s indifference. Yet the wish the speaker articulates is not for a generic do-over. He asks that time

“bring
me another opportunity
to experience and see,
fathom and breathe,
live with her and leave
the world on its own,
that night of passionate solitude.”

The syntax creates an arc that rises and falls on the phrase “passionate solitude.” Solitude is usually the emblem of absence, but Mishra loads it with plenitude. The poem’s emotional intelligence lies in its refusal to erase loss or to sanctify it. Instead, it isolates a night when solitude was an intensity rather than a lack of company. That is the paradox the collection repeatedly explores.

One of the strongest allegorical structures appears in The Garden and Its Shadow, where beauty is inseparable from its cost. The opening lines set the terms with measured clarity: “The garden of grandeur and glory / casts its shadow / long.” The poem tracks the shadow’s effect on visitors who are “pervade[d]” by the garden’s “fragrance and beauty / on display for everyone to see / at the cost of one’s / pleasure and agony.” The series that follows is exact and cutting:

“A song
on loop,
a poem unfinished,
a play with no catharsis!”

The chime of “loop,” “unfinished,” and “no catharsis” is Mishra’s way of naming forms in which aesthetic delight can turn to compulsion or stasis. The garden becomes an image for public life and for fame, both of which dazzle while they deplete. The refrain “The garden of grandeur and glory” returns to show that spectacle repeats, while awareness deepens. The garden is full of arrivals and departures, “people come and go, / and yet, / not away from its shadow.” The last three lines enact the trap. To enter the garden is to remain within its penumbra even when one leaves the gate.

With The Art and the Artist the collection enters its most explicit philosophical register. Mishra resists a consoling notion that literature sometimes indulges. “Poetic justice / is a flawed concept we long for.” He calls that wish “a tool to lure the arche architect / away from the divine mathematics, perfect and immaculate.” The poem’s argument proceeds by crisp contrast. “The universe has a different rulebook.” To press human emotional expectation upon it is to mistake category for category. “Heavenly justice takes a distinct course, / aided by objective passion and brute force, / it seldom takes into concern / the emotional jargon / or soul’s juice we burn.” The phrase “objective passion” is a sharp paradox. The world may be impelled by a fire that is not sentimental. The poem then pivots to human arrogance. “Still, we attempt / to practise the contempt / and belie the artist / who created us as the masterpieces.” The questions that close the poem are not rhetorical flourishes.

“Can the artist be lured
to fracture his course
and corrupt the source
code of the incessant line of creation?”

The neat internal echo of “course” and “source” frames a boundary. Dr Mishra is writing a poetics of humility.

That humility informs the manifesto, just as it does in Heartbreak. The opening line rejects an easy lineage: “No heartbreak can make a poet!” The poem is not hostile to feeling. It is hostile to the belief that pain is a credential. “Poetry doesn’t stem from a broken heart / which fell apart / merely because someone left.” Instead, Mishra proposes a more exacting criterion: “Poetry is creating flowers in the desert, / oceans on Neptune, and even Gods alive!” The imperative that follows is both bracing and generous:

“Sculpt your Galatea and love,
if need be.
Let poetry, as it was,
be free
of the mortal vanity!”

The craft is evident in the clean movement from rejection to positive counsel, from critique to creation.

Where Heartbreak is declarative, The Chase stages a drama of relation and self-loss. It begins in dialogue: “I just wished we could talk. / You insisted, ‘let’s take a walk.’” The walk becomes an extended metaphor for a relationship that withholds speech. The speaker is led “to the maze / of the uncertain / thoughts, and a tiring terrain / that sucked on my emotions.” Soon, the labyrinth names the entire condition: “walking in this maze of perplexing / entries and problematic exits.” It is striking that the poem reserves its largest claim for faith: “I believe you, and I do so. / I know only you may show / the final door to enter / with no exit that follows.” The hope is not for release into volatility but for a last door that ends the maze. The control of tone is notable. Even as it describes exhaustion, the poem refuses rancour. The dignity of endurance is the point.

The short, stark Justice condenses the collection’s metaphysical temper. “A mother will die. / A child will be saved. / A serpent will always bite.” The insistence on will, not may, hardens the lines. They are followed by a firm corrective:

“Beyond the sentimental values
we often inscribe on whatever we can,
the jury and the executioner, in this case,
are one and the same, and their perception of justice –
airtight!
Untouched by the melodrama.”

The aside about sentiment and inscription highlights the human tendency to embellish reality with the stories we prefer. The poem strips that habit. In this bareness lies the book’s integrity.

