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Aug 11, 2021

Creative Poetry, How To be Poetical? How To Write Poetry And Contribute To?

 By Bijay Kant Dubey

It is a fact that one cannot discern and dislodge the cultural stuff, so is the case, as because even if we want to be impersonal, it is bound to reflect the racial, archetypal and territorial stuffs. Myths and motifs are a part of our life. One cannot so easily the legacy of thought and idea, the historical past and the hinge of the cultural heritage. The psyche is composed of the consciousness layers.  Time, Western and Eastern, mechanical and cosmic, how to put in? How to tell about samay, kaal, bela, prahar and danda, which is what? How the vidhan, code of danda? The jurisprudence of punishment? Here time has been deliberated upon mythically and archetypally. Cutting the space of Indian manna, I am trying to take it out what it our psyche, manna.

Main samay hun,/  Akshay samay hun,/ Akshay aur amar samay,/ Samay, kaal, gati/ Jiski koi  sima nahi hoti hain,/ Main samay hun,/ Samay ka chakka/ Jo ghumata rahata hun,/ Sab kucch mere under .( I am Time,/ Indestructible Time,/Indestructible and immortal,/Time, tense, movement which have no limit,/ I am Time,/ The Wheel of Time/ Which keeps it rotating,/ Everything but under me.)

 

Samay Ki Mutthi Mei, Everything But Under The Clutch of Time can be a subordinate title. If you want to title the poem simply, you may call it, Mai Samay Hun, I Am Time. The other option for it may be Akshay Samay, Indestructible time which is but a suggestion. Mai Akashay, Akshay Samay Hun, I Am Indestructible, Indestructible Time may add to rhyming it more as a title suggested again.

To see the flower and to imagine romantically is but the European way of deliberation which but the romantics can think of taking the flight of imagination, gliding in their way. Here the picture of a dream girl conjures upon, a romantic girl standing with a bouquet of flowers. A flower princess she herself presents it the bouquet. Can the lady love be as such? Here Rajanaigandha has been personified. Sometimes a beautiful girl, strangely fair and white stands before you unawares and you on looking her seek to scribble and jot down spontaneously.

Rajanigandha mere ghar ki dahaliz ke paas/ Phulon ka guccha liyei huyi khadi dene ke liye/ Kucch khamosh, kucch sahami huyi/ Apnei aanshuyon ko poncchatin huyi/ Oshabhari raat kahi jaati huyi,/ Kya yahi pyaar hai? (Rajanigandha at my doorstep/ Standing with a bouquet of flowers to gift/Somewhat silent, somewhat stricken/ Wiping the tears of hers/ Leaving under the misty night for somewhere,/ Is this love?)

Wei pucchatei hain,/ Kavita kya hoti hain?,/ Kaisei batayun,/ Kavita kya cheez hoti hain?,/ Kavita kavita ke liyei. (They ask it, / What is poetry?,/ But how to say,/ What is it poetry?,/ Poetry is for poetry.)

What is poetry? It is really very difficult to define it. Poetry is poetry, as take you, take I. Poetry is a flow of emotions and feelings. Sometimes one feels it within to express the inexpressible, the unputdownable on paper.

Poetry writing is an art and the poetry-writer as an artist tries to convert his experiences and memories into that art, transfusing it all. A poem is but an idea, a reflection, a symbol, a motif, a myth, a dream, and an imagination.  A poem is but a photograph hanging on the wall. When we were children, we used to see the photograph of Abraham Lincoln. Bapu’s smile, have you forgotten it? How sweet is it even now! The old man smiling sweetly and innocently.

To be a poet is to be a man of emotion and feeling, to be sentimental and sensitive. To be a poet is to be sensuous, a lover of beauty, truth and goodness, always in search of beauty.

The sentimental heart is the origin of poetry and here from poetry originates it, as the mind perceives, observes and restores the images.

Chandni raaton mei/ Mei tumhei khojata hun,/ Meri ruha tumhari ruha se/Baatei karti hai,/ Tum kahan ho,/ Tum kahan ho? (In the moonlit nights/ I search you,/ My soul with your soul/ Holds the talks,/ Where are you,/ Where are you?) (Title: Pyaar Ka Geet, The Song of Love)

Pyaar ka geet eisa hi hota. (The song of love is as such.) The other thing, Bhagwan ka ghar kahan, hriday hi hota hai, where the house of God, it is but human heart.

Mandir kahan hain?,/ Wah to manna mei hai,/ Mann ko cchodkar,/Tum khoj rahe ho unko kahan? (Where is the temple?,/That is in the manna,/ Leaving you manna,/ Where do you keep searching Him?)  (Title: Manna Mandir, The Temple of Heart)

Akeli ladaki,/ Jaayegi kahan,/ Jivan ke shua path par? (All alone girl,/ Where will she go,/ On the lonely path of life?)

Shuna Jeevan-path, Lonely Life-path may be a title suggested for it. The poems could have been titled right from the start, but these have been at last and the titles too have been coming to rhythmically.

Seva se badhakar,/ Koi dharma nahi,/ Lekin koi jo karte nahi/ Ab. (There is nothing as greater,/ Religion than service,/But nobody does it/ Now-a-days.)

Seva, Service is the title that I cannot suggest it here. Mera Dharam-karam, My Religion-duty can be another option for it.

 

 

Kaisa jo wah hoga,/ Ram ka geet ga raha,/ Krishan ka geet ga raha,/ Kaisa jo wah Rama-bhakta,/ Krishna-bhakta? ( How will he be,/ Singing  the song of Rama,/ Singing the song of  Krishna,/ How that Ram-bhakta,/ Krishna-bhakta?)

