Introducing Satabdi Banerjee

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As a first, we reviewed Satabdi Bannerjee’s poem “Quarantine Hopes.”

My days are gloomy balloons

Filling in the unsettled air

Much to anxiety over

How shall I find my way?

The quarantine thoughts

Are imposing sway

In recurrent echoes

I spend the day.

I look at the sky

The clouds floating by

I sit around my window sill

gaze them pass by.

One spring has gone by,

Another is waiting

I comfort myself in my present

Till I leap across tomorrow

I scribble my diary every day

In wait for a longer spring

I promise myself a new day

Where all is merry down the bay

The news the noise

The mundane the voice

All crackle my soundings tonight

As I awake to new dawn now

Filling my gloomy balloons

Eventual as May.

The Review

All of us, including the dictionary, are going to remember 2020 as the year of the Big (-ger than the known) C, which introduced the      word ‘quarantine’ into all the languages of the world, not to mention our beings. 

Satabdi has written this poem about the indelible mark the pandemic has left on our collective psyche, of fear, of “unsettling” doubt about finding our "way out" of the dilemmas that it has imposed on us. 

Titled “Quarantine Hopes,” the poem uses common, everyday sensory imagery, conflicting with its more common usage. For eg, she likens the days of the quarantine period to balloons, an image usually used to express a lightness, the buoyancy of hope, rising high above despondency. But here the ‘gloomy’ balloons are filled with ‘unsettling air’ that creates anxiety. This is an interesting experiment. 

Similarly, “clouds floating by” would commonly denote a carefree, unpredictable whimsicality, but here it suggests a vacant passage of time wherein one spring has been spent gazing at them from her seat on the window sill, waiting for the new dawn. 

As she waits for a day to come when “all is merry down the bay” with routine, mundane news, she is filled with expectations that “crackle” her instincts, filling up her “gloomy balloon” days with all the promises of May. 

For Satabdi, thus hope springs eternal. She scribbles in her diary every day, waiting, comforting herself in the present, sure of making the “leap across tomorrow.”                 

While doing so, she carries her readers along. Having heard the echoes of “quarantine thoughts” in our own lives, we feel grateful for the hope she provides and look forward to the new dawn now. 

So what did you think of it? We would love to hear from you in the comment section.