Shas­tri Boodan

For her lit­er­ary de­but, De­vani De­vi Ram­lakhan-Bo­hal trans­formed her life­long pas­sion for writ­ing and cre­ativ­i­ty in­to a po­et­ic ta­pes­try ti­tled 40 Pearls of Love. The re­cent­ly pub­lished an­thol­o­gy, a poignant col­lec­tion of verse, seeks to awak­en the spir­i­tu­al con­scious­ness of its read­ers, invit­ing them to re­con­nect with the purest essence of hu­man ex­is­tence—love.

Ram­lakhan-Bo­hal, who us­es the pen name De­vani De­vi, de­scribed the work as a gen­tle in­vo­ca­tion to truth and uni­ty.

“The po­ems speak of one­ness and uni­ver­sal truths,” she ex­plained. “I am es­pe­cial­ly drawn to po­et­ry be­cause it of­fers space for per­son­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion. It en­cour­ages con­tem­pla­tion—about our choic­es, their con­se­quences, and how they af­fect not on­ly our own lives but the lives of oth­ers.”

A res­i­dent of Or­ange Val­ley in cen­tral Trinidad, Ram­lakhan-Bo­hal has a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence de­gree in Physics, with mi­nors in Med­ical Physics and Psy­chol­o­gy, along with a Post­grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion, spe­cial­is­ing in the ped­a­gogy of Sci­ence. She cur­rent­ly works as a physics teacher with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Al­though 40 Pearls of Love marks her first for­ay in­to pub­lish­ing, Ram­lakhan-Bo­hal is no stranger to cre­ative ex­pres­sion. She wrote and pro­duced eight orig­i­nal bha­jans—de­vo­tion­al songs—fea­tur­ing her own mu­sic com­po­si­tions, which are avail­able for view­ing on YouTube.

Look­ing ahead, she said her lit­er­ary jour­ney will con­tin­ue to be guid­ed by the over­ar­ch­ing theme of love—love of self, love for oth­ers, and love as a trans­for­ma­tive force. The de­but col­lec­tion is cur­rent­ly avail­able di­rect­ly from the au­thor, through Ama­zon, and at Scrib­bles and Quills Ltd book­store in Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas.