Poetry: Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

EARTH- LIFE

I am Gaia, your Mother Earth

My greens golds, blues, pure chroma

Sustain your bewildered life

Your darkness throttles me

Your jigsaws pierce me 

Will you never end this strife?

I birthed you as you bloomed

I wrapped you in my lovelorn folds

You breathed in my watery placenta

You danced along my ripples

You lived cosily in my moulds

You ate, drank, slept, rose in songs

All in my silken wreathed sheath

In my shimmering grassy gold ---

You flew from azure to ether

Rejuvenated in my milk and water

Built your castles in airy space

All because I gave you home

And hearth to land here and stay ---

And now you ransack my plenitude

Ravage my gracious wealth and beatitude

Make my loving loam a wilderness

I am almost a weeping bald pate now

Shrivelled and withered living anyhow

Grown old well before my years

My ambrosia now a living hell

You make me limp with your Power-spell

Change before you hear your death knell

Every day is your Mother Earth Day

Preserve my bounty for you to live and stay!

***

GUNS IN GARDENS

Ah can you not hear the hoarse cries of 

the approaching torpedo?

The suppressed grunting of the angry thunder?

The incinerating rage of the lightning 

in blossoming gardens?

Can you not see the outstretched arms

of wailing green branches

Reaching out to the school-bagged, uniformed children

Walking side by side for their morning 

prayers in classrooms?

Those that you push into battle gear

with hazardous guns

Those that wallow in fury

of uncontrolled angst

You convert schools into war zones

splattered with soft cherry blood

Lobbies steeped in crime and greed

for arming children with guns of death

Rather than books of life?

O you creed of super-powerdom

May you become one of peace and love

To sustain the whiteness of your doves ---

Inhuman hate-clad hubris in loose strings

Spectral terror of the darkest purple clouds

Floating above in aimless dislocation

Rudderless un-reigned juvenile wrath

In the clutches of gun-totting monstrosity

In zones of misplaced machoism

From Texas to California

From Florida to New York

To usurped unloved reckless wrath

As forests and multihued rainbows weep

Shedding blood and tears in mutilation

In a land of unabated guns of annihilation

Shattering ceaselessly tender leaves

Of blooming buds in disarray

Nettled in thorny fogs of unwashed simplicity

Prodded in disenchantment to kill and shatter

Beauty of tumescent new lives ---

Ah the dissolved souls and fainted cries

The muted reverberations die across the ocean

As life becomes a toy of unbridled cruelty

Smothered forever in silence

In the precincts of innocence ---

***

DEAR MY FRIEND

Dear Friend ---

have you ever seen

those mushroom clouds

mirrored in the graphics

of moist eyes?

have you ever seen

blood splattered tomatoes

spilling, spouting in agony

gurgling out of 

puny wrenched bellies

of gunned down

erased innocence?

have you ever seen

those naïve moths deluded

in cavernous delight, dying

in their vain search for light?

have you ever seen

body-bags of unsuspecting bravery

flung out of hospitals and frontlines

thrown into riverine ashes?

have you ever seen

that dreary, desperate haze

of shattering shells

in bombed towns and villages?

have you ever seen

the musk rose wilted

torn and grounded

stamped dead under

the boots of cannon-cruelty?

have you ever seen

peoples, dogs, rats running

helter skelter

scrambling for life and shelter

in misty fields of smoking uranium 

alive still in death?

have you ever seen

that dying child gasping

in the lap of a dying mother

begging for life in the detritus

for the alms and arms

of some unknown god?

have you ever seen

a burnt body, a burnt mind

a scorched young soul

in the embrace of 

a wailing woman in wilderness?

No my dear friend

you have never seen these scenes

even in dreams ---

life has so eluded you

that you still breathe in masked sheen

in lounges, parlours, conditioned salons

drawing rooms of endless babble

and gibberish, glitzy gossip

as life passes you by covertly

with padded paws

as love leaves you forever in the lurch

and fervent humanity slips away

in all its scented miasma

through the ornate hour glass

in evasion and treachery

in the gaudy darkness you chose

till the last explosion!

***

---

Setu, December 2025

The Red Woman by Laksmisree Banerjee

The Red Woman

Laksmisree Banerjee
Black Eagle Books [Dublin. USA. India]
PP 108, Year 2025

ISBN 978- 1- 64560- 637- 6
PRICE ₹ 280

---Reviewed by Santosh Bakaya

There is no denying the fact that Laksmisree Banerjee is an important literary voice in the present literary scene. I have read many of her books and have found the impassioned intensity of her writing almost palpable, impacting the reader powerfully.

