Born in the beautiful town of Sri Ganga Nagar in Rajasthan at the boundary of India and Pakistan to a middle-class family, Nayab Midha is a compassionate and dedicated youngster who now embraces slam poetry, performing before a huge audience in different locations across India. From missing a train to finding her passion, Nayab Midha has a unique story to tell. The renowned slam poet who embraced words to influence people across the globe- Nayab Midha opens up to The Talented Indian.

The past that dreamt of this present.

Nayab’s grandparents had settled at the Sri Ganga Nagar during the partition of India. She was born while her parents were struggling to set up their careers and stabilize themselves. Her parents are postgraduates. She was moulded to believe in education and its abominable scope of progress as a human being. Thus she started reading extensively at 10 years of age. She feels that is where she belongs and wants to move forward with it.

Nayab loved Mathematics but her father wanted her to be a doctor. Then she landed on being a Software engineer by profession. Back in her college life, she had thought becoming a poet can only be done by being an author. She is used to writing poems from the early days. But only when she went to Delhi for graduation, that she participated in slam poetry competitions in the College. But when she came across people performing slam poetry on stages in malls, she found this new door to execute her ever dreamt desire.

Later, she chose to leave her 2 years of Infoscion life to pursue what her passion demanded- to be an influencing poet. College life gave her opportunities to contest in various competitions to perform her poem. She took the 2 years at Infosys to stabilize her independent life and used weekends to embrace slam poetry at stages in various places like Delhi.

Nayab started taking reading and writing seriously when she was reading the fresh arrival of  Revolution 2020 by Chetan Bhagat while she missed a train and was waiting at the railway station. Nayab says she is so grateful that she missed her train which literally made her take another in her career. She continued exploring books written by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens. But she is more fascinated by Indian authors, especially Hindi writers like Amrita Pritam.

Passion overrides pressures

Nayab believes that whenever she shifted from a particular position it took much courage for her to do so. The first and most risky thing was to leave her job at Infosys. But she strongly believes in and loves storytelling and wants to pursue it as much as she can. To the question regarding societal pressures and pre-established parameters that hinder such unconventional careers, Nayab says she did not randomly take the bag and left the place. She worked for 2 years at the MNC and ensured that she paid her bills and simultaneously chased her slam poetry interests. She made her parents believe in her. Nayab affirms that it is only to the parents and the loved ones that we need to justify our actions and not anyone else. Because one can’t always convince the cent percent people. Nayab proudly says her parents are now absolutely happy with her decision to take the current path. For her, the constant motivation has always been her mother. Also, the catchy themes of any project can make her curious to work ecstatically on it. She playfully adds that paying her bills and feeding her stomach is yet another motivation.

A poem to cherish

Nayab feels that every part of the journey has been special for her. But something to be so genuinely touching was an incident, she recollected. This happened while she was at Chandigarh and was struggling to establish her name. She worked at Infosys in Chandigarh on weekdays and organized events in the city related to poetry and music during weekends. This helped her grab the train from Chandigarh to Delhi to perform once a weekend every month. Then she would go to her favorite place and eat her favourite food as she was so in love with Delhi food. Then she goes to Chandigarh late at night on the same days. During one of the dull days where she couldn’t write well due to lack of time and had to give a mediocre kind of performance. Later a program was around the corner, she asked for a slot and they reminded her not to be like the last time. Relying on the promise. Nayab was given a slot and thus the poem Khubsoorat was born. The organizers decided to release it and informed her. While she went out to have some Dosa at Sharavana Bhavan, she dreamt of getting 100 K views since her previous ones got less than that. Her phone got switched off in the midst of the travel. By the evening when she switched on the phone, the views were 300k and by 9 pm, it got 1 million views. Later it went to like 15 million.

Social media is for all people

Social media has given an egalitarian platform for people from all walks of life to showcase their talents in any art form. The economic, social, or geographic inequalities are overridden by merit and creativity. Equal opportunities are established and auditions don’t matter now if one has the ability to take up chances and uses it effectively. Every person is talented in a unique manner. But there are often cases where works are plagiarised and copied, which degrades the quality of the art.

Risks, Failures, and Success

She reminds us that if you stay there in the pit of not taking risks and following what you want, you will remain there all your life. So it’s better to jump from the pit and get the best out there. Nayab exhorts to climb up the pit even if you fall off. Have the courage to jump, that’s it! Believe that you can grow and mould yourself. Nayab acknowledges failures but never wanted to pursue success without deserving it. She wants to achieve victories when she is prepared and fully ready to receive them. Learning and accepting others’ work is also significant for her. Nayab admires poets like by Rohit Sharma whose amazing poem Mein Ravan Hoon is trending on YouTube. She is so much enchanted with the poems of Pallavi  Mahajan, Nithi Narwal especially Andhera.

