Reviewer: Radha Chakravarty
Review:
Gossips of our Surrogate Story (Hawakal, 2025), Rajorshi Patranabis’s latest book, resurrects the myth
of the ancient Egyptian god Osiris and his undying love for goddess Isis, from
whom he has been forever separated. Through a series of brief but power-packed
prose poems, we hear the voice of Osiris affirming his passionate conviction
that their love will triumph over adversity.
Rajorshi has already carved
a niche for himself in short-form creative writing. With eleven volumes of
poetry in print, he has established his reputation as a poet committed to
experiments with genre, especially ghazals, sonnets, haiku, haibun and gogyoka.
The Last Drop of Your Tears, published in 2023, is the first volume of
gogyoka in English by an Indian. Checklist Anomaly (2023), likewise, is
the first collection of gogyoshi published by an Indian poet. Rajosrshi is also
a practising translator, with a multilingual sensibility. His own poetry has
been translated into Assamese and Hindi translations are also in the pipeline.
Interestingly, Rajorshi is a food consultant by profession. Perhaps that has
something to do with the bold textures, intense nuances and colourful flavours
that characterize his writing.
In the
Preface to Gossips of our Surrogate Story, Rajorshi asserts his faith in
Wicca, an occult philosophy dating back thousands of years, and based on worship
of the Mother Goddess. The word “witch”, he tells us, derives from “Wik”,
meaning ‘wise”. He uses the myth of
Isis, ancient Egyptian goddess of the moon and wife of Osiris, god of the realm
of the dead. Isis, goddess of magic, is also associated with emotions and the
soul. She is the sacred mother of all mothers. Osiris inhabits the multidimensional
domain of life after death. In the traditional story, Osiris, destroyed by Nut
and Set, is resurrected by Isis with the consent of the sun god Ra, on
condition that he will preside over the world of darkness. The prose poems in
this collection bring to life the voice of Osiris, declaring his eternal love
for Isis, despite the distance that separates them.
Paradox
becomes the defining feature of this fateful relationship. It is the cycle of
death and life that sustains the passion of Osiris for Isis. “I live to be
slaughtered again”, he declares (9). Distance, rather than proximity, fuels his
love. “I desire an irreversible life in a garb of death” (38); “I fail to hold
you close, and you, to stay away” (82); “We unite in estrangements” (121). Ra,
the sun god in Egyptian myth, stands as a figure of opposition to be defied in
this journey of impossible love. “Ra is old and tired and needs rest. … There
is a deep embrace before the old man wakes up from his forgotten eclipse” (13).
The path of passion is full of agony. Both lovers are permanently wounded. “She
bleeds secretly. … She carries every broken piece with her through broken
portals. Pain never deserts” (21).
In
his approach to Wicca, Rajorshi declares himself a seeker rather than a
believer. Perhaps it is the underlying quest motif that lends such profound
urgency to Osiris’ words. For his utterances explore what it can mean for a
lover to eternally walk the thin line between desire and despair. “I fast to
attain your prayers of a dream, smelling like this drizzle –drops that ignite
hope,” Osiris declares (138). Absence and distance are pivotal to Osiris’
passion for Isis. The story belongs to a distinctive mythology that differs
from similar narratives in Indian myth “Behula is not my Isis” Osiris asserts.
“She stays with him forever. I remain away from my Isis. We live, we love”
(11). The ancient narrative of Isis and Osiris is resurrected as an evocation
of long-distance love and unrequited desire that is at once timeless and
contemporary, remote and exotic, yet infused with powerful immediacy. This
timeless, death-defying love is projected in cosmic dimensions: “From my dark
world, I wait for a sunrise inside your eyes. I was yours, when love was first
painted in ether” (95).
The expression
of this extraordinary love seems to demand a vocabulary of its own. For the
language in which Osiris articulates his desire is individual, stylized, as
mysterious as it is mystical, with its own unique resonance and imagery. “My
love is yellow,” he declares, “burning in your blue mustard clouds, bleeding in
red through your lunar lips, thwarting the feeble ignitions of our immortal
spring. “My love is a rainbow, painted in translucence” (93). In places, the
effect of this style is mesmerizing, almost hallucinatory.
Rajorshi’s fascination for formal experiment is evident in his willingness to cross generic boundaries and adopt the mode of the prose-poem. This enables him to break free of formal constraints, combining the lyrical, emotive elements of poetry with the potentially more fluid freedom of prose. The individual pieces are brief, intense and condensed, but each has its own place in the long, continuous narrative of Osiris’ deathless, lonely love for his absent beloved. Trapped in the realm of darkness, Osiris asserts his conviction that love will prove victorious in the end. His dream of reunion culminates in an affirmation of faith in his beloved’s steadfastness, and in the power of love, articulated in the haunting, incantatory prayer: “Tua Anset”—“you’re the Isis I know”.