Many of Mishra’s richest poems work with the conversion of darkness into insight. Unexpected names the process with quiet force: “The very darkness that drowned me deep / unfolded unto me / the eternal source of light.” The source is not transcendently distant. It is “coming from very much inside me.” The enlightenment is then translated into companionship: “the freedom that illuminated my soul / shook hands with my terrain of thoughts / and became my friend.” The balanced phrasing is characteristic. Freedom does not erase thought; it joins it. The poem’s last motion is to grant darkness a functional role. It “lured me deep / to help / me find the light.”

That movement from constriction to liberation is dramatised at length in Upgrade. The opening is a bleak admission: “Loneliness perturbed my existence. / It pinched a thousand holes / in the animated case that stores / my ticket to eternity.” The metaphor of the body as a case is practical and unsentimental. The change begins with a practical decision: “a tiny bird in the cage / can seldom bask / in the glories of the infinite! / So, I cut the ties / and weakened the ropes of ego.” The language of ropes and ties is tactile, and the effect is decisive. “Loneliness, eventually, turned into a recluse. / And I met the one I used to ignore.” The concluding insight is stated with controlled paradox: “One regret, truthfully, I had then – / I wish I could earlier know / (and grow / my wisdom) / there is nothing to know; / there is nothing I don’t know.” The rhythm of the last two lines carries the doctrine. Knowing is a circle that collapses into awareness.

If Upgrade presents knowledge as paradoxical completion, And Regret reveals its comic burden. The poem is a wry meditation on epistemic pride. “Only if I knew / that knowing it would bring / a burden I could seldom carry.” The speaker then turns inward and walks through a set of mock catechisms: “Who knows / what I know? / Do I know / if they know? / Who knows / all those who know?” The repetition produces a light but sobering dizziness. The verdict is neat and memorable: “Ah! / The game of knowing! / All folds and not even show!” The final gambit severs the loop’s hold on freedom. “A regret is to know; / that’s what I know. / You know it / if you know.” The poem dignifies uncertainty and punctures pretence.

Two brief pieces mark moods of enclosure and tenderness with formal economy. It may rain locates long delay within a monsoon image: “Clouds roar, waver, loiter / and roar many times / in the sky full of blanks.” The self uses loneliness as defence and as excuse: “Fortified by my loneliness, / cherished by the shallow touches / and unfelt kisses of the night’s darkness, / I / deny / to even try / going out.” The couplet “It is pain. / It may rain.” lands with disarming simplicity, and the last line “And years pass” measures the cost. Fragile maps the limits of stoicism:

“Bravado
earned with penance,
detachment accumulated by pursuit,
knowledge, wisdom, objective vision,
and all the grievances of that forbidden fruit
fade away, shatter and die
instantly as they try
to wrestle a drop of tear!”

The image that ends the poem is vivid and slightly comic: “Boiling in the water of relationships / on the oven of emotions!” Mishra has a gift for domestic metaphors that carry moral weight.

The long poem Wide Blue Horizon treats liminality with narrative flair. The speaker wakes within a dream of his own death and asks, “Who is this on the bed?” then, “Is that me?” and confesses, “I am dying… or am I dead?” The philosophical quest is interrupted by bodily need: “my biological needs, thirst for water, woke me up.” The poem returns to ordinary comforts with a wry smile: “Water. A little air. Caffeine.” Yet the thought remains, turning in one central question: “Am I not death, the dead, dying and the one to die?” The poem’s mix of speculative earnestness and trivial detail is very contemporary. It makes space for metaphysics without abandoning the kettle or the keyboard.

Several concise poems define the ethics of the book. Truth is a four-line lecture in perception: “What you speak / and I hear, seldom matters / more than what we perceive, / and deceive / in attempts to survive.” Meditation honours still attention: “Silence! / Eyes wide open, / ears letting pass / the noises without bother, / and the rest is passive.” Sacrifice states an austere law: “The grander the pursuit, / the severe the sacrifice; / not once, / twice or thrice; / as many times as would suffice.” Each of these small poems reads like a sutra. They do not decorate life. They instruct.

Love in this collection is not a theatrical confession. It is a schooling. In Love, by the way the speaker repeats the avowal “I love you” but places it inside a recognisable discipline. The beloved grants “a few moments of truth, / the true freedom / I experience / entering from one prison / to another.” The metaphors are tactile and unsentimental: “like a fish swimming for no shore / with a momentary stay on the giant hands / before being let down / where it belongs.” The tenderness lies in recognising that love shelters briefly and then restores one to the world where work must continue.

