Dear Life by Shanta Acharya. Book Review
Dear Life by Shanta Acharya
LWL Books. 2025
ISBN: 9798218465247 (hc);
9798218465292 (sc);
9798218465261 (ebook)
120 pages (sc), £8.95
Published February 14th 2025.
It is difficult to write a review of a collection of poems that are so concentrated, intense, deeply allusive and thoughtful. The reader is dazzled by the profusion of ideas and invention. There is wit everywhere. Her description of the face, for example, in “Meeting Le Rêve At the Tate Modern:” ‘The eyes to the right, the nose to the left...’
The title Dear Life is ironic. Yes, we cling to ‘dear life’ when confronted by something like Covid-19, but what makes life so precious when the world is in so many ways frightful?
These poems confront the enigma of existence and the grimness of the world head-on, asking what makes life endurable, despite terrorism, rape, environmental destruction and the pervasive lack of humanity. “Sunflower Seeds” mourns the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Another poem, and it is a very fine one, mourns the destruction of Aleppo in the Syrian war.
Once the beating heart of the world,
its flourishing trade routes,
the envy of nations, I lie in ruins...
Where are my scented gardens and fountains,
when will I hear bird song and laughter of children,
lose myself in a whiff of jasmine?
“In A Time of Siege” presents the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13th 2015, as if from one of the victims’ point of view.
Moving to music in the concert hall, we shrugged
off gunshots, mistaking them for fireworks.
In an instant we got a grip on reality
as masked men sprayed bullets and blood.
…
Unbearable this poisoned shroud that keeps diminishing my world to nothing,
Release me from this coffin that I may breathe…
Faced with a world of brutality and indifference do we cling to our absurd little existences only out of an instinct that is irrational?
The question of what makes life worth living is answered here in many ways, firstly by the humorous poems and then those that find consolation in contemplating the natural world and reflecting through the medium of Hindu philosophy and religious concepts.
The collection starts with poems written during the Covid lockdown period such as “Staying Alive”. Ill health and isolation plunge the speaker intro despair: ‘My days measured in blister packs of agony’. Among the many pains of life is the sense of being an exile everywhere - to which one poem is devoted.
In “Nesting”, a woman's misery trapped with an abusive male is described with acute insight, ‘her body became his plaything, no longer hers’ ... ‘her tears knew every synonym of fear and loathing’. In “Wokeness”, the title plays on a fashionable word but uses it to mean wakefulness, as the author lies brooding at night on the awfulness of the world – rape takes place in India every fifteen minutes, how can we even take that in or live with it? – and finding the quietness of lockdown eerie and disturbing.
“The Waiting Room” is one of many poems that addresses the loneliness and isolation of existence, doing so with delicate irony, and in “The Questionnaire”, another poem about hospital treatment, she struggles to find an adequate answer to the final question “Do you suffer from depression?” In this mood of deep pessimism, ‘Hope lives like a virus’. One thing that helps to makes life bearable is a sense of humour. “Dressing up in Lockdown” is an ironic self-portrayal of how the speaker decks herself in a glamorous sari and jewellery for an evening in, alone, watching Downton Abbey on TV.
“This Is Where We Learn What It Means to Be Human” acknowledges the rewardingness of cookery as an art form and a source of cultural identity that kindles sociability. “If You Let Yourself Believe” is a positive poem about friendship. Several poems in this collection celebrate friends. “Somewhere to Come Home To” is in praise of Mimi Khalvati, the Iranian-born recipient of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry. “Between Thoughts” is dedicated to Hugo Williams, the prize -winning poet, and “Hearing Eye” is about John Rety, the Hungarian-British poet who ran the Torriano Meeting house, a poetry reading venue, in Kentish town. He died in 2010.
“The Tree Huggers” tells a story from Indian history. In 1730 in Rajasthan, Amrita Devi and her three daughters tried to save the sacred trees of Khejarli from being cut down by the Maharaja to build his palace. The trees were venerated by the Bishnois as connecting them to the universe and the women embraced them as their shringara, their life and beloved. They and the other villagers who joined them were all beheaded ruthlessly by the Maharaja’s soldiers. By calling them tree-huggers the poem draws a parallel with contemporary struggle to save our environment. The villagers knew from experience that the khejri trees were precious. Nowadays we know that they are (like other members of the bean family) nitrogen fixing trees that enrich the soil and enable other plants to grow. They produce edible beans and their bark is medicinal. It is indeed a wonder-tree. The heroism of these women is celebrated in Acharya’s poem and we learn that the struggle to protect the environment is not new. The problem did not start with capitalism and it has not been solved by the fact that India is declared a socialist country in its constitution. It is in caring about such things that life becomes meaningful and therefore endurable. It is still painful, but at least the pain is meaningful.
“Thinking of You” appears to be a poem about God, a divinity to whom she still prays ‘caught between faith and doubt’. “The Forgiveness of Bees” is one of several poems here that written in 2022 for Earth Day, in a group then titled “Song of Praise” and other poems published in the Beacon webzine. It celebrates the wonder of these tiny creatures and their fragility, comparing them in death to the legendary Hindu warrior, Abhimanyu, who died in battle in a maze as bees do, trapped in a boiler.
The mysterious poem “Inside One’s own Singing” ruminates that while life around is bleak and comfortless, the mind has its own resources and one can retreat inwards to find a place of freedom, bright and hopeful, with space and resources. This place is the soul. This seems to connect with the poem “Secrets”, about a self-sufficient introvert living stubbornly in her inner world of secrets. “Going Nowhere” is a prose poem about a dream that achieves a truly dreamlike quality. It is strangely beautiful and its conclusion that our destination is somewhere within, not beyond, chimes with the thoughts of “Secrets” and “Paradise In My Soul”. There is a cosmos all around us, and a cosmos within. Both are a source of wonderment and consolation.
Acharya’s ideas are taken from Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and further afield. In “Paradise in My Soul”, she quotes Emily Dickinson’s ‘Much madness is divinest sense’ (which has been called Platonic) as well as the Sufi poet, Hafiz. In its conclusion, she finds ‘Vishwarupa darshan’ – a revelation of the divine in Hinduism. Elsewhere, she refers to time dancing like a god. “Song of Praise” is a hymn taken from prayers in different traditions, a syncretic celebration of the cosmos. It is St Francis meets Siddhartha, and by the time we reach the end of the collection with “If” and “Always Beginning”, the mood is one of exaltation, rapturously contemplating the wonder of the universe.
“Grant Us” is a prayer for all the virtues we need to live meaningfully, the wisdom to survive, imagine, rejoice, love and pray. Several poems of reverence for the universe follow. The collection ends with two poems dedicated to Acharya’s brother Susanta, who died of cancer in 2024. “We Are All Returning” is a moving elegy, a tribute to a man who lived well and left behind an indelible impression. Faced with death and loss how can “Dear Life” not be precious?
Acharya is what I call an Indo-Anglian, the reverse of an Anglo-Indian; an Indo-Anglian is someone originating in India who has not only lived in the West and become naturalized but has soaked up far more of the culture than most natives can ever aspire to. This is partly because India itself has a vigorous British and Eurasian heritage and partly because her mind is greedily eclectic, taking in, absorbing and synthesizing ideas and stimulus from everywhere to create a dazzling mosaic. This is complex, challenging poetry, that requires us to work hard to grasp the rapidly changing thoughts and many layered metaphors. Readers will find the effort deeply rewarding.
https://www.shanta-acharya.com/
