3 Review(s)

Seeped in the details of remembrance and translucent in memories, Mohul Bhowmick’s The Past Is Another Country vainly attempts to honour, celebrate and restore what is lost. While such erasure as may be possible in poetry is done little justice to, Bhowmick remains true to his roots with a poignant, gratifying and sincerely intimate collection of poems after a lull of three long years. Examining the human condition seems to have become an attribute of his, as is the willingness to speak - without hushed tones - about the remnants of moments once intensely felt but now disregarded. While the dismembering of the past is perhaps the easier way out in times of such decay, Bhowmick overlooks the pain that causes pain and confronts himself with his recollections of sunnier days. He does not shy away from looking straight into the heart of all things, as is his wont, and the result is a treatise on love, loss, grief and most of all, a time that can not be reclaimed. Treatment of such nuanced emotions has seldom been acceptable in the harsh light of society's ochre-coloured drawing rooms, but Bhowmick does not tread lightly, or carefully, in connivance with the present. For he is also a pilgrim, weary of the mind, and incapable of seeking such knowledge as may be his privilege, who ruptures into his wounds and asks for such healing as may be possible through mere words.