The Complete Collected Poems by Lopamudra Bandyopadhyay
The Complete Poems of Lopamudra Bandyopadhyay. This edition comprises of both her earlier volumes on poetry, Meghmallhar and Meghashyam. This collection has been published in the year 2023 for all lovers of poetry and the finer things of life. Lopamudra Bandyopadhyay lives in Kolkata, India. She is an academic by profession and a writer by passion.
In order to buy a copy click on the link given below:
At the end of every momentous year (yes, I do consider every year to be momentous in its own way), I tend to mentally declutter or rather spring clean my mind. As I have often mentioned in the past, being an introvert and living in the world of extroverts can be challenging in more ways than one. One simple feature is the inability to think or focus or do all those things that a writer needs to do in his or her daily life. The outside world with its incessant cacophony and unceasing dialogues tend to burden the mind. Society loves to chat and no matter how many doors you close and bolts you fasten, it will find its way into your life and fill it with unnecessary words, sentences and pictures. And then you are grappling for the right words and right emotions which have hoodwinked you all the while you were forcibly pulled away from your tiny world of peace .
Every Winter I tend to Spring Clean my mind. Now this may sound odd, but I cannot think of a better way to express myself at the moment. I tend to throw away the frivolous moments and burdensome phrases that the ongoing year has piled upon my consciousness and choose to cherish only the ones that have meant something to me in the recent past. Also, I tend to declutter my mind and refresh myself for the upcoming new year by cutting out on all the unnecessary chores and trying to focus upon only those that might benefit both me and my career. Although my full time job tends to give me my bread and butter, but I know that my heart is not into it. Writing has always been my passion and I can think of nothing except writing when it comes to real work. However, I have tried and have succeeded to a certain extent in relegating my official job to the sidelines of my mind, thus in the process, offering the center stage to writing. This year too I have decided to formulate a routine in order to facilitate my total devotion to my craft.
Relegate official work to work hours only.
Avoid logging into my work email after work hours.
Shut off all notifications of my phone once I return home every evening.
Use my alternative flip phone for the family.
Sit at my computer every single day even during the occasional writer’s block.
Read, read and read more.
Avoid screens as much as possible.
Maintain a daily record of how much I have accomplished each day.
Finally, when I am not writing, cook healthy meals, because it is during cooking that I get some of my great ideas 🙂
It has been more than a year ( my first post was on the 27th of August, 2022, to be precise) that I have been blogging on Vivaldi. I began in last August and have not given up on blogging despite the regular hiccups of work and social obligations. In fact, it has been quite a welcome change from sharing my thoughts on the ever chaotic social media. It has now become a regular habit to scribble down a few words on my blog, however relevant or irrelevant they may be. In fact when I had started blogging last August I did not even think that I would continue with this hobby of journaling for more than a year. Today I am happy that this venture into a new territory has now blossomed into a productive hobby.
Choosing Vivaldi has also brought with it its unique bouquet of advantages. The site being free from the ever intrusive advertisements (which are usually found in other blogging sites) has made it more attractive for those of us who want simplicity coupled with technologically advanced features. For people like me who are writers, poets, photographers and others involved in various creative fields, a site that is non intrusive, robust and downright simple is indeed a boon from the heavens. I have been using this site not only as a blogging platform but also as my official website. Further, with the automatic integration of the Vivaldi email it is easier for my readers to contact me. Both this blog as well as the integrated mailing feature helps me connect with my current readers as well as prospective ones.
Another great thing that I discovered in the last one year is the Vivaldi community. It has helped me immensely in coming across like-minded people who are involved in creative pursuits too. I would specially like to mention Dale Tucker, who is a fellow novelist, whose writings and dedication towards his craft has encouraged me to devote more time to my own literary pursuits. I would also like to mention Marco Castellani’s (who is an astronomer) blog which is a wonderful place to go back to and read about technological stuff that are extremely new to me. Last but not the least, I would also like to mention Evanescent Revelations, yet another blog that compels me to visit the same time and again due to its sheer lyrical appeal.
Dale in particular has gradually become a good friend over the last one year and I am glad that blogging on Vivaldi gave me the opportunity to meet and know people who have the same destination that I have 🙂
This is that time of the year when each one of us tends to reflect upon the year gone by and ponder upon our gains and losses during the course of the same. However, in a nutshell, I can safely state that Vivaldi has helped me immensely both in my professional career as well in my personal sphere as a writer. I would definitely consider this site “a home away from home” in more ways than one. Not only has it disciplined me as a writer, but it has also made me more dedicated towards my craft and has in the process successfully released me from distracting tentacles of the all pervasive social media. I am now more in control of my mind, my solitude and my single-minded devotion towards writing.
Thank you Vivaldi. Thank you for indeed being “a home away from home”.
