Question

summary of the poem parrots written by Eunice de souza in 200 words

Answer 1

Eunice de Souza, who is better known as a gifted and astringent poet, carries in her first novel, Dangerlok, the flavour of that Life series. Poetry does not lend itself to plots and Dangerlok spurns any hint of one, eavesdropping instead on Rina Ferreira, lecturer, spinster, owner of a flat shared with two parrots in a seedy part of Mumbai.


Dangerlok is a coined, catchall word that embraces everyone from the truly threatening to the merely irritating. But though dangerlok jostle past Ferreira often enough, they're the background, not the heart, of the book. The novel's title seems to have been chosen for its attention-getting properties rather than its aptness.
Ferreira is not entirely uninteresting; she shares with her creator a dry humour and a sense of the quirkiness of the universe. She emerges in the letters she writes to a man who can't commit as independent rather than manless; in the day-to-day scuffle of existence in Mumbai as grimly capable; in her relationship with the parrots, those most demanding of housemates, as reluctantly affectionate.


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De Souza has the poet's eye for colour and metaphor and these illuminate the novel's celebration of the quotidian. But Dangerlok trips over its own ordinariness. It rambles incessantly, from references to a Praful Bidwai article to sly references to Arundhati Roy's huge advance and the sneaked-in skewering of a recent biography of Nissim Ezekiel. "Too much string," Dickens commented when he returned a contribution entitled Orient Pearls at Random Strung. Dangerlok has its moments, held together, alas, by too much string.

Somewhere in India's bookshops, there must be a cover design even uglier than the schlocky excrescence that decorates Dangerlok, though it hasn't been found yet. One presumes charitably that all of Penguin's designers decided to go on holiday at the same time. For all her limitations as a novelist, de Souza deserved rather better than this.