Book: Subliminal
Radha Chakravarty
Hawakal Publishers, 2023
PP 107
ISBN 978-81-19858-52-1
Price INR 500
Radha Chakravarty, an internationally published poet, critic, and translator, is a former professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies [Ambedkar University, Delhi].
In your Eyes a River: Poems, has just been published [December, 2025]
Many of her works have been critically acclaimed and awarded.
Subliminal, her debut book of poems, [2023] is multi-layered, with many emotional depths, which needs to be read and re-read to get to the kernel of each poem.
Dedicated to her “great grandmother, Renuka Chakraborty, a self-taught woman of letters …” the poems in this book of 107 pages, delve beneath surface realities to unearth submerged narratives from the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives and our relationships with the human and natural realms we inhabit.
With a deft pen, she writes poem after poem on eclectic themes, revealing to the world that everything has a secret story, everyone is involved in survival games, has hidden fears, longings, and secret memories.
Among the eclectic mix, the reader is delighted to find a sonnet, skinny poems, and Fibonacci poems.
“Designs in Kantha” P 19, is one poem which touched me deeply, where her poignant words create an image of a fond grandmother, lovingly sewing “intriguing patterns in silk strands”.
“Fleet fingers, fashioning
silent fables, designed to swaddle
innocent, infant dreams, shielding
silk- soft folds of newborn skin
from reality’s needle pricks,
abrasive touch of life in the raw”.P 19
Chakravarty has a panache for alliteration as can be seen in lines such as these:
“Fleet fingers, fashioning
silent fables,”
“Shielding silk -soft folds”.
We glimpse the pristine soul of a seeker in these poems, who looks around, wondering, introspecting, seriously mulling over ways in which the world can become a better place to live in, where there are yearnings, traces of “silken cocoon dreams” and “the sigh of the breeze in vanished trees.
In her poems, we also hear the resounding echo of vacuities, ‘ with vignettes of lost longings and belongings.’
Her poems, Ahalya’s awakening, and Walking through the Flames are ablaze with a disdain for patriarchy. In the latter poem, she maintains that Sita emerged unsinged, yet, she was scorched within by enduring the test of the ordeal by fire. But, still the world continued to feel no shame or guilt. It is a tragic fact, that even in the present world, things have not changed; the centennial patriarchy continues to hold sway with impunity.
Ahalya waits to set the story of her ‘imputed impurity’ right, but none hears her wordless plea, and her silent screams.
‘Year after year, age after age,
with the patience of a rock, I waited
in frozen agony , for the touch
of another god’s sacred foot to bring me back to life –:”
Chakravarty concludes,
“for women,
even in this new, fast advancing world,
not much has actually changed.” P 106
In another poem, “The violence of a Volcano”, P 98, she reiterates that a “woman’s silent agony is not ‘unlike a smouldering volcano, smouldering with aeons of suppressed rage.”
She also scoffs at our materialistic selves, which are enamored by tantalizing ads that
‘leap at us from TV screens,
grab our eyeballs, fill our ears,
with promise of success or bliss,
magic cure for all our ills.” [Subliminal P, 76]
Under the hypnotic spell, we reach the river’s glittering edge as though an invisible Pied Piper is drawing us there, and down we go, driven into ‘the depths of our own desire.’
The very first poem hammered poignantly at my heart:
“In the pressed flower between the pages
The story of you and me.” [Memories of Loss, P, 13]
An aura of serene sensibility envelops every poem, and in poems like [Alien, P 17], we find the air swirling with explosive yearning, spectres clinging, and ghostly voices clamoring.
She laments that the world has become too arrogant, self –seeking, everyone dreaming of immortal fame,
“But the indifference of constellations
shrivels our hubris, humbles our pride” [Starlight, P 44]
Under Seductions, PP53 – 58, we come across bewitching poems on fruits –Apple, Mango, Pineapple, Tangerine, Guava, Coconut- all are skinned, stripped, squeezed, sliced, ripped, chopped and dismembered for the succulent delight of the human palate. In all these poems, I could hear the lament of the fruits, the allure and seduction of which the humans cannot resist, succumbing to their charms, wreaking havoc on their fragile bodies.
These days, I have been reading and reviewing several books of poems, and each book offers something different: a new perspective, a new paradigm, and a new outlook. Needless to say, every book has enriched me tremendously. Each poet looks at the same thing, but experiences different emotions, and reacts differently.
I am strongly convinced that this sensitive collection, with a multitude of themes and perspectives, has the power to change the contours of this screwed-up world. When so many soul-stirring poems are let loose in a topsy-turvy world, there can be nothing but a lingering fragrance of love, goodwill and compassion.
In Key – a Sonnet, she laments the dystopian world the vile virus had unleashed and hopes that:
“as the old world recedes we must search for a key
To unlock the future, a new world, more free.”
.
What the world needs is not the
‘swift spreading
pandemic of hate
infecting our soul, filling hearts
with toxic venom, killing all kindness, blinding our gaze,”
Hate [A Fibonacci Poem, P 26]
“pure breath of love’
is all that is needed to resuscitate this choking and gasping world.
Gifts, p 104, encapsulates the gifts that make life meaningful:
“Cool green shelter of the banyan tree
Water for the thirsting crow
……..
Open door for strangers on a stormy night
……………
unconditional gifts,
we discover the meaning
of kindness,
of the real kind.”
Reminds me of the words of Ernest Hemingway,
“In our darkest moments, we don’t need solutions or advice. What we yearn for is simply a human connection-
a quiet presence, a gentle touch. Hold my hand until dawn arrives, helping me remember my strength.”
Her poems put the readers under a spell, pulling them into a world where mundanity morphs into profundity, quotidian is transformed into something significant, urging us to go beyond the realm of the conscious to the unconscious\subconscious. With her, we shed tears for the girl at the traffic light, “her eyes emptied of the fragrance of a spring that, for her never came.” [Flower seller, P 73]. With her we even hear ‘the hint of a lost green spring’ ‘in the veins of a fallen leaf’. [Memories of Loss, P 13] Her poems on the nightmarish Pandemic make us shudder anew, leaving us with a lump in the throat.
Her overwhelmed heart yearns for peace- ‘The peace I seek is the calm we feel,
when we face the darkness not alone,
but holding hands, you and me, together” [Peace Process, P 68]
Thanks Radha Chakraborty for gifting this book to the literary world- a book that should be mandatory addition to every university and college library.
Looking forward to more books from your prolific pen and sensitive heart.
And yes, hearty congratulations on the publication of your new book of poems-
In your Eyes a River: Poems.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr. Santosh Bakaya is an academician, poet, essayist, novelist, and TEDx speaker, with more than twenty published books to her credit..
