Book Review: An enticing collection of poems that celebrates memory and childhood

Under The Apple Boughs

By Santosh Bakaya

Publisher: Authorspress

Pages: 234

Price: Rs 350

After the success of her poetry book Ballad of Bapu in 2015, followed by Where Are The Lilacs?, another notable poetry collection, which came out in 2016, author and poet Dr Santosh Bakaya now offers us Under The Apple Boughs.

A collection of 131 poems, the compilation is divided into four sections—”Memory Shards”, “Crippled Rhyme”, “Nature Sings a Symphony”, and “O Africa”. In the first section, the author reminisces about her father, her childhood home and the good old memories of the yore. She is now remembering all the lost time which as a child never seemed to quite move her: “As a child I never saw the hands of the clock moving, but when I looked away they had moved”. This section will make one indulge in recollection of their own bygone childhood. Also, in  her poem “In The Watermelon Days”, the poet talks about how the attitudes of the present generations have changed from those of the past.

These poems are also rooted to nature and in the next section, Bakaya finds the beauty of nature and its elements at their supreme best with “A Song On Earth’s Lips”, ‘The Twin Sunrays”, “Celebrations” and many others. Her figurative language and rhyming adds to the joy of reading.

In the next section, “Crippled Rhyme” the author, who firmly believes in Martin Luther King’s dictum that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, conveys emotions of the worldly views and conflicts. Like a true master’s, Bakaya’s words reflect brilliance. So we find how “one day a vicious gust of wind broke his father’s flute. The breaking of his heart was witnessed by a tiny coot”. In one of the poems she touches upon the chaos the world is in. She writes, “Humanity was in the intensive care unit gasping for breath.”  The poems convey our reality as audaciously as they can.

These poems are also rooted to nature and in the next section, Bakaya finds the beauty of nature and its elements at their supreme best with “A Song On Earth’s Lips”, ‘The Twin Sunrays”, “Celebrations” and many others. Her figurative language and rhyming adds to the joy of reading.

The last section, about Bakaya’s visit to Accra, Ghana, is titled “O Africa!”. The book is itself dedicated to the people of Accra, who struck her with awe. Their life, their struggles, their music is what the section presents in an enchanting fashion.