Nayab Midha is an inspiration to many. She sets the flame to the cult of upcoming artists or any dreamer to dream big, start small, and finally get their careers built.

Poetry is an art that gives our deepest emotions a way to come out in the world through words. It takes us with our mundane ideas or experiences on an indescribable transcendental ride. Whether written or spoken, Poetry is different from mere expressing because it gives rise to hidden emotions in the human mind, while expressing is when the already aroused mind is vented out. A great artist evokes emotions even in the most stable of minds in an unexpected way and takes audiences on a spiritual tour that ends with tears in their eyes and memories in mind.

Today, we are here with a small collection of poetries, written and narrated by such great artists capable of arousing intense emotions in audiences’ minds through poetry based on daily life struggles. Some about childhood, some about life, these poetries will take you down a road of long-forgotten past and will put you in a nostalgic mood.

“Bachpan” by Rakesh Tiwari

This nostalgic poem is for all those millennials out there looking to dive back into that era when the neighbourhood’s roads used to be their playground, parents beating felt like a necessary and inevitable daily intake, and Maths teachers looked like a lifelong enemy. Listen to this for a time when life was sorted and simple, and the world still looked like a magical place.

“अम्मा की अटैची” by Rakesh Tiwari

Another heart-touching piece of spoken poetry by Rakesh Tiwari, Amma ki Attachy is about a journey which a son took down his mother’s memorabilia after her demise. The cherished objects by his mother don’t hold any materialistic value, but they are equally valuable because of the memories and feelings attached to them. 

“Softy” by Mohammed Sadriwala

This narrative spoken poetry for the 90s born will take you down to a time when possessing 5 rupees meant having all the riches of the world, and cute cat faces with big sparkling eyes were made to get that one rupee from the dearest grandmother or uncle. Softy is one such simple story that, like a domino, hits all other childhood memories of the past which were deeply buried in the valley of mind. It is a must-watch for those who want to unravel and revisit those golden days of childhood. 

“Woh Aaj Nahi Toh Kal Hoga” by Shubham Shyam

This motivational spoken poetry reminds you that every tunnel has an end. Today’s struggles will surely culminate someday at the foot of your desired destination if you have put your body and soul to the task. 

   “Sirf Karm tumhara Kal hoga,

Aur agar karm me sachai hai

 to Karm Kha Nishfal Hoga”

The poem is about hope; no matter the hardships, no matter how long the fight is for or how dark the days are, there will come a day when all the struggles and difficulties will be worth it. Just keep putting that one foot after another, keep moving forward and if not today, tomorrow will be yours.

The digital world has provided an accessible and free platform for both artists and their audience to enjoy and consume art. Contemporary poetry has become one of the fastest-growing genres, and it seems to be getting bigger and better. One of the main reasons for this is that, now, poetry is out and front, readily available. While the classic poems were meticulous and difficult to navigate, contemporary poems have come to be in easier language, dealing with our day-to-day lives in the creative use of words. These poems also seem to feed the aesthetic needs of the audience. More importantly, it has also opened an avenue for women, people of colour, and other marginalised communities to showcase their words and rhythms, which was otherwise an arena just for elites and men only. 

In this light, we have some poets and their smooth flowing words. 

Arunoday Singh

Arunoday Singh, who goes by the username, ‘sufisoul’, on Instagram, is truly replicant of his username selection. Arunoday’s poems are soulful indeed, as we see his page filled with poetries expressing his and our thoughts eloquently. His pen inks the paper with not just one genre of poetries, but everything ranging from the mundanity of life to the struggles and hardships, to love and friendship. Also, we may just also appreciate Arunoday’s beautiful handwriting as well! His Instagram poetry page will also fill your aesthetic needs!

Tuheena Raj

Tuheena Raj and her words have an enormous tranquillity over them. With each word, she captures the essence of a multitude of feelings. Browsing through her Instagram page, one can come across not only short poems but also think pieces and paragraphs, which are as unequivocally crystalline with emotions as her poetries. Through her poems, Tuheena faces her audience by simplifying the incomprehensible feelings into beautiful coherent words, as the one featured here.

Sonia Sabins 

Sonia Sabins’ style of writing is descriptive and realistic. One can often find solace, calmness and clarity reading her words and thoughts. Her writings deal with friendships, love, mental health, and above all, the importance of loving oneself, and realising one’s worth. As her bio says, “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”, stands true for all of her think pieces. The plethora of words stringed with simplicity and easiness will definitely leave you to ponder over a lot of aspects of our life. 

