Loving Without a Shield — an interview with Mr Anurag Talukdar on his latest poetry collection “Whispers of Desire”

What if desire isn’t romantic at all? What if it’s just a quiet kind of exhaustion? In a world of filtered lives and half-spoken truths, Anurag Talukdar drops the mask. In Whispers of Desire, he doesn’t perform emotion; he surrenders to it. This is a collection that doesn’t ask for attention; it pulls you in by holding nothing back. Love, longing, loss, and reawakening bleed through every page, pressing us to ask: What have we hidden just to keep moving? What haven’t we dared to say out loud?

His lines, “desire in this book isn’t just romantic…it’s about yearning, vulnerability, and the quiet truths we carry,” can be marked as the essence of his book. His poems connect to a larger human truth about loneliness, about the ache of unspoken wants, and the minor acts of emotional courage it takes to keep going.

No connection comes with a promise of forever, but the heaviness of what we feel is left for us alone to carry. Anurag faces his rawest emotions head-on, drawing in readers who may be unfamiliar with speaking their own truths aloud in his book.

Talking about the process of publishing his book, Anurag admits the editing to be the most challenging part of the process, half because of emotional reasons. To let go, to pare down to only what fits the vision he had for the book, is difficult when every written piece speaks to a writer personally. This also shows how honest the author is in his writing. He shares that if it does not feel intimate, he wouldn’t even write it. The author does not aim to create an effect; he wants to touch souls. Anurag Talukdar tells us how the very act of writing grew him into a braver writer, making him more comfortable with vulnerability through the pen.

While the poet does not like the idea of emulating anyone else, he expresses that while reading or exploring a series, he ends up feeling inspired by well-written characters. He mentions indulging in Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls while finishing the book. It is not surprising that both works delve into themes of longing and yearning for a world without foundations. The poet shares that he enjoys music playing in the background when he is in his process of writing.

When asked about what he hopes his work will leave behind, he tells us he would likely wish for a quiet ache. He wants his readers to feel and hold on to beauty, even if it comes with pain. Anurag wants them to realise a deeper connection to their own feelings and wishes them courage to face their own whispers of desire. He lets on that he is working on a business book next, along with a few horror stories, but he is definitely not one to rush the good things before time.

Anurag’s Whispers of Desire drifts through the aching terrain of love and loss, desire unmet, and the quiet ache of abandonment — a place where fate plays both God and the devil with equal cruelty. Each poem holds a mirror to the rawness of longing, the vulnerability of feeling deeply in a world that rarely pauses to feel back. And yet, as Haruki Murakami reminds us, “Love is the indispensable fuel that allows us to go on living.” So, we do. Lovers keep loving. Dreamers keep dreaming. The broken keep hoping. And we, fragile, tender, beautifully human, carry on.