Apnei aanshuyon ko ponnccha,/ Rama ka geet ga raha,/ Krishna ka geet ga raha. (Wiping tears of his eyes,/ Singing the song of Rama,/ Singing the song of Krishna.)

Waha kahi dur khada,/ Dur khada,/ Dur desh ka yaatri. (He standing somewhere far,/  Standing far,/ The traveller from far off land.)

How to title it? What should it be? The matter is one from Strange Singer of Rama. A poem of three stanzas here we want to title it, Kaisa Jo Wah Ram Ka Bhakta, Krishna Ka Bhakta? (How That Rama’s Bhakta, Krishna’s Bhakta?) And in addition to the title, we seem to be questioning even that additionally, Kaisi Jo Usaki Bhakti? (How Is That His Devotion?).

Jab apanei log parayei ho jatei hain/ To usase badhakar/ Dukha hi kya? (When the own people turn they into others/ Then what it is bigger than/ That of sorrow and suffering?) Title: Kaisa Lagaa, Boliyei?, How Did You Feel That, Speak You?

‘Kaisa Lagaa, Boliyei?, How Did You Feel That, Speak You?’ is but a life-experience, what this life has given to me and what have I got from it. As these are bilingual poems, so the tiles and their versions exist side by side. Try to choose one.

 

Devadasi, kya yogan bana,/ Gujar jaayengi,/Tumhari raatei? (Devadasi, will becoming a yogan,/ Pass it on/Your nights?)

Yaha kiski sajish,/ Ab to bata,/ O, Devadasi,/ Rahana nahi mandiron mei? (Whose is this conspiracy,/ Now say you,/ O, Devadasi,/ Need not live in temples?)

Devadasi or Kiski Saajish may be the title of the poem. One may also title it, Devadasi, Yah Kiski Sajish? (Devadasi, Whose Is This Conspiracy?). Generally, oracle-makers, soothsayers, astrologers, palmists, florists and other middle men would have brought her here. The first late child may have been coaxed to be here. The astrologers and fortune-tellers would have persuaded the parents to gift the first new-born to be consecrated to Divine services rendered in the form of temple-serving maids which but I resisted it on seeing them for the first time in rock-built temples. Now say you, how will she live in the company of stone gods and goddesses? How will she pass her nights? It is definitely good to serve the gods and goddesses, but not to be by being there. The temples may be classical, the priests may be too, but their hearts not reasonable and logical at all. The whispering villagers and conspiring Brahmins have I never admired them in life.

Vishwanath ke mandir mei,/ Mera manna,/ Shahanai bajata huya. (In the temple of Vishwanath,/ My manna/ Playing the shehnoi.)

Main nahi janata,/ Wah raag-bhairavi yaa kaushiki? (I do not know,/ If that raag-bhairavi or kaushiki?)

Dhanyavad, dhanyavad/ Shir jhukakar thoda, haath uthakar abhivadan mei.(Thank you, thank you,/ Bowing the head a bit, raising the hand in greeting.)

A poem of three small stanzas, Baba Ke Mandir Mei Ek Shehnoi-vadak, A Shehnoi-player In The Temple of Baba is the title I seem to be suggesting to you. One line which came to me later on is ‘Shuniyei’ (Listen you) from, but I did not like it to be included in as one more stanza interrupting the design of the poem. Baba Ke Mandir Mei here indicates Vishwanath Ke Sang, In The Company of Vishwanath. It may be the main pagoda or the courtyard, be it anywhere.

Mere manna mandir mei,/ Wah kaun shi pujaran/ Phul chadhanei aatin hain? (In my temple of manna,/ Who is the worshipper/ Coming with flowers to offer?)

Should I title it, Prem-pratigya, Love-oath or Prem-pujaran, A Love-worshipper, now say you to me?

Sometimes sadness overtakes us and we seem to be possessed of, grappling to come out emotionally. The repentance, struggle and suffering of life, how to put in? How have sorrows raked us? How have we mourned and wept inconsolably? God even did not come in to wipe them out, the tears trickling down the cheeks.

Kitanei badal jo gayei,/ Log jo yahan/ Jo panei thei! (How have they changed,/ The people/ Who were so much own!) Ttile: Badalatei Log, Badaletei Samay, Changing Men, Changing Times

Badalatei Log, Badaletei Samay, Changing Men, Changing Times hints towards a change in our attitude and thinking. Things do not remain the same. Everything changes with time.

Teri aankhon se bahatei,/ Aanshuyon ko/Ponccha jo/Shaka nahi,/ Mera dard, mera dukha!(The tears/ Flowing from your eyes/ Could not/Wipe them,/ My pain, my sorrow!)

Sometimes one fails to render into line by line, just the meaning is converted into so is the case  with the poem written in the memory of my youngest brother. Mera Dard, My Pain I would like to title it. There are two titles, one for the Hindi version another for the English version.

Shraddha ke phul jo bikhar gayei,/ Kaisei karu jo puja-upashana? (Scattered it the flowers of reverence,/ How to worship with the sacred heart?)

Here there is a variation from in the second English line of the poem. It should have been, how to do worship, prayer?, but here the other thing has been attached to instead of. How to title it? If you do not, let me, Shraddha Ke Suman, Flowers of Reverence and this is but faith and its flickering.

Roshani chali gayi,/ Andhera hain,/ Ghup andhera. (Light has gone out,/ There is darkness,/ Deep darkness.)

Kshin Hota Prakash, Diminishing Light may be the title suggested here in an experimental way.

