Angor

Angor
Image source: Google

Rating: 4.6/5

Author: Jacinta Kerketta

Publisher: Adivaani

Publishing Date: 2016

Language: Hindi, English

Genre: Poetry

ISBN-10: 9789384465070

ISBN-13: 9384465070

Format: Paperback

Pages: 164

Plot:

Angor is about "resistance to oppression and exploitation". The alertness and efficiency with which Jacinta Kerketta has introduced a particular context in her verses, is a new experience to poetry lovers. Her poems effectively convey the pain, anguish and anger of the indigenous tribal society.

Additionally, Jacinta has sought to empathetically understand the tribal woman's plight through her poems.

Review:

The subject of the book caters to the different issues of an Adivasi community. Using nature as a powerful tool, she delves deeper into the matter of displacement, environment, struggle, violence. There has been mentioned some very beautiful imageries of nature.

It has both the Original Hindi and the English translation side by side. The English translation is jointly done by Ms. Bhumika Chawla-D’Souza, Mr. Vijay K Chhabra and Father Cyprian, and is one of the best works of poetry translation.

There are portions in the book that are very unsettling, yet relatable. Although her poems convey the pain, anguish and anger that the tribal community feels in our society. The issues that influenced her or her subjects are a part of problem which is faced by a rather large portion of the society. Like when she placed her views on her personal life:

“…my father, like other men, began to be oppressive towards my mother. Like she should eat only after her husband. She shouldn’t speak to other men.”

“On the one hand, he was suffering from discrimination in the police department because he was an Adivasi. He used to fight those discriminations. But on the other hand, somehow he had adopted a certain behaviour towards women who are considered to be the weaker sex in that other society. I witnessed it all.”

She talks about the machoism, the hypocrisy: similar to the kind of problems people who are not associated with her tribe as well. This may be the reason she has a wide horizon of readers to cater to.

She has this extraordinary ability to express the agony of tribal people in a span of just few words. We would strongly recommend this and other books of Jacinta.

About the Author:

Jacinta Kerketta is a young poet, writer and freelance journalist, belonging to an Oraon Adivasi community of West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. She writes in Hindi. In her poems, Jacinta highlights the injustices committed on the Adivasi communities, along with their struggles. Her poems are also important cultural and artistic documents of Adivasi worldviews. Jacinta is the author of two bi-lingual (Hindi and English) full-length collections of poems – Angor (Adivani, Kolkata) and Jodon Ki Jameen (Bharatiya Jnanpith, New Delhi).