In the pages of this new book, The Red Woman, published by Black Eagle Books, [Dublin, the USA, India], Patriarchy, with all its cruel claws, is in the dock!

Laksmisree Banerjee

 In her foreword, Bashabi Fraser says that the ‘vigilant third eye’ is forever awake in Laksmisree’s poetry, as she walks with the prostitute, remembers the child widow, the smothered silence, the shunned, isolated or lonely woman…”

Her poems cannot be stifled, but will bring hope to the hopeless, revitalizing and resurrecting the women languishing in the margins of society. 

With remarkable panache, Laksmisree has woven together myriad female experiences in a Male-dominated society, symbolized by the powerful Red Woman, embodying pain, defiance, and the searing fire of rebellion.  As she says in her interview with Rachna Singh, [Editor, The Wise Owl magazine], she has presented and poeticized 'The Red Woman in all her entirety."    

She has a voice that excels at singing dulcet songs, but here her poetic voice reaches a crescendo of indignation at the centennial patriarchal mindset.

Santosh Bakaya

 With an edifying eloquence, she expresses empathy with the marginalized, the downtrodden, the silent sufferers, the child brides, the young widows, the victims of prejudice, and the invisibles. And, also, the new bride,' in closeted freedom of female glory', all dressed up in heavy finery, waiting for the doors to open, 
' lattices removed,
for guests to enter, inspect, and laud
the newest toy in her in-laws' home."   

Dedicated "to all such Abhayas, Nirbhayas, and fearless women of the world, brutally treated  daily, killed and raped by the ageless guillotine of patriarchy", the book, in its 108 pages, attacks the sinister minds responsible for the' female body and soul strewn in gory shards.'

" lacerated womanhood, the searing agony of a manacled womanhood,"

In the Author's Note, she says that, “the predominance of the Red Colour, its efficacy and usage is interwoven in my poetic fabric."
 ”Fire and the colour red are powerful symbols that burn in her poems and remain intensely personal, while also connecting with the reader because of the universality and the immediacy of the issues raised,"  says Debjani Chatterjee in her blurb. 

The longest poem in the book is The Red Woman, pp 1- 5 - the woman who is lost in the meandering paths of Songachi. 

She exclaims,  

"You are the whore,
 not I 
 You have sold your soul
 not I 
You have revelled in perfidy
 not I 

You have traded in lust 

not I”. 

 The back page blurbs speak highly of her poetic talent. 
Candice Louisa Daquin, [USA], calls the book 'a potent tour de force through womanhood, culminating in a meticulous, polemic rebellion.

K. Satchidanandan says that she has consistently pursued the "painful secrets of the human condition."

 The poem Timeless Sin p 30, hits hard at the regressive ritual of locking up a woman for her crime of bleeding for 'four days a month'.

"My grandmother 

 was chained in darkness in the cowshed,
Barred from sunlight four days a month
It was a crime for her to bleed
 Like it was for her to be a girl-"

After coming out, she would be purified with cow dung and chilly Ganga water
"Strangling her every month 

with pneumonia."

Unborn Kill, p 39 is another hard-hitting poem on female infanticide.
"I felt my throbs
deep within
 the frothy warmth of
 my mother's insides...

 I was she
a teardrop on the serrated edge

 of being,
a dew on her hidden, clement leaf,
soon to be sucked out by
the boiling seas, the hot winds
 of prejudice.”   

In 'Renaissance after her Martyrdom', p 107

"No way will this upheaval ever stop
till a new awakened, sun rises in tearful blossom..." 

No longer can we afford to remain complacent or indifferent; we need to raise our collective voices against these atrocities, against bruised womanhood, against all societal stereotypes,

'Till fists are ready to combat subjugation

...

patriarchy asphyxiated with blasts of justice:

In an interview with Rachna Singh, the editor of The Wise Owl magazine, Laksmisree Banerjee   says that the book accentuates 

'' the multifacetedness of women's experiences throughout the world."   
She emphasizes that the "resonant image of this book would be a blood-smeared woman with an unfurled flag in one hand and a tight fist in the other, proclaiming a crying rebellion for a better world of equality and humanity."

