Review of Sanskarnama Nabina Das

Review of Sanskarnama:
Book: Sanskarnama: Poetry for our times
Writer:  Nabina Das
Publisher:  Red River, 2018
Price: 300 INR
Pages: 73

 
Dystopia is here, dark, dismal and dreary, and is cheeky enough to masquerade as ache din, where time is wasted  in discussing the etymology of the word ‘lynching’, heads crane and look into kitchens to see what is being cooked, innocence is bashed every day, and sedition clamped at the drop of a hat .   According to a newspaper report, a question recently asked in a self- financed school in Gujarat was, ‘How did Gandhi commit suicide?’ Well!

 This nightmare will be unending, and will stay on with impunity, if genuine, rebellious voices do not speak up.  Nabina Das is one such voice which lashes out at the panjandrums frothing at the mouth with jingoistic fervor and a dismally skewed rhetoric of misplaced patriotism.

Her pen scribbles, doodles, writes, writhes , does a tandava, thumping in angry bursts, sometimes so indignant, that it appears that the paper that she writes on, will suffer a fiery annihilation with the tongues of fire leaping forth from her pen.   She says ,
‘My pen is downright anti national now
it follows the rebel ink trails and writes elegies’ [hymn of the anti- national p 16]  
She calls this book, ‘a joint statement in art and protest’- a collaborative venture with her sensitive poet- publisher, Dibyajyoti Sarma, whose exquisite art -work embellishes this  immensely beautifully done , sleek book.
She is indeed a ‘serious political poet of our times’, as another intrepid and immensely powerful poet, Manglesh Dabral, says so eloquently in the cover blurb.
 “If obeisance is the norm, if slavery is the rule, if gender oppression is the tenet- Sanskarnama is my protest and faith both.”  Thus writes Das in ‘A few words of Sanskar’, and I must concede, these few words pack a punch.

“Prayer for Gorakhpur babies’, [p 39] is so heart- wrenching a poem that it left me with a lump in my throat, and tear- streaked cheeks.[ In August - September 2017, there had been a huge number of child deaths due to medical negligence in  supposedly one of the biggest  government hospitals , BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur , UP . The oxygen supply in the hospital pipes ran out.]

Little fingers, little toes, smell of damp swabs
silent clutter of inert soft chests
some bit of lyrical anxiety in the air
 the gurgling inside out throats halted

and babies like yesterday’s flowers

 

I found ‘Apologies for our times ‘[p 13] a visceral punch:  

But I’m sorry for all the songs that I had composed, for imagining
children will live and the oxygenated world would be better one day  

With Saaqi she wails,

“If Saaqi were to pick up the ruddy cup
she’d only wail today sans ecstasy: O mere rabb!
Where are all the flowers gone in this poison clime,
what pellets do you hurl at us, what hex do you rub?” [rubaiyat for Kashmir p 64]

Full of  incisive satire,  ‘my neighbour is a gau rakshak’, ‘hymn of the anti- national’ ,   and heart wrenching ones  on Gauri Lankesh  and Junaid which  make the reader reel under their assault, they are searing indictments of the present day political scenario, juxtaposed with soft poetic caresses .  A book to jerk comatose consciences out of their slumber .