“Every poet has a muse he draws inspiration from. It might be a person, place, or a feeling; and mine is this girl called Fairy,” he says, rather dreamy eyed. “And it’s extremely important for me as a poet to be able to express myself, it is next to my existence,” he says rather passionately.
For him, poets have a natural sense of nostalgia, and it brings out the true self in them.
“Being a poet is about expressing yourself whereas being an actor is about expressing somebody else,” he adds.
However, for him, being a poet compliments acting.
“It accentuates the capacity to express myself, thus acting comes easily,” he says. He adds that being an actor gives him a feeling of immense freedom. “It allows me to be somebody else, and the desire to get out of mundane life is materialized by acting like someone else; thereby I get to feel like someone else.”
As a photographer, his exhibitions have taken place at The Nehru Centre in London and his photo essays have been published in The Statesmen, Namaste, and Outlook Traveler.
However, he admits that despite his talents, he has not put in consistent efforts to be a disciplined artist. His carefree attitude has seen the better of him.
“It’s taken me 22 years to realize that I have a responsibility to the talents that I was born with,” he says.” I’ll be damned if I don’t hone my talents with consistent efforts,” he promises himself.
He traveled extensively to various monasteries across India during the making of his documentary, “The Buddha of Badamtam”, a documentary on the last work in bronze by Meera Mukherjee and her journey into Buddhism. Thus he finds Buddhism in Nepal particularly fascinating.
“Boudhanath is a fusion place, and I’m currently writing an article about Boudha,” he says of the Buddhist stupa in Kathmandu.
“Although I haven’t seen much of Nepal, I like the little bits that I’ve seen, and I intend to see more of it in the days to come,” he says. “The people here are soft,” he says, “softer than the ones in Delhi, and this is a welcome change. I wish Nepal and the Nepali people best of luck in their endeavors.”
Later next week, Murad Ali is reciting some poems of Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi at a show entitled “Journey”. It is about the journey of Rumi, the spiritual mentor, and the quest he took to find love. Rumi is considered one of the greatest spiritual masters and poetical geniuses of mankind and was the founder of the Mawlawi Sufi order, a leading mystical brotherhood of Islam.
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