Book review: Jayanta Mahapatra, Temple. Dangaroo Press, 1989. 58 pp

Using the frame of two news reports from The Times of India (1980) of New Delhi and The Telegraph (1986) of Calcutta, regarding first an old couple who committed suicide because of poverty and loneliness and second, a young girl allegedly gang-raped and murdered, Mahapatra builds his poetic temple to the Indian woman. In a series of poems in four parts, a dream narrative, he mixes the worlds of dream and reality, so that in the end the Indian doctrine of illusion pervades the whole text.