Review of Mitali Chakravarty’s ‘From Calcutta to Kolkata: A City of Dreams: Poems’ (Hawakal Publishers Pvt Ltd, 2025)

and for every grave / a firefly burns / and for every grave / Dhaka never learns

Scorching in a way the April sun never was. / Scorching in a way a fever never feels. / It wasn't just grief

'On the Other Side of Silence' is a thoughtful volume of poetry, not just because it summarises every existential crisis that visits contemporary life but also because it engages, unlike a postmodern cynic, with the issues that plague the world

It would rain in the rains / And the rest of this poem would be written by someone else

There’s a purgatorial break between these stretches …flaxen against the lights

So go in peace, be free, be kind.

A quiet, seniority in its touch, / A tenderness that feels like it's meant to last

You thought you had escaped, didn't you? / Outran everything that weighed you down

Sometimes at early dawn / You overpower my eyelids / And won’t let me wake up

I love the texture of your hair and I wanted to tell you about it in far too many words than either you or I are comfortable with.

Who do I tell, sir? The walls do not listen, The roads do not answer back

We'll put up feigned politicians / And their fake promises instead

face to face, 20 taka in my pocket and this keyless map do you think love ever ends?

Pebbles strewn pavement Keep drawing me back

I hope you fight with your mother when you have a migraine, / I hope there's a holud ceremony playing item songs right beside your building

at night I look past my window / moon like a bruise hoisted on the shoulder of onlookers / as they draw their curtains

you don't recognise yourself, / everything is lost like a fish in Lethean space. / you have mistaken truth for love again

Here are a few things I learned in the one month we haven’t spoken

Imagine it’s raining cats and dogs The hilly river has let the hair loose