Moral tact comes to the fore in Beginning is the End. The poem stages the problem of speaking difficult truths. “It began / when / I seldom might find. / Did it end that night?” After recalling a crisis “Smothered between / inviting wrath and pleading for mercy,” the poet arrives at a measured verdict: “Some truths are best left unexpressed! / Some lies are best not confronted, / and an imagination is best untouched!” The insight is not an alibi for cowardice. It is a recognition that imagination and conscience must sometimes preserve their own conditions of work.

The elegiac and the ecological converge in one of the collection’s most moving poems, Watching Sunset, Under the Tree. It begins with composure: “The evening is calm, / unbothered by the chaos inside me.” The tree has stood through the speaker’s life and “shadowed my mistakes, / impish sports and all the life lessons / I learnt.” The inventory that follows is joyful and domestic: “Fruits, flowers, fuel and furniture / never stopped coming my way.” Time has begun to lean upon the trunk. The speaker brings “sticks, ropes and tools” to brace the elder. Then the poem launches a catechism of impossible tasks:

“How do we offer our hopes a ladder?
How do we show the Sun a candle?
How do we purchase a Cheetah running sneakers?
How do we teach patience to mothers?
How do we give a walking stick to ageing fathers?”

The blend of wit and pain is controlled with care. The poem’s answer is spiritual rather than technical. The tree has taught a doctrine of flow: “we neither come nor go, / we are one / with the eternal flow / in the river that does not begin, / does not end.” The poem closes on two sentences of gentle resolve: “Until I go. / Until it lasts.” Mourning is held in the open hand of gratitude.

Finally, Mind and Heart provides the book’s most forceful critique of cleverness when it gives rise to cynicism. “Crafty wisdom / weaves careful, callous, cosy lies / born out of innocent truth.” The poem’s second movement names the consequences: wisdom becomes “the ringleader / of thugs, criminals, robbers and murderers / decapitating the innocent feelings.” The invective is rare in Mishra, which makes it all the more telling. He fears not intellect but the abuse of intellect. The climax declares the danger with clarity: “A ruthless reconstruction / to hide the original, / the innocent truth, / far-far below.” The poem then imagines the theatre of manipulation where “expedient breadcrumbs, convincing story / and a striking blow” conspire to distract from the plain thing in front of us. It is a stern reminder that art can cure and art can corrupt, and that the poet’s duty is to the original human gesture of pity and reverence.

Across these poems, one notices a consistent craft. The diction remains simple, while the idea remains strong. Lines are short, leaving air around the words. Repetition is used to create meditative pressure rather than decorative echo. Images are domestic and elemental. Causality is plain, and paradox is held without flourish. When Mishra risks abstraction, he steadies it with a tactile metaphor. He asks large questions yet speaks in a voice that trusts the reader’s patience.

The book’s architecture reinforces its themes. Aphoristic poems punctuate the longer meditations, which prevents the collection from drifting into one mood. The sequence moves from intimate scenes to metaphysical statements and back again, as if to suggest that the only path to the universal is through the particular. Even where the poems borrow the gestures of prayer or of philosophical sutra, they do not preach. They observe, infer, and leave a space for thought. The reader is not overruled. The reader is invited.

It is also worth noting how the collection’s recurrent emblems sustain coherence. Gardens, mazes, ropes, doors, swings, birds, and hands carry a shared vocabulary of constraint and release. Water appears as thirst, as an ocean, as a river of flow. Light is found after a journey through darkness, and darkness is granted a role in the making of light. These patterns bind the separate lyrics into a common meditation. The unity is earned, not imposed.

In the context of Indian English poetry, Dr Alok Mishra’s voice is distinctive for its refusal of noise. The poems do not chase novelty. They return to classic questions and attempt grounded answers. If one were to search for affinities, one might think of lines in Tagore where simplicity bears metaphysical weight, or of Aurobindo’s prose when it steps lightly into lyric. Yet Mishra’s signature is his own. He modernises the contemplative register with colloquial turns, practical images, and a clean argumentative spine.

To conclude, Thoughts Between Life and Death is a carefully composed and deeply felt book. It deserves slow reading. Its most memorable lines remain in the mind because they tell the truth without ornament. “Poetry is creating flowers in the desert, / oceans on Neptune, and even Gods alive.” “The very darkness that drowned me deep / unfolded unto me / the eternal source of light.” “A regret is to know; / that’s what I know.” “we neither come nor go, / we are one / with the eternal flow.” Together, such sentences build a patient philosophy of living and of art. They teach us to accept what is given, to resist the seductions of clever cynicism, to work with love, and to recognise that thought itself is a form of gratitude. Mishra’s achievement is to have made poems that think clearly while feeling cleanly. The thoughts live between life and death, as the title announces. The poems make that interval luminous.