Ek madhyaraatri/ Jab mainei apna darwaza khola/ Bahar baansa ke pole se jhulata/Mitti ke asthi-kalasha ko dekha/ Maan nahi/ Uski naabhi aur bhashma  mitti ke paatra mei. (One midnight/ When opened I the door/ Outside by the bamboo pole found I hanging/ An earthen small asthi-kalasha/ Mother not/ But her navel and ashes in a clay pot.) Title: Asthi-kalasha

Asthi-kalasha, I want to keep it in Hindi and English as well and I think the meaning is quite clear as for the images, thoughts and ideas it carries with along.

 

Pinda-dana,/ Bhuta ke liye,/ Diwnagagata atma ki/ Shanti ke liyei. (Pinda-dana,/ For the spirit,/ The dead soul/ The peace of it.) Title: Pinda-dana

Pinda-dana is actually a journey of the soul, from earth to earth, wind to wind, spirit to spirit, water to water and fire to fire. The soul has merged into the Supreme Soul and what more to say to? The path of life is almost the same. Everyone has to go bare-footed, empty-handed. Let Buddha be our guide. Om shantih shantih shantih.

Mera kucch bhi nahi yahan,/ Khali haath yaya hun,/ Khali haath chala jaayunga/ Yahan se.(I have nothing my own here,/ I have come empty-handed,/  Empty-handed shall I go away/ From here.) Title: Khali Haath, Empty-handed

Pehle bhi akela thaa,/ Abhi bhi hun/ Akelapan cchodata jo nahi. (In the beginning had been all alone,/ Even now am alone,/ Loneliness leaves me it not.) Title: Main Aur Mera Sathi, I And My Companion

Khali Haath, Empty-handed, Main Aur Mera Sathi, I And My Companion, are the poems which I do not want to say it about. Now it is your turn to say.

 

 

Aug 5, 2021

Freedom by Jayanta Mahapatra

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

What the others have left he seems to be describing, taking up for an evaluation, a re-evaluation  as for what did we promise at the time of the attainment of freedom and what we got, how have we stood up to the promises made and pledged? Now the time for realization has come, the time for re-assessment. The tales of freedom, who to tell it? The situation is just like the radio talk of George Bernard Shaw broadcast over the BBC, London in which the dramatist seeks to know what it is freedom, who a freeman and how the types of freedom. Are we free really? Who can be free? So is the case herein. To see it in other words, it is but Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. It is not the talk of Jayanta Mahapatra, but of every conscious human being, what have we for the widows, daughters and poor people? What have for the hopeless and the helpless? What have we for the desperate and the devastated? The  answer which but every conscious being will say, we have done nothing  for them. We have done nothing for those who expect it from. We do not think the women are in a better state even now. Many live below the poverty line. Still now many go half-fed, half-clothed. Many do not have the cots to sleep on. The small hutments, mud houses, they leak it badly during the rainy days, so shivering with cold during the wintry days and so full of humidity during the summertime.

The poet starting the poem in the likewise manner says it that he feels it at times his country’s body floats it into the river. He just imagines about to suppose that if sinks down or keeps floating the river, what will it happen? Just like a boat it will keep floating. The  things will remain half-submerged, hidden from wide view as it happens during the rainy days with the flood warning when the villages go under water and the people run for rescue centres if any in the suburbs

Left alone, he grows into a half-disembodied bamboo whose lower part is sunk into the bank. In this context we may hear the Tennysonian lines as said in The Brook,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever. 

From the river-bank the poet notices it all, the river and the people, the boats and the boatmen floating on the waters.

Here old widows and dying men cherish for to be free from. But the body does not freed so easily. Only prayers cannot give them all.  What will a life of inaction give to? Does God hear the prayers of the inactive? God is in action. Blind faith cannot lead us far. Blind faith cannot give us food. God helps those who help themselves, is the thing of reckoning.

Children too talk of freedom nurturing and nourishing the dreams of it in an ideal way, thinking highly of it, upholding noble ideas. But they know it not what it is freedom. What the meaning of freedom? Freedom is just an imagination, a thought and an idea. Can you say, what do you understand  by it? What do I? Are you free? Am I free? Do you not encroach or infringe upon someone’s rights? Practically we are not free. Theoretically and idealistically we are free. Freedom is that which one feels it after reading ‘Where the mind is without fear’. Khushwant Singh’s columns too speak of freedom and liberty even though does he mazak with us, comic, caricature and joke.

At times, as I watch,
it seems as though my country's body
floats down somewhere on the river.

Left alone, I grow into
a half-disembodied bamboo,
its lower part sunk
into itself on the bank.

Here, old widows and dying men
cherish their freedom,
bowing time after time in obstinate prayers.

While children scream
with this desire for freedom
to transform the world
without even laying hands on it.

In my blindness, at times I fear
I'd wander back to either of them.

In order for me not to lose face,
it is necessary for me to be alone.

Not to meet the woman and her child
in that remote village in the hills
who never had even a little rice
for their one daily meal these fifty years.

And not to see the uncaught, bloodied light
of sunsets cling to the tall white columns
of Parliament House.

In the new temple man has built nearby,
the priest is the one who knows freedom,
while God hides in the dark like an alien.

And each day I keep looking for the light
shadows find excuses to keep.

Trying to find the only freedom I know,
the freedom of the body when it's alone.

The freedom of the silent shale, the moonless coal,
the beds of streams of the sleeping god.

I keep the ashes away,
try not to wear them on my forehead.

On the one hand the pontifical and hypocritical ones talk of being over religious, but while on the other the people lie underdeveloped, hungry and distraught, so devastated in their life. The hamlets tell of their poverty, illiteracy, underdevelopment, living below the poverty line under miserable conditions. What does freedom mean to them?

