STREAMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

About the Book

“Streams of Consciousness,” was first published in 2012, as an anthology that spanned a period of almost 50 years of writing spread over multiple countries. These poems, an expression of personal sentiment, deal with an array of emotions – love, wonderment, angst, anger, resignation, frivolity, candor, spirituality, and finally the search for eternal bliss.

Readers have requested more poems in the same vein – a continuum of sorts. Thus, this second edition with an added chapter of new poems, with a foreword by poet and freelance writer, Devika Syal.

Being one of the first Asian Indian poets to be published in East Africa, Syal was widely written about. The late Professor Bahadur Tejani commented, “Syal has the spiritual courage to enter the dreadful labyrinth of African past… His precise versification hits the reader like a tank salvo…”

Noted African writer, Taban Lo Liyong, commented that Syal’s work is, “…full of fire and passion and poetry and philosophy…awake to the ripples of long ago and shores of past and passing.”

About the Author

Dr. Parvin D. Syal was born and brought up in Nairobi, Kenya, by his parents who migrated to Africa from Punjab, India. Having attained his medical degree from the University of Nairobi, he trained both in Merseyside, England and Pasadena, California, before going into private practice.

Though a practicing physician, Syal has forayed into different fields: as an activist he fostered the causes of the Indian American Community; as an actor he performed both on stage and in films; as a journalist he wrote political and literary columns for the ethnic press; and as a broadcaster he presented a healthcare program on radio. He was a co-founder of the Tri-valley Indian Medical Association in Los Angeles and is Secretary of the Association of L.A. Physicians of Indian Origin.

Syal is author of his second volume of poetry, “One Zero Eight,” that was written in the Covid pandemic period. He is co-author, with Harshi Syal Gill, of “African Quilt - Stories of the Asian India Experience in Kenya,” and the play “God Minus,” based on the life of Buddha.

Syal was often published in the literary magazines Busara and Nexus, in addition to “An Anthology of World Poetry,” edited by Krishna Srinivas. Editors David Rubadiri and David Cook included his poetry in “Poems from East Africa.” He contributed a chapter,” The Esoteric in Kabir,” in the Govinda Bhakta- edited, “Thus says Kabir.”

He lives with his family in Chatsworth, California.