I’m who I’m (আমি আমার মতন): Mohsena Reza Shopna

Dr Khairul Haque Chowdhury

If we read Mohsena Reza Shopna’s poems, we find the poet seeking justice, the platform, the ideal ground in equal terms for the oppressed, the sweetness of roses and the stings of bees, the forced union, and the powerful surge of protest.

To discard people of red-light zone, do we lock them in a¬ cage,
away from the natural social gaze? The poet introduces the red ribbon girls in the poem লাল ফিতের নারী (The Red Ribbon Girl) with a series of questions directed to them: do you make the male nights colourful for the sake of fun or for the sake of your living? Has anyone asked you, dear red ribbon girl, why are you an inhabitant of this hellish red-light district? Where do you come from? The poet tries to condition the red ribbon girl’s mind with positive attributes: You had a normal life, why are you in living hell?

The poet answers the questions not to console the red ribbon girl but to empower them by building a morally higher ground for them. The male consumers of girls gratified their sexual needs and then again, they accuse the victims of their own cardinal sins. The consolatory questions invoke the girls to stand up and face the oppressive male structured society. They need to snatch their rights to dignity from the hegemonic systems themselves.

Mohsena Reza’s first poem বিয়া কি (What is marriage) is particularly interesting from the point of poet as it highlights how a female who is oppressed in the highly structured male dominant society. The final poem of I’m who I’m, কাবা (The Kaba) becomes a vent for the poet to see the ray of hope in the post-covid world. The pandemic has given birth to so many tragedies. The poet’s immediate loss in her surroundings becomes the universal seven stages of grieving for the readers.

There are dramatic monologues like থার্ড জেন্ডার (The Third Gender) where the persona questions their predicament to the reader and to God. The persona has been thrown to isolation from which they are unable to make a relationship neither as a male nor as a female. In the horrifying inhuman reality, the third engendered persona cannot have love and affection from their mother. The male patriarch will not tolerate the persona’s presence in the male space.

The central poem of the book titled আমি আমার মতন (I’m who I’m) establishes a heroic persona who dares to break the social construct which can be termed as the patriarchal analysis of a female body. They go above the traditional markers of female body and attains the lofty human spirits who initiates the ceremony of unchaining the female body from the typical conditions.

A remarkable feature of Mohsena Reza Shopna’s poems is her use of dialogue between characters. The poem titled রুপালি লজেন্স (The Silver Lozenge) imagines a magic tablet that will help to fight all devouring pest which is taking the humans to an oblivion from where no one returns. The poet uses personification and tactile imagery in such a way that the COVID-19 becomes vividly live in front of readers.

Another interesting poetic device is the use of soliloquies. একটি অনুভূতির খোলা চিঠি (An open letter from my conscious self) imagines the loss of a better half. This happens in the questions, “Who is responsible for this sense of loss? You left the world dumping me in the empty space of nothingness. Will you be able to live in that world without me?” two selves were mingled in such a fashion that the poet doubts their beloved’s ability to survive alone. Their relationships and value of a stitch in time foregrounded at the end of the poem and suggests the readers to take control of their life. The poem expresses the persona’s fear whether they were doing the right thing at the right time.

The structure of বংশীর সুর (The Tune of a Special Flute) is built around the idea of the female supreme sacrifice in the Great War of Liberation 1971 – there are two parts in the poem and the first is made up of seven parts – the first descriptive narrative foregrounds the days of the year and secondly poet laments and shows their anger at the loss of the dream in liberated land.
Invocation of moon in the poem ও চাঁদ তুমি ধীরে চলো’ (Moon, please walk slowly) may suggest that the poet sees the moonlit night and moon’s movement as an endless march of victims during the onslaught of COVID-19: dying all alone. COVID-19 has also a wider spiritual significance which often exploits the fact that it is a pandemic which can be described something in the form of natural justice to the humanity for the collective crimes by the humans: that is, it has a kind of consolation. The lamentation derives from the lonesome dying process which an individual must embrace.
Whether the poems in the collection are anti-system or anti-social-construct, I’m really interested in poems that destabilises the traditional protest writings. If the poems dislocate and challenge the role of ‘I’ in all possible ways, then that is the platform Mohsena Reza Shopna builds. You might assume that a traditional system abiding collection of poems wouldn’t powerfully dislocate the domains of power, most of the poems in Mohsena Reza Shopna’s did this.

Dr Khairul Haque Chowdhury is a researcher, educator and writer and is based in New South Wales, Australia.

. . . . .