Saikat Roy’s KARTICA: Fragments of Us – A Journey Through Love and Emotion
By Antara Mohan
I first noticed the title before I noticed anything else: KARTICA: Fragments of Us. There was something about those words that lingered. They felt less like the title of a poetry collection and more like a reflection of life itself. After all, every one of us is made up of fragments – fragments of people we’ve loved, memories we’ve held close, dreams we’ve chased, heartbreaks we’ve survived and moments that have quietly shaped who we are. Long before I reached the final page, I realised those three words weren’t just the title of the book. They were its heartbeat.
The idea behind the book is just as beautiful. Thirty poems, meant to be read over thirty days. One poem each day. I loved that. We live in a time when we rush through everything, even our emotions. Saikat Roy asks us to do the opposite. He asks us to pause, sit with a feeling and give it the time it deserves before moving on. That simple idea stayed with me because poetry isn’t meant to be hurried. It is meant to be lived.
After meeting Saikat at Fire and Ice in Kolkata, I understood why the book had to be written that way.
Although he is younger than I am, the age difference disappeared within the first few minutes of our conversation. He has a quiet warmth that instantly puts people at ease. There was no attempt to sound intellectual or poetic. Every answer came naturally. He listened as much as he spoke, and every story carried honesty. It felt less like interviewing an author and more like listening to someone share a deeply personal chapter of his life.
One thing that genuinely surprised me was learning that Saikat comes from a purely finance background. His world is built around numbers, calculations and logic. Yet behind that world is someone who writes with remarkable tenderness. His poems speak about love, longing, hope, uncertainty and healing with complete honesty. It reminded me that our profession never defines the depth of our emotions. Sometimes, the people who spend their lives working with numbers have the biggest stories hidden in their hearts.
KARTICA: Fragments of Us was not written overnight. Saikat spent an entire year writing these thirty poems, allowing each one to grow at its own pace. That patience can be felt throughout the collection. Every poem has room to breathe. Nothing feels rushed, and nothing feels forced.
Then came my favourite part of our conversation.
Every poem carries an Italian title, while the poems themselves are written in English. I asked him why. He smiled before telling me about his love for Italy, its language, its culture and, of course, its food. But what touched me most was learning that he had met an Italian woman who inspired this collection. The entire book is dedicated to her. Suddenly, those Italian titles no longer felt like a stylistic choice. They felt like memories. They felt like quiet love letters woven into every page.
Among all the poems, Il Mio Mondo remains closest to his heart because it was written during one of the most uncertain phases of his life. As he spoke about it, I wasn’t hearing a writer explain his work. I was listening to someone revisit a memory that still mattered.
When I walked into Fire and Ice that afternoon, I expected to meet a promising young poet. I walked away having met a genuinely kind human being. Perhaps that is why KARTICA: Fragments of Us feels so honest. It doesn’t try to impress. It simply opens its heart.
By the time I closed the book, I understood its title a little better. We are all made of fragments. Saikat Roy has simply gathered some of those fragments, given them words and reminded us that love, loss, hope and healing are experiences we all share. Somewhere between these pages, I believe every reader will find a small fragment of themselves.
