Title: A Hiatus from the Loaded Past
Author: Snehashree Mandal
Genre: Poetry
First Publication: 2020
Language: English
Book Summary: A Hiatus from the Loaded Past by Snehashree Mandal
Poems and vignettes. If you are wanting to linger around roads and paths of life that you have either left or planning to leave, come and read this book. Somewhere love, tears, and grief make it a wholesome whole. It talks about our minds, our love for others, and also about every small thing that makes it a life. The struggle of things gone wrong and the also the cats. It talks about women and the efforts they are throwing in, to succeed in life, yet failures often come up.
The poems and vignettes tell you about smells and how they matter. The love of the mother, the love of the lover and the love of the world, it encompasses everything. You might want to know more of Lola’s tale whose mother taught her to smell everything or you might want to catch up with Xixi’s tale and how she felt through her experiences. Cats have been strange creatures- wouldn’t it be fun to know what they do when around a monk or what they do when they are around a fan?
Learn all lovely worlds that come together to make this book special. The full Moon, our wishes and tears, the dreamer, our confusions where we do not know who is our own and who isn’t? It talks about grief being real or not?
Catch up the beautiful tales through this small book that can surely leave a mark on you. Mind and the windy games they can play. There are six chapters called- Love choices, voices, noises, phrases, Croissants and poignant pansies. Enjoy each one as you sit in a bus, travel in a car or sit on your favorite couch within your home while catching the rain or the winds pass by.
Book Review: A Hiatus from the Loaded Past by Snehashree Mandal
In A Hiatus from the Loaded Past, Snehashree Mandal talks about strength, positivity, nostalgia, love, optimism, and so much more. It’s a short book full of short poems, but each poem will ring true and will make you think of what it means that it rings true. It makes you reflect on your choices while giving you a different perspective on how choices affect human beings other than you.
This collection of poetry is really gorgeous, and tells a story. It’s divided into six parts: Love choices, Voices, Noises, Phrases, Croissants and Poignant Pansies. Each section feels a little different from the others but they all contain strong poems about women and feminism. Each chapter offers an honest look at some key moments in poet’s (and our) life that ultimately helped shape the woman she has become. Some poems will make you a little uncomfortable, some will force you to take a closer look at yourself and others will make you smile. But there will never not be one moment when you don’t feel.. something.
Snehashree writes about the pressure she feels about the efforts to succeed in life. Think about sharing your truest feelings and darkest secrets with the world, it’s truly daunting. I forced myself to read this slowly, otherwise I could have read it in one sitting, and giving more time and thought to each page allowed me to connect more with the poetry.
Even if there are a few poems where Snehashree describes the pain and suffering, A Hiatus from the Loaded Past is far from a depressing compilation. The collection talks about loosing, yes, but also about hope and love, and finding your inner strength. This book covers almost everything from love and loss, hope and hurt, being lost and found.
I like to read poetry slowly so I can soak in the words, it just sounds better that way to me. One of my favorite poem from the collection is:
The Harrowing Tale of Feelings
When I lived quite a bit in life, I knew I had learnt to feel. Felt tears, felt smiles, anger, revenge, falsities, brevity's delight. I felt many more things like I was less a human and something else. I felt a bird, a tree, an animal, a cat. Often a mouse, a blade of grass and also a bat. But, then I knew not why I felt so much. I looked around but humans don't feel such things. I felt compassion and love, filial love once, oft late. Then I asked myself how it served me? When I began feeling humans around. Oh! I write a bit to feel my surround.