But the sunsets glowing around the white pillars of Parliament House tell it otherwise taking to different panorama of life. Who are sitting therein? Who not? How the stories of it? The stories of people and the lands? How the story of the house? Who made it and when? And who leased it? Is it of the architects and masons? Or, of time? Is it of lawmakers or of people and their representatives? Who represents whom? How direct narration, indirect narration? Their voices sometimes echo and re-echo it in the house, but the people fail to hear it. The voices of agony, anguish, distress, bruise, distress, trouble, tribulation, struggle, suffering, pity, pathos and loss, a few can hear and overhear it.

In the new temple built near it, the priest knows what freedom is, but God seems to be hiding as an alien. How peculiar is the concept? How the oblique approach of the poet? What is religion? Where is God? Which is what and what is whose? Is God Daridranarayana or in kangal-bhojana? This too is a point of deliberation which but Adi Shankaracharya felt it once as Shiva showed him in the form of.

Each day he thinks of being light, hopes to be enlightened with, but darkness seems to be enveloping in. Darkness leaves him not alone and with the excuses it seems to be escaping each and every time.

An idea, a thought has both negative and positive aspects. The Gita too says it, ‘Annad bhavanti bhutani’, ‘The world is created from food or the things from food’, translate you as thus.

Do you want to see the land with the eyes of the unfed and the uncovered people? Try to know from them who have not been fed well. The eyes will tell a saga of life. The hungry stomach and the thirsty lips will tell the story of life as felt and experienced, trouble and tribulation faced and borne.

It is a different poem so indifferent in thought and idea, image and reflection. To quote in the words of William Wordsworth, we have grown too much worldly as the world is too much with us. But apart from all this, nothing can cut the base of existentialism, nothingness and nihilism. What are our institutions for? What is our purpose? What do we want? Do the humans not err? Are we sincere? What is the thing that is not intentional? The every work that do we is but self-tending.

Have we not heard, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine’?

The only freedom he has known it in life is but the freedom of the body. Putting the anti-thesis the poet says in the manner of G.B.Shaw, but Donne too says it but in a metaphysical way in Death, Be Not Proud.

To be religious is not to be blind to logic and reason. To be metaphysical is not to too much superstitious, mythical and mystical, unnecessarily supernatural. Along with karma, dharma too is important. To be a karmayogin too is a thing to be reckoned with. Only to talk about the sleeping gods is not good at all. Smearing the forehead with the ash, he does not want to look over religious and mystical. Rather than being hypocritical and pontifical, he wants to go in his own way.

To talk to, revert to freedom and its tale is to be back to the children, widows and poor people and to hear from them the tales of their hard life. So, rather than losing one’s face one needs to be silent. Why to say them all? Why to critique in a discerning way if the people like it not to hear the candid stories of freedom, liberty and independence?

Who is a legislator, who a lawmaker? What was he? What had  he been when he was not? We do not want to discuss these. Who knows rule and regulation in what way we cannot say it. Something one learns from the chair.  After all we are human beings full of errors and omissions, failures and foibles. Are we for law? If we are asked to say keeping the hands on the Gita, can we?

Law and justice? Are these the voice of the heart? Is law not a document? Say, who is for justice? Is justice not compassion? Who is a judge? Is he not a man? Who is whose? Who a criminal? Why is he a criminal? Is he a man or not? We do not understand. How the Jurisprudence of God we do not know it, it is beyond the comprehension of human mind!

Is the court for litigation or reconciliation? Or should, there be some acquittals? The lapses of law, how to compromise with? Something needs to be borrowed from dhamma.

I too thought it similarly while celebrating the fifty years of India with some thinking which I kept ruminating. What have we for the widows, women and children? For the poor daughters of India? What did we for the old men? For the addicts? Did we ever think of making rehabilitation centres? Did we ever about the making of the old man houses? Could we eradicate poverty? Could we do away with hunger?

Such a thing it is in political science and its theories and the consequences of historical movements. Democracy, equality and fraternity, good is the message of the French revolution, but what did we do to the king’s family, the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian revolution, we appreciate it for socialism, uniting the labourers of the world, admiring the dignity of labour, but what did we do the Czar family? Democracy turned into a chaos and socialism in proletariat dictatorship.

The jurisprudence of law is something different, is but the metaphysical side of it. Situations, circumstances and times keep changing. Everything does not remain the same. The  chariot of time keeps it rotating. What we see it today will not be tomorrow. What it seems to be is nothing and nothing is what it seems to be. The charkha of fate too keeps spinning. What one will become none can predict it. Not even the astrologers and palmists. Do they know their fate? The history of land, the history of time, the history of man, we know it not. The history of the house the house-builders know it well, but we take it not their version, we just enter into, take the version of the kings and their people, we mean the courtiers. Such an anti-thesis it is in George Bernard Shaw even though he may be a propagandist, a monotonous talker. Such an aspect it is in  George Orwell’s Gandhi and elephant shooting essays. Such a thing it is in John Galsworthy. Read them and say you. The  British historians of constitutional history will enlighten upon the topic in hand.

But there is something to learn from R.K.Narayan’s An Astrologer’s Day, Oscar Wilde’s The Model Millionaire, O.Henry’s The Last Leaf, Leo Tolstoy’s Three Questions, A.L. Tennyson’s Ulysses, Samuel  Brecht’s  Life of Galileo, K.A Abbas’ The Refugee, Lady Gregory’s Rising of The Moon and so on. Freedom is not of human rights activists or freedom fighters. Freedom is not in charters. Freedom is in the sense of being free; freedom is in the understanding of mass and matter. How to take liberty with the idea is the main. Nissim Ezekiel’s The Patriot and Night of the Scorpion too teach about the clarity of thought and idea.