We, the writers and poets are strange creatures. We love planning. Planning our manuscripts. Planning on which days we will write which chapter. Planning the exact materials that we will use (they may range from battered typewriters to laptops to computers to paper and pen). Planning intricately on how to avoid the world (social engagements, official engagements etc). Planning quick meals so that may reduce the time devoted to cooking. And finally, planning our sleep patterns (how much should we rest our eyes and when). All this requires ample time. This huge and detailed planning. I am sure that compared to us, city civil engineers will fail when it may come to planning entire cities and towns. 😀
However, when it comes to the execution, we are master procrastinators (at least I am). We love daydreaming and creating those characters in our heads and we even allow them to romp around us on a daily basis, but when it comes to reducing them to letters punctuating white pages we tend to fail miserably. Either those whom we are able to capture and pin down on white sheets do not match the expectations that we have harbored in our heads for months, or we are too lazy to find the right words and sentences to describe them and their current predicament. As a result, we fail miserably. And then we get up, dust ourselves in the most brisk and official manner and plan again. We build newer plans. Plans that seem infallible to us. Invincible plans. Grand plans. And then they fall flat on their faces yet again. This never-ending carousel plays on till one fine day, suddenly, out of blue, we are struck by some divine lightening, and we manage to put together 80 or 90 thousand words within a single manuscript. That is nothing short of a miracle. That Eureka moment !
But, all said and done, till that magic hour arrives or the sky turns lavender and our inks turn blue this unending dance of the mind and the circumstances will continue. Quite like Hegel’s Dialectics. Quite like Wittgenstein’s language games.
Till I scribble another day…back to planning and execution. 🙂
November quivers each time it is destined to leave my threshold. Decembers enters my doorway, dark, deep and somber. It has been such for the last 12 years. I do not wish to reveal the details of the somberness of December through my writings. She has her own coquettish moods that are difficult to decipher. She carries both light and shadows upon her countenance. Both black and white. At times she is sinister and at times rather bland with the pale light of the winter sky pasting itself to her visage like an old crumpled veil.
I do not question December. I do not speak to her. For the last 12 years I have simply watched her. Watched her descend into my life each year, Watched her pull the curtains around me and seclude me from the rest of the world. Watched her revive old memories and nightmares that I had tucked away deep beneath the bedclothes of my decade old mind. I have watched and waited with a crooked smile fluttering across my vapid face. Like a butterfly on the wing…trying its best to brush away shades of a dismal winter from its otherwise vibrant body.
Thus, we do not speak. December and I. We merely pass each other by. Like strangers, like old disenchanted neighbors, like two introverts caught up amidst this quagmire called life.
Stumbled upon some brilliant little clips from the movie Wittgenstein (1993). It is a pity that I have not yet had the opportunity of watching the same. Wittgenstein has always enamored me as a philosopher.
Sharing one such clip from the movie mentioned above.
Picked up a copy of the book mentioned above from one of the largest bookshops in the city. Needless to say, it has been a rather life-changing experience reading through its contents. I would not like to comment on the stories, because, I am not qualified enough to comment on them (being the minuscule writer that I am). However, even though most of us tend to prefer bestsellers these days to classics, I would still recommend classics to all, as they are perhaps the only books that can not only touch the reader’s soul but also alter his or her perception about language in totality. Though each one of the writers whose works have been encapsulated in this slim volume is a writer par excellence, I would still like to mention William Faulkner in particular, whose usage of words intertwined with rich visual imagery will stay with the reader (haunting his or her mind) long after the story is over.
Words do matter. Writing is definitely not only about the plot and the characters. Words are perhaps the most important, to be closely followed by the rich imagery that the very same words create. If a writer can make the reader, see, smell, hear and feel things then the writer has truly been able to acquire all that he/she had ventured to accomplish in the first place.
This is to inform my gentle readers that both my books are now available worldwide across multiple sites. The following is a brief description of my books :
Megh Mallhar: The Song of the Rains(Publisher: Serene Woods, New Delhi, India, 2010)
Category: Poetry
Drops of luminous rain, slivers of vivacious emotions, dreams quivering through skies festooned with memories, warm earth pulsating with the sound of divine anklets, and the wistful notes of a flute wafting through unknown forests dark with blue shadows…Megh Mallhar is about these disjointed visions. Megh Mallhar is the amalgamation of intimate experiences. It is the first song of the youthful rains, and the final aubade of a monsoon departing with silent footsteps. Megh Mallhar is a voyage through the myriad straits of solitude, loneliness, betrayal and silence, finally culminating into a quest for a love that demolishes the notions of time and space.
Megh Mallhar: The Song of the Rains is now available on multiple sites such as Apple Books, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords, Baker&Taylor, SCRIBD, Angus & Robertson, Rakuten Kobo, Gardners etc. Kindly click on the universal link given below in order to buy a copy:
Meghashyam: An Anthology of Poems (Publisher: Serene Woods, New Delhi, India, 2011)
Category: Poetry
Dreams, seen over the years, through the diaphanous veils of nebulous nights. Dreams, nurtured and cherished with unbridled affection, enmeshed within visions of tender innocence. The forest, the river, the gazebo, the palace and the temple speak in hushed tones of a love that is beyond temporal denominations. A love that straddles the ephemeral epithets of time and space, and conquers a lone wandering minstrel entrapped within its silken folds.
Meghashyam is the dark prince of luminous smiles, molten eyes, tranquil peacock feathers and enigmatic flute notes. Meghashyam is a forgotten ballad of untrammelled passion excavated from within the innermost recesses of eras smothered in infidelity. Meghashyam is one woman’s quest for a love that is the flickering flame of eternity in a mortal world enrobed in the darkness of impermanence.
Meghashyam: An Anthology of Poems is now available on multiple sites such as Apple Books, Barnes&Noble, Smashwords, Baker&Taylor, SCRIBD, Angus & Robertson, Rakuten Kobo, Gardners etc. Kindly click on the universal link given below in order to buy a copy:
