In poetry, silence rarely means absence. It transforms itself into a space where any meaning is either given a new dimension or completely annihilated. Silence Has a Sound is situated at the centre of this paradox. This is the second poetry collection of poems from Mitra Samal, a poet from Odisha. It is divided thematically into five parts – Nostalgic Reflections, Realities, Celebrating Nature, Yearnings, and The Weight of Silence. Most of the pieces from each of the sections come across as deeply intimate and sincerely confessional and are set in a domestic sphere.

Meeting the self

Many of the recurring motifs throughout the collection are established in the first section, Nostalgic Reflections. A sense of displacement, childhood memory, and familial intimacy are some of them. The spectres of the past haunt the present and lead to fissures where time is out of joint. It is evident in “I Like Old Walls,” where the poet writes,

Then there is one
with the shadows of photo frames,
and nails where perhaps a map once hung,
a map that must be no longer valid,
with places that have changed names
and borders that have shifted.

There is also an earnest sense of longing. In “Leave,” she writes:

I may leave this place for a while,
but it will remain
with me forever.

This longing is captured in another poem, “Reminiscence”:

Oh, how it aches
to be distant from one’s native land
to be lost in a sea of strangers.

Memory functions as a mode of engendered mourning in “Photograph”:

How can I live your dream, granny?
How can I possibly
even live?

Another poem from the first section, “Grandma’s Smile,” builds on the earlier poem:

Had I spent more time with her,
might I have seen that smile again
perhaps a truly happy one?

Ageing seems to be another concern around which the poet weaves a few poems. Most notably, “There Will Come a Time”, where there is a lamentation of women being reduced to objects of desire. Samal cautions,

There will come a time when you will
no longer be stared at or admired
as a symbol of beauty.

From self to society

In the second section, Realities, the poet shifts from navigating psychological corridors of self to society. “A State Bleeds” is a critique of the general apathy and indifference towards violence in Manipur. Divinity is located in suffering in “Come Out God,” as the poet points out the hypocrisy of society which is interested in performative religiosity. The divinity for the poet “rests in the naked, / ominous darkness.” The poet also challenges the religious codification of colours in Indian society in the poem, “Green.” Samal writes,

I am not more Hindu in orange or ochre,
nor does green make me a Muslim.

“The World as a Book” is a requiem for world peace as her deeply humanist values shine through in the following lines:

It would belong to no language,
speaking only in the tongue of the heart
a treasure for all people,
where borders dissolve,
merging into the lines of pages,
never to be separated again.

The third section, Celebrating Nature, has a pastoral feel to it. In several pieces from this section, Samal uses allusions to nature as narrative structures. “You Are Poetry to My Eyes” alludes to nature as a lover as Samal writes,

You are poetry to my eyes,
and I live only for it,
for everything else is meaningless.

In “Reminds Me To Live,” she writes:

The whisper of the wind
rustling through leaves… quiet that escapes
from deep woods,
reminds me
to live again.

“Sunset” serves as a critique of the fast pace of urban life, where the sunset

no longer feels the same.
It doesn’t pause anymore,
doesn’t feel anymore
it is growing too fast.

Memory strikes again in the “Moment” as the poet is haunted by her past, and a palpable anxiety crops up in the lines:

I will never
learn to conquer time…
but it will always remain
a thing of the past.

Yearnings, the fourth part, is Samal at her evocative best. She turns inwards again as a Plath-like sensibility is evoked by many of the pieces from this section. “Find Me Love” consists of the lines,

Find me love that stands beside you
when no one else does
when your cronies turn away
yet your beloved still beholds you.

Her verses triumph sensual undertones without compromising aesthetic flourish in “Union.” It consists of lines:

If you become the rain
and pour from the sky,
I will let each transparent drop
paint me with hope
let it trickle down my body.

“Empty” deals with heartbreak. Here, she writes,

where I meant to write
a sad poem for you,
but a hollow silence
settled in my mind.

In “When I Remember You”, she ponders about love lost which neither

hurts, nor does it amuse.
It lingers like a faraway, untold dream
untouched, unfathomed.

The last section, The Weight of Silence, acts as a culmination of all the themes explored by Samal in her collection. Silence transforms into embodiment, intertwined with memory and desire. In “Seizure,” the cognitive dissonance experienced in a seizure is eventually overcome with an ordinary gesture – “I rise, murmur that I’m okay… and begin to walk away.” She gives an aesthetic treatment of resistance to convalescence in “Sleep.” Samal’s experimentations ground abstract concepts in bodily unease. The haunting of the earlier sections returns here briefly in pieces like “Abandoned House,” where houses are alluded to as relationships which can be “unkept promises… like ghosts of the past.” “Silence Divine” and the title piece are the strongest pieces of the collection. In the former piece, the poet has a spiritual epiphany in silence:

That silence had a sound,
softly floating into my senses,
lifting me into something
almost divine.

The title piece explores silence as a condition of interiority as it

has sound
when murmurs fill the room
but the mind is quietly beguiled.

However, the reliance on familiar imagery and symbolic patterns constrains any kind of aesthetic or linguistic experimentation. Samal’s preference for direct articulation ensures emotional intimacy, even though that leaves less space for ambiguity. The collection is compelling in exploring themes related to memory, desire, and inward attunement to silence. It gestures towards possibilities of rich psychological terrains, which are not always fully developed. The quiet moments of introspection give the collection a contemplative charm that is rare to come across in contemporary poetry.

Abhik Ganguly is a poet, writer, and scholar-practitioner. He’s pursuing a PhD at the Department of English, University of Delhi.

Silence Has a Sound, Mitra Samal, Om Books International.