Bhaskar Parichha
Read the blurb first: The book ‘is a celebration of the myriad shades of life…In a world of conflicting emotions, it becomes important to seek the irresistible joy that lies at the core of the human heart.’
Ranu Uniyal is a celebrated name in Indian poetry, even though her oeuvre is limited to just three anthologies – interestingly; she brings out one collection every six years. The earlier collections were: Across the Divide (2006) and December Poems (2012).The present collection has about eighty poems all of which have been published earlier in various journals and magazines both home and abroad.
Prof John Thieme,University of East Anglia, fittingly says the anthology ‘reinvigorates the possibilities of elegiac verse’.Ranu Uniyal is one of the ‘most original voices writing in India today’ and her poems have been translated into Hindi,Urdu,Malayalam and Uzbek languages. A professor of English at Lucknow University, her other books include two criticisms. One on Raja Rao’s Kanthapura and another one on the works of Margaraet Drabble and Anita Desai.
What excites the reader about this anthology is the poetic form and style. There are limericks, haikus, narratives and also couplets. The poems have a contemporary touch too. Take this one for example:
To live and to live happily
Is well-nigh possible
even if you lose your virginity
and the pockets in your trousers
refuse to carry your driving license
and the cell phone drifts
And finally dissolves inside
the hem of your skirt
your computer blinks
as you put your email id
and there is no face book
to confide in and you are left
with only what you believe in. (From a young girl’s diary)
Or this one:
Every woman
Is a man
A man is
A woman
Madam
Holds
Adam
And Eve is
Eve
Howsoever you
Please. (Mystery)
Ranu’s style of verse is pulsating and the themes are trite which make the poems lovely and enthralling. One distinguishing feature of the anthology is prose poem – an experimentation to go into raptures over .Prose poems, as we know, typically appear as prose, but reads like poetry. As Peter Johnson says, ‘prose poem plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels.”Seems, here too the experimentation is remarkable.
There are at least half a dozen of prose poems in this collection which are of varying length with an array of styles and subjects e.g. ‘At Falaknuma’,’Love Lies’,’Ma’s imperfect advice’ and ‘When God came down to earth’. And, the smallest poem in this anthology is just eight words:
Make it even,
this floor
without a ceiling (A Plea)
Published by Dhauli Books and with a handsome cover by Sarita Chouhan and Kirti Thakur,the anthology has some significant departures and a few momentous arrivals too. The poems are a mottled mixture of ideas – love, hate, hope, loneliness, spiritual bliss and so on.
Fruit picking, as the title of the anthology suggests, is an impressive calisthenics in muse and each of the verses indeed makes a fine pick.
The Day We Went Strawberry Picking In Scarborough
By Ranu Uniyal
Publisher: Dhauli Books
818/2502, Gobindeswar Road
Old Town, Bhubaneswar – 751002
2018