Review Details

REVIEW BY NAHALI BANDYOPADHYAY

nahalibanerjee@gmail.com

Two poems of Avik Gangopadhyay, from the Collection

The Murmur of the Mist

 

The Sun and the Dark

 

The Sun and the Dark

O Sun!

One cannot see with your rays.

Why escape
From the infinite darkness
That surround you
Spread over millions of light years.

Isn't it that your light is a cheat?

A shine that scorches
A planet that burns
A star from distant
Unseen from afar
How long could you dispel! darkness,
Hundred million years of years?

What is it to Time?

Time does not know
Neither its beginning nor its end
The truth that it is.

Your light does not enter into the womb
Passion and devotion,
Love and creation
Avoid your beams

Where would you hide defeated

In the hands of mind and death?

 

With this poem, the poet has sought refuge of the Romantic stream of poetic flow and cascaded his thoughts in the fluidity of an ode. The title of the poem could as well be “An Ode to the Sun” where the poet, in all his bouts of curiosity has posed questions to the Sun, which, at the same time he has provided answers to, in his attempt of finding solution to these age-old mysteries.

The poem sets in with a complaint that the sun blinds us when it shines straight into our eyes and hinders our eyesight. The world of rapturous nature that envelopes us is engulfed in a haze of white as its rays pierce our eyes. This is juxtaposed with the sun’s own ironical existence in a world of black, an abode of dark, dense space surrounding it forever in both the planes of space and time, across years and light years together.  

The poet goes ahead and calls the sun’s rays a cheat as they elude our understanding of light and darkness, sight and lack of it – the dichotomy of black and white that changes with the change in perspective.

The poem continues to wonder at the nature of the sun – how its rays have the ability to both infuse life on earth and scorch all life forms from the face of our planet at the same time. A mere star in the vastness of the formless ocean of the infinite universe, it has been burning since the beginning of time. It burns and scorches itself and in turn, frees our planet from the clutches of darkness. It has done so for millions of years and will continue to for another million – but where is the end of the circle of this burning of the self and providing light in return?

However, the poet has come to realize that this cycle, the relationship between the giver and the given, this continuity of the giving for millions of years mean nothing to Time. To Him, to the endless and the eternal, even the all-encompassing vastness of the universe is too miniscule to even make a mark. Whether the sun of our universe shines or whether its light dies off mean nothing in front of the sickle of Time. The beginning and the end of time will remain constant, as they are meant to be and they will continue to move in their own pace irrespective of the presence of the sun or its light.   

The sun’s light can also not penetrate the sheaths of the womb, nor can it influence the mind or the myriad emotions it houses. They function on their own accord and regulate how we think and how we behave. They have been doing this since time immemorial and the sun has never had a role to play in this intricate execution of the mind. The poet has thus concluded that however powerful the sun might be, however able a giver it might be of life and sustenance, it has no control over death or human mind. This is where it loses all its power and is robbed off of its pride. The poet brings him down from  its alter of worship to the level from where he just like us is subject to Time’s decay and mind’s antics like any other thing in the world.

 

 

Remnants of a Dream

 

I

Remnants of a dream
Long for a trespass-view,
Gasp for a terminal hope
In the flicker of unrest.

Strange musing and foreboding
Of lost joys, imagined despair and troubled happiness
Sinuous and immobile
.... and the rust of the key making noise
The key turns,
The lock unlocks
The invisible and the inaudible
Aired out to life,
To life
That begins with a cry
A cry
Joy to others
A cry
The enigmatic prelude of an unfinished overture.

                                          II

It was the time when the voice feared the echo
"When were you born?"

When the drizzling shower soothes the mind to say 'yes'
A trance more rejoicing than sleep
When far seems near and cosy
With the engulfing mist shudders
Wipes the sunshine from the face
There remains no eager anticipation
To transform expectation into reality
When sex and creation become synonymous

Excitement and pain dissolve in a filial bulk,
Raindrops beat the drums of summer
When smile and tears hide
Behind the fragrance of an unseen flower
Promised to spray evanescence into the air
then .....

 

                                                         III

Now time paints with an invisible hand
Visions cheat the void.

"Where were you born?"

Where smog stales the new-born leaves
The purple trees with moist cheeks
Stand in an unmoved arrogance
Like the slum-dweller watches the passing train
Without curiosity or abhorance.

Where straight roads end with a sudden surprise
. Before the destination;
Where apartments develop early cracks
From the day-long spiralling sighs residents heave,

                      .                                                there ....

IV

The rock was curved before the sunset.

It was at a new position in the next morning.

Such awful change with the passage of few hours.

"Why were you born?"

Because life is a slave of creation
Creation is a prisoner of Nature
Nature is free to enchain.

Freewill is under the whip of instinct.

Instinct is the foster-son of Nature.

Born to see reasons falter
Emotions swell and go dry
Affection ruining sanity
Duty unrecognised in depravity
Love unrequitted before conditions
The savage air engulfing the elite codes of living
Venomous fumes of wrath of the low
Cementing the breathing space of the cultured veneer.

To see
The wells have gone dry.

The shadow of lizards and scorpions
In the eyes of the fleeing reindeer
Amid the domain of the sprouting cactus.

 

                         V

What it is to be a dead among the dead?

To know all and do nothing.

Amid a feeling less perception .

..... and the hours pass-by to the not-yet
and the leaves peep out of the trees
from the corner of the dream
unnoticed in reality.

 

The poet is a romantic and moulds his unfulfilled dreams and desires into words of this poem, rather than brooding over them and living in the misery of it. He questions the fundamentals of life and living as his inquisitions bloom in four different parts of the poem which merge in the end in a haze of the intangible reality, the reality which cares not of what we want - only what happens is what matters.

