Book Review: Easterlies

Author: Sonnet Mondal

Format: Paperback 

Language: English 

Pages: 245

Price: Rs. 350

Publishers: Cyberwit.net

ISBN Number: 978-81-8253-245-8

about the book:

If you are to put the best composition of a man, a poet by his very name- you are likely to feel the flavour of the seasons brushing across your face. Easterlies, is thus rightly titled, as it is worthy to be called a bouquet of verses- some of it might have been published earlier and some perhaps had till now stayed in hurried notebooks of a man of many wonders. Sensibility and practical observations fuse together as you pour through the pages. To begin with I liked the style of getting a new poem to read from a fresh page. Sonnet Mondal is pragmatically drawing parallels between the illusive mind and the one his vision captures with the passing days. Therefore to understand what lies in between his measured words- you need a fresh mind and inner peace- something you will be able to get only when you see a tale ending at the bottom of a page and giving way to the new one from the fresh. 

Ashes won’t claim Honour- and rightly said so; it is your deeds and your smile, more so laughter, to build up that pyre on which you are rested. The poet seem to speak in favour of the ashes-

“They even need air,

To fly and yet

Fly so irrelevantly’.

A sense of helplessness echoes through much of the volume of verses I have in my hand. For instance, the lines from the poem- “Howling Night”-

“My limbs tied up with

Moving ropes over the pulley of life”-

It informs you that you can do hardly anything to the course you are set since the day of your birth. Similarly- the poem in the adjacent page- “Blacksmith and his diamonds” is tinged with magic realism. Never so poignant pleasure in creation has got protected in very few words as this: “He smiles/ his toil vanishes!”- it is as if the plight of hard labour gets a new meaning in the revelation of a treasure that the finder can’t even keep for long. (Reminds me of the argument- “God lies not outside, but inside our very soul”.) Those diamonds would adorn the illiterates- and the seeker is least bothered about it – to his the initial thrill is enough to surplus the material gains. “The lamenting soldier” on the other hand, is ached out of pathos of a soldier who is yet to forget the true meaning of humanism.

Easterlies give you a brazen look of life but with words to weave a mystic coat over the harshness it keeps referring to from time to time. It is a face within a face or an Escher mirage with stairs pouring in and out of the house of mind.

about the author:  

Born and brought up at the industrial city of Asansol of West Bengal in India Sonnet’s childhood was marked by visiting several places with his parents. His father Mr. Kajal Mondal is a banker and mother Mrs. Sima Mondal is a housewife. His schooling was carried out at the St. Michael’s school, Durgapur till class ten and he completed class eleven and twelve from the Hemsheela Model school of Durgapur in India. However he used to pass his holidays in his maternal house in a village named Jahidpur. Jahidpur is a village surrounded by dense ‘Sal’ forests on all sides segregating it from the busy city life and pollution. The green flora and fauna, the dense forests and wide spreading fields of paddy and rice in Jahidpur were surely some inspirations that later got reflected in his poems. He also passed much of his initial days of childhood in the coal belt area of Sripur and destiny later turned him towards Mining engineering. He was never too fascinated by his poetic name and took least interest in the genre of poetry. further details:http://www.cyberwit.net/publications/315