Bapu in My Dream : Poetry Across Time People and Pandemic

From freedom fighters to the plight of women the bounties of nature and the beauty of flora and fauna... RP Ghosh has traversed themes beautifully and seamlessly in this wonderful collection of poems.Born in 1944 at ‘Narail’ a suburb town of ‘Jessore’ district (now in Bangladesh) of undivided India Ghosh found himself hurtled into the turmoil of life in pre-Independence struggling as a refugee along with his parents and relatives. The collection offers us a peek into the life of the poet as a young child displaced from the world he knew on account of the Partition. One must read the poem Poverty My Loving Stepmother’ for a portrait of life in those turbulent times.The menagerie of poems also delves into the poet’s musings during the pandemic another turbulent time in his life. One gets to see the happenings of the last couple of years through his eyes when the world was held hostage by the pandemic that claimed the lives of thousands of people.“If it is considered as an offence; and I am sentencedto death I shall greatly accept it as an attainmentof my soul’s salvation which is the ultimate desireof every human being.”The longest and loveliest poem in the collection is on Bapu or Mahatma Gandhi. The poet’s beautiful description of the ‘father of Nation’ brings to the fore his admiration for Bapu as well as the sorry state of affairs today.In short the collection juxtaposes wistful hope and harsh reality in a most evocative way.