review By Rochelle Potkar

Of every other emotion and feeling, love is the most powerful, and though this theme groans under a dismission of romanticising life, it flutters every now and then to the surface with equally redemptive qualities.

What makes possible dialog between two poets, who have never met and are separated by vast expanses of time and space? Perhaps their intuitive understanding of time and space itself, and all that lies in between.

In a dream, there is a sea in the last century/and there we are on a bed of shells naked/and making love, shells crumbling.

Ritamvara writes from the ‘I am’ of her heart, whereas Ra Sh is many books and epiphanies old. Yet the two poets hinge the incorrigibility of love across a time-tesseract of centuries, hypothesising the immortality of this life-nucleus.

‘…I am submerged/in this river, counting the stars that/drowned while we lived.’

Each poem is like holding water in tender trembling palms. You glean the reflection of quivering moons in phrases pensive and tricky, yet knowing and liberating.

In this pastiche of time-passages, sagas of alternate histories take their place, culminating climaxes of dispersal or laying bare secrets in antechambers of revelation. Elements of wind and weather are personified like Greek gods, exploring the statis of time in each stanza.

‘I don’t toss on the bed at the cry of Aazan,/nor do I whimper at the strumming of Bhimpalasi/raag in sitar on dead afternoons.’

From a bricolage of social observance, philosophical contemplations, and examining interconnectedness, these poems express their spirit steadfastly.

The weight of a book is not in paper kilograms then, but refreshing phrases that carry on their delicate shoulders the weight of dreams, nostalgia, and a longing for all things precious.

So even as I held this slim chapbook by Ritamvara Bhattacharya and Ra Sh, sifting through its pages, the notion of its light-weightiness evaporated, transcending even notions of (many-a-) weighty poetry omnibuses of: but regurgitated poems.

‘Like a meteor you hit me headlong/and I stumble back with a cry.

Ra Sh is an Indian English poet with three collections of poetry, Architecture of Flesh, The Bullet Train and Other Loaded Poems, and Kintsugi by Hadni, and several books of translation.

Ritamvara Bhattacharya writes from a darling’s heart, Darjeeling. Her first collection of poems August Rituals will shortly be published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata.

To purchase a copy of the book click here.

Banner image by Marcin has been downloaded from Unsplash.com