In Butterflies In My Mind, Deepti Jethani makes a considered and quietly confident entry into contemporary Indian poetry. A finance professional by vocation and a poet by instinct, Jethani writes from the interstice between structure and sensitivity, bringing to her verse a discipline that tempers emotion without diminishing its force. The result is a collection that does not clamour for attention, but gradually earns it—line by line, pause by pause.
This debut volume turns its gaze inward, towards the landscapes of mental health, love, body image, longing, and emotional survival. These are not treated as fashionable subjects or rhetorical gestures, but as lived realities—often unremarkable on the surface, yet deeply consequential beneath. Jethani’s poems acknowledge what is frequently left unsaid: that the most enduring struggles are rarely dramatic, and that healing, when it comes, is incremental rather than sudden.
The poetry unfolds with lyrical restraint. There is an economy of language here, a refusal to over‑explain or over‑decorate. Joy appears briefly, like light filtered through moving leaves; sorrow settles more slowly, with weight and persistence. Across the collection, one senses a careful attention to rhythm and silence. The poems seem aware of breath, of the spaces between thoughts, allowing meaning to surface without insistence.
The central metaphor of the butterfly—suggested in the book’s title and revisited with subtle variation—functions as more than a decorative image. It becomes a quiet grammar for the mind itself: fragile, restless, easily disturbed, yet capable of transformation. Thoughts flutter, emotions alight and depart, and beneath this movement lies a fragile resilience. The metaphor is handled with restraint, never forced into symbolism, but allowed to resonate naturally across the poems.
One of the collection’s most notable achievements is its ethical clarity. Mental health is not aestheticised, nor is vulnerability turned into performance. The poems do not offer solutions, nor do they issue reassurances. Instead, they offer recognition. They suggest that uncertainty, self‑doubt, and emotional fatigue are not failures of character, but conditions of being human. In this sense, Butterflies In My Mind aligns itself with a growing body of contemporary writing that treats emotional honesty as a form of quiet resistance.
Jethani’s professional background in finance lends the work an underlying structural discipline. The poems are thoughtfully constructed, their emotional arcs carefully held. There is a sense that feeling has been examined, not merely expressed. This balance—between analytic clarity and lyrical openness—gives the collection its distinctive tone: intimate without being confessional, reflective without becoming abstract.
What Butterflies In My Mind ultimately offers is not spectacle, but shelter. It is a book that invites the reader to slow down, to sit with discomfort, and to recognise resilience in endurance rather than triumph. In an age marked by performative vulnerability and instant affirmation, Deepti Jethani’s poetry chooses a quieter register. It listens more than it declares—and in doing so, leaves a lasting impression.
Book purchase links:
Amazon India: https://amzn.in/d/58t28PP
Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=sPwUEQAAQBAJ