YANCHEP resident Jagdeep Bhatia has been writing since he was seven-years-old.
His first story was about an eagle that used to visit their apartment terrace in Mumbai in India.
He describes his early writing as childish in nature but he did end up writing for his college magazine.
While his father wanted him to become an electronic engineer he finished college with a degree in English literature.
After he and his family left India he stopped writing for many years.
During this time they lived in New Zealand for seven years before he got a job in Australia and trained to be a policeman.
In 2016 while facing hardship at work and in his personal life he started writing inspirational quotes.
“So I didn’t write (about) the incident, but I wrote a quote, and that quote reminds me of what lesson I have learned, because you never stop learning,’’ he said.
His efforts resulted in a book of inspiration quotes called Amanishad: Whispers of Resilience, which was published in 2020.
He left the police force in 2024.
Other books by the author are Poems and Blues in Solitude, Taste of Life, Ode to Experience and Echoes of the Ages of Vedas.
He has weaved many life lessons from his time in service into the following piece, which is written in a 16th-century English style while exploring themes of resilience, duty and the inner battles that shape humans.
A Soldier in Chains
A Dialogue Between the Soldier and His Shadow
by Jagdeep Bhatia
(A dim cell. A sliver of sunlight falls through a narrow window, casting the soldier’s shadow against the wall. The chains on his wrists weigh heavy, yet the shadow remains light, unbound. He speaks – and the shadow answers.)
I. Melancholy’s Embrace
Soldier:
O Melancholy, mother fair,
Thy whispers weave the poet’s air.
Lo, man doth flee from pain at birth –
A gift unwished, yet bound to earth.
But sorrow comes with years untold,
More weighty far than brass to gold.
A blade is forged in fire’s wrathful breath,
Yet valour steels it ’gainst the dance of death.
Shadow:
From sorrow’s forge, where lessons bright do gleam,
The soul is shaped by loss and stifled scream.
Like tempests dark that long abide,
It bends the soul, it sways the tide.
And as the roof of thatch doth yield
’Neath sorrow’s rain, so unrelieved,
So doth the heart when sadness clings
And o’er the weary spirit brings.
Though time belongeth to the earth alone,
Seizeth this moment, for its yours to own.
II. The Burden of Suffering
Soldier:
What use is such if sorrow reign,
And maketh dust of all in vain?
From faults of mine doth wisdom first arise,
Then trial’s hand doth ope the seeker’s eyes.
The path, the road, the way that man must tread,
Is carved by purpose, not where fate is led.
Shadow:
Who wrought this fence, and wherefore dost thou stay?
Dost fate thee hither bring, or dost thou stray?
By thine own will, or life’s relentless tide,
Sittest thou there, in doubt enclosed so wide?
If thou should’st leap, would all have been discerned?
Hath every path and winding way been turned?
For if none remain, then life – more strong than thee –
Would have cast thee forth by fate’s decree.
Harken thee well, first must sadness be borne, then shed,
Ere sorrow weaves its woeful thread.
Brick by brick, the mind must rise
With wisdom’s hand and counsel wise.
III. The Battle Within
Shadow:
Else, like a beast that feeds unchained,
Sadness drains the flesh, devours the brain,
Till all is hollow, weak, and worn –
A soul undone, a spirit torn.
Yet if thou linger, torn in restless plight,
Then dost thy mind thee wrest – so pause and alight.
Perchance one stone, still hid from watchful eye,
Awaits its turn ere thou dost leap or bide.
Soldier:
Like sands that sift through grasping palm,
Should one too tightly press my form,
Lo, glass I turn; in the hand that seeketh hold,
I carve a wound both deep and cold.
If death of body granteth freedom’s flight,
Let it be swift –
Or break these chains – set soaring spirit’s lift!
Shadow:
O Melancholy, mother fair,
Thy whispers weave this poet’s air.
(The soldier lowers his head. The sun shifts, and soon the shadow will fade.)
