Buddha And Biryani By Ra Sh

Dazzlingly unpredictable, Ra Sh바카라™s recent collection of poem 바카라˜Buddha and Biryani바카라™Â constructs a world of perception that is playfully irreverent but  trenchantly real. The poet, known for his seductively tantalizing referentiality of erotica in 바카라˜The Architecture of Flesh바카라™(2015) and 바카라˜The Bullet Train바카라™(2019), strikes the raw chords of readers again.  

In the title poem 바카라˜Buddha and Biriyani바카라™, Buddha transfigures into a desire-stricken 바카라˜anyone바카라™ who cannot spurn the quintessential world of the senses.  His transmigration 바카라˜foodie trip/ to all parts of the globe바카라™, note the flavour of flippancy, is cynically farcical as the enlightened is not able to conquer the sensory world. The underpinning of the food metaphor is boldly loud in its irreverence; it ironically connotes no search for dharma but only the irresistible aroma of sensory gratification.  To read this is like stumbling into a space that is wickedly transgressive, its mock slanting implying the anxiety of the 바카라˜unlonged바카라™, the role of control in religion and what lies beyond the formulaic when the boundaries are pushed for inner realisation.  The ending of the poem does not spare readers the onslaught of censorious certainty: 바카라˜바카라¦there is no right food/or wrong food/The Cannibals know the best.바카라™ Does not this tongue-in-cheek sally sound the death knell for puritanical belief in the hierarchy of food? The unyielding mask of pretentious theism is yanked off nullifying the metaphysical infinitude the Supreme exudes. 

The collection is inescapably significant in initiating nuanced discussion of sexual violence, wellbeing and empathy. Shot through with a trauma of bestiality, the monumental question in the poem 바카라˜Why did you rape me?바카라™ grills the sickening system of patriarchy. The poem registers the recklessness of sadistic pleasure through the use of listing. The ending of the poem, with the vengeful raped바카라™ s tongue dripping blood and the libidinous rapist바카라™s feverish hunger, creates a suspension due to the use of ambivalent humour leaving the sense of retribution precariously poised on the brink of 바카라˜darkness바카라™.  The enmeshing of grief and beauty renders poignancy to 바카라˜Pathology of a Rainbow바카라™; mark the words: 바카라˜I signed the report that said/ to determine the cause of death/ the pathologist needs more colours,/ drained from dead flowers, trees,/animal sap, volcanic ash, coral reefs,/crayons and a few broken bangles.바카라™ From the universality of nature imagery to the anguish of loss through 바카라˜a few broken bangles바카라™, the poem ends with a stab of bleeding torment: 바카라˜When I went out into the sunshine, / I heard a rumble and /the wail of suffocated rainbows.바카라™ The poet바카라™s empathetic gaze not only induces a rush of tenderness with melancholic regret but also lights up the haze that is metonymic of the corrosive irony of socio-political apathy and insensitivity to rape culture.  The phrase 바카라˜ a few broken bangles바카라™ is symbolic of the fragility of political will in curbing the rotting menace of sexual violence. 

What accompanies the apocalyptic version of human destiny in 바카라˜Two Covid-19 viruses meet Albert Camus바카라™ is the elimination of any possibilities for redemption against the irrevocable sense of inevitability. The allusion to Camus is the only comical acquisition of human condition that intrigues the adolescent viruses: 바카라˜Who are you sir, how come you are in one piece when all humans are dead all over the world?바카라™ The poem ends with Camus making his 바카라˜way up the stream with/fishing rods, bait and the day바카라™s catch, whistling to himself바카라™ confounding the notion of utopian freedom in the wake of the 바카라˜end of humans바카라™ as the opening of the poem, amidst calmness and silence, depicts a spectacle of the absurd sans the humankind: 바카라˜Only the birds chirped tweeted sang cawed. Only the animals barked mewed mooed growled. Only the river gurgled. Only the sky thundered. Only the fires cracked.바카라™ The uncanny paradox of existence that bursts through the string of images lay bare the shaft of sarcasm in trying to blot out the world of humans from this new-found freedom during the pandemic.  

바카라˜Buddha and Biryani바카라™ will elicit the attention of readers by virtue of its boldness and slantness in uncovering the overriding sense of disjunction that both complicates, unnerves, mediates and illuminates. Hitting hard a world where ethical imperatives are numbed, the style juxtaposing the mystical and the material prompts a way of thinking about the familiar where the poet, without apology, attempts to wrench meaning from the deep recesses of the banal, the brutal and the beatific. The rugged and indulgent texture of his poetry offers a subtle offering that call for delicate unravelling. What appears flippant and unwarranted, calls for incise reading to tap into the reality, reduced to clichés by wanton appropriation. It also demands of careful readers an ironic detachment to tease out the grave infused with sardonic humour. This implicit frame of satirical humuor that encloses the contingencies of life has a philosophical ring. 

Publisher: Hawakal Publishers, Kolkata 2022

Sudeep Ghosh teaches at the Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad(India). His pedagogical articles, poems, research papers, translations and art criticisms have appeared in national and international journals. Aesthetica Magazine (UK), Le Dame Art Gallery (UK), Canadian Literature (University of British Columbia, Canada), Wasafiri (Open University, London); national journals - Teacher Plus(Azim Premji University), Apurva (BHU, Varanasi)The Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Penguin India, Mentor, Knowledge Review, to name a few.  He can be reached at deeptoking@gmail.com