Growing to love yourself for who you are and the world for what it is, is a complicated endeavour. It entails shedding past obsessions and habits, regardless of the comfort they offered you. Poets Ranya Warren and Suhani Shah hold the prism their own experiences to the sunlight of words and rhythms to portray the multifaceted being of self-love and growth.

Warren retells her childhood in bittersweet melancholy, going back to her parents’ split and touching up on her issues with her own body. In an age where body positivity has morphed from an inclusive movement to just a hashtag on the internet, Warren illuminates us that simply looking at yourself in the mirror and redundantly uttering the words “Your beautiful” doesn’t make the gut wrenching self loathing disappear. It’s still there, it’s still palpable. In the same breath, she tackles the world’s indulgent fantasies of fair skin. She empowers women to be themselves, and more importantly, be vulnerable. Because we’re all told to be fierce, confident, gorgeous women all the time. Warren argues, why can’t we just be human.

In Counting Stars, Shah narrates the all too familiar phases we go through from childhood, to puberty and then adulthood. From the escapist imaginations of us being pilots, detectives, international spies, our juvenile expectations of unending happiness, to the sudden crashing understanding of the real world Shah hits all the soft spots we had as little kids. The harsh reality of the system obsessed with success and the brutal killing of passion as we know it, an experience we’ve all had. Coupled with her phenomenal stage presence, we’re glued to her performance, as she takes us through the emotions of becoming an adult.

You don’t want to miss out on these impactful artists, because their voices speak too much truth to be ignored.

Poetries that seep through the cracked walls of the heart and enlighten the attic therein. The echo that parallels the beats inside the cages, touches it and heals it. The emotions that trickle to lace the lines of the poetries, and wonderfully resemble the submerged feelings of ours. Sometimes the lines make us plunge into the ocean of love, at other times it questions the existing injustices. It never escapes to enchant and spellbind us with its magic. How remarkably we dive into the lines and brimming emotions, enter into the labyrinth of incredibly knitted words that lift our spirits and beep the minds. Sometimes we smile through it, at other times tears dribble through the cheeks. Out of the castles of fantasy, to the stark reality, it wraps all that is within. Here are two exceptional pieces of poetry fully equipped to resonate with the unexpressed emotions underneath the niche of our hearts.  

There is someone for everyone by Sainee Raj: The composition of resplendent verses and the magnificent recitation of it made us swoon over the lines. 

She captured the intangible and intricate feelings in her verses and poured out the spell-working effect onto us. Love, the feeling that gives butterflies in the stomach, that makes the heart skip a beat. The exceptional verses and the majestic recitation made us eulogised. The impeccable use of metaphors to describe the most beautiful feeling spells magic onto us. From the sharing of magpies to losing ourselves in the wonderland the lines lured the fantasies. Be it the love at first sight, or the love after the heartbreak, meeting the right person is always special. Some of us long to meet the person the destiny has designated for us, while some are with the smithereens of heart smeared with hopelessness. Sainee’s verses have an escape for all. There is someone who has been carved for us and is destined to meet us. For the ones who have lost the fond hope, or the ones who are reeling in this abode this poem will relish all the hearts. The poem ends with a smile on our faces and an imprint on our hearts. Sainee has taken us through these topsy-turvy aisles, rekindling the joy, and reawakening the hope of finding our “perfect match’’. As she enthrallingly recited ‘every moon has its sky’ and ‘coming home to someone who is yet to be known’ our utopias leapt and bounced. This poem whispered to the lonesome hearts ‘And there is someone out there, someone for everyone’.

Next Time Ladka Hoga by Divya Chaudhary: The astounding storytelling skills smashing the prevailing misogyny. 

Divya Chaudhary rose to challenge the benchmarks set by patriarchy. Divya highlighted the injustices prevailing in society through the stories, citing her own experiences. How the clutches of patriarchy have been ingrained in the minds, how the family without a male child is considered incomplete. The aspiration for gender equality moans in despair when inequality exhibits itself in every niche. Her story started with an example from the most famous movie ‘Dangal’ and ended with the most famous ‘dialogue’. Rhythmically moving through the verses, she brought forth a crucial segment of injustices and inequalities pertaining which made us rethink the biases. How she has always stood for what is right and has conquered the so-called dogmas of society that give rise to the unequal ambience, she rightly expounds through the lines. Putting forth real-life examples from various sectors, where gender inequality has been pumping itself ostentatiously. This has put up a big question mark on the mindsets and a big hurdle onto the abode of gender-neutrality. Sometimes through satire at other times intrepidly ridiculing it, she has equivocally challenged the mindsets. The closing line ’Gold is gold whether a male earns it or a female’ smashes the patriarchy.