Sangeeta Banerjee
BOOK REVIEW
Checklist Anomaly by Rajorshi Patranabis
Hawakal Publishers,
New Delhi, Calcutta, 2023.
Price: INR 400
Life often takes the shape of a mosaic inside the head, where one witnesses innumerable images, conjuring to form a fragmented whole. With this carefully crafted contradiction, Rajorshi Patranabis’ Checklist Anomaly, the first ever collection of gogyoshi written in English by an Indian poet seeks to form a delicate interplay of human emotions, striving to embrace images and emotions as they occur in life.
The five lined poems without any punctuation brings forth a sense of eternal continuity, a saga of life and death. The continuity is intersected by a stark reminder of everything unsaid and undone. Perhaps the best thing about the sharp and soft lines is the fact that they are never forced and they embrace emotions as they are. Because of this realistic touch, once each poem ends, the heart keeps longing for more.
The first thing which attracts the readers’ attention is the title. What kind of “Checklist” does the book contain, and what is so “Anomalous” about it? Well, the answers lie in the sheer beauty of the verses, leading to more questions, serene but sorrowful at times, but always beautiful. We realize, an ‘Anomaly’ is necessary for the ‘Checklist’ of what we humans could have done and should have done in life.
The narrator of the poems appears to be an unsung human, a philosopher perhaps, lurking in lights and shadows, to find the meaning of life, the quest to form something out of nothing, and the images of the day-to-day activities makes him a believer that in spite of the fact that life is often haunted by broken dreams, the departure from ‘Platform Number Shi’ will find a destination at ‘Yatai’.
A major theme which recurs in the collection is waiting. There is a longing to belong. The ‘lurking monotony’ meets ‘green loneliness’, as one waits for the ‘periwinkle’ to bloom again. The ‘Molested Mist’ tries to find its answer in ‘Forgotten Caffeine’, trying to ‘Escape’ from ‘Misled Hopefulness’. The narrator, with the readers, ponders over ‘Ransacked Embrace’ and ‘Anarchic Harmony’.
The motif of journey runs through the entire collection. ‘Platform Number Shi’ leads the readers as they ‘hold out the ticket in pragmatic practice’ at ‘Kataomoi Express’. The ‘Lavender Sojourn’ is worth the wait, which makes life worthwhile. The presence of contrasting hues heightens the human emotions. In ‘Ripples’, the poet says,
Blue meant hope
Red narrated my story
One simply cannot miss the sense of yearning in ‘Lurking Monotony’:
Crimped in your blue
Bare confessions
Loops of lurking monotony
My string wobbled to hold you close
Your cloth fluttered in pink
In this manner, ‘Red screamed in agony' while ‘Shy violet turned red'.
In the entire collection, life is presented in various forms. It is at times a game of chess:
Tables turned to dawn
Checkmated into the sunset
Bled to colour your feet
Masks of faked joy
Truths grinned in tears (‘Mask’)
The readers become aware of the sinners and saints, the good and the evil, as they experience ‘Catharsis’:
Throbbed in gruesome moonlight
Your crimson silver blanket
Robs the purgatorio of a rhapsody
Truants of brief collages of our lips
Trampled lines of blurred catharsis
The brilliant interplay of life and death continues as one reaches a ‘Happy Ending’. Incidentally, it is not the last poem of the series. There remains a profound sense of continuity in the poem, ushering a new beginning:
And there was a continuity
Of relentless malaise of a happy ending
Epilogues carry residues
Smelt your sweats to wake to our sunlight
Knew that there was beginning to every end
The lines reminds one of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’:
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Checklist Anomaly is a book which keeps its promise to gift the readers soft and fierce narratives of life. The lucid verses reach the hearts in a simple and straightforward manner. The book reminds one of the profound Japanese concept of ‘kintsugi’, as it becomes a humble reminder to the readers to accept and celebrate everything broken and fragmented, as in life, we rest in pieces.
Sangeeta Banerjee
Sangeeta Banerjee is a trilingual poet, a literary enthusiast and is currently associated with Heritage Academy as a full-time English faculty member. She is an active member of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata. She is the author of the book Trifling Metaphors: Verses From a Chaotic Soul (2021). Her literary works have been published in various esteemed journals. She is a recipient of the 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award hosted by BookLeaf Publishing.