Subhashree Tanima Nayak’s poetry collection “Shadow of a Speck of Dream” makes a pleasant read. Going through the poems in the collection is like passing through the shady corridors of a jungle with flowering trees on both sides whose intoxicating beauty is a feast to the eyes, when the outer part of it reels under the twin assaults of heat and humidity. Below, as the zigzag and uneven path one treads, it is symbolic of life’s course that gives many bumpy rides with surprising twists and turns corroborating Virginia Woolf’s views: “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged...” By the time one has finished reading the poems, it is no longer difficult to find the poet behind the mask.
The poet gets affected by small things she comes across. She picks up things from life’s situations, blends them with what she has imbibed from the life lived so far. As she is rooted to the soil and never cut-off from it, her poems are enriched with life experiences. She is distressed when she finds a girl or a woman is ill-treated by an indifferent patriarchy who takes her for granted and blatantly denies what is due to her. Such ideas are echoed in poems like: ‘A girl’, ‘For a daughter’, ‘A woman’, ‘A married village woman’.
A cardinal rule of patriarchy is that a woman cannot do as she pleases. She is to be subjected to intense scrutiny throughout her life—every utterance she makes is to be deconstructed and critiqued. As she is treated with contempt by the male dominated society, she is also portrayed despicably. She is like a marionette that bobs up and down like a bird right from her birth till death. She remains neither the master of her body nor her mind. When a girl steps out of her house, insecurity looms and she faces jeering hostility and cat calls.
Such a condition is foisted on her which she never wanted. This has been beautifully articulated in the poem ‘For the Daughter.’ However, when a woman’s tolerance comes to the end of the tether, she rises and takes the posture of a virago to protect her self-respect. In Indian tradition, love and longing, and the pain of separation have inspired poetry and art. In conformity with it, love remains the mainstay in this poetry collection. The love expressed here is the artistic expression of the poet’s own love. Thus the poet is never dismissive about physical love. The poet is young and full of beans. But she is neither impudent nor impulsive about it. No doubt, she is passionate, but she is not bent on being swayed away by the heat of youth like the youths described in WB Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ where they are “in one another’s arms”, “at their song”, and caught in “sensual music”. Her poems are the artistic expressions of her inner feelings and longings for the lover, similar to Kalidash’s ‘Meghdootam’. The poet’s passion is articulated with such effortless artistry and craftsmanship that the personal elements are transcended to become universal. This is a characteristic of good poetry as readers find reflection of their thoughts and feelings in these poems. However, the poet doesn’t remain obsessively stuck up in the physical experience level. She takes it as a spring board for making a leap to reach a metaphysical level where self is transcendental.
The poem ‘Father’ is an awesome tribute in glowing terms to a father in recognition of his sacrifice for the children and the tenacity he displays in shouldering family responsibilities. He is like a camel that is on his knees, day in and day out. He only gives to the family, though he has nothing to take from it. A father has the depth of an ocean—calm, serene and peaceful.
A creative writer puts into their work the essence of themselves. And for a poet, poetry is the sublimation of the finer thoughts put in words. In order not to let the travails of life get her down, she slips into a dream. However, the size of it is not a big one; it is, instead, as tiny as a speck where small is big and little is more. In life too much reality is unbearable, as, to use TS Eliot’s words, “humankind can’t bear very much reality”. So to escape from it noiselessly for a while is a wise thing. A dream in itself is physically non-existent and unreal. And to imagine the shadow of it gives cushion like softness is at the most surreal. But it is not farthest removed from reality. However, it carries in its womb the possibility as vast as an ocean that has an unfathomable depth. Though it is simple and unadorable in appearance, but it is, to use Virginia Woolf’s words, “complex and many”. Besides, as it is not extricated from the past and the present may influence the future, it is, to use Walt Whitman’s language, “I contain multitudes”. Thus through love and a dream, the poet has embarked on a new path of self discovery.
Her poems are unequivocal and simple like truth that assumes obscurity on needless analysis. Yet with striking comparisons and startling images, they have an inexhaustible appeal like Cleopatra who instead of cloying “makes hungry where she most satisfies”. Like the sweet fragrance of flowers carried around by air in a garden, love and longings permeate through her poems taking them to a distinct lyrical level.
(Subhashree Tanima Nayak, an MSC in Chemistry, has written a number of poems in Odia and English. She is winner of a number of awards)
