Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 3, Number 1. May 2020. ISSN: 2581-7094
Heart Raining the Light.
Poems composed at Jhargram, Kolkata and beyond:
Jaydeep Sarangi, Cyberwit, Allahabad,
2019. ISBN: 978-8194348559
This new
collection of original poems confirms once again Jaydeep Sarangi’s lyrical
boon, and his capacity to articulate words, images and sounds in many fruitful
ways. Thanks to their rich imagery, these poetic compositions evoke images,
convey feelings and mesmerise the reader as they shift from the dimension of
the concrete to the sphere of the abstract. Here we read of railway lines, of
bells and of Kolkata’s Ghats, but also of forgotten loves, new passions and
deep memories.
Poetry, in
fact, is also a form of reflection, a method for distilling meaning from words
and from life: in the poem entitled “History is Mystery”, for example, the
author seems to interrogate the sense of life by browsing through “text books,
page after page / killed unmade kings / leaders and martyrs / far away from the
metro lines / by the magic rod of publicity”. In this light, history lies in
and hides itself in small objects and moments as we carry on and construct
relations.
The
writer’s affect for his city emerges and marks this collection significantly
with a number of pictures about the rites and scenes of Kolkata’s vibrant
microcosms, in which everyone is invested by a sensory tempest and atmospheric
force: “happy flowers smile / in South Kolkata slums, after October rain”. Colours,
smells, tastes, gazes: an accumulation of sensations that combines material and
immaterial sides, with bodies, dreams and nature. The city draws its mystic
aura from the holy waters of Mother Ganga and celebrates its time-less cycles
of life and death through funeral rites and ceremonies, but also in joyful
acts.
Sarangi,
who is also a renowned and prolific academic, does not forget his political and
ethical commitment, and in the poem “Dalit Feminism” foregrounds the question
of marginality for those portions of society that are constantly subjugated and
often deprived of their voice. In particular, the first two stanzas exploit the
rhetorical strategy of repetition to endorse a sense of belonging and empathy
that overturns difference: “my window is a small place / my community is my
city / My joys are not yours / My pains are distinct. / My walls know my
stories. / My prison has a different name / My autobiography strong binaries”. These
lines are subtly powerful and offer an alternative perspective as they benefit
from a particular prosodic force based upon the use of sibilant sound patterns
(-s).
But these
poems also unfold a wealth of echoes, citations and references, from the Roman
Egypt to Agra and Hyderabad, from Lorca and Sefaris to Ambedkar and Lord Shiva.
Written in captivating free verse, these texts resonate with allusions and
metaphors, as the language absorbs the spirit of poetry, namely “lost words for
sometime, my umbrella / all these though days, wine and brothels”.