Author: Satbir Chadha
Authorspress (2020)
ISBN 978-93-89824-06-3
Satbir Chadha is an award-winning poet, critic, academician and artist, all rolled into one. As the title suggests explicit, she is transparent in straight-from-the-heart expressions, sometimes witty, sometimes romantic, yet leaves a lump in the hearts of the readers. Her observations and perceptions from every day life forces her to express them diligently.
This collection contains 80 poems with an introduction by Dr. Santosh Bakaya and blurbs by Gauri Dixit, Vijay Nair and Dr. Ampat Koshy. Dr Bakaya states in her introduction that this is a book ‘serving the choicest delicacies for all literary palates, a waft of fresh air tingling the senses, slowly making the reader drift into a meditative state of mind’, and I fully endorse her view.
The poems have been written over a period of four years from 2016 to 2019 indicative of her thoughts and themes having undergone thorough and deep deliberations, events of historical relevance well researched and etched in the pages of history, her humane thoughts and experiences, all outfitted in words of her wisdom and each poem proves this beyond doubt.
This is a kaleidoscope of poems dealing with different emotions presented with effortless simplicity and touches the sensitivity of the readers. Her themes revolve around socio-political concerns, anguish over societal degradations, violence against women and children among others with a m├йlange of emotions and is meant for an audience of all age groups.
The title poem ‘Glass Door’ sets the tone of this collection just with a few words enough to touch the hearts of the readers with its forthrightness.
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| Satbir Chadha |
-----One slices invisibly
Like a surgical scalpel
But they all bleed
And bleed
Nothing clots
Inside, something dies
Every time
Behind the closed glass doors
Of a woman’s fortitude.
Poem ‘Flirtations’ clearly indicates the inconsistencies meted out to boys and girls or the lines drawn between the man-woman identities with an ulterior motive, yet women prove their mettle amidst conflicts, when the outcome should be definitely in favour of them.
‘I ‘ll be Right Back’ is a fine poem, a tale in verse, wherein the poet portrays a man assuring his lady that he will be right back and her solid faith in those words sees her not to lose her mind, even when her son tries in vain to make her believe that he has got the news that he is gone. But at the end, her intuition proves right and he comes back. The poem concludes with a twist at the end, which makes one teary-eyed.
As she nodded teary eyed
He took her home and put her in bed
He kissed her eyes, he kissed her lips
He kissed her pearly forehead
Her vigil over she smiled in peace
Then at last she shut her eyes
Never to open again.
Poem Dejavu makes us aware of the ruthless happenings in the medical field, the fate of a person whose right kidney was removed without his knowledge or consent while he got admitted for gall bladder surgery. These types of inhumane acts, that too, from persons we trust next to God being saviours of life are disheartening and disgusting, but true. The humanist in Satbir Chadha holds a mirror to these types of misdeeds in the society in many of her poems.
While in Poem ‘Those Lazy Afternoon Miles’ the poet’s concern for the safety of children inside school as well as guardians and parents is displayed, it is the poverty of street children that is dealt with in poem ‘A Guilt-Ridden Passer-by’.
Some folks I’d see while passing on street corners
They’d be kids in tatters with soothers in their mouths
Doubles up in a swing crafted from the mother’s torn saree
Saw them playing there on the same sidewalk
Barefoot in faded frocks or shorts and T shirts
When they should have been at school………
‘Please Don’t’ is a poem dealing with deception veiled in kindness especially shown to young girls and one would feel a lump in throat after reading this poem:
Everyone hugs me
See what you have done to me
You hug me and squeeze me
And make me bleed between my legs
I’m scared I’ll soon be dead
Like our dog when he cut his leg
Still everyone just hugs me.
The pain and helplessness of a little girl depicted will haunt the readers long after reading the poem. Satbirji has a golden heart which wants to eradicate the decadence, bone-stuck in society’s opaque innards.
There can’t be any poets who has not sung for world peace, Satbirji is no exception. She prays for world peace in her poem ‘Devotion’. She wants to see the devoted and the devotee merge into one like a soul in the eternal soul or like a drop in an ocean.
If all colours of the world
Become one colour of peace
Through Poem ‘Don’t Walk on Clouds’ with its powerful opening lines, she reiterates that one can neither walk on the clouds, nor in the air or on the snow, but only on the ground, which holds us, belongs to it and ultimately return to it. This is such a powerful poem and one of the best in this collection.
Only the ground will keep you
Folded in its arms
Thence you came
To it you belong.
There are two villanelles (Nostalgia & Mama’s There with you) which are quite convincingly structured with beautiful rhyming.
The last poem ‘The lazy Music is Still’ has a tag line “dying continues for a long time after death’ from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and pauses with a question to the readers, with its concluding line; “Does one fully die when declared dead.”
There are many other beautiful poems in this collection one can’t miss, which I leave for the sake of brevity and would insist poetry lovers to explore this book, which is quite engaging and entertaining.