It is better to be alone and to confide in reckoning. The flight of imagination has always lured us and has a charm of its own. To confute and contradict is not at all good all the times. But the thoughts keep swaying and images swapping positions and places. Allen Ginsberg too lessons it otherwise as for what the digressed and lost generations have given in as for spiritual thirst and search for knowledge abandoning material pleasure. Freedom is not what you think, what I think. Freedom is an experimentation with liberty and while experimenting with, if one fails, the other may make a way for. It will right to conclude the poem with Rousseau’s line:

“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.”

What the others have left he seems to be describing, taking up for an evaluation, a re-evaluation  as for what did we promise at the time of the attainment of freedom and what we got, how have we stood up to the promises made and pledged? Now the time for realization has come, the time for re-assessment. The tales of freedom, who to tell it? The situation is just like the radio talk of George Bernard Shaw broadcast over the BBC, London in which the dramatist seeks to know what it is freedom, who a freeman and how the types of freedom. Are we free really? Who can be free? So is the case herein. To see it in other words, it is but Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. It is not the talk of Jayanta Mahapatra, but of every conscious human being, what have we for the widows, daughters and poor people? What have for the hopeless and the helpless? What have we for the desperate and the devastated? The  answer which but every conscious being will say, we have done nothing  for them. We have done nothing for those who expect it from. We do not think the women are in a better state even now. Many live below the poverty line. Still now many go half-fed, half-clothed. Many do not have the cots to sleep on. The small hutments, mud houses, they leak it badly during the rainy days, so shivering with cold during the wintry days and so full of humidity during the summertime.

The poet starting the poem in the likewise manner says it that he feels it at times his country’s body floats it into the river. He just imagines about to suppose that if sinks down or keeps floating the river, what will it happen? Just like a boat it will keep floating. The  things will remain half-submerged, hidden from wide view as it happens during the rainy days with the flood warning when the villages go under water and the people run for rescue centres if any in the suburbs. Left alone, he grows into a half-disembodied bamboo whose lower part is sunk into the bank. In this context we may hear the Tennysonian lines as said in The Brook,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

From the river-bank the poet notices it all, the river and the people, the boats and the boatmen floating on the waters. Here old widows and dying men cherish for to be free from. But the body does not freed so easily. Only prayers cannot give them all.  What will a life of inaction give to? Does God hear the prayers of the inactive? God is in action. Blind faith cannot lead us far. Blind faith cannot give us food. God helps those who help themselves, is the thing of reckoning.

Children too talk of freedom nurturing and nourishing the dreams of it in an ideal way, thinking highly of it, upholding noble ideas. But they know it not what it is freedom. What the meaning of freedom? Freedom is just an imagination, a thought and an idea. Can you say, what do you understand  by it? What do I? Are you free? Am I free? Do you not encroach or infringe upon someone’s rights? Practically we are not free. Theoretically and idealistically we are free. Freedom is that which one feels it after reading ‘Where the mind is without fear’. Khushwant Singh’s columns too speak of freedom and liberty even though does he mazak with us, comic, caricature and joke.

At times, as I watch,
it seems as though my country's body
floats down somewhere on the river.

Left alone, I grow into
a half-disembodied bamboo,
its lower part sunk
into itself on the bank.

Here, old widows and dying men
cherish their freedom,
bowing time after time in obstinate prayers.

While children scream
with this desire for freedom
to transform the world
without even laying hands on it.

In my blindness, at times I fear
I'd wander back to either of them.
In order for me not to lose face,
it is necessary for me to be alone.

Not to meet the woman and her child
in that remote village in the hills
who never had even a little rice
for their one daily meal these fifty years.

And not to see the uncaught, bloodied light
of sunsets cling to the tall white columns
of Parliament House.

In the new temple man has built nearby,
the priest is the one who knows freedom,
while God hides in the dark like an alien.

And each day I keep looking for the light
shadows find excuses to keep.

Trying to find the only freedom I know,
the freedom of the body when it's alone.

The freedom of the silent shale, the moonless coal,
the beds of streams of the sleeping god.

I keep the ashes away,
try not to wear them on my forehead.

On the one hand the pontifical and hypocritical ones talk of being over religious, but while on the other the people lie underdeveloped, hungry and distraught, so devastated in their life. The hamlets tell of their poverty, illiteracy, underdevelopment, living below the poverty line under miserable conditions. What does freedom mean to them?

But the sunsets glowing around the white pillars of Parliament House tell it otherwise taking to different panorama of life. Who are sitting therein? Who not? How the stories of it? The stories of people and the lands? How the story of the house? Who made it and when? And who leased it? Is it of the architects and masons? Or, of time? Is it of lawmakers or of people and their representatives? Who represents whom? How direct narration, indirect narration? Their voices sometimes echo and re-echo it in the house, but the people fail to hear it. The voices of agony, anguish, distress, bruise, distress, trouble, tribulation, struggle, suffering, pity, pathos and loss, a few can hear and overhear it. In the new temple built near it, the priest knows what freedom is, but God seems to be hiding as an alien. How peculiar is the concept? How the oblique approach of the poet? What is religion? Where is God? Which is what and what is whose? Is God Daridranarayana or in kangal-bhojana? This too is a point of deliberation which but Adi Shankaracharya felt it once as Shiva showed him in the form of.

