Being a poet from the city of joy is in itself a
matter of great depth, liveliness and emotions as well. Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee
is a poet of similar joy, holding the truest emotion of love from each spheres
of life as the city holds in its heart.
Dr Bhattacharjee has come out with his recent collection of melodious and beautiful poems through his book Melodies and Maladies.
The central thematic concerns of the poetry of Dr.Ratan
are largely the same themes that defined Romanticism, especially among the
younger love poets of modern era: beauty, the passions, nature, political
liberty, creativity, and the sanctity of the imagination. What makes Dr.Ratan’s
treatment of these themes unique is his philosophical relationship to his
subject matter—which was better developed and articulated than that of any
other poet of our time—and his temperament, which was
extraordinarily sensitive and responsive even for a Romantic poet, and which possessed
an extraordinary capacity for joy, love, and hope. Dr.Ratan fervently
believed in the possibility of realizing an ideal of human happiness as based
on beauty and love, and his moments of darkness and despair almost always stem
from his disappointment at seeing that ideal sacrificed to human weakness.
Dr.Ratan’s intense feelings about beauty and
expression are documented in poems such as You the Definition of Beauty and “I
Miss You Most ” in which he invokes metaphors from nature to characterize his
relationship to his art. The center of his aesthetic philosophy can be found in
his passionate love poems in which he argues that love brings
about moral good. Poetry, Dr.Ratan argues, exercises and expands the
imagination, and the imagination is the source of sympathy, compassion, and
love, which rest on the ability to project oneself into the position of another
person.
Dr Ratan is a craftsman, who admires the sense of
love as the utmost emotion of spirituality. In his poem “Life is meaningless
Without You” he gives his love the most special feeling by calling himself
meaningless without his lady love. To quote his words:
You came into my life
Like a blazing star or a comet
You filled my heart with joy
You took my pain as if it was yours
Like an angel on the earth
I could not believe
You gave me love
that no one ever could
With the soft sweet words
you whispered in my ears
You made me realize
that I was in Love
You made me realize
Life is meaningless without you .
For Dr. Ratan, the beauty of love is important in
each and every form. He finds love in all the zest of life. His tender love for
his daughter is visible in the poem “Why
your Dad waits for you, My Daughter? “
My daughter, how shall I tell you the truth
It is really very tough to be an ideal dad
When you were a wonder kid with all your
talents
And I could not make you either happy or glad
Love for his child can be seen in a new avatar in
another poem “The Woman With the Laptop Grew in the Parent's Lap”
Love likes privacy, and so abides in our
hearts
But when the beloved is a priceless
beauty
Love permeates the soul,
Then feelings all, suddenly go beyond
control.
What is this special feeling, for a
child
Or for a woman whom I saw in her
parent’s lap
Understanding the beauty of love, Dr. Ratan never
leaves the deeply rooted hypocrisy and cruelty inherited in society. One of
such examples is his poem “They Tore the Petals of a Budding Flower” which he decided to write on the Delhi Gang Rape of a young female doctor.
Light breaks when darkness sets in
Drop by drop. On the Highroad that glitters with neon light,
Love begins when the words of farewell were uttered
And Damini, you are not alive in spite
of all the fight.
Never will it be uttered Damini
You cried it out in the cursed bus, Save
me, anybody there?
But they tore the petals of a budding flower
When the Delhi Gurgaon Highroad was slippery
With your blood, loud with your cries in the moonless night
Reverberating all over there…
But they dared to tear the budding flower.
You gave the fight and they killed you
Damini
They killed womanhood, the mother, daughter, the sister in you
All in one night… just one night…
The well-known secret about the talent of Dr.
Bhattacharjee’s writing is; he takes inspiration from anyone, without the
knowledge of that person and ends up by writing a supreme piece of verse
through his conversation. Hope he keeps carving such pieces with similar
intensity in future too.
About Dr Ratan Bhattacharjee
Dr.Ratan Bhattacharjee is at present the Chairperson of the Post Graduate Dept. of English and is also associated with teaching in the PG Dept of English of Rabindra Bharati Univesity , both in regular and distance.He is the Executive member in the International Advisory Board of International Theeodore Dreiser Society, USA. http://www.dreisersociety.org/His articles and poems are published in numerous journals and magazines in India and abroad. He was associated with the Indian Association of American Studies (IAAS) as a member of the Executive Body and now he is the Founder Director of the newly inaugurated Dattani Archive and Research Association (DARA) , Kolkata. He edits the Journal VIEW ( Voice of Indian English Writers) . His papers have been accepted for the International Conference at Romania organized by the University of Craiova. He contributes to The Washington Post and The Guardian UK as a free lance journalist. His poetry is published in Poemhunter.com and Allpoetry.com.His regular write-ups are there in Merinews.com.(www.merinews.com/cj/drratanbhattacharjee) , boloji.com, (http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Writers&WriterID=3749)
Voice of Bengal.com and Isahitya.com and in Times of India Timeline. He has to his credit nearly 10 books and 500 articles on Indian English, American and British literature)
Email address : drrb07@gmail.com
Original publication in SAHITYA ANAND
AN INTER-DISCIPLINARY INTERNATIONAL REFEREED RESEARCH JOURNAL
Vol 1 Issue 3 June 2013