This collection throws ample light on the brutal fact that women continue to battle the evils of patriarchy, excruciating humiliation, and isolation.
Some, like Maya Angelou's caged bird, alas, have forgotten to sing.   
Like Laksmisree, I am also robustly convinced of the power of poetry to bring about positive change. And this, I am sure, is one such book which will take society by the scruff of its collar, and shake it out of its complacency.
Let me add an important point here.   
Despite the bludgeoning and battering of women in a toxic patriarchal society, Laxmisree reiterates that we continue to witness the grit and gumption of such women to rise above the trials and tribulations of life, and We Rise with Her.P 107

"No, we cannot stop till the seeds flower again
till the verdure of love sprouts in redressal 

Till the womb stops bleeding in such a demoniac carnage
..............................
We now await appeasement of a new daybreak."

 Two chilling poems, Fire of a New Woman, PP 25, and SCARS: Burnt Woman, based on a real-life, personal Fire Tragedy, sent chills up my spine:
In the concluding lines, of Fire of a new Woman, I could read the message of resilience and fortitude. Out of the ashes of the fire, a new Woman was born.

   “You found your new sangfroid
I found the darkness of fire 
the light of knowledge."

In [SCARS: Burnt Woman pp 23 -24] Despite ‘ice cold abandonment…”
 “my tears hardened

Into granite chips…and the darkness of fire
taught her ‘the lessons of love and life’.

Bravo for writing such an important book- A book which deserves a permanent place in the book shelves of all university and college libraries.

---

Setu, November 2025

TRIBUTE & TRANSLATIONS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE’S SONG-LYRICS

Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

 

From ‘Prem’ Series of Tagore’s Song Lyrics

 

 

‘Mone Ki Didha Rekhe Gele Chole’

 

What is that unsaid longing,

that folded qualm, the reluctance

within your heart, which you kept

from me that evening while departing

in the muted colours of twilight?

 

Rabindranath Tagore

What is that untold word

that confession you wished

to make but did not, as you

turned your face once more to

look back at me while going away?

 

I could see that cryptic smile

and flicker in your eyes while

I sat in rumination with a heavy,

trembling heart, still believing in

your presence in a distant universe.

 

My agony remains alive yet

in the company of the flying birds

 across the skies, wishing again to ask you

 for those secret words of reticence

to unmask your deepest feelings

 

I still remain frozen in that moment

when you suddenly left me

with my injury in fond remembrance,

imbued forever in the fragrance of

the tacit pain of tottering Juthi flowers.

***

 

 

 

From ‘Puja’ Series of Tagore’s Song Lyrics

 

 

 

 

Je Rathe More Duar Guli …….

 

That dark night when the storm broke in

crashing open my gates

I knew not about your silent tip-toeing

across my threshold

into my home

 

When the fearful blackness engulfed all

burning out my lighted lamps

I knew not who I looked for while

I raised my folded hands

Upward in prayer

 

As I lay breathless in the dark

perhaps in dream or in nightmare

I knew not that the tempest

bore your proud banner, the herald

of your coming

 

Till you awakened me in the morning

with your shining presence

while your arrival

fulfilled me within the emptiness

of my ravaged heart

***

 

 

Bohu din dhorey bohu krosh durey**

 

Over a long time, through miles of space

Having spent a lot to see the grace

Of wondrous hills, seas, lands and vales

Which vastly adorn our worldly ways.

 

But I never did view the bounteous sight

Of the natural smallness beyond the heights

Being just a few steps from my home

I never did see that glistening gold

That glory, that light at my very threshold

 