Each day he thinks of being light, hopes to be enlightened with, but darkness seems to be enveloping in. Darkness leaves him not alone and with the excuses it seems to be escaping each and every time. An idea, a thought has both negative and positive aspects. The Gita too says it, ‘Annad bhavanti bhutani’, ‘The world is created from food or the things from food’, translate you as thus. Do you want to see the land with the eyes of the unfed and the uncovered people? Try to know from them who have not been fed well. The eyes will tell a saga of life. The hungry stomach and the thirsty lips will tell the story of life as felt and experienced, trouble and tribulation faced and borne. It is a different poem so indifferent in thought and idea, image and reflection. To quote in the words of William Wordsworth, we have grown too much worldly as the world is too much with us. But apart from all this, nothing can cut the base of existentialism, nothingness and nihilism. What are our institutions for? What is our purpose? What do we want? Do the humans not err? Are we sincere? What is the thing that is not intentional? The every work that do we is but self-tending.

Have we not heard, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine’?

The only freedom he has known it in life is but the freedom of the body. Putting the anti-thesis the poet says in the manner of G.B.Shaw, but Donne too says it but in a metaphysical way in Death, Be Not Proud.

To be religious is not to be blind to logic and reason. To be metaphysical is not to too much superstitious, mythical and mystical, unnecessarily supernatural. Along with karma, dharma too is important. To be a karmayogin too is a thing to be reckoned with. Only to talk about the sleeping gods is not good at all. Smearing the forehead with the ash, he does not want to look over religious and mystical. Rather than being hypocritical and pontifical, he wants to go in his own way. To talk to, revert to freedom and its tale is to be back to the children, widows and poor people and to hear from them the tales of their hard life. So, rather than losing one’s face one needs to be silent. Why to say them all? Why to critique in a discerning way if the people like it not to hear the candid stories of freedom, liberty and independence?

Who is a legislator, who a lawmaker? What was he? What had  he been when he was not? We do not want to discuss these. Who knows rule and regulation in what way we cannot say it. Something one learns from the chair.  After all we are human beings full of errors and omissions, failures and foibles. Are we for law? If we are asked to say keeping the hands on the Gita, can we? Law and justice? Are these the voice of the heart? Is law not a document? Say, who is for justice? Is justice not compassion? Who is a judge? Is he not a man? Who is whose? Who a criminal? Why is he a criminal? Is he a man or not? We do not understand. How the Jurisprudence of God we do not know it, it is beyond the comprehension of human mind! Is the court for litigation or reconciliation? Or should, there be some acquittals? The lapses of law, how to compromise with? Something needs to be borrowed from dhamma.

I too thought it similarly while celebrating the fifty years of India with some thinking which I kept ruminating. What have we for the widows, women and children? For the poor daughters of India? What did we for the old men? For the addicts? Did we ever think of making rehabilitation centres? Did we ever about the making of the old man houses? Could we eradicate poverty? Could we do away with hunger? Such a thing it is in political science and its theories and the consequences of historical movements. Democracy, equality and fraternity, good is the message of the French revolution, but what did we do to the king’s family, the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian revolution, we appreciate it for socialism, uniting the labourers of the world, admiring the dignity of labour, but what did we do the Czar family? Democracy turned into a chaos and socialism in proletariat dictatorship.

The jurisprudence of law is something different, is but the metaphysical side of it. Situations, circumstances and times keep changing. Everything does not remain the same. The  chariot of time keeps it rotating. What we see it today will not be tomorrow. What it seems to be is nothing and nothing is what it seems to be. The charkha of fate too keeps spinning. What one will become none can predict it. Not even the astrologers and palmists. Do they know their fate? The history of land, the history of time, the history of man, we know it not. The history of the house the house-builders know it well, but we take it not their version, we just enter into, take the version of the kings and their people, we mean the courtiers. Such an anti-thesis it is in George Bernard Shaw even though he may be a propagandist, a monotonous talker. Such an aspect it is in  George Orwell’s Gandhi and elephant shooting essays. Such a thing it is in John Galsworthy. Read them and say you. The  British historians of constitutional history will enlighten upon the topic in hand.

But there is something to learn from R.K.Narayan’s An Astrologer’s Day, Oscar Wilde’s The Model Millionaire, O.Henry’s The Last Leaf, Leo Tolstoy’s Three Questions, A.L. Tennyson’s Ulysses, Samuel  Brecht’s  Life of Galileo, K.A Abbas’ The Refugee, Lady Gregory’s Rising of The Moon and so on. Freedom is not of human rights activists or freedom fighters. Freedom is not in charters. Freedom is in the sense of being free; freedom is in the understanding of mass and matter. How to take liberty with the idea is the main? Nissim Ezekiel’s The Patriot and Night of the Scorpion too teach about the clarity of thought and idea. It is better to be alone and to confide in reckoning. The flight of imagination has always lured us and has a charm of its own. To confute and contradict is not at all good all the times. But the thoughts keep swaying and images swapping positions and places. Allen Ginsberg too lessons it otherwise as for what the digressed and lost generations have given in as for spiritual thirst and search for knowledge abandoning material pleasure. Freedom is not what you think, what I think. Freedom is an experimentation with liberty and while experimenting with, if one fails, the other may make a way for. It will right to conclude the poem with Rousseau’s line:

“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.”


 


 


 


 

Aug 1, 2021

Small Towns and the River: Mamang Dai

By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

Small Towns And The River by Mamang Dai is a poem of Arunchal pradesh where she was born, of Shillong, Meghalaya where she read it, did her schooloing from, of Assam where her graduation with English Honours from Gauhati Universty and it all telling of the cartography and topgraphy of the Northeast of India indirectly, how it was in the past, how it is now, how the indigenous tribes and cultures of it in contrast to as well as taking us far for an ethnogrphic, socio-linguistical study. A poetess from Pasighat, East Siang District, Arunachal Pradesh is first an IAS, but for devoting more time to journalism and literature she chose it otherwise.  A recipient of Padma Shri from the Govt. of India and Sahitya Akademi Award, she comes from the Adi tribe with a folk base of her own deeply rooted into the soil of her land. To read her is to be reminded of Verrier Elwin and George Grierson and Jim Corbett.

