such as rootlessness, unbridled materialism, fragmentation of the human consciousness, lovelessness, and truth. Divided into four sections -

Flame Rock, Fallen Angels, Relationship, and God Does Not Make Mistakes - Stone Forest reveals the progression and maturation of Pradhan's poetic sensibility.

'Bridge Stone' from the first section is about the emotional vacuum in the modern city-dweller and his unsuccessful attempts at overcoming it through pleasure. As Pradhan says,

"All of us are born slaves
And die in chains
The king and the queen drink
Wine in cushioned company
Rocking in the night's prolonged emptiness…"

Shackled to the chains of civilisation and modernisation, there is little that man can do to escape his fate. The poet's pessimism and lack of hope is evident when, invoking the image of the graveyard, he says,

"The Gods have deserted
The Himalayas
And the snows have gone…

The bare souls lay scattered
On the staggering stoneyard
Seeking another lease of life…" (Stone-Yard)

A macabre and surrealistic reversal of roles takes place at the butcher's shop on a Sunday morning (Sunday Souvenir). Transforming a mundane scene into a powerful expression of protest, Pradhan delineates the hollowness of man's claims to being a superior species. Here, man is the bloodthirsty animal, which bays for the blood and body parts of members of other species. At another level, the poem represents man's insatiable rapacity, which threatens to strip the planet of all its valuable resources. There seems to be no end to the havoc wreaked by the "tailless beast", man.

"Ephemeral Love" in the third section, takes the idea of dehumanisation of mankind in the stone forest a step further. The fragility of love and the lovelessness of human existence are brought out by the image of the statue of the goddess of love, which "lies in a heap of ruins" as a result of one "wrong stroke". "Sunset", the last poem in this section, looks at death as a release from human suffering. In a metaphysical sense, it is dying to the known that brings with it possibilities of salvation.

The fourth section is richest in terms of themes, imagery, and depth of experience. "Counterfeiter" shows the rootlessness of his existence ("hanging between / The infinite sky and / The fathomless sea…). Divorced from all feeling, man is no longer genuine; he is, at best, a pale imitation of his real self. "Virgin Goddess" is about poverty amid the riches of nature; and "The Wealth" reveals the poet's anti-materialism philosophy.

Pradhan seems to have a curiously ambivalent attitude towards the city: at one level, the Stone Forest is home to the tailless ape run amok; at another it becomes Pradhan's city of joy.

"This is my city of joy
The golden city of sunshine…"

A must-read is the foreword by eminent scholar Prafulla Kumar Mohanty, in which he views Pradhan's poetry in the larger context of a poet's art and craft in the Indian tradition. "The Adikavi, Valmiki, thought that poetry was the finest expression of sorrow: sloka flows from shoka.

Readers will warm up to Pradhan's maiden venture, which forces them into rediscovering aspects of feeling that otherwise lie dormant. The importance of the poet and poetry in making man human again is revealed when he writes,

"But surely,
I'm not like those fallen Angels
Who compete with the risen Apes
For a place in the sun."

(The critic teaches English in BJB Junior College, Bhubaneswar)