Midnight Diary,Bibhu Padhi ,
Authorspress, New Delhi,2015,
​ISBN 978-93-5207-012-1,Rs.295/-($15),Pp149

Reviewed by Jaydeep Sarangi 

‘Real’ is what we see, feel, hear, or otherwise experience physically . But what about the ‘interior experiences’  when we can't detect with our five senses? When writers get into  the inside scoop on characters' internal experiences, they resort to psychological realism, which is the consistent depiction in a brand of literature . This type of honest portrayal of real-life human emotions got its start in the late 19th century with the works of Henry James. Bibhu Padhi, an engaging enigmatic soul maker from Bhubaneswar/Cuttack, traps his readers through his beguiling poetic tentacles. His images unlock  our hearts. Bibhu Padhi’s poems are collage of varied impressions, psychological imprints,  and moods. They  invoke many  lived moments, small acts and psychological views like  ‘wish of leaving amid familiar faces (is) an ancient design of return to the body’ and ‘a longing to forget all that the heart holds dear’, and bring to our attention. Reading Padhi is like reading  all-time great late poet John Keats who will never disappoint us. The  poet’s creativity and imagination are reflected in careful use of  metaphors that evoke incessant images of hope  and picture  of life’s daily course in the readers’ minds. At times, Poetry for  him is an expression of the non grammar of being: a journey beyond the physical parameters and  social contexts. Like Keats, Padhi is a sensuous mystique.He writes from the seat of consciousness:
“Nothing is what you
cannot have. Nothing is
what you are not, already.” ( ‘A Few Things About You’, p 130)
 
Poetry is not a pre-planned or deliberate exercise, but, as John Keats very appropriately put it, “ That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all”. For Padhi,  it outbreaks day light. Writing poetry is a night clearing act which takes us beyond the ‘stories of the night’:
“The night carries itself
far into the day.” ( ‘A Long Night’s Sleep’, p 15)
 
 
 Bibhu Padhi is a meditative poet who reflects life’s strange facets through a charming cadence. Some of his images are abstract. He uses epigrams and at times, this becomes difficult for a common reader to understand the underlining tone and tempo. His sincerity is genuine and feelings are unfathomable. To me, no contemporary Indian English poet can draw  the palpable  and the negotiable so effectively, and that too  with economy of words. He reads like a magician at the desk:
“My gypsy heart
longs for retreat.” ( ‘A Kind of Looking Back’, p 21)
Each time I read Padhi, he is different. Something drags me back.All gates lead to the  chamber of his maiden thoughts:
“Last night sleep came easy.
After a long, long time.” (‘ Sleep in Kolkata’’,P 103)
Successive use of liquid consonants make his poetry rare and sweet.
 
Every language is like a snail, it carries its social and cultural history on its back. Language is not just a linguistic phenomenon unrelated to life and society. It is not a monolithic object. The poet has experienced pain at several levels. He is patient of acute migraine and nervous disorder for several decades.His sensitive heart can not adjust with a world of profit and delight where people have mad rush for name and fame. Introvert by nature, Padhi doesn’t like  going out for reading his poems or attending conferences. He likes to sit with an old clock that ticks slowly; has its own pace. Bibhu Padhi’s poetic  outpour transmits a synthesizing energy among the readers and it works like a healing touch:
“Pain is its very own prayer,
its own question to your own.” ( ‘Midnight Diary’, p 115)
 
The inner world overlaps with the outer on the speculative. At times the voice is surreal and sounds like our within is speaking inside out:
“Touch .You can feel how
the words pulsate within you.” ( Returning, p 149)
Padhi’s poetic canvas draws parallel lines  between the living and non living through a catalogue of images juxtaposing  presence with absence. At times, his thoughts go beyond the world where things are negotiable with human  wit and routine grammar of living. The noted Indian English poet, Jayanta Mahapatra in the back cover comments rightly observes, “Padhi successfully records twists and turns of the heart, never lets us forget this world we live in.”   
 

About the reviewer

Jaydeep Sarangi is a poet and critic with twenty nine books and hundred research articles. Widely anthologised and reviewed as a poet, critic and translator, Dr Sarangi has delivered talks on poetry in several countries and conducted workshops. Dr. Jaydeep Sarangi is the Associate Professor in English, Deptt. Of English at Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College (Calcutta University).

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