REVIEW
“MonorogChhondeMonobiderShonge”
NavoneelaBardhan
Post Graduate Trainee, Department of Psychiatry, Gauhati Medical College Hospital, Guwahati, Assam, India
Bardhan N. “MonorogChhondeMonobiderShonge”. Open J Psychiatry Allied Sci. 2015;6:160. doi: 10.5958/2394-2061.2015.00018.X. Epub 2015 Jan 4.
Keywords: Poetry. Mental Disorders. Psychiatry. Mind.
Correspondence: navo11610@gmail.com
Received on 3 January 2015. Accepted on 4 January 2015.
Author: SoumitraGhosh
Edition: First
Published in 2014
Publisher: SwapnaSau, 35B Canal West Road, Kolkata
Pages: 72
Price: Rs. 100.00
ISBN: 978-93-83710-22-5
“MonorogChhondeMonobiderShonge” is a compilation of poems in Bengali by a psychiatrist and is an attempt to bring mental illness classifications into the realm of public domain. Apart from mental illness, this book has also targeted to elaborate on some of the important psychiatric symptoms – functional pain (“MonerByatha”), sleep (“Ghum”), etc.
The style of poetry is narrative – didactic as we get a picture of the manifestations of each illness in a connected manner, and that all the poems use rhyme and metre to make a long lasting impact at the very first instant on the readers’ minds. Most of the poems are written in a quatrain following the AABB pattern; while some poems follow the ABCB pattern – “Behishabi Mon”. The poem “borderline personality disorder” is written in a mixed quatrain pattern using ABAB, AABB, and ABCA styles. Some are also written in heroic quatrain pattern – “MonerOshukh”, “Psychosis”, “Depression”, “Personality Disorders”, “Schizoid Charitra”.
This book stands at the intersection of ‘art’ and ‘science’ and therefore, the choice of language by the author has achieved its target. The Bengali language is read by a large number of people in the region of eastern India, and the language has been kept simple enough for people even outside the fraternity of mental health professionals to comprehend and relate with. On reading the poems, one could virtually visualise a person who might be suffering from mental illness, the struggles that they go through, and how important it is to empathise with them. It also brings into light the subtle differences between seemingly similar entities to the masses and focuses on the differential experiences of the same.
As the language used is in this book is different from the language in which we conventionally study Psychiatry, some terms could not be translated into Bengali and have used as such, for example, ‘psychosis’, ‘schizophrenia’, ‘paranoid’, ‘anankastic’, to name a few.
In the later section of this book, the author has also tried to address some special issues related to treatment of mental illness – stigma surrounding mental illness and mental health professionals, the importance of treatment adherence and compliance.
The book ends befittingly with “Chaile Mon” – pointing out to the vast reserves of the power of our mind which makes a major contribution in our health, achievements, etc., and suggests that expression of one’s thoughts and feelings may have therapeutic value too.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.