A patch of greenery so well made

But always pushed along the shade

That beaming dew drop in the glade

A sparkling smile on a tiny rice blade

******************************

**Tagore’s autograph in Bangla given to the iconic film maker Satyajit Ray when the latter was a mere child.

---

Setu, September 2025

Special Edition: Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

1. GREY YEARNING

Out of the box the universe lives with me

A reality more mesmerizing

than a dream- sparkle---

Encased in my glassy shell

an intangibility hard to trespass

I see soaring innocence

Yearning hands of prayer

Upward motions of sacredness and desire

Children seeking eternity

With peals of laughter

Fragrant whorls of incense

Moving upwards to touch

The azure bending to kiss---

Dry twigs have undergone

Transcreation of souls

Now nascent and pure in

The play of outstretched baby hands of jubilation

Soon they will break the boundaries

When limitless space will bring harvests of corn

Dense foliage will spread velvet verdure

The rejoicing children of multihues will giggle

The walls and fences will fall apart

And the land, sky and sea converse in untarnished mirth----

I know for sure the rains will come soon

The drenched empyrean will mingle with the children

In a new age of noble youthfulness

And I will break open my glass cage

To ballet with the mellow sun-soaked showers

To let my heart sing till infinity

Songs of the good earth

And let baby leaves and grass grow in abundance---

***

2. HOPE

we live in huts and hovels

across that untouchable horizon

fences are redundant with

windy gusts of remorse

awaiting spring

the pathways to our cubby holes

have clusters of half-axed trees

forming a community of minimalism

bare landscapes revel in bonhomie

shrubs and bristles along highways

hug, stretch and hanker for company

for that greenery of kind socialism

for that foliage of untarnished love

the parched earth wails with moist tenderness

as brittle twigs lie with still to be born babies

the cloudless skies celebrate life in death

with the arrival of watery whirlwinds

a patient watch proclaims sudden silence

of the mortuary wrapped in brown about to rise

a coffin cloth of cruelty is a sign of

plundering as the grey sky relents

that jaundiced orb in the sky proclaims

rejuvenation with a fast approaching festival

Of awakening....

***

3. BEAUTY OF TRUTH

This day benediction is a far cry

scrambles through light and shade

The skeletal limbs outcry

In tired movements

Stretched beyond

The invisible horizon

Blazing with love and hate----

Here is a slivered world

Days like nights of gold and silver

Sun masquerading half- nude

As the amorous moon

Scrawls across in perfidy

With aridity sucking out life

In shrivelled fog of dusty skies----

The barricades harsh still

Assert their supremacy

Though hills and greens

Herald with thrills from afar

The egg in the sky drips

With hope of better days

Echoing still the beauty of truth---

Oval pallid may perhaps turn vermillion

As dreams of love swim to soothe zillions!!

***

Bio: Laksmisree Banerjee is a Multiple-Award winning Poet, University Professor of English and Cultural Studies, International Scholar and a Vocalist. Widely published and anthologized she has Twelve Books of Poetry and several research cum academic publications. She believes in the potency of her Pen and Voice for Socio-Cultural Transformations.

---

Setu, May 2025

Poems by Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

 

                           The Phoenix and Cacti

(In memory of a Corporate Fire Tragedy in 1989 causing a lifetime Injury to the Poet)

 

Survival is a gruelling task

when severely injured through

cruel negligence of another

 

One more day of their heat-eyes

standing erect as a black reminder

afflicting me into perpetuity

 

Their glare a spike in my flesh

though they often conspire

against my pulpy softness

 

I manage to return the spike

with struggling deliberation

against destiny and the doers

 

Their eulogies, emptiness, flowers

Explode into envious slips of flame

ignited callously at my back

 

Pushing them into some unknown

judgement day I am sure of

yet my injuries remain irrevocable

 

On that haunting day of hailing the Visionary

with unforgettable cramping memories

of arrogant pomp with no vision or piety

 

Their incendiary pavilion full of

meteor-eyes fuming as if to

have me burnt to ashes

 

When the flames ate my flesh and silk

someone enthused with callousness

“but isn’t she scarred beyond recognition?”

 

That day I garnered my realization

from the ruins of reality

from the cinders of cruelty

 

The fire tearing at my spirit and body

writhed upwards and inwards

like a hungry, lascivious female ---

 

My arms and soul outstretched

an umbrella hard to open

to save my only fledgling

 

Times have gone by since that inferno

but I have risen with the rainbows

in rain and sunshine from the ashes

 

A tigress or a phoenix I do not know

never debilitated nor sunk

yet unable to cremate

 

The charred corpses still deep inside

bristles over-crowding within

a tangled forest of cacti---

                                          REPAIRING A BURNT BODY

 

The doctors saw my body,

scarred, naked

and shamelessly identifiable

 

The scorched moon dying

with the shrinking sun

in my blood

 

My splintered self

breaking under the scalpel

with my simmering corpuscles

 

A lump of flesh examined

closely by burns specialists

while I made my consciousness

and awakening

wait outside ---

 

The body had to revive

and the spirit to die

with wilful erasure

 

Though I never allowed

the hard rocks in me

to ever wane or dissolve

 

Photographs of my

snake-skin grafts

 

helped Dr. Bhargava

to fetch his degree

Masters or Doctoral

in the skilled art

of redeeming

burnt bodies

 

I wailed in searing agony

with outstretched, dishevelled limbs

 

While he pulled out my bandages

to snap-shoot my bleeding wounds

     BOUQUET OF FLINTS

 

     My body feels like a grave

      With sprouting flowers

Adorning its lovely crafted facade

      My mind a lonely peak

Free and breezy at the summit

      In its dizzy stance of

World-watching in aftermath

      Defying the storm.

