Combating Familiarity: Exploring the motif of the Prodigal Calcuttan in Nabaneeta Dev Sen's 'Return of the Dead'

"Poetry is like war", Dev Sen wrote, "a war with oneself"- an intensely personal engagement, the yield of which ruthlessly exploits and inhabits the poetics of vulnerability in trying to accommodate the overt rawness of the emotions that Dev Sen sought space for in her lifelong creative undertaking. The poetry of Nabaneeta Dev Sen embodies a curious blend of emotions, the multifariousness of which offered to the poet, and subsequently the reader, a chance to explore and identify an abundance of thematic underpinnings. 

It was through poetry, the unfailing coherence of her words, and the brutal honesty that she resorted to, that Nabaneeta sought to confront and articulate pieces of her life at junctures of turmoil and dissonance. In the light of her failing marriage with economist Amartya Sen, returning to Calcutta in 1974 as a single mother of two, Nabaneeta inadvertently sparked significant curiosity. 

“When Ma came back as a young mother with two kids and a marriage that was falling apart, she was met with an awkwardness that she was not expecting," says Nandana. "Even in her liberal literary and social circle, no one knew anyone who had got divorced.”

Dev Sen voices the brutality of dismay, the strangeness that characterized her homecoming in a familiar city that now appeared strangely unwelcoming, in her poem, 'Return of the Dead'- a conveyance that Nandana describes as "heartbreakingly lyrical". Nabaneeta was unrestrained in her expression of grief through her poetry- she laid herself bare, unabashed, and found little reason to do otherwise. "Why be ashamed of your tears?", Dev Sen asks in her poem 'Shame', another piece from Acrobat appearing in the section that Nandana names 'The Unseen Pendulum'.

'Return of the Dead' reveals acute desperation- the longing to belong, to be accepted and welcomed. Nabaneeta distills the emotions surfacing from her trials into vivid images of an aborted mother returning home from war, elated at the prospect of being received by her waiting lover. But to the lover, the city of Kolkata, the 'childhood sweetheart', his 'very own Nabaneeta' returns as a 'familiar stranger'. The poet is dismayed at the 'anxious glances' that she is greeted with; as if her lover is reluctant- even apprehensive to receive her back into his 'waiting arms'. The poem communicates a unique sense of dislocation, and search for identity- the poetry of estrangement that Dev Sen dealt with, reveals her distinctive treatment of time and space. 

The translator's objectivity plays an important role in the poem's interpretation. Originally the poem had been titled, "Amake tobe grohon koto, Kolkata", which could be roughly translated to, "Receive me then, Kolkata". "The experience of translating her made me see her not only as my mother but as a woman going through all of these emotional challenges", Nandana said in an interview. It is perhaps also true that an intimate understanding of the author's material experiences was crucial in locating the poet in the liminal space between grief and the desire to reconnect with life- as the title does. 

The poem incorporates themes manifold- womanhood, childbirth, and loss- themes that have recurrently been central to the poetry of Nabaneeta Dev Sen. Decoding Nabaneeta is simultaneously complex and uncomplicated at the same time. The poet scratches all falsehood in her poetic exercise, yet her alertness to the world around her and profound versatility are compelling and admissibly challenging to interpret exclusively. Admissible, because one can only do much to nurture an 'unwavering life partner'- the elusive, hard-backed 'kobitar khata'.