The poet in Prime Minister Narendra Modi emerges in Letters to Mother

"I am not a writer, most of us are not; but everybody seeks expression, and when the urge to unload becomes overpowering there is no option but to take pen and paper, not necessarily to write but to introspect and unravel what is happening within the heart and the head and why," Modi adds in the book, translated from Gujarati by award winning author Bhawana Somaaya.

As a young man, Narendra Modi had got into the habit of writing a letter to the 'Mother Goddess', whom he addressed as 'Jagat Janani', every night before going to bed. The topics were varied: There were seething sorrows, fleeting joys and lingering memories.

But every few months, Modi would tear up the pages and consign them to a bonfire. However, the pages of one diary, dating back to 1986, survived, and are now available in English for the very first time.

"In my opinion Narendra Modi's strength as a writer is his emotional quotient. There is a raw intensity, a simmering restlessness which he does not disguise and that is his attraction," said Bhawana Somaaya, who has been a film critic for almost 40 years and has contributed columns to various publications.

An author of several books on cinema, Somaaya was awarded the Padma Shri in 2017. Letters to Mother is her 17th book. (IANS)

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