“Abhijit
Sarmah's Dying with a Little Patience transports us into a world of
fine wit, opulence, and stark imageries. It opens up alternate worlds,
democratic and egalitarian—spaces that question the existent social condition,
create an alternate reality, and dare to undo the state of apathy and brutality
that pervades our current scenario.”
-Namrata
Pathak, author of That’s How Mirai Eats a Pomegranate
“A little volume of
poetry, but captures a whole truckload of emotions and sensibilities regarding
the contemporary world. Each poem has a lapidary quality to it, chiseled with
passion and heart. I love the title, it has a Sartrean ring to it, and the poems
within does justice to it. Abhijit's poetry talks about living, the melancholy
and inevitability of pain and tragedy, but also revels in the little moments of
life caught in love, memory, and nostalgia. The subject matter of the poems
range widely from socio-political contexts to existentialism, to a cosmopolitan
quest for beauty and meaning in a world that is materialistic and changes every
moment. Abhijit has a tempered romantic sensibility when he speaks about love
and the self in poems like "The Kind" and "A Night-piece".
Besides that, he also eloquently conveys the issues of immigrants, the
prejudices/discrimination, of war and nationalism, with a delicate irony and
deft imagery that strikes to the gut like a well-aimed punch. Poems like "Re-imagining
a Rape", Alternate Names for Refugee Boys" are like scalpels that
carves a wound deep and traumatic, making us aware of the ugly brutality that
remains at the periphery of media and a narrative that's twisted and consumer
friendly. Poetry lovers will find a real treat here. Abhijit is following in
the steps of the Beat Generation, poets like John Ashberry, but has his own
style that's at times laconic and striking with urbane imagery, and a libertian
philosophy that celebrates love and universal brotherhood.”
-Rituranjan
Gogoi, Assam
"'He who was living is now dead. We who were
living , are now dying."
With a little patience' - T.S. Eliot (The Wasteland)
These lines very
aptly and strategically justify the title of this Poetry collection ,
"Dying With a Little Patience". Rife with vivid imageries of a
disintegrating society whose inhabitants yearn for a blue sky and a home (if at
all home any longer holds any relevance) they can call their own , Abhijit
Sarmah with his brilliant tapestry of words and commendable experimentation
with the poetic form and structure , dexterously weaves a poignant world of
trauma , fear and uncertainty where the tenets of Democracy, Freedom and
Equality are strangled to death .
The Collection is
divided into three parts with each part bearing a prominent thought or emotion
very subtly. The poems dare to question the authority of the state with utmost
sincerity with regard to its stance on the miserable plight of the refugees and
sheer opression and a step-motherly treatment meted out to them by the state
which has failed its people outright. Poems like "Thirteen Ways of Looking
at a Refugee", "Alternate names for Refugee Boys" and "A
Survivor's Monologue" render us with vivid images of a pungent sense of
anxiety and hopelessness that pervades the minds of a refugee who has no safe
bower to retire to . He suffers all throughout from the pangs of trauma and
identity crisis and the bitter memories of brutality and recalling them feels
like sand in the mouth . Poems like , "Reimagining a Rape" and
"My Brother's body was in peaces in front of me" project and
criticise Rape and murder as inarguably potential weapons to suppress the
voices of the underprivileged. However, the human heart despite crumbling
into pieces, gathers its scattered pieces to rebuild dreams and hope anew . It
longs for love, for the lover's touch or grandmother's memories reeking of moth
balls or the ardent longing for an egalitarian state for that matter.. Abhijit
Sarmah also very sensitively and delicately explores such fragile emotions in
his poems , contained in this collection. It is overall an arresting read,
delving into the intricacies of human emotions and conflicts. A strongly
recommended read."
-Smaranika Chakraborty,
Assam
“This new short collection is a harem of
emotions, feelings and soul that carries the reader into the realms of love,
hurt, pain and peace. The poems are memorable like stories that take space in
your mind which sometimes paint vivid pictures of what was or what is and can
be. As a poet it was a delightful quick read and I highly recommend it to all
poetry lovers.” (Read the full review here on
RovingBookwormNG website: https://bit.ly/3ila0AF)
-Biyai
Garricks, Nigeria
“How much can a book of poems, a rather short one at that
speak about what it is supposed to speak about, if it is supposed to speak
about anything at all. What can it say that has never been said before, in ways
previously unattempted? For poetry makes nothing happen (Auden). It cannot
lift a pandemic, but it is said that it can help you with the understanding of
isolation that can come with it. In that
desire to collapse into flux, or in that desire to quit reading the newspaper
and say, " to hell with the world, I cannot keep up with my own life
anymore..." Where does a little book of poems fit in? For four months now I have hardly done any reading. I
have read a few poems by Plath, a few by Auden for my poetry class, one or two
books here and there and that's about it. As someone who reads almost a hundred
books every year, this year has shown me the quaint suffocation that comes with
an abundance of time. So much time, never a good night's sleep, no mornings are
good enough to be reading anything. However, I kept thinking about poetry, how much of
it is in effect in the cause of our living, how should you tell stories, where
does one begin, why do we allow Poetry to 'happen' in ways that it does....to
this, I found that Poetry could reply "I am forever flowing in the hearts
that sympathize, in that sentiment of voicing the truth against oppression, I
am in that heart that desires to heal other broken hearts. I am in that memory
that is not your memory, I come with your mission to write, change and
revolutionize. I am in you because you are brave, to speak and listen." I
read Sharma's book and it spoke to me this way. The book reaffirms, reassures
that poetry cannot do a lot of things but it can help save lives. Sarmah's book of poems is one of the very few
books that I have read this year. I loved Dying with a little Patience... It is
beautiful in the way it is brutal. What the book gives you is a sense of terror
of unbelonging, of rejection of the faults of human life and the panic of the
loves that we help create. The book speaks to us, it asks us to observe and
listen more, to be more sympathetic and be less dismissive of the world. I can
only write about my experiences with the book and I can say for a fact that the
poet has written this book with great amount of love in his heart.
Abhijit Sarmah is good at what he does. I'm very
excited to see what he does next.”
—Sitabz Garg, Tezpur University (Assam)
“A collection of poems for the nameless shadows in the
refugee camps, gnawing on the memories of a free dawn is raw, thought provoking
and original. A book that begins with a lyrical prologue has to be beautiful!
This book is a fleeting beauty divided into three sections and a total of
thirty poems. All the poems very beautifully weaves a narrative of a refugee's life.
When I say beautiful, I mean to say it's beautifully crafted but equally heart
breaking and some of them might slap once or twice on our faces. There are
poems of love, one of them is a translation of an Assamese poem. The Assamese
title kind of made sense to me maybe because I am a Bengali. Maybe. Just
speculating.
What touched my heart a little more is the fact that the poet
didn't estrange the bloodshed of partition and the refugees as a consequence.
He wrote a very beautiful piece for that. So many people lost their loved ones,
land, themselves or maybe a combination of all three. I must stress on the fact that all the poems in
this book, are very wisely crafted. They do not necessarily meet the criteria
of traditional poetry (which I am a fan of) but they are wonderful. This is probably the first time when I absolutely
loved a book but kept delaying to post a review ... It would've been so amazing
if we knew about this book before our Assam prompt for #wordsofnortheast. But maybe it's never too late. We can still
consider this beauty and give it a read whenever we can because this six months
was a kind of simulation for us to diversify our reads and I'm so glad to have
discovered so many amazing books and this is surely one of them.”
Read the full review here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMXJN-lgj5l/
—Tiyasa
& Sreejita (the.biblio.minhocas)