 

The cinders inside have

      Caused efflorescence, transformed into

Endless contentment of victory

      And forced tumescence

At having known and conquered it all.

 

I have learnt to walk on burning coals

      And feel yet the icy cool,

The balmy wind playing on my face

      And the slag of black pains

Which I have waded across

      Gathering still in memory

The aromatic white sprinkles

      Of the springtime grounds.

 

I have faced it, fought it,

      Learnt to accept the scars

Of hidden illness as trophies

      To make my bouquet

Of flints and sparks of victory.

                   

Now I see

      A scintillating, slim ray

Across an endless foliage

      Perhaps my fractured sun

Will rise yet again

      From the violent billows

And touch me with his baby-pink

      Soft incandescence

To light my thorn-ridden path

     Perhaps, perhaps someday ---

                                                                             ***

---

Setu, February 2025

Poetry: Laksmisree Banerjee

Laksmisree Banerjee

WOMAN

I am a Woman, an amazing tree of life

a stunning follicle of immensity

fruit, flower and foliage of being and unbeing

of all that breathes inside and outside---

I am a Woman of wise wistfulness

a re- building after all erosion and sighs

the rage and calm of the flowing river

a ravage and rubble of the hibernating seed---

I am a Woman born in the eye of a storm

a cardinal rib that protects your soul

a tingle of ebullience in ruddy tears

invincible joy breaking open claws of grief---

I am a Woman of a continuity unstoppable

despite all lies I enrich with truth of knowledge

I rise to kiss the stars and delve into the deep

I remain the womb, the cell and over- arching pulsation---

I am a Woman holding the enormity of life

It is hard to read the riddles I clasp

for I am your genesis, your love and hate forever

your creation and annihilation ín dawn and dusk.

***

ONCE AGAIN OUR LOST VOICE

Once again the roaring wind

brushes, lashes past shoulders

dishevelled peoples and races

annihilation more fierce

more disruptive than ever before

raising fears and slogans

against the green and blue

confused and segmented

against all free unfurling

all curbed to nought once again---

 

Once again the lost ballot

weird thoughts and heresies

against liberal words and acts

against brotherhood

nothing, just nothing

but the forecast of

decrepitude of tears

the ravage of power

denudation of unsuspecting

loves and lives---

There you go once again

as you knowingly trump

as you dump, as you bump

as you stoke the fire and pump

to make more hate-zones

and fences with bristles

clamp and stop the onward going

all understanding spilt in murk

as divisive authority reigns again

as humanity stares a dumb onlooker

once again our lost voice

once again, once again.

***

---

Setu, December 2024

The Artistry of Patchwork Quilts

Deepa Agarwal

 

Dust-Decked Rainbow Quilts

By Laksmisree Banerjee. Penprints Publishers, Kolkata, 2023. Pages 103; ISBN: 978-819667772. Price ₹ 250, $30

 

Review by: Deepa Agarwal

 

Dust-Decked Rainbow Quilts—an intriguing title for a poetry collection, yet so apt for eminent academic and poet Dr. Laksmisree Banerjee’s latest offering.

 

I had the pleasure of reviewing Laksmisree’s earlier collection The Blue Phoenix and Other Poems some time ago and thus have some familiarity with the poet’s compelling inner world.

In her preface she provides the explanation a reader might seek for the title. Referring to her perspective both as humanist and womanist she states: “the metaphor of the “Quilt” has been deliberately used from the usage or context of Feminist Historiography in which the artistry of embroidered or patchwork quilts or crocheted bedspreads, made by Women across ages and geo-spaces, becomes the archetypal crux of Women’s Stories.”

The term “dust decked” itself offers a clue to her unique and skilful handling of language that the reader will encounter over and over again in this collection. The distinctive prism of her imagination throws up many such phrases that have an enduring resonance. It is indeed a mark of the poet’s calibre that she negotiates the maze of poetic language with such a practised felicity. We rarely think of dust as something ornamental and this rare juxtaposition evokes both the past and the beauty of oft ignored, rarely appreciated toil of women.

