Description
Mallika Bhaumik’s book of poems, When Time is a Magic Jar showcases the trials, travails and introspective journeys of a sensitive poet whose deft, empirical detailing of the ever-changing world around her is indeed noteworthy. A sense of nostalgia, dilemma and pain wrap many of the narrative poems with the subjective warmth of deeply felt responses and unsullied sincerity. Bhaumik’s riveting poems, arranged in thematic sections, traverse a significant range encompassing the cityscape, journeys within and without, gender injustice to monologic ruminations, with malice towards none. Bhaumik’s poems will surely touch the hearts and minds of informed poetry readers. — Sanjukta Dasgupta
In this book of poems, the poet refers the world as a ‘treacherous place’. Yet, she is deeply immersed in its essence — its affairs, nature, locales, relationships, conflicts and politics. She emerges not just as a poet of sensitive verses but as a soul wholly submerged in love, compassion and an unwavering faith in humanity. Through her metaphors, eloquence, silences and pauses, she unveils a fragile yet profoundly beautiful world — one that invites us to cherish, confront and witness truths our eyes, minds and hearts have long ignored. Mallika Bhaumik’s poems possess a lightness that mirrors the radiance of light itself. — Rahman Abbas
Mallika Bhaumik was a nominee for the Pushcart Prize for Poetry in 2019. Her poetry, short stories, essays, articles, travelogues, and interviews have been published in various journals, including The Punch Magazine, Madras Courier, Outlook India, Dhaka Tribune, Shot Glass Journal, Cafe Dissensus, Guftugu Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, Kitaab, The Alipore Post, and Voice and Verse (edited by Tammy Ho of Asian Cha). Her writings have appeared in many reputed anthologies, the latest being her non-fiction piece in Our Stories Our Struggle: Violence and the Lives of Women, published by Speaking Tiger. The transliterated version of her personal essay, ‘Of Memories, Mahalaya and Moksha’ has been published by the Bengali daily, Ei Somoy. She has received the Reuel International prize for her debut poetry book, Echoes (2017), published by Authorspress. Her second book of poems, How Not to Remember (2019) was published by Hawakal Publishers. Her poems are part of the post-graduate syllabus of the English department of by the BBMK University, Dhanbad. She lives and writes from Kolkata, India.
Reviews
Mallika Bhaumik talks about When Time Is a Magic Jar in EKL Review
“This book is a collection of forty four poems written over a period of time. The different themes of poems in this collection focus on human emotions, society and the way it treats people. It brings up poems that revolve around the theme of urban nostalgia, love, loss, longings, betrayal, memories, autumn of age and death. It also carries poems that speak of homelessness, feminism, rape and global crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, the effects of Ukraine war and the horror of genocide taking place in Gaza.”
Neera Kashyap in Scroll.in
Mallika Bhaumik’s third collection of poems, When Times is a Magic Jar, has memory and a lost past as major motifs in her evocative verses. For she is able to make time melt in the palm, shrink it to a dot, make it fluid so she can both dream and “rush back to chase the fireflies”. At its most primal, the past is about the tall, lean frame of a mother waiting to take her ten-year-old daughter home, the child prattling on, as they walk home together in the rain under a blue umbrella. Life right now is more difficult. For it is not only about the mother’s breathlessness, a dim retina and painful limbs but how these fragile years press upon the narrator, metaphorized by a tour site she plans to visit where a tree forces its way through a ruined temple roof. At the end, everything blurs.
