Poetry (Padya): prescribed Manipuri poems
Poetry (Padya) covers the prescribed Manipuri poems. Questions test stanza explanation, central idea, poetic devices, tone, and the poet's place in Manipuri literary history. The examiner is checking that you can name a device and say what it does, not that you can retell the poem.
Read a poem in four passes
- Literal: what literally happens or is spoken.
- Structure: stanzas, refrain (eshei), line length, rhyme scheme.
- Figuration: simile (উপমা), metaphor (ৰূপক), personification, alliteration, and the recurring imagery of hills, river, season and mother-tongue.
- Tone and theme: devotion, patriotism, longing, satire, elegy.
Write a stanza explanation in four moves
Paraphrase → image → feeling → link to the poem's theme. Do not translate line by line; show that you understand the drift of the stanza.
Worked example
For a devotional lyric with a refrain, a 5-mark answer to 'explain the stanza and name its device': (1) one sentence of paraphrase; (2) name the device - 'the poet addresses the river as a living being, so it is personification (চেতনাপ্ৰদান)'; (3) quote the three words carrying the device; (4) say what it achieves (it makes the landscape a companion to the speaker's longing); (5) close with the theme. The device name is worth one mark; the effect sentence earns the rest.
Traps that cost marks
- Writing the poet's biography when asked for the central idea.
- Missing that a repeated refrain changes meaning across stanzas.
- Calling every comparison a metaphor - check for দৰে or নিচিনা, which signal simile.
- Writing one line for a 5-mark task.