 

the trapped sunshine of hues sprinkle all over

from the riotous tints of bygone ages

embroidered coverlets of centuries

of female trajectories buried from sight

or their parallel humans in subaltern blight

of captive lives emitting culture- soaked light

    to illumine our lucent todays

The poet uses a familiar device—invoking the past to find meaning in the present but her singular vision sketches a pattern that is her own inimitable creation. The same unusual use of language adds a particular luminosity to the poem “People’s Poet Jayanta Mahapatra: in Fond Memory” in which she pays homage to the iconic poet who left us so recently.

the calm of your cherry pain

leavening our shredded soul

your wincing butterflies wing

    through our ambrosial manna

These are indeed words replete with multilayered meaning.

The themes of Banerjee’s poetry are wide ranging. However, certain tropes become evident as you examine the poems deeply. Her “womanist” concerns come across strongly in poems like “Silent Scream” and “Object D’Art”. The plight of women who have no control over their lives is expressed in stark unsparing terms in the former:

 

Worship, immersion, festivity, facades

all drown fading into memories and births

of generations of women with silent screams

    dying every instant with their fortitude of dreams

The objectification of women is set forth in “Object D’Art” in intense and graphic language, where the newly wed is portrayed as a puppet whose role has been predetermined by others.

She was reconstructed

with finery, jewellery

a good status-symbol

    for private use and public display---

While poems like these may decry the ways of patriarchy, she also finds joy in man-woman relationships. In the poem “Love Marriage” she uninhibitedly celebrates the union of two bodies and the overall tone is one of hope.

 

we have pilfered time for loving each other

in the surge of the storm wheezing past

    the turbulence of deep silent permeation

 

“Rivers Meet” similarly reads like an ode to love, though its mood is somewhat melancholy as it dwells on the tenuousness of human relationships.

Her humanist side and her social consciousness are evident in poems like “On A Greyhound from London To Northampton”, which is a scathing commentary on racism when a white bus driver brutally forces some coloured passengers off a bus.

 

That was an eye-opening day though

with squally skies and a blurred vision

when the cosmic lights went off

darkness prevailed more within

than in the arrogant winds outside,

the usual crowd of white predominance

with a minuscule of blacks and browns,

a thick smoke of supremacy clogged

    the free flowing air with spurts in frowns  

 

“Siachen (To the Unknown Soldier)” dwells upon the plight of those anonymous guardians of our frontiers with deep empathy.

 

On the highest battlefield of this cold-hot world

we are the ones who script forgotten, illegible history

sing unsung heroic songs of bravery often erased

we the ones who dance in the silence of doom

we live and die in anonymity, in glory gone silly

give up lives, families for our national family

     still we remain ever decided sentinels of freedom ---

 

Banerjee paints vivid mindscapes with great energy.  The brilliant colours that ornament her poetry—coral and azure, indigo and sapphire add a particular radiance to her verses. While her poetic pallete is incandescent with colour, she adeptly brings a chiaroscuro of darkness and light into play as well, which adds another dimension to her poetry. The five elements—earth, air, fire, space and water are also evoked to convey poetic meaning as in the poems “Rain Rhapsody”, which plays joyful tribute to nature’s healing power:

 

Look Mommy, the rains have created magic

Clumps glossy plumaged

I see these silver slivers

Lancing the earth playfully

With so much tender chuckle

Slanted splinters of watery crackers

Implosions of sky and earth

 

This multi-dimensional poetic sensibility can be experienced in several other poems as she presents a variety of points of view to illuminate different facets of meaning. Indeed, Banerjee’s poetic voice is almost like a clarion call alerting the reader to possibilities that might have escaped their notice. She is all heart and spirit and her passion for life and living is vividly evident as she negotiates the high and low notes of language with consummate skill. The poem “Chance Meeting” reads like an affirmation of faith. After beginning with the traumatic scene “where mutinous mobs ran, at each other’s throats”, in the end there is exuberant celebration:

God reappeared in the skies blessing me

As I cried in joy, my hands stretched upward

“Yes I have found him—I have found my answer

It is love, love, the endless River of Life”--

 

Thus, while she bewails the imperfection of human existence and throws merciless lights on the dark fissures in our society, she also soothes us with a ray of hope, a belief in the essential goodness of humanity. To quote from her poem “Game of Numbers”:

 

So the gaming sprints through time and space

Yet humanity lone belongs to another race

A wholesome knit of goodness breed

     As we reap the verdure from that seed---

 

It is impossible to do justice to this vast patchwork quilt of Banerjee’s poetry in this short piece. All I can say in closing is that the diligent reader will reap much verdure from this poetic seed.

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Setu, July 2024