The Visual Quality Of Dr Sabarna Roy’s Writings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabarna_Roy

https://www.sabarnaroy.com/

The visual quality of Dr Sabarna Roy’s writings has been much talked about.

In his first book “Pentacles”, in the novella ‘New Life’ Chapter 1 opens with the following lilting, melancholic paragraph:

“Loneliness is like smoke. It starts from a definite point and ends up everywhere indefinitely. It eats up the soul, actually chews it to miniscule shreds, from inside and out.”

Chapter 4 opens with following panoramic paragraph:

“Some people may recall the first appearance of the shark in the movie Jaws by Steven Spielberg. You had been waiting for this scene for a long time in trepidation. Just when you thought the scene is likely to be delayed by a few seconds and you relaxed from the numbness of an anxious wait, the deadly fish sprang out of the foamy waters, and you thought in panic that it had torn apart the cinema screen and leapt inside the dark hall.”

In “Frosted Glass” Dr Roy in the iconic story ‘Prank’ describes in a paragraph a sequence of invisible love as follows:

“In these moments, he would invariably envision Purnasree. Purnasree was his neighbour when they lived in his mother’s inherited home. Rahul was in college those days. Purnasree was an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer. She practised classical dance rituals early every morning in her house, in a room opposite to Rahul’s. The room had a window, panes of which were always kept half-open. Rahul’s gaping, sleepy eyes could get a complete view of what was happening inside through the space between the windowpanes. Purnasree would be clad in a colourful silk sari, with flowers in her hair, deeply immersed in her graceful movements carved within the grammar of an ancient dance form, of which Rahul understood nothing. The scene aroused in Rahul a deep sense of longing and desire, poking him like dowels of steel. This silent duet of performance and appreciation connected by a low scale torment and rapture of hearts went on for one and a half years.”

Even the images in his poems are magical. Dr Roy’s most recent book is “Thirty Summer Poems and Conversations about a Murder”. The opening stanza of the poem ‘The Child’ starts as follows:

“It is raining outside.

In the hospital corridor, the tiny child is in my hands

He is sleeping the sleep of his life

With black toothbrush-like hair

Thick lips, as if bitten by a red ant Dense, curved eyelashes

A faint pinkish face with ears like wings on his face…”

The sparkling visual quality of his writings, the mysterious montage of images holds the readers attention without any distraction.

Possibly, that is also the reason why Dr Roy’s books have been so popular especially amongst the younger generation in spite of its heavy thematic experience.