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ISSN: 0974-892X

VOL. V
ISSUE I

January, 2011

 

 

Abha Shukla Kaushik

Insect’s Nest and Other Poems

Mukhopadhyay, Aju. Insect’s Nests and Other Poems, Gurgaon: Prasoon Publication, 2010. Price Rs. 95

Short Verse Delight

Mukhopadhyay, Aju. Short Verse Delight, Gurgaon: Prasoon Publication, 2010. Price Rs. 95

 

Aju Mukhopadhyay is an award winning bilingual poet writing in Bangla and English. ‘Insect Nest and Other Poems’ and ‘Short Verse Delight’ are two of his latest collections of poems.

Insect’s Nests and Other Poems contains 44 poems divided into three sections: ‘With Nature Again’, ‘Already with you, humans’ and ‘looking the other way.’

It is collection of poems which celebrate nature with a keen eye for observations. Aju is able to capture in words the activities and knowledge that can be found in nature. His poems have a song like quality and yet are simple compositions which hold an appeal to the common man for whom it is a welcome change from the cosmopolitan drudgery of concrete jungles and ugly social issues that modern life is full of. He gives due prominence even to the smallest of creatures like a wasp.

The poems reveal that the poet has substantial knowledge of trees and their benevolence. Some of the poems like ‘The Uncivilised’ and ‘The Adivasi’ follow the theme of man being the enemy of man, of displacement and alienation. The collection has poems dealing with almost every aspect of nature and connects it to philosophy of life and its transitoriness

Ain’t all the great constructions
like insect’s nest
brittle and fragile
sure to go
today or tomorrow
measured by time?

Short Verse Delight is a collection of Haikus and Tankas Japanese short verse forms. Once again the world of nature and its beautiful phenomena have been presented before the readers with striking effect.  There is a lot of variety in his Haikus which are more personal than anything else. The section on Tanka is in a mode restrained voice which is both vigorous and calm at the same time. He is able to connect emotions and experience in a lucid language full of passion. The book is dedicated to Rabindranath Tagore as a commemoration of his 150th birth anniversary. There are write-ups on Short Verse forms, Tagore and Haiku in General in the later half of the book. One wishes these were in the beginning to enable an entry to an unknowing reader, who would then been able to understand them better. Nevertheless Aju retains the essential attributes of concise expression, clarity, sensory immediacy and allusive quality of hinting rather than explicit statement in his verse and comes out as a master poet.