Silent Days Speak Aloud: A Critical Study of Jaydeep Sarangi’s Silent Days

Jaydeep Sarangi, the poet, critic, academic, and reviewer produces poems full of hopes and aspirations, dreams and allegories standing on the ruins of time and tide with problem ridden socio-cultural modern framework. His Silent Days, a collection of fifty poems, was published after his successful release of the collection of poems From Dulong to Beas. His silent days are eloquent in the pages of his poetic veins and blood. He is the perfect “son of the soil” with realistic approaches showered by intellectual corners. He is the ‘silent pilgrim' on the bank of the river ‘Dulong' invoking the mother earth to get back the ‘land of red hearts' for the hungry people of the red soil. His heart oozes for the people who have lost their lands, cultures, prayers and vibrations to protest against the suppressed authority. He opines for the land and life of his inheritors gunned down and long trudges by night---“the loose strand from Ma's ‘Saree ‘reminds me/That my own ones dwell, in the land of red soil.” His sensual organs also drugged with the alluring red, emotions touched with vegetation, visions revisit bows and arrows. And he does not hesitate to confirm his psyche with them in his flowering “I am on your side”---“the red soil… Leads to another.” (17) Their folk dance, oral history, wild fabrics give breath in his sweet heart---“you are not ….side” (17). Dalit…My dream …I am “ (17). How optimistic he is to voice the voiceless indigenous world. His dream is to reach their stories and histories to the windows of the world. So he expresses “It's my dream …In indigenous ink”. He stressed on how forefathers are connected in the mindscape. By meditation he can connect with his ancestors, their feelings, their voices and advices. The smell of the red soil still lingers in his prayer ploughed heart, his heart bleeds, and his pen draws the plough with its sweats and toils. He is hungry with intellectual blessings riding on a chariot culturing the experiences of silent days. Days are coloured, days are romanticized, days are modernized, and days are blessed with rhythmic dance of life drama. So my article is an attempt to stress how Sarangi's poems highlighted and portrayed the seamy side of the lives of dalits and have- not's, the poor and downtroddens and slum-dwellers and how he voices the voiceless to arise and awake to fulfill their dreams.