In the poem, one can mark the history and growth of towns, Indian towns, hilly towns and the history of struggling folks trying to shed ignorance as well as underdevelopment, moving out for job and better opprtunites and also he feels towards the pull of the tradition of patriarchs or tribal chieftains seeing with the hawkish eye. But at the first instance it is a poem of the river and the small town. But mythically it is a song of man and Nature, how the conncetion is in between. The second thing is experience, the experience of life, the world, as seen and  experienced and viewed. How the contrasts between society and development? How to clutch them along? How to myth and tradition with the stride?

Small towns always remind me of death.
My hometown lies calmly amidst the trees,
it is always the same,
in summer or winter,
with the dust flying,
or the wind howling down the gorge. 

The poetess while starting the narrative says what she has come to feel it personally as an inhabitant, as an in-dweller what the town meant to her, how the history of their, how the trends and traditions of them doing the rounds, beleifs and faiths whch but sustaining them so far. To read the poem is to come to feel the history of Assam and the frontiers, the history of the ethnographic tribes and tribesmen, the opening of colleges and schools. How was it Pasighat in the past? How is it now? Does development take a toll upon nature? And if not developed, can man be man? Let us study it the relationship between man and nature, the relationship between the town and the river.

The small towns remind her of death, what she has seen, come to feel it, how the communities have been living, burying their dead, carrying on with rituals and beliefs and in the midst of all, she lies with her divided self, split personality in choosing in between the two as for where to go, what it to opt for.  Her hometown lies it calmly in the midst of trees and hills. It is almost the same, the same archetypal village; the same hutment she sees it over the years coming down to as an image and if to see it otherwise, ‘Home, home, there is no place like home.’

Just the other day someone died.
In the dreadful silence we wept
looking at the sad wreath of tuberoses.
Life and death, life and death,
only the rituals are permanent. 

How life goes on, keeps on moving she narrates it here in this poem. How did   happen it one day when soemone of her close died and she kept weeping, mourning the loss in silence placed with a sad wreath of tuberorses? Life and death, death and life, it will continue unto the last as long as man is on earth. But it is the rituals which some may confide in for a repose.

Here identifying herself with the river the poetess tells the archetypal stories of life and death. How do they bury their dead? How do they do away with? The scene is one of silence and mourning; man coming and going whcih is but never-ending story. The lines remind us of Tennyson’s Tears, Idle Tears, Break, Break, Break, Crossing the Bar, The Brook and In Memoriam.

The river has a soul.
In the summer it cuts through the land
like a torrent of grief. Sometimes,
sometimes, I think it holds its breath
seeking a land of fish and stars 

The river has a soul whcih she has come to feel it and it is also true that without the river, the forest, the hill and the land man cannot live. The river is a source of life-giving water as well as for agriculture and she has seen the river in different seasons. During the rainy days, it has a tale of own to tell about the babble and murmur by and during the summertime so different.

The river has a soul.
It knows, stretching past the town,
from the first drop of rain to dry earth
and mist on the mountaintops,
the river knows
the immortality of water. 

Water, water, water, the drop of water for the thirsty, on the barren earth parching and dried, burning with heat and dust swirling, how to pray for to be blessed with a cold shower, the clouds gatehring over Himavant for a cloudburst. No life without water is the thing. Water for fertility, vegetation, how to explain it, for the seeds to germinate? But Coleridge describes it with the sighting of the scenery and the return of the ship when retribution for the guilt is done.

To read the lines here is to be reminded of The Waste Land, Kailasha and Mansarovar, Meru and Vaigai river, the Ghagra which but Eliot, Yeats, Ramanujan, Daruwalla refer to into their poems. It is the river on whose banks lie it the settlements of the indigenous people. It is water for which the saints prayed to Shiva for emanting the Ganges from his matted locks to the earth. The tale of the Neelachal hills and the Brahmaputra of Kamakhya, how to allude to?

A shrine of happy pictures
marks the days of childhood.
Small towns grow with anxiety
for the future.
The dead are placed pointing west.
When the soul rises
it will walk into the golden east,
into the house of the sun.

What golden dreams does she dream? Where her Konark Sun Temple? How her land of the rising sun? Does she mean to hint towards the Tawang monastery too?

Life, what was it during childhood? How had it been the times? How did the huts after the growth of towns? There is something of Hood’s My Chldhood and the loss of innocence. There is something of Lamb’s chimney-sweepers.The sun has been used in as a myth and a motif too as Lawrence refers to in his travelogues, novels and short stories.  There is something of Sea and Sardinia, The Lost Girl, Etruscan Places and Apocalypse; there is something of The Ship of Death, Bavarian Gantians and Shadows. Resurrection stories of Lawrence too can be referred to. The Mexican backgrounds which Lawrence refers to too take us to a different world of native myth and mysticism. What more do we know about the Mayan civilization?

In the cool bamboo,
restored in sunlight,
life matters, like this. 

Life matters, as the bamboos keep murmuring in the wind adding to greenery and vegetation. The word bamboo has a mythical text. How do we use, wehn do we and for what purposes? Bamboos are needed for huts. Bamboos are needed for making the bier. Even for making baskets, cots, mud houses and for fences it is needed. This is how life goes in the forest ranges, the hilly terrains where there is life too and it pulsates with. Here we can hear the mystic drums of Nigeria not, but Arunachal.