The poem starts with a tone of desolation where the poet talks about the bits and pieces of his unfulfilled dreams which hanker to live and grow and meet the goals of their very existence. They strain and gasp for that last breath of life, of the hope of their realization and seek their way amidst the din of the unrest that confuses the mind. The usage of the word ‘terminal’ here, however drives the point home proving that success for these dreams is not on the cards and the poet has come to terms with the fact at last.

The poet reminisces his past, the music of the joy and happiness that adorned this past and created the memories which haunt him now. This happiness too however had been tainted by troubles and tribulations, - cringing and writhing in the stagnancy of despair. The poet hears the click of the key turning in the lock and feels the hope surging in him once again – for new doors to be opened and the gust of air to rush in and fill his heart. The lock does open and ‘the invisible and the inaudible’, the intangible realities in the poet’s life break free from the stupor of suffocation and are reborn again. They are new lives now which start with the snivels of infancy, the cry that is the source of joy to others who celebrate this birth. The poet describes this birth as the mystery of the beginning of a journey, an idea that has still not borne fruit and is blooming in anticipation.

The second part of the poem starts with the series of the questions that are to follow and the answers to which the poet seeks to deliver. A voice echoes in the mind of the poet and asks him when he was born. The poet dreads the question and yet, answers it in the following lines in somber words and delicate imagery. The scene of the birth is set when the drizzles and their cooling touch pacifies the mind and       binds it to say ‘yes’. It goes into a state of such enchantment when far seems near and snug, where it washes its face off the touches of sunshine and longs to be engulfed by layers of mist and curtains of haze. The sense of contented tranquility pervades the mind, which no longer loses sleep over anxieties and anticipations. The pressure of delivering, of realizing the expectations and watching the realities come to life matters no more in this new world, the world of a new life and of a new birth. Sex and creation mean nothing more than one single act of procreation with just two different names. They merge and intertwine and create a world of peace where the pleasures of the flesh cannot create havoc and wreck the mind’s abode of comfort. In this world, pain and excitement join hands in filial agreement and manipulates the mind so as to forget how they individually struck its chords once. In his efforts of describing the time of the birth, the poet moves outdoors from inside the shells of the mind and narrates how the Summer’s warmth is vanquished when the war drums are struck by innumerous drops of pouring rain. The sweet fragrance of an unknown wild flower makes the mind forget what smile and tears are and is swept away by waves of ecstasy where they go hand-in-hand. It loses itself in a world where the promise of evanescence hangs in the air and lingers till the mind fades away into oblivion.

The third part of the poem starts with another inquisition and yet another imagery before that to take note. The poet imagines Time in its usual decaying self who keeps painting the future with its invisible hand as the poet moves on to seek the answer to the next question – ‘Where were you born?’ The description starts where the smog and the haze makes the fresh leaves of the trees lose life and become stale and forgotten. The trees stand tall and still in their royal arrogance and with a certain nonchalance of those who dwell in the slum and watch the trains run past them without so much of a second glance. So they stand there and watch them too with a practised lack of either curiosity or loathing, a feeling that separates the entire world from their own. The poet also describes another ‘where’ for his readers when he sings the song of a road that apparently runs straight towards the destination and then vanishes before the end is reached, before it fulfills the goal it was meant to and leaves us in a state of revelation. The imagery of space and place ends with a more mundane image where the poet describes apartments that have grown old with time and develops irreparable cracks which have made their way through the worn out walls reeling under the sighs of its residents, the gradually building despair in their hearts and have hit hard the foundation of life itself.

The fourth section starts with yet another question of the fundamental ‘why’ and paints an image of a rock that shifts shape with the movement of the sun and assumes a new role, a new side to discover. ‘Why were you born’ – the question resonates throughout this part of the poem where the poet has created an inevitable chain of thoughts and events that weave the very fabric of creation. Life becomes a slave of creation, having no other resort than to yield to its overtures and start blooming, while creation itself is enslaved by nature, who nurtures life and sustains it. Here the poet creates an unbreakable loop of life when nature too stands free to be in chains. Free-will remains not so free anymore, when the whiplash of instincts resounds and instincts again, bow down to nature. The circle is completed and at its centre we still find nature, nestling in the glory of life and its creation. But this birth sees life, unfair, as it is, and witnesses what was never meant to be. Reasons and logic waver in this life-to-be and emotions make futile attempts to stay afloat and eventually lose way in the quicksand of sense and sensibility. The affectionate mind is flagged as insane and all sense of duty remains hidden in cul-de-sacs of decadence and immorality. Love remains unrequited and unacknowledged in the shadow of endless conditions and the heart throbs to make its presence known in futility. Codes and terms of ‘elite living’ loses way in the wild, unkempt gushes of wind and the ‘cultured’ residents of the concrete jungle feel more and more engulfed by the fury of the deprived and lowly. A sinister foreboding hangs in the air while the wells of life go dry. The unforgiving desert gives life to thriving cacti and at the same time its children instill fear in the eyes of the reindeer fleeing to save its existence.

The last section of the poem sums up the images sketched so far and colours them with a somber tone of despair. The poet feels a certain pang of helplessness as he wants to know how it feels to be one among the dead and how the living might be any different from it. He feels the lack of the ability to do anything even if he knows everything and his perceptions remain no more than mere seeing and devoid of all feelings. It is a sense of an unfinished task that doesn’t let the poet be in peace. Hours pass and time fades away to meet an ending, perpetually incomplete. Maybe there is no hope, or maybe there is when a few tufts of green peep out to adorn the dream that has remained unknown to the reality.