‘Sunset in a Cup’ by Dr. Santosh Bakaya is an exquisite collection of poems that is startling in its poetic intensity and abounds with her unbound joy in nature and compassionate heart. The book plants poetry in the heart with hope, peace, wisdom, and inspiration. With poems such as ‘Demagogues All-Knowing’, she helps us to see the beauty in nature and people despite the “venom pouring, hatred soaring, and innocent blood flowing…in a half-crazed world.”
Dr Bakaya is an inexhaustible guide to nature with robins trilling, pups romping, squirrels scurrying with gold whiskers, peacocks preening, owls hooting, bulbuls nesting, cicadas chirping, woodpeckers pecking, rabbits scuttling, rivers babbling, and clouds floating through her poems. The natural world remains a source of great inspiration as a dejected poet writes with great frenzy, blooming as nature blooms outside his window with a bird trilling, a hibiscus peeping from behind the curtains, a frisky squirrel scurrying along the boundary wall, and a robin’s incredulous symphony [The Dejected Poet]. It is impossible not to be transported to the scenes she describes with such vivid imagery as in ‘The Vagrant Sunbeam’. She writes, “Sitting near the window of the cottage, by the garrulous Lidder River, I am transfixed by a vagrant sunbeam catching sprays of water and sublimating them into rainbow hues.” I am transfixed, too, by the sheer poetry of nature unfolding before my eyes.
There is a constancy with time in many of these poems. In ‘An Indignant Robin’ a robin trills amusingly as her kid brother sits on a sun-drenched boulder bawling in the bulwarks of her memory. Another robin sits amusedly outside the reclusive poet’s study today as he runs his fingers through his stubble. There is also a lyrical quality to the book, showcasing the poet’s unbound joy in using rhymes, alliteration, imagery, and other poetic devices, as one takes warm sips from this cup of poetry.
Written with empathy, the book presents a slice of life that highlights the struggles of daily existence, and yet the small joys don’t go unnoticed, as she pays so much attention to the little details. Unsung scenes familiar to us make their way into the book like a toddler sleeping as his mother looks on blissfully, a crying colicky child soothed by his mother, a beggar rattling his mug of small change, a gardener weeding, and an urchin rummaging for splinters of his dreams in a garbage bin. The “mundane is turned to magic’ to quote her lines in ‘Magic’ touched upon by the magic of her quill like sun-kissed gold dew as a grandmother reprimands a child throwing tantrums on the floor, a mother bounces her baby and tickles him till he emits a happy chortle. To quote from ‘Is it Time’, her “heart beats for the impoverished, it beats for the homeless. It beats for the orphans, it beats for the mangy mongrel on the street.”
There is so much love and care invested in a single gesture of a tired farmer’s wife as when “the farmer slumps down on the earth, and massages his work calloused hands”, she “rummages in a small, shabby bag by her side and pulls out a bottle, with gnarled fingers, she lovingly applies some oil on his hands, rubbing them with deft, gently strokes.” All this, while “a bulbul hops next to the farmer…trying to heal him by her song” and “the scarecrow looks at the two and smiles a lopsided smile”. I quite felt like the scarecrow in that moment when man and nature were in total consonance.
I find the use of situational irony in many of her poems, highlighting a deeper theme between what is explicitly revealed and what is actually meant. In the ‘The Cap Seller’, the Cap Seller picks up unsold Santa caps, “ignoring the noise of festivities coming from a sparkling house and a child’s squeals for more plum cakes… Christmas Father, they said, was busy elsewhere.”
“Sunset in a Cup” presents a very poignant slice of life. It touches the heart with its vivid imagery of the beauty of nature, hope, humanity, love, and nostalgia. ‘The Last Shikara Ride’ transported me to a couple’s last shikara ride in Dal Lake in Kashmir where “the night fell, and some strains of music, so soothing and soft, wafted across to us from another shikara, and I was enchanted. Blown over.” So was I, totally enchanted and blown over as I felt the scene unfolding before my eyes and I peered in the darkness, feeling the pain in the lines “Tell me, did you cast one last lingering glance at my face in the muted light, did you?”
How can one not have moist eyes and be overwhelmed with nostalgia emanating from such poems as ‘A Fractured Reality’ and ‘The Chill’. A wistful longing for time to stay still overtakes me as “Hand in gnarled hand, they walk. An eye fixed on the clock. Tick-tock-tick-tock. Till it will tick no more. Till they will tick no more.” In ‘The Chill’, the chill of old age hangs heavy in the air as “The lonely, old woman sits in her chair dreaming… making a pair of socks… Under, a tree, on a hard bed sleeps a skeletal man, lost to the world, undisturbed by birds twittering overhead… Then with a pair of freshly knitted socks for a newborn, on wobbly knees, she hobbles towards a shack.”
There is a sense of mortality, too, perhaps because many poems here were penned during or post-COVID. In ‘The Eternal Dreamer that is me’ she says, “When the final moment comes, I will still be dreaming, my cluttered mind teeming with dreams,.. I must concede, whoever was behind this, did an excellent job with the curation of this masquerade. Even the illusory world appears so real…Kudos to the creator!” Kudos to you, Dr Bakaya for taking us on this wonderful voyage of the illusory world.
About the Reviewer
Avantika Vijay Singh is a communications professional, wearing the hats of a writer, editor, poet, researcher, and photographer. She has authored two solo anthologies, edited three anthologies, and has been published in national and international journals. She received the Nissim International Award Runner Up 2023, WE Gifted Poet 2024, and WE Illumination Award 2024.
