Shirani Rajapakse

In her latest collection, Offerings to the Blue God, Shirani Rajapakse revisits themes on which she has expressed herself so forcefully in the past: the cheapness of non-combatant human life when bullies fight wars; the absolute terror many women must feel during life’s ordinary transactions; children forced into a lifetime of slavery, and the particular hopelessness when that child is a girl; and the self-defeating and sometimes infuriating steps one must take to follow pious rituals in supplication to gods whose representatives on Earth are only in it for the money. These themes recur with renewed focus and force in Offerings, plus we glimpse other tropes and new sophisticated structures which flare and flourish in her writing too.

For instance, Rajapakse shows terrific aptitude with stories that harbor surprise twists and “gotchas” at the end, and in each of the two cases here the door slams or the precipice disintegrates, and the results are indeed shocking, even ghastly.

The memorable character in a predicament, and the unadorned, straightforward language are both here in abundance, as we have come to expect from Rajapakse. Her decision to present her evidence in simple, forceful declaratives serves her purpose best, and she uses the tactic to good effect again. She lets her anger show without flash or authorial rant; she lets her readers’ natural vituperation well up from the stories.

But, like a couple of stories published here, this collection itself flies a silver lining, a final story that provides the “gotcha” of a young woman’s decision to turn her back on superstition, cynicism and greed. She makes an emphatic and highly symbolic gesture of discarding the old, which amounts after all to a scrap of paper scrawled with pious claptrap, into a drain in a gutter, flowing with mud and filth.

Pick up Offerings to the Blue God for her fresh take, and for the promise of hope for a rational world in the future.… (altro)

A poem has few words, but it has a big heart. Poems are not only emotional in content but powerful in their tone. They speak those things that we humans tend not to even think about.

In this book by Shirani Rajapakse, through the poems, readers will bring their own experiences and find what they want or need in each one, situation and life. The Sacrifices a woman makes, the difficulties a citizen faces, the pressure a teenager gets subjected to, the emotional quotient one builds when travelling in nostalgia, and the social extremes. Many more things people face, endure and adapt in their day-to-day life are the muses of every poem.

For a complete review, visit:
https://bookreviewscafe.wordpress.com/2023/01/04/samsara/… (altro)

Book Title: I Exist. Therefore I Am
Author: Shirani Rajapakse
Format: Kindle edition

Book Title:
The title of the book is ‘I Exist. Therefore I Am’ is very strong and interesting.

Book Cover:

The book cover is the digital image of the ‘Woman’ symbol underwater. Which clearly gives a picture that the womanhood is getting drowned in the water, either dead or looking for survival.

Plot:
Our land is a place where Goddesses are worshipped and respected in an utmost way by everyone. But most of the people fail to treat the Woman and show insolence towards them. Sometimes, they are tormented by the society and family in a physical and mental way which forces them to take the unexpected treacherous decisions. The pain woman take is unexplainable and her toil is inappreciable.

The author has penned down the trauma and soreness which woman goes through in her stories.

The characters in the stories will show how rude the society is towards the woman and how they treat her when she is in twinge. While reading each story the reader will feel the chills in the spine. The horrifying stories and the disturbing plot will leave the reader in fury.

The pitiful stories of a mother, newly married woman, an aspiring young woman, widowed woman are presented in the book. Read this mind alarming book by Shirani Rajapakse.

What I like:
The plot of the stories is good and the characterization is good and stirring.

What I didn’t like:
In particular, there are no negatives which can be pointed out. The stories are way too tragic and make the reader feel pity about the life of a woman.

Narration:
The narration in all the stories is very well and it is easy to read.

Language & Grammar:
A clear language with neat and uncomplicated grammar is used in the book

My Final Verdict:
A book that focuses on the harrowing issues which women face in day to day life and to be read by everyone especially the youngsters.

Book Title: 3/5
Book Cover: 3/5
Plot: 3/5
Characters: 4/5
Narration: 3/5
Language & Grammar: 4/5
Final Rating: 3/5





… (altro)

In Samsara, her new volume of poetry, Shirani Rajapakse demonstrates intriguing new perspectives with a deft and heartfelt diction. The poet generally chooses to illustrate a finite set of themes, and this allows her to deal with them a number of times, in a stunning variety of ways. For instance, she brings us a much wider range of visual images than in prior work, and they’re a delight: rich, vivid, and sometimes quirky. Another tool this award-winning poet uses: she anthropomorphizes certain ordinary natural phenomena, like the waving branches of a tree, the dancing of its leaves, or the simple activities of animals.

But the salient feature in Rajapakse’s poetry remains her magisterial stance regarding her themes. She treats reincarnation, love, Buddhist and Hindu faith, human relationships and spirituality, and the nature of reality, with a sure hand, and delivers her usual unflinching judgments on all. This is a very accomplished work, mature in its perspectives and starkly clear in its verdicts.

Besides these attractions, this volume has what struck me as a thesis statement. This is quite unusual in her work. In “Musing,” she writes, “I lift my eyes to the goings on in the garden; / the noisy chatter, yet / my eyes see through this all to what hides / behind, inside spaces no one can see.” This deep peering into the known but unseen, into the hidden sense of things, recurs throughout the poems, and always illuminates a facet of a larger idea.

These pieces are a delight for those who trust contemplation and deep thinking, and in the efficacies of the written word. I liked these offerings quite a bit, as you can tell.

The title of the collection is a Sanskrit word meaning the suffering-laden cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, wherein the Earthly plane is seen as illusory, appealing overmuch to the senses, and encouraging the empty pursuit of things. The poems explore these facets a number of times; in some pieces she decries the emptiness of life, but sometimes she arrives at an elegant moment where the deeper truths are hinted at, or yearned for. And there is quite a bit here about loneliness, about humans who have become separated and now must adjust to life by themselves. Samsara indeed.

I honor Shirani—for her gift with felicitous phrases and her clear insight into the spiritual realm, among all the other features of her growing oeuvre. Among her poetical work, this is clearly her finest to date.… (altro)