Small towns and rivers

The poem ‘Small Towns and Rivers’ written by Mamang Dai is a beautiful word-picture. It is also a lament of the poet about her beautiful native land of Arunachal Pradesh. This theme shows in the way she begins the poem that small towns remind her of death. It is shocking. She implies the town is unchanging in all weathers, but development comes along and changes everything. There is irony in that the cycle of life and death shows that life is not permanent, but the rituals are permanent. She uses metaphor that the rivers are not only alive like us humans, but actually immortal. She personifies the river by way the river ‘holds its breath’ because it is choking. It is flowing in search of a place where it will flow clean and clear. The poet uses metaphor of the water cycle to illustrate the river has a soul and its waters are immortal. The poet builds a climax with ‘shrine of happy’ childhood memories. This becomes growing up -‘grow with anxiety’. Then she speaks of how the dead are placed pointing west so the soul can ascend directly into the sun’s golden home in the east. This tells us about the traditions of her region. The poem is in free verse and seems to be in easy language, but we can understand the full depth of meaning only after reading it more than once. The poem is a lament about the destruction of nature for development. We all will feel the sorrow of the poet when we read about how nature’s beauty is damaged for man’s greed called ‘progress’