Sunil Gangopaddhaya’s ‘An Unsent Letter’: A Harrowing Outburst of Long Smothered Wail of a Lacerated Psyche

Abstract

The statement that the poets are born after their death is universally known. There is hardly any writer who writes the criticism of his writings. They are the critics who criticize their works. It can be said that the writer himself may have only a single idea or message when he produces his piece of writings, but the critics have different views on the same work. Even one critic sometimes innovates miscellaneous ideas and messages from the same poetry, play, novel, short story, fiction, non-fiction etc. Furthermore, a post- colonial critic always tries to find the message of his area of study even in the writers of Anglo Saxon, Middle English, Romantic or Victorian era. A romanticist finds his theme in the writings of other periods. Similarly, a fan of feminism attempts to discover the messages related to females in the writings he studies. In the same way, the author of this paper, because of his being a writer for those who find themselves trapped in the social four walls, and who have no control over the situations around them, focuses on how Sunil Gangopaddhaya, in his short lyric titled ‘An Unsent Letter’, has picturesquely delineated the indescribable plight, predicament and quandary of a sub-continental girl who has been sold to a brothel for six thousand rupees. The paper also, besides showing how the women are neglected, abandoned, deserted and ignored in the male-chauvinistic society, emphasizes to show the real backdrop of the women in the society the poet lives.