A Palmful of Pain

Nrusingh Tarai's poems have an unusual freshness & vividness & clarity about them. His language, phrase & rhythm has a rare felicity & flexibility that enables his poetry to acquire an identity of its own. He is prolific, not to say profuse and his range ranges over a great variety of themes, issues and concerns. At a time when young poets showcase the stereotypes and platitudes of contemporary living, he beats a hasty retreat from the pedestrian & comes abreast of gross realities by stark metaphors. The language both racy and idiomatic, precise and prolix suggest his beginnings in the sylvan backwaters of Odisha and his sense of rootedness. He has a felt undertone of empathy with the disinherited & dispossessed, fallen females & outcastes. He scores while stating a problem & avowedly believes that it eludes any neat resolution. And thus he is apolitical. And there is an aura of magic when he captures, in apposite vocabulary, the urban & semi-urban vignettes. There emerges a vision, not uncluttered, of a writer wrestling with the medium to achieve an echo of pain & reconciliation, jubilation and freedom. Above all, he is eminently readable.