This Damp House : A Review
Explore Navamalati Neog Chakraborty‘s insightful review of Bibhu Padhi‘s anthology, This Damp House. In this reflection on life’s ephemeral nature, Chakraborty delves into Padhi’s lyrical portrayal of existence, where the mundane meets the profound.
In a 2500-year-old city, where Lord Jagannath and the annual festival of Chariots catapult one’s minds and hearts beyond expectations year after year, the poet Bibhu Padhi has his poems speak out in a gentle unhurried flow augmented by a familiarity. The poems are refreshing by the dint of the flow of unique sensibility through words and sentences. Lights of realisation, of understanding seep in. They draw the readers face to face with the mysteries of life and living. The virtual world that the poet finds, help to decipher such truths of life that lie scattered and hushed, as harbingers of emotions on spring dawns. Poetry on such occasions, do not permit us to change horses’ mid-stream, as with the blessings of our expectations we wait hand and foot, through adversity and deprivation, to ease our way to understanding life. The poet brings out the truth that, we who live on gingerly each day of this mulch covered earth, scoop a handful of truth from them. Here life and living wrap up vibrantly with its own music.
The evening moves while
I talk to my children about
Ghosts and how they
Stay with us, in the trees.
They’re lonely like us,
invisible, friendly. (Bird Speaking)
Candidly the poet Padhi sings of life with contemporary relevance within his mind frame. The poems are not an obscure repertoire, but has the fluidity of life and thought in its simplicity.
I’ve carried your face everywhere,
Met you wherever I went. (Echoes)
The poems are not about a Xanadu where Kubla Khan built an exclusive palace, it is about felt passions, so very earthy. This Damp House is not merely about a house that carry the smell of damp air, but…
Sometimes, on certain nights,
a lean cry is heard through
its solid brick-and-cement walls
a cry that disturbs the night,
diminishes its presence, wakes us
from our much-needed sleep.
The poet hints at how life remains almost as an attachment even after our death. Deleting the numbers from our phones after the demise of a person has always made us pause and think about the dead person. The familiar face and the dead person’s presence, even after the burial is over, hold us back. The Night Dance is again about the final closure of the old dance of death, an imagery of a voice in our midst, proclaiming in a lyrical tone, that is beyond gods and goddesses.
As a poet, Padhi’s ratiocination about human lives lies in the thought of a person folding the palms of his hands in prayer to have his whole self. It is a reflection of his sentiment that the prayer and the entire self of the person need to be together. Man needs to hold on to faith on his knees, all heart and mind. Dreams are needed to cushion on to in life, in the very way we need sufferings to rise above the life we live, beyond the uncommon perceptions of man. This is what the poet Bibhu Padhi holds in his poetic preserve. Man lives on purchased time for it is bent on hope (Uncertain Eyes). With a wise couplet he speaks about how man spread out his days, surrendering to the lure of the mundane world.
Today I realise how in this world
the distant things matter.
Each poem, seem to pointedly weigh out the truth in our mind’s grasp. In the poem Tea Cups, the wounds of time are apparent in the tea cups where the stains of the lemon tea are indicative of the deeper wounds of our lives. Tea cups never remain milk-white even when they are washed well, as do our mind’s façade as years roll by. It is all about lived life, be it a tea cup or our lives. We may discard a tea cup but age catch on to the permanence of our days on earth.
Padhi’s poems merge with the thought of death and life. There are all sorts of clouds, nimbus, cumulus in our minds’ sky… and we men look for security all the time in our life, away from such clouds. The irony of puny man who try to start a life in Different Clouds, and man’s essential loneliness in a world where we are all alone (Flawless), with our self-testifying translucency is stark. His One More Story is again a poem that points out towards availing peace amidst a natural world of relatives living in beautiful houses, only to return home and find peace in one’s own bed. In the poem Easter, each drop of blood of Christ that pour out of wounds dwell on the symbolism of forgiveness.
a picture that shows
everything, the world’s slightest history,
memories of our loss.
Padhi has interpreted how everything in our lives is within a temporary framework. The imagery of the damp house that grips man within their homes is incurable. The walls of the house cannot put off our thoughts or fears but hold on to us like a chronic disease. The Waste Paper Basket of our lives holds all the tattered torn rubbishes that we try to discard…our errors, our records! Life stands up to tell us that…
the very end of things, for
the savage laughter of the gods
inside their shrewd shrines. (There Are No Answers)
and the winter of our lives descend among us with memory loss, neuralgia, faded smiles, in the very way the old roots of trees give way…
like a love that was so very much
alive while it lasted, but long ago. (Winter Signs)
The titles of each of the poems of this collection significantly speak out, as do the lines of the verses standing up to pronounce the truths of life. Very simply stated life is about that damp house where the walls do not keep away that lean cry, despite being of solid brick and cement. It thus brings out the way the complexities of life always take centre stage. The rounding up of the conclusion is to just accept life. It is a mandate of human life, iconoclastic, cognitive and fused together into a circuit. Man’s dumb-pride despite the storming of divinity and rituals of loss undergone in small measures make the poet say…we shall teach the universe how fulfilling suffering is and that dreams alone are sufficient for life. The stoic acceptance of the imagery of man purchasing time from the earth and the sky, and how after the years passed by, the children take the place of their parents…to grow beyond us. (Uncertain Eyes)
Padhi finds himself spread out between sleep, dreams and awakening and the vistas of loving. Poems are for each poet a unique way of placing thoughts and preserving thoughts. They aren’t celebration, nor visualisation, but a psychological reasoning of the deep essence of life, our craving and seeking.
I hear a child cry, looking for
its mother’s breast
the milk sings it to sleep. (Strange)
The poet’s pen speaks of his mind’s firm assurance amidst the long fight with myself, as everything is finally forgotten like the dinner we had yesterday. That’s life, that’s about life.
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