The King of the Crickets Had It by Santosh Bakaya

The King of the crickets Had it

Santosh Bakaya

ISBN 978-93-6095-689-9

Authors Press, New Delhi, 2024

Pp, 100

₹ 295/ $ 25

 

Reviewed by Brindha Vinodh

Brindha Vinodh

Dr. Santosh Bakaya needs no introduction in the contemporary literary world. Enthusiastically expressing her thoughts through collection after collection of poetry books, she is astonishingly awesome in being prolific. Here is another exquisite book in her signature style- “The king of the crickets had it.”

In her introductory page, she says most of the poems were penned during the pandemic, when the world experienced never-before-such-a-scenario. Therefore, in the first section titled “Voices,” she begins with the sound of crickets echoing in the night amidst all the loneliness, and choking voices resulting from the void of emptiness engulfing humans, slowly progressing to the sinking “ship” in the poem “Bitter Taste” from the section “As Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean,” where, by ship, she means life as a metaphor, and her very own one at that. She writes,

“I had Dreams. But then many had dreams.

Dreams can be no solace in such a nightmarish scenario.

……….

Martin Luther King Jr. too had a dream, still unrealized.

Will my dream dry up like a raisin in the sun?

…………..

Where was the sun? A storm was in the offing.

The water kept rising………..

Was the ship plunging into a chasm?”

Her eloquence in alluding to Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King and the helplessness of unfulfilled dreams in a pathetic plight of reality is applaudable, the result of which is this beauty of a poem, which is poignantly powerful and deftly immaculate, and by bitter taste she means not just the bitterness of the tongue of a feverish body, but the bitter taste of life itself, arising from parameters beyond her control, which finally relishes sweetness through the birth of this poem.

“A Delectable Detour” from the section, “The Tremor and the Tumult” is indeed, as the name suggests, a detour to the world of nostalgia, where she fondly recalls her “disciplinarian dad” in her ancestral house, overlooking the flowing ebbs of the Jhelum river. She recalls of delicious pancakes for breakfast and chocolate fudges, but what is impressive is her play around the words of Dicken’s novels, “Great Expectations” and “Hard times.” She pens,

“sadly eyeing Great Expectations, long fallen,

face down on Hard times.”

Dr. Bakaya is known for her naughtiness as a child, evident from her earlier collections, but here, I marvel at her brilliant wordplay. Hard times of humans and Great expectations for a better future [?] An effortless pun, if I am interpreting it right! The poem “Toothless glee” reminds me of a poem of hers in another collection, “Fractured reality” from “Sunset in a cup”- similar in its subtle approach towards ageing and love in old age, which makes me think if she is drawing connections between empty nest syndrome and the solitary gloom of pandemic times. In this section, the word night is frequently used, both as a metaphor and in its literal sense, to add emphasis on the dark times, I presume. Many poems in this section leave a lingering memory, “The girl with the stack of wood” and “The sad sparrow” in particular delve on powerful topics of the basic need of food and ecological responsibility or the lack of it, causing sparrows to dwindle in numbers. “The soldier has come”- which she says is inspired by the painting “Homecoming” by Norman Rockwell- strikes from a different angle in the end, making one ponder with this question- “Why war, why not peace?” “I am thirsty, mom” is also an unforgettable poem, haunting, hinting, in fact, about the next big war being that for water.

In the section “Ramblings,” “The frail strength of an aging man” has a gracefully mellow approach in its tone and is a mixture of compassion, inspiration and the blatant truth of mortality of man and immortality of time. On the contrary, “The notes perched on butterfly wings” is a pleasant one, a recall of the past, brimming with nostalgia, the beauty of childhood, yearning for that juvenile joy with catchy onomatopoeic lines,

“Unfazed, we continued to hum, banging, clanging, 

dangling and hanging from those trees of childhood, 

their leaves crackling with anxiety.”

In her poem, “On my virtual wall,” virtual reality is captured through daffodils dancing on her friend’s virtual wall, the fragrance of bougainvillea from another’s when social distancing was the norm, but the take away for today as one reflects nearly five years later is that we, as humans, should remind ourselves that at a time when breathing was a blessing, we understood not to take things for granted; it is only wise on our part that we adhere to love and peace forever, unmasking hatred, which also happens to be a theme in disguise not just in this collection, but Bakaya’s others as well.

The dominant subject of this entire collection is the abominable aura of a world hit by covid, but in silence, she seeks for a voice, a voice suffocated and throttled not just by a virulent virus, but one that has been suppressed by other factors in general, in a broader sense, thereby doing her job as a poet, hence the title from a line in Federico Garcia Lorca’s “The Little Mute Boy.” 

Undoubtedly, many literary devices have been used, layers of metaphors, excellent use of alliterations as in “Wicked whorls of whimsical, wheezing warriors” and “Blustery butterflies flitted around, flaunting flamboyant hues” [Barricaded no more], onomatopoeia (mentioned earlier too) apart from this one- “But it was yakking away – yak…Yak… yak …”[ A growl, a Yelp] and allusions to works of many writers like Dickens, Noami, Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver, etc. The use of language is copiously rich, though I am not surprised by it, having read her earlier collections.

There’s a column of her interview with Maria Miraglia in the concluding pages of this book, which is a unique initiative of exposing more of her thoughts in a poetry collection, this is the second of its kind if I am not mistaken, the previous one being from another collection. In it, she mentions about the wall Frost talks about, and how she perceives poetry as a powerful medium sans boundaries. She recalls that she started penning poems from class six, inspired by a girl in her class, and I take this opportunity to congratulate that now-grown-up-girl who knowingly or unknowingly introduced to the world a poet, who has been unstoppable ever since, and Maria Miraglia for evincing it out from Bakaya. Let her voice be heard more and more!

I can’t but conclude without mentioning about three different blurbs of three literary personalities, Dr. Lakshmi Kannan on the front cover and Dr. Koshy and Poet Laureate Richard Doiron on the back, each with their own perceptions of this book, but the common thread being appreciation for her splendid diction, which I wholeheartedly agree. The cover is blue, beautiful and expansive, mirroring her thoughts in this collection. AuthorsPress and Santosh Bakaya have become a wonderful combination and I wish them both success in their future endeavours as well.

Reviewer bio: Brindha Vinodh is a poet, writer, reviewer, literary critic and a former copy editor. Her debut poetry book- “Autumn in America and other poems” has been critically acclaimed. She is the recipient of Reuel International Prize for Poetry with an honourable mention and Poiesis Award International for excellence in poetry (Xpress Publications).

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Setu, March 2025