As a pulmonologist, breath is both my profession and my poetry. Each day, I witness its fragility — how a single breath can steady a frightened patient, how a missed one can overwhelm a family, how a laboured gasp can reflect stories of resilience held deep inside the human chest. For most people, breath is an automatic function. For me, it is a language.
It is from this intersection of science and spirit that my poetry was born.
A pulmonologist’s lens
Nature has always been my teacher. The sky, with its infinite patience, has a way of reminding us that healing is not linear. The ocean mirrors our emotional tides — sometimes gentle, sometimes furious, but always moving. The vastness of the world outside mirrors the equally vast inner landscapes we rarely take time to explore. In my years of practice, I have found that the human heart responds to nature in much the same way that it responds to touch, tenderness or time.
Perhaps being a doctor taught me to pay attention — to the pauses between sentences, the tremor in a patient’s voice, the unspoken fear behind a question.
Perhaps my interest in photography taught me composition — how the smallest detail, a sliver of sunlight or a drifting cloud, can transform the whole frame. Perhaps poetry found me because I kept searching for meaning in the moments which science couldn’t explain.
In medicine, we measure breaths; in poetry, we interpret them.
Breath became the metaphor that sewed my worlds together: a reminder that life, for all its complexity, is held together by something as delicate as air.
‘Breaths That Bind Us’ is a poetry collection by Dr. Ishan Capoor
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
A journey of empathy, healing
We all carry questions that cannot be answered by data. We carry emotions that do not fit into diagnostic categories. We carry quiet longings that rise and fall like waves, waiting to be acknowledged.
I wanted to explore those moments — the ones that tilt us gently towards introspection, that speak of empathy, of love, of grief, of wonder, of hope and of the healing that occurs not only in hospitals but in conversations and in silences.
Breath as a bridge
We spend so much of our lives rushing from one obligation to the next, forgetting that breathing itself is a miracle of constancy. When we slow down, even for a moment, we realise that the world is full of reminders to pay attention: the wind against our skin, clouds drifting lazily, the soothing rhythm of waves by the beach, and more.
I wanted to pay tribute to those reminders though poetry: not just for poetry lovers or for those seeking solace, but for anyone who has ever paused mid-day because something within whispered: look closer and for those who are searching for the threads that connect us – to each other, to nature, and to ourselves.
In the end, we are all held together by a series of breaths. And sometimes, one poem is enough to remind us of that truth.
(Dr. Ishan Capoor is consultant pulmonologist at Narayana Health, Bengaluru and author of poetry collections ‘Breaths That Bind Us’ and ‘Inhale Exhale From the Quarters of Quarantine’. drishancapoor@gmail.com)