Author: Gopa Nayak
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Pages: 107
Price: Rs. 200
Publishers: Cyberwit.net
ISBN Number: 978-81-8253-220-5
About the Book:
As I write this review, I am painfully trying to forget the horrid misuse of freedom to create new musical composition for masterpieces written down by Rabindranath Tagore. The song that just got botched by the electric guitar, the drum set was- “Jodi tor data sune keu na ashe”. The reason I wrote this was perhaps I felt as if a dead old man was assuring me , that no matter how hard they try- the existing creation are too powerful to be marred by the mindless.
And Gopa Nayak’s lines worked as a catalyst.
And Gopa Nayak’s lines worked as a catalyst.
“I will burn
I will not be tainted
I will prove
I will not be chained.”
Yes, the context of the main poem “Sita Stepped into Fire” is though more serious echoing epical occurrence, bordering quintessential feminist questions. The beginning of the poem would be something every woman at some part of her life must have said to herself –
“I know what she felt
When she did that but
Sita in me argues today.”
Gopa Nayak in her collection “Dissension” spills powerful virtue through smartly selected words. For example we can consider a simple poem like “Born to live and love”, especially the following lines-
“The voices
Bold as they are
Prompts actions
Shedding away
The bondage
Of the norms”.
A little crescent formed by those delicate lips speaks more than thousand incomplete words tumbling over them every day. “I smiled” reminded me of this through the following lines:
“I smiled
Even though it felt strange
To bridge all enmity
Or perhaps to bond all diversity”
My era is punctured with relationships without its foundation. They are like daring menaces that alter the ethics- washing away the societal ruins down the murky gutters, leaving me to ponder- are the Flower Children still thriving unsatisfied within us? May be Nayak had written the poem- “Can I secure a place?” for other purposes- but, I guess there is no harm in deciphering written lines in new light. Quoting from it.
“Answers pose more questions
Than convictions
I reckon
It is my illusion
Making love
Seems like struggle
For survival
Or is it?”
Conformists don’t have a way but to bend the approaching claws of new decadent waves. Will these fluorescent trends, reflecting the colours of rainbow, go down in history like the much talked about Wildes?
The poem –“Save the last dance for me / My love!” seems like an answer to Michael Bubbles’s favourite song- “Save the last dance for me”- or more profound answer on behalf of women who felt their voices gagged and their innocence trampled in the dark unfortunate alleys of our civilization. To all those who love organizing stampedes over urges of being liberated- I would join in with Nayak and speak the very lines, she has etched out through her revolting pen-
“I would rise from the ashes
A phoenix incarnate
Save the last dance for me
My love!
About the Author:
Born and brought up in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, Gopa set up a home and raised her two sons in Hong Kong and Singapore. She then moved to Oxford to pursue her Masters leading to a DPhil from Oxford University. It was during her stay in Oxford that her words found meaning in poetry.
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