My friends are yellow, brown and white,
What difference does it make to light

Contemplative and simple, Ponder a While is not just a composition of some 66 poems, but an experience that leaves you with your thoughts alone. "I knew this would happen," says Mohit K Misra, the 37 year-old former Merchant Navy sailor who underwent a revelation that not just changed his life, but also changed him as a human being.

"It happened when I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and found my enlightenment," he recollects. So, while you go through the immense response that Misra has received for his work on the internet and in person, what leaves you wonderstruck is his way of composing his feelings. Framed in couplets, his poetry canvasses spirituality and the human mind. "I write in dohas to make even the most complex subjects simple. My emphasis has been on the metrical length and rhyme because that pattern is easy to understand and even remember," he says. Very much so as the language is so unmistakable straightforward, that even a child can understand it. "

Having sold 1,000 copies so far, Misra wants to concentrate on propagating his message—oneness with the universe. "We usually separate ourselves from the universe and keep complaining about our misfortunes and various negativities. My book asks the reader to unite with the universe and be one with it," he explains. Deriving inspiration from god, love and light, Misra says he has spent the last seven years reading extensively on spirituality and then was able to write on it. "One has to be prepared for death and know that we will all be gone one day," he says.

Ever since Misra's spiritual journey began with An Autobiography of a Yogi, he has read almost all the spiritual writers around, right from Herman Hesse to Mikhael Naimy and many more. And, it wasn't like Misra was always prepared to talk about his thoughts openly. "I have thought a lot and only when I was ready about it, did I talk about it," he says. The message that he now wants to propagate is, "God is not for others, he is for us only. And, it isn't that sages and saints are people from another planet, they are all as human and as normal," he explains.

Misra will soon be heading to Delhi for a poetry reading session for Dahiya Badshah, an Indian poet from Philadelphia.