Dr. Santosh Bakaya’s latest book, Fog: a liquid Ditty Flows is a collection of poems with two parts, the first part, Fog, written as a long, narrative poem and the second part, A liquid Ditty Flows, written as a sequence of Roseate Sonnets. A Roseate Sonnet is a variation of the regular sonnet with two quatrains followed by a couplet and the last quatrain with the acrostic ROSE, a form innovated by Dr. Ampat Koshy.
Dr. Bakaya hints us about her crazy love for all things spooky and the influence of Edgar Allen Poe’s poems on her, a result of she being punished in her childhood and sent to an attic full of books, for being mischievous, a confession she boldly and earnestly recalls in her introductory note, A Poet Rambles.
Both Duane Vorhees and Dr. Ampat Koshy aptly acclaim Fog as a long narrative poem, though they differ in their points of view in comparing the history of long narrative poems and the influence on her work. The result from such insightful observations of erudite scholars only benefits the reader(s) in the end, widening their perceptions, adding generously to their literary inputs.
I cannot but restrain myself without praising Gargi for the two illustrations that are so amazing and I cannot go without mentioning Ayaz Razool Nazki for the beautiful cover photograph. It aptly signifies the theme of the book. Coming to Fog, written in quatrains with a rhyme scheme of AABB like A.E. Housman’s “To an athlete dying young,” and narrated from the point of view of first-person singular, Dr. Bakaya skillfully takes us to a forest where a boy appears, searching for a girl, smelling her presence. Amidst frogs, trees and owls that hoot with the breeze, the “undulating wilderness” and echoes of “Frantic footfalls” grip you, slowly, slowly, till the rivers mumble and darkness envelopes and silhouettes appear and disappear and ruffians and villains drag the girl, not to forget a man with frightening looks who yearns for liquor when suspense builds and the fever of anxiety culminates to palpable fear. Somewhere, in between, as bizarre thoughts of a subconscious mind unfold, and the thin thread between realism and surrealism seemingly intertwine, the narrator daringly unfurls her confusion and confides
with these lines:
Was the desolate boy a fevered mind’s creation
A frenzied dream, just a figment of my imagination?
Only a spark of madness, in the embers of the night?
Oh, I always had a very fertile and wacky imagination
Often, plead guilty to falling victim to hallucination.
I need to stop here in order to not break the suspense, but trust me, it isn’t an exaggeration when I say that some stanzas are so impressive with rich imagery that they will leave you with an impact of having watched scenes from a horror movie.
There’s a plethora of literary devices put to use effectively; personification, onomatopoeia, lots of alliterations that captivate you like “A confusing concoction of chaotic communication,” “feisty fireflies flitting,” allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s line from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and similes as in “moon like a seraph” and subtle inter-textual connotations, while the very title Fog is in itself metaphorical.
Yes, that’s Fog for you, but before I move on, let me tell you that somewhere amidst the outbreak of thoughts from the channels of the poet’s mind, there’s a sagacious eco-consciousness and a tone of compassion that leaves an underlying message for the reader as can be interpreted from the following lines:
“It’s not easy to be green when there is rampant plunder.
Your cruel, reckless behavior is tearing us asunder.”
The weeping willow groaned looking utterly forlorn.
“With this rampant destruction, we will soon be gone
and the only green will be the monster green-eyed.”
Asked the pine, “O, wise human, what is our fault
that we are at the receiving end of your assault?”
At this very open-ended question that makes the reader ponder and reflect, I move on to Part two, which is a collection of Roseate sonnets, as mentioned earlier. The tale unfolds through a man in old, dirty, tattered clothes, lost in his own world and thoughts, with pangs within. People around him look at him with contempt, some kids collide with him for pleasure but then he seems to be lost in a world of his own, oblivious, most of the time to the jeers of the crowd, as evident from these lines:
Running dazed, he peered around, looking for his lost treasure.
Obstreperous kids rudely jostled him for malicious pleasure.
Stoically he bore all the jeers and barbs of the adversary.
Enervated, his sunken face was sheathed in lines of worry.
What ache does the man endure within? Why does he remain oblivious to events around him at times and why does he smile unknowingly at other times?
Why does he observe the butterflies and horses with a sense of yearning and longing and why does his memory involuntarily think of nostalgia?
Thoughts dribble through his mind looking at a five-year-old child but why and what are those thoughts? Read on to explore the tale of the man and the secrets he possesses.
The refrain, “They did a jubilant tango, so merry; as if rejoicing in a new birth” is sure to arouse the interest of the reader but then in the end, the reader will be left with tears, full of empathy for the man, and this where Dr. Bakaya succeeds as a poet, as testified by the following moving verses:
No more did the lifeless ragamuffin’s eyes dance in mirth.
No more did they do a jubilant tango, as if rejoicing in a new birth.
The skillful narration of a man’s story in fifty sonnets, with fifty acrostic verses from the word Rose, not only conveys the society’s perception of a stranger merely based on his appearances and clothes, but also unravels the message that a man’s tears can have a story within and hints at how the society needs to be non-judgmental.
As for imagery, it is lavishly vivid and her vocabulary exemplary as usual. One’s eye sways with the rhythm and rhyme of her lyrics, written in her inimitable style. There’s this oxymoronic verse that becomes more emphatic as in
“His life had now been reduced to a desert, so barren and cold” and this intricately beautiful metaphor, ”Their life had been a delicately nuanced poem, so sublime.”
The book ends with an exclusive interview of her with Marian Eikelhof for her prize-winning poem. I strongly recommend that the younger generation read this to comprehend the nuances of poetry, the problems of the world and how powerful a tool poetry can be in dealing with harshly realistic social maladies.
Let me congratulate Marian Eikelhof for the diligent questions that elicit insightful answers from Dr. Bakaya. The poem Blue Bench with its alliterative title also speaks of the blues of a dad and a daughter and hence is metaphorical as well. But then, what is the gloom that sheaths them?
It is what someone, somewhere is experiencing, and again one that moves one to tears, is heart-wrenching, and a story within a poem. Read on to explore the girl’s grief and her father’s philosophical question about the meaning of life.
Before I sign off, let me recapitulate that this book is an exclusive collection of poems written with her excellent command in English, right from Fog that revives us in its narration memories of Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Noyes and Vikram Seth, yet unique with her riotous imagination and diction, to the tale through the sonnets that evokes empathy in a movingly compelling manner, and the interview that adds inputs to the already imaginative yet realistically insightful collection and the beautifully poignant poem, Blue Bench. At a literary juncture when free verse and short poems seem to be more popular, I applaud her daring effort in bringing forth such narrative poems written with lyrical tempo.
Authorpress and Dr. Bakaya succeed again!
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Brinda Vinodh is an author and a postgraduate in Econometrics.