Title of the book- DEWED
Author – Nandita Bose
Publisher – Atta Galatta
Price – Rs 275
Pages – 104
he Bengaluru-based poet-writer Nandita Bose’s verse is so refreshingly uncomplicated that it just gets absorbed straight in, in the reader’s being. One gets taken aback by the sheer intensity-cum-diversity of the entire expanse… hitting, her verse, the emotions, the relays. A book review by humra quraishi
I’m all for the uncomplicated and the simple and the straight forward. Whether it is verse or prose or a person!
And the Bengaluru-based poet-writer Nandita Bose’s verse is so refreshingly uncomplicated that it just gets absorbed straight in, in the reader’s being. In fact, when she handed me her this particular book I’d thought I would quote a verse or two from it, in one of my columns but then I was completely taken aback by the sheer intensity-cum-diversity of the entire expanse… hitting, her verse, the emotions, the relays.
Nandita’s verse takes you along rather too spontaneously, without any pulls or pressures. There comes in that instant connect. It’s best to put right here her verse…you’ll then perhaps comprehend what I’m trying to relay.
Nandita Bose’s verse tucked in, in this book:
‘everyone warned me/
circumstances were against it /
people thought it was a bad idea/
acquaintances hoped for better sense/
friends were unsupportive/
intimates scandalized/
my judgement was overridden/
all caution ignored/
you drew me towards you/
I went.’
—–
‘Come, walk with me where no one goes,/
talk of things no one does,/
of how your heart grew young,/
mine old,/
How to reach out to death and pretend/
to enjoy birthdays and gifts,/
from those who will not give us time,/
tell me of dreams you no longer dream,/
or of graveyards you visit every day/
I will tell you of a childhood/
In which I died unseen.’
_____
‘Those canals now dry and boats burnt/
as firewood/
Our parrots are gone. In the orchards /
only shadows of crows./
The mud path, straight as vermillion parting/
mussed by elephant grass/
Even kites don’t fly in my village anymore,/
just the young, away/
Between here and my village centuries break/
ageing like hills/
I would walk back but they built walls/
No man’s land a shooting range/
Annihilation needs no wars or the plague/
