What lies between the night and the morn?

Sailen Routray

Of late I have started going back to a few authors who I started reading as an adolescent and never have gone back to properly. One of them is Kahlil Gibran. Recently I read 'Between Night & Morn' by him. It was the first time I read the book though.

It is a miscellany of his early works and consists of eight very queer pieces that range from stories, extended reflections, to versified spiritual exultations.

'The Tempest' tries to explore the mystery behind the withdrawal of Yusif El Fakhri from society. In 'Satan' Gibran plays the iconoclast by showing how a living Satan is so central to our ideas of the good life. 'Ashes of the ages and eternal fire' is an 'oriental' love story of longing and rebirth that is so simply told that its assumptions of transmigration of souls ends up seeming as natural as desert sands.

At seventy eight pages, it is a small book that gets over in one sitting. After finishing the book on a Saturday evening, I suddenly remembered that when I read Gibran for the first time (it was not 'The Prophet') it was this that I had found so refreshing about him, his lightness and clarity.

I had started reading books in English, for pleasure, only in class nine. I was fifteen, and the promiscuous mixture of the spiritual and the worldly in Gibran spoke to me, as did his simple language and brevity. Those first impressions were not wrong.

I had gotten introduced to English only when I was nine years old, I think, in class four, and by class nine my appetite for printed material had started extending beyond my native Odia. It might seem strange, but the first people I read and loved in English were Bertrand Russel, Nehru and Gibran. About the first two, I'll perhaps ramble some other time.

Details About the Book: The Best of Kahlil Gibran. 'Between Night & Morn'. Delhi and Gurgaon: Book Palace.