By: Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee
“I was never in rhyme to be a poet,” wrote Tinat herself. But in her profundity of perception, she was a true poet as she wanted to be a teacher in her creative fecundity. Wordsworth regarded a poet as a teacher and a moral educator of society. So was Tinat whom I contacted in the evening when she was too happy with the Amrapali mango which reached her from Shekih Hasina Prime Minister of Bangladesh through the Chief Minister of Assam from the office of the Asst High Commissioner Bangladesh Tanvir Monsur Roni. A famous media personality of Assam presently faculty of MSME who earlier was working for many national newspapers including Hindustan Times and as renowned media panelist Iconic Woman Awardee by Women Economic Forum, she dedicated her poetry book to the Universe a rare gesture from any poet so far. “Writing a poem is discovering,” wrote Robert Frost. In poem after poem Tinat discovers truths of life and the sharing with her readers is truly amazing. In one poem ‘A Wish’ she was waiting for writing a long poem, “I want to write a poem / a long one / Not specific.” This was because she was versatile in her thinking and multiple perspectives of a society caught her attention as a social activist. She tried to mingle this role with the role of a responsible poet. It was her country that she wants to write about It was her state of which she took intense care for her poetic musings. She was deep but never lacked width. Her spectrum ranges from home to society, from society to the state and from state to the country, and from the country to the universe.
On the one hand, she saw the crystallized tears of mothers and children and she wrote about it with tears in her eyes. Again, she looked with ire when she described how brothers killed brothers simply because of communal grounds. Sometimes she felt tired of seeing all that happened or is still happening in the country. The riots of Nellie made her sad and depressed but as a poet, she can at best write a long poem to enlighten her nation. This is how Tinat plays the responsible role of a poet and this book is a poetic manifesto for Indian English poetry from an Assamese female poet.
Related Posts:
The book ‘ATOMIC HAZE’ contains 50 poems. The very first poems ‘Raining, Ma’ sets the time of the book which is about ‘Relationships’. In this poem, a daughter deliberately lost her umbrella ‘cause today I want the rain wash away your pain.’ The readers are intrigued at the bypassing of the romantic content by a more ecological bonding of humans with nature. ‘Forget me not ‘ends with a big question on relationship ‘But aren’t mothers and daughters supposed to grow old together?’ The poem ‘Nasty Clouds’ shows how the brightness of those nasty clouds is so evil but the poet says “yet I planted a seed”. Tinat is romantic but never at the cost of reality. She takes count of each real shade in nature. She loves rain but never ignores the nasty cloud. Love is not a cup of tea for Tinat though she has the expertise to write love duets and romantic poems elsewhere on social media. But in this book love is depicted wonderfully with a philanthropic urge. ‘The Requiem for Love’ is an unusual love poem where two loving souls take a pledge to do good for everyone and the final lines are just superb – “My lover and I flew over a rainbow / Our wings flapping together in unison.”
Every poem takes its own time to find its audience, Tyenjam Bijoy Kumar Singh says, “The real beauty of her poems has that quality common to love, romance, longing but she hardly indulges herself in sentimental pangs.” Tinat in an interview given to be informed that she started writing at 18. But since that teenage period of poetic creativity, she was aware of her role as a responsible poet interestingly enough her first poem was about drug addiction. It was because she had met a drug addict for the first time in her life and she emoted from her first-hand experience of real-life around her.
Tinat is a prolific writer and can muse on anything and everything from soft stories to hard political analysis. She prefers to write more and about young adults and how they should be treated by parents, teachers, and elders. The list of her year-wise publication of books is quite impressive 10:20: (A collection of 20 poems published in 2010) The Visionary; The Life and Rise of Tarun Gogoi. She complied this biography over 5 years and it was published in 2016.
Her prime intention as a social activist is to teach people the art of loving, being compassionate, and empathetic with every human on Earth. Her dream is to fill her head every day with knowledge and share this knowledge with people so that she leaves a legacy behind. Her prime job is to mold fearless focused future leaders for the country. The family was always with her be it their parents, their husband, or her teenage son. All are extremely supportive of her growth. Renowned French poet Jean Cocteau rightly wrote: “The poet is a liar who speaks the truth”. After reading the imaginative poems of Tinat Masood we feel this in abundance in poem after poem in this volume. (The author is a senior academician and trilingual poet. He can be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com)
