From Compassion to Conscience: A Critical Study of Selected Poems from Tell Me, Please… by Abnish Singh Chauhan

Abnish Singh Chauhan’s Tell Me, Please... (2025) offers a profound meditation on the emotional, moral, socio-cultural and spiritual dimensions of human existence. Marked by lucid diction, lyrical precision, and reflective depth, the collection charts a transformative journey from compassion to conscience, tracing the evolution of the self from empathetic awareness to ethical realization. This study interprets Chauhan’s poetic vision through the intersecting frameworks of Humanism, Ethical Modernism, and Postcolonial Poetics, examining how his verse reaffirms the sanctity of individual conscience while engaging critically with the moral and socio-cultural dissonances of contemporary life. Accordingly, the selected poems—“A Small Desire,” “Poetry,” “The Treasure,” “The Unread Book,” “The Mountain,” “Your Words,” “Silence,” “Spring,” “A Paper,” and “The People of Braj” embody a deeply humanistic ethos that harmonizes aesthetic sensibility with ethical reflection, positioning the poet as both contemplative seeker and moral participant. Situated within the evolving continuum of Indian English poetry, from early humanist articulations to post-liberal ethical modernism, Chauhan’s poems emerge as a significant contribution to the enduring dialogue between art and morality, reasserting the transformative power of verse as a vehicle for socio-cultural continuity, spiritual renewal and the enrichment of human understanding.