Poetry Review : ‘Mystic Warrior - A Poetic Novel’ by Balram Cheruparambil

Never one to give up, I was handed these by the poet, Balram Cheruparambil asking me to review them, only if I could. I can say that of these two poetry books, I liked the first one, ‘Satire, Free Thoughts & Other Felonies’ better. This poet is an Engineering graduate and a Management post graduate and now, heads recruitment at one of the leading companies in the Middle East. 

This second book of poetry, which I read was ‘Mystic Warrior: A Poetic Novel’, which is a poetic tale. It basically is about an orphaned, young boy who finds school a big bore. He gets by, running errands for local shopkeepers. One such day, he comes upon a haunted house, quite by mistake. It was a dark, rainy day and the house on Thronton Hill was his destiny. 

‘It towered over the surrounding skeletal trees,

Its very sight made my blood freeze,

The land around it seemed to absorb all light

It appeared drowned in perennial night.

He, however lands up in this house trying to escape a huge and hairy form on his broken down cycle. Here, he sneaks into the house and is encountered by Mathiast, a kindly vampire who tells him that he has no real exit and he must fight evil, the reason the town is a virtual paradise for the residents. The orphan is caught by the whole story and he comes back, saying he would like to join hands with the brave vampire.

He is quickly adopted by Mathiast, and then learns warfare from him and another warrior, Nanda.  He is on his way to become a warrior, when he is put through the first test. The ghost of a powerful sorcerer, Thebos the Greek takes over the body and soul of the young man and he finds himself more powerful than ever before.

The lessons continue when he meets with Nafrees, a brave princess of the elves. Nafrees and he fall in love quickly. There are a few wonderful moments to share, but

She said, “I wish with all my heart that it could be,

But love is for now forbidden for me,

I have to complete the task we are on

We can talk further after this danger is gone.”

The war begins between these four and the evil forces begins. The siege continues, with all of them losing their lives, except the boy who must be an orphan again. How he would encounter the forces again, would be a part of the second volume.

The orphan feeling in the poem does not seem to evoke enough feeling, when suddenly you are faced with the whole warrior training and then there is the love phase too, when again you are put under a siege in no time. These phases should have been given a sense of time, which I felt was lacking. 

Overall, it was not a great experiment but the earlier samples, of a poor orphan boy and the training phase are very good. This poetry book, I felt lacked a comprehensiveness. The story is fairly simple, and though very well-rhymed, seems to lack a rhythm. It goes from a slow phase to a fast one, in no time at all.

Poet: Balram Cheruparambil

Publisher: AuthorsPress, New Delhi

ISBN: 9788172738105

Price: India- Rs 195/- 

Elsewhere: US- $8