Miniskirts in the Waste Land

Sudhir reviews Pratibha Castle’s poetry book, launched today, 9 November 2023. “These poems resonate because they describe life as it is. They give a sense of how the eternal can slip into the world of time, of how, if one looks even in the midst of the mundane, there is magic.”

Miniskirts in the Waste Land
by Pratibha Castle
Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2023 – hedgehogpress.co.uk
36 pages
ISBN-10: ‎ 191349974X
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1913499747
Available through the author’s website pratibhacastlepoetry.com
or through bookshop.org – blackwells.co.uk – Amazon*

I’m not entirely sure what made me prop and take a second look when I first saw this book presenting itself on-line. Maybe it was the purple paisley cover, with the mini-skirt, monkey and guitar. Maybe it was the hint of T.S. Elliot in the title, or maybe it was the fact that Pratibha’s name was on the cover.

There’s something intriguing about the 60’s (and 70’s) still it seems. This period, while I was living in Australia and just a little too young by a smidgen to be a full participant in the 60’s London, has always held a certain mythological spot in my mind’s eye. To realise that Pratibha was there and had written about it, along with her impressions of the years to come, including trips to India, made it even more interesting.

Pratibha was the third sannyasin I met. The first two were in Brisbane, in 1976. I didn’t know there were such things as sannyasins, but through a strange and wonderful set of synchronicities, I had found Osho, or was it he who found me? In 1977, it was Pratibha who lead me into that small underground room in Bell Street London, where I first launched myself into Osho Dynamic Meditation. She quietly served tea afterwards, as a discourse played. I’m sure that tea had nutmeg in it. I have never tasted tea quite like it before or since.

Which leads me to these wonderful poems.

My first read was like fast forwarding a movie. The second and third readings took me into a beautifully paced, rich, colourful, real place. Pratibha travels through her experiences of London, (Portobello Road and Notting Hill), Italy, pregnancy, Catholicism, love, sex, India, childbirth, Goa, Pune and a colourful array of existential stops in between.

Some of these places, and some of these experiences are familiar. I lived in London in the late 70’s. Her descriptions of places I used to haunt are evocative and real. The colours and smells and characters move in my heart as they move on the page. I was also in India in those years. The messiness, colour, smells and busy-ness of M.G. Road live again, in a way that they did then. Who can forget either – the accents of London, or the buddha-essence of India, that hides timelessly behind it’s chaotic surface.

Pratibha’s poems are a journey of self-discovery that weave in environments and experiences that are familiar and yet not. Her words are sensual. They describe what her senses are saying, moment to moment. Poetry can take us into that liminal space that arises when we actually see, feel, touch, smell and hear what is going on right before our eyes. They are awareness in action. These poems resonate because they describe life as it is. They give a sense of how the eternal can slip into the world of time, of how, if one looks even in the midst of the mundane, there is magic.

These poems are a feast. Having also frequented some of the places Pratibha describes, and somewhere near this time, I feel they have put a skip in my heart. For others I’m sure they would bring alive a world unknown, which deserves to be known. Most of all they help me see a whole lot more of that dark-haired woman who served this bewildered colonial boy spiced tea in a refurbished coal cellar in Bell Street, London, in 1977, after having gone through the wild, wash rinse and spin cycle of Osho Dynamic Meditation.

These poems are a window into Pratibha’s heart – and into the tangible yet strangely ephemeral world of past places and experiences, lit up by the words of someone who cared to take notice.