I Like to Wash My Face with Seawater : A Collection of Poems

Introducing saumitra’s poetry to an English relishing readership is like reliving its flavour a few years ago in Hindi when these very poems caught the print eye of an eminent publisher Bharatiya gyanpith. Saumitra’s selection was not only published from there but also awarded the ‘yuva puruskar’ and these poems have been expertly translated by dhiraj Singh who gives a Midas touch of his pen when moving from one language to another. Saumitra is by profession an engineer and by passion a poet. He has moved away from India but his sensibility is filled with boyhood memories and tender moments of his youth. With an economy of words he expresses himself in short verses that look like a map of his moods. All aspects of nature find expression with Saumitra so much so that he emerges as a friend of live landscapes changing skies and the smell of raw mangoes. He has a wordsworthian involvement with nature and with the simple sweet voice of humanity. The translation by dhiraj Singh is equally sensitive and soulful conveying the authors creativity convincingly. To quote the very first poem- ‘every tree calls out to her but she chooses her tree and sits on it she chooses and sits and that is all there is to it.’ at first sight these may appear to be single–focus expressions but page after page you come across sensitive lines like these you are bound to feel involved. Poetry is not a sealed-off entity of nature alone. We live in an urban world and our concerns are city-bred. Then what impacts our young poet to focus on greener landscapes. Actually this appears to be saumitra’s retort to the mechanized mundane Metro culture that leaves us myopic to personal pleasures and the bounty of nature. - Mamta Kalia.