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Rashmi Jain's Kaleidoscopic Visions |
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by Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar |
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Kaleidoscopic Visions by Rashmi Jain. Publisher: Author Press, 2015 Kaleidoscopic Visions: Looking into The World Through a Woman's Eyes
Kaleidoscopic Visions is a collection of 31 innocent and beautiful poems by Rashmi Jain who is a Research Scholar in Department of English and MEL, University of Allahabad. She is an emerging and promising poetess, and, of course, has the potential to be one of the strongest feminine voices of the time. With this book of poems, she has made a bold, brave and brilliant beginning of her poetic writings. In this debut anthology she explores, the kaleidoscopic experience of life. Memories, childhood, mother, soul, love, nature, role of woman, dreams and hope, dowry, life and God, socialism and humanism etc are the major themes of her poetry. It showcases “weird and varied moods of life” with “amalgam of ideas and expressions”.
“Childhood” is another beautiful poem expressing her exultation over the lovely and lively celebration beautiful, precious moments of live as well captured during her childhood days with all the pranks and naughty acts, fighting with siblings, for some candies etc. She opines that the days so spent are unforgettable as they have the innocence of childhood that paves way for the vitality of youth and in times of old age they revitalize our life and enjoy much and more. She unravels the undying idea of enjoying each and every moment of life within the limits of time available with us-
Rashmi Jain is a poet of keen and minute observation. She takes into account even the small things of life, in and around. There is a penetrating observation of life with her romantic perspective on love . She talks about soul and mate and their unification for inner journey for bring about a sense of complete being in the poem “Soulmate” :
Since Rashmi Jain is a woman, she is well aware of the plight of woman in male-dominated society. With some social concerns veering around woman, she sees to it that woman’s condition improves. Though woman is believed to be a source of joy, comfort and sustenance, yet the poetic heart of the poet is aggrieved at the sad plight of woman and her status in society. Her feminine sensibility is at its best when she gives a poignant portrayal of woman in distress. “Changing Role of Women” presents poignant and deplorable condition of woman. Despite ‘Designed as semi divine/Worhipped as Mandakini, Lakshmi, Saraswati and Kali/ But her position is still deplorable off papers, Crushed and crippled as tissue papers “
She is also a poetess off reactionary and revolutionary zeal. As a poet of revolt and revolutions, she expresses her socio-political concerns in her poems. She accord due importance to the concepts of ‘catharsis’ and ‘purgation’, being the crux of thoughts on literary analysis. She arrests our attention:
Hers is poetry of hope and determination, of sanguine attitude to human life. She sparks and splints a hope of light in the darkness of despair and disappointment in the frustrated heart of humanity. Her positive words mesmerize the readers and exhort them to resort to the right and virtuous path of life, despite all the inevitable hurdles human life is faced with. “Paths to Follow” is one such an inspiring and motivation poem -
She further reiterates the same theme in her poem “Hope” that hope does wonder in bringing about the realization of true self. The following lines are the outcome of her profound brooding over the positivity of hope and its significance-
One of the most distinguished features of Rashmi Jain’s poetry is the realistic depiction of social and familial reality of contemporary times. There is a note of bitterness in her description. She is socially alive to the myriads of social issues. She touches upon some of them in her poetry. Dowry is one such a grave issue with its diabolical repercussion on a woman’s life. This monstrous dowry system has taken our society under its strong grip and hold. It is a social stigma for the Indian society. The verbal description of the victimized bride is poignant, heart-rending and nerve-shattering. In “Say ‘No’ to Dowry” she laments-
Hence, she as a poet of exhortation with a strong message urges all of us-
Ecological concerns of the poet also find beautiful expression in her poetry. One such poem on nature is “Nature” where she speaks at length for the preservation of trees and all that. As she is of poetic sensibility, she is saddened to see the exploitation of nature. Like Romantic poets, she also believes that nature sustains and maintains mankind and humanity. Both of them have inseparable rapport with each other. She highlights the dual aspects of nature- constructive and destructive forces:
Some of her poems contain her metaphysical broodings and philosophical speculations over life, death, mysteries and eternal concept of Time. She is of the view that time teaches us all the eternal lessons of human life in due course. Life is full of surprises and uncertainties, several hidden topsy-turvy, bouncy and wavy waves and tides of troubles. However, what man is supposed to do is keep marching on and on with smiling face and courage in heart. Her idealism lies in this very idea as reflected in her poem “O Life! O Life!”
