Political and Business Daily reviewed 'Kavyanjali' in their 01 Nov. 2016 edition

This review appeared in the newspaper – ‘Political and Business Daily’ dated 01 Nov. 2016, under the Headline – “Poetry with a Rare Freshness”

It would not be surprising if Haldhar Nag’s poetry blows the uninitiated reader away. They would not be prepared for anything that the life and the work of the poet offer. Haldhar ruthlessly destroys any comfortable notion of conventional association and poetic tradition.

First, let’s begin with the life of the poet itself. Burdened by the choice between a formal education and having to earn a living for his family, he was forced to choose the latter, bringing an unceremonious end to his schooling in merely the third standard. But the dish-washing job in a village eatery could hardly smother a remarkable poetic sensibility that was growing within him. The words that create his poetic universe are so ingrained in his memory that he is able to recite them extempore with sincerity and passion before his enchanted audience. The soulful and lyrical vocal rendering of his songs make him a true balladeer of the soil, in the mode of Bob Dylan, this year’s Nobel Prize winner for literature.

The poet writes in a language – Sambalpuri-Koshli – that majority of readers in his own state, Odisha, find it difficult to understand. This much about novelty and offbeat nature of the artist, now let’s move to the unconventionality of his art. To begin with Haldhar employs rhyming meter to compose his poems, whereas most of the poetry today is written in blank verse. There is a strong presence of rhyme and lyrical cadence in his writing, very akin to earthy beats of folk songs. Haldhar writes poems of varied themes and lengths. Some are epical in scope, such as Mahasati Urmila (The Great Sati Urmila), whereas some are quite small, such as Panch Amrut (Five Nectars of Immortality) consisting of just six lines, or slightly longer, namely Dadho Bargachh (Old Banyan Tree). Themes are drawn from mythology, nature, human relations and spiritualism. The array of subjects chosen by the poet range from the dilemma of a prostitute (Harlot of Tikarpada) to the permanence of the soul (The Soul is Real), with everything thrown in between.

The metaphors and imagery used by the poet resonate in a rare freshness. While describing the arrival of a morning in ‘The Great Sati Urmila’, the poet compares the cock’s crow to Dharma’s “hailing aloud/ For the benefit of mankind”. In the same poem the poet writes about Urmila watching Laxman’s glum face and feels “as if Rahu/ Had heaved it out retching”. This is a very ingenious usage because it alludes to a mythological belief that Rahu’s head occasionally gulps down the moon and then lets it go. That is how the lunar eclipse occurs.

The translation of the poems fulfils the cherished desire of the translator Surendra Nath to bring it to a greater audience. The English rendering successfully retains the lyrical grace of the original Sambalpuri-Koshli language. By his own admission, “translating poems is ten-fold more difficult than translating prose”, but the translator’s labours have borne fruit and this beautiful anthology is imbued with a quiet grace. Since this is the first volume of the selected poetic works of Haldhar Nag, we hope that the next volumes will also see the light of the day soon.

(Reviewed in the Political and Business Daily by Chinmay Kumar Hota)