She holds her own philosophy of life. She believes in the continuous flow of time and life with confidence and courage “ a supreme eye is always following and keeping vigilance”;
The same theme of life is also carried forward in yet another poem “Whenever”-
Rashmi Jain’s poetry also presents a world of dreams with varied hues and scintillating sparkles. Her perception and conception, and perspectives on dreams is awesome. “Dreams” is a fantastic articulation of the poet’s ideas about dreams that colour different poetic moods-
“Butterfly” is poetry of metaphor that’s exhibits the play of free will. She compares a girl with this beautiful creature and makes contrasts in terms of freedom enjoyed. In the case of women or girls, freedom is confined and limited. She calls for total freedom for girls as the butterfly enjoys-
She writes ‘A Letter to God” requesting Him to take avatar and redeem life, safeguard humanity and dispel darkness from the world. Global vision of peace, fraternity, prosperity is well reflected in this apt poem. She highlights-
As a poet of love, Rashmi Jain wonderfully touches upon multifaceted aspects of love. Love is tender, intense and intimate feeling of human life. It makes life enjoyable, pleasurable and humane and intensifies the longing to cherish more and more- the love-filled moments of life. To the poet, love is; transcendental’, ‘an emotion of delight ‘’’an infatuation’, ‘a magical enchantment’, ‘ a flame of passion’, ‘yearning’ , ‘ deed of worship”. In fact, it is encompassing everything soft and tender. Love is a comprehensive word which means many things to many but for her-
Love beautifies life and life gets its beauty from love and both form a beautiful and soothing realm for soul to rest on with joy and peace. Her concept of beauty reminds one of Keatsian concept of beauty :
Rashmi Jain is also a poet of humanism and humanity. There is a preponderance of humanistic sense in her poems. Her humanistic approach to life is quite remarkable. It is this characteristics of her poetry that her creativity wears a global and cosmopolitan vision- her central poetic concern. Humanity forms a greater theme in her poetry. Topical and contemporary issues find an excellent articulation in her poems calling for global peace and love. She is saddened to see the brutalities of fanaticism, brutal killings of the innocent in the global strife, in the name of caste, creed and sects, the ego clashes among people. Hence, she calls upon to inculcate the human values for safeguarding humanity and the feeling of brotherhood all over the world. She questions-
Her poetry is a beautiful portrayal of mother who is an apostle of humanity and the primordial seed of creation. She sings glory of mother in her poem called ”Mother”. She calls her “Beautiful, bounteous and divine/ God’s grace to mankind/ The originator of life,/ Who nourishes and nurtures humankind”. To the poet, mother is “The embodiment of love,/ The symbol of sacrifice,/ The fountain of inspiration”. Her subjectivity is well reflected in the wonderful lines of the said poem. She expresses her indebtedness to her mother for what she has done to her. However, she is scared and very much apprehensive-
Rashmi Jain’s poetry is ‘soft flowing emotions’,’ Imaginative or realistic’,’ Sketched, framed and presented infront of the world’. Her poems are both aspects of meanings- connotations and denotations. They embody her ‘inner feeling and thoughts’,’ Like pearl in an oyster shell,’ ‘Collected and stringed together like/A necklace.’ She reveals the true purport of poetry-
Thematically, the book is quite appealing to the readers. The book was supposed to undergo a serious proof-reading. Grammatical errors such as “When the mother lull me lullabies’ (page 13), Soulmate are the abiding force of one’s life/ Making one feel complete of its kind (14), Shadows that speedens and flickers (page 15), The winds blows and revolts/ The waves rolls and revolts (17) The winds blows and revolt/ The waves rolls and revolt (page 18) The shadows of life//The mysteries of skies/Makes me aware why do I survive (19), It doesn’t leaves one alone (20), Dark Lady do exist (21) could have been averted and avoided. The proper pruning, linguistically semantically and stylistically, could have been done for proper presentation of poetic thoughts and vision, for proper clarity of thoughts and expressions. (An abridged version of this review was published in Asian Signature, Third Volume, 2016) |
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06-Feb-2016 | ||
More by : Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar | ||
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