In small towns by the river
we all want to walk with the gods. 

The small towns dotting the river banks have a tale of ther own to tell, the folks have a mythical base of their own to share with. The river is essential for every purpose. Even in the past the ciivilizations grew up on the river banks. Even now the Hindu people need them for pinda-dana on the ghat and asthi-kalasha to keep it hanging by the tree of to be immersed in.

To read the poems is read the alternative version of history; is to know history through folk mediums and local sources. It is also true we have neglected  regional history so much in attaching imporatnce to the war, loot and  plunder.To read is to be remembered of the poems of Wole Soyinka, Gabriel Okara, Ben Okri and so on. To read the poem is to know the history of the seven sisterly states and to relate to and align it with otherwise to the main story. While reading the poem, the mind gets lifted to Nagaland and the Naga sadhus; their rigorous and austere sadhna and hathayoga which but few know it. What more do we abut the Ahom dynasty and the Sikkimese kings?

Her theme is one of A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal where Wordsworth talks of the insensitive body of Lucy Gray turned into the rocks, stones and trees. Is it a poem of the Siang river or the Siyom river? As Mahapatra talks of the river Daya so does she here in this poem. Has Wordsworth not written about Tintern Abbey and the Wye river and London 1802?

The river of Time, the hutment of Nature, the presence of Man, the history of Earth, what to say it about? What it in race and ethnicity? What it in myth and mysticism? Where do they lead to ultimately? Should we not ask our own conscience to deliberate? Who can but about the pathway of life? But there must be something to confide in, repose in as for temporary solace.

 

Jul 27, 2021

Relationship: Jayanta Mahapatra

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Relationship, The First Volume of Indian English Poetry To Fetch Jayanta Mahapatra The Sahitya Akademi Award For 1981

Relationship is the first volume of Indian English poetry writing to fetch Jayanta Mahapatra the award for creative writing in poetry and he is the first Indian English poet to be awarded with it. But to discuss it is to know about the institution of the Sahitya Akademi award. Since when is it given to? Were there any awards before it? Were there no Indian writers of Indo-Anglican verse? The answer is definitely yes, there were some to get it. Many did not get a chance. Many felt it not encouraged. Many used to write in their diaries, but never liked to open and claim at that time. Whatever be that, let us be with it. It is also a fact that the books of Indian English verse used to be out of print and out of stock. Most of the writers were unknown. This was also true with regard to Jayanta Mahapatra. The book shops and book stalls flatly used to deny with regard to the procurement of books and used to express annoyance. Even the books were not available in College Street, Calcutta. Even at Patna the volumes of Indian English poetry could not be traced.  

When I asked about the journals, the magazines stall-sellers saw me with wonder and asked to tell the names of some more dead magazines. The teachers were also not adapted to Indian English tradition and were critical of. Just the slender anthologies of Indian English poetry were before us counted on hands, ones or twos. To get the books of Sarojini is to search antique book shops or the libraries of Nehru’s time. Who will go to National Library, Calcutta to dust the racks or shelves? Even in the eighties modern Indian English poets were just evolving poets and poetesses rather than what they are today. Do not intermix the things of the photo-copier machines’ time with that of the smart phone and the computer. Nissim Ezekiel got the Sahitya Akademi Award for Latter-Day Psalms in 1983, Keki N.Daruwalla for The Keeper of the Dead in 1984, Kamala Das for Collected poems in  1985, Shiv K.Kumar for Trapfalls in the Sky in 1987, Dom Moraes for Serendip in 1994, A.K.Ramanujan for The Collected Poems in 1999,  Adil Jussawalla for Trying to Say Goodbye in 2014. 

But we cannot who have and who have not? Who should have? Something is also not in awards and prizes. Lawrence Bentlemen too was a good poet. K.D.Katrak too was no less than in his innovative writing. The modern Indian English poets were not popular since the start, they have taken time to develop and the world too has taken time in knowing them. Had the UGC not pressurized, these could not have been included, had the Ph.D. programme been not made compulsory for career advancement! At that time Ph.Ds. done on Indian things and topics used to appear as Indian language Ph.Ds. The problem lay not with the British-text schooled professors, but with the standard and quality of Indian English verse too as it was derivative, imitative, parodied and copied, a study in minor voices and slender anthologies. The publishers too used to refuse to publish. I myself heard it and the talks passed through my ears when one research student wished to do his Ph.D. on Arun Kolatkar in the nineties as suggested by one Indian-matter inclined guide, the varsity head of the department in a dilemma hesitated if to approve the synopsis as because Kolatkar had not so many books then. 

Even in M.K.Naik’s book he talks of collecting the stray poems of the poet and publishing in  a book format. We too were not accustomed to reading Indian English verses. The high-powered specs-wearing olden time professors schooled during the British period had no interest at all in these slender anthologies and puerile parodied stuffs. Frankly speaking, Indian English verse is a study in private and personal collections. The poets are here but self-styled poets and poetesses. The other thing too is this that it is easy to work on Indian topics as for the dissertations rather than the British stuffs.

What it pains us most in reading Indian English poetry is this that there are no critical texts as for to analyze them. There are no critics of it. The fresh research students pose as the critics of Indian English poetry who are in reality the novice fellows as well as the learners of such an evolving genre of literature. Here whatever your write will be accepted. There is none to contradict your theory. The biographical details too of the nondescript practitioners whose whereabouts are unknown and obscure are quintessential as for discussing their poems. If you are able to access and approach the poet, you will definitely turn into a critic here.

I searched for the books of Jayanta Mahapatra, but could not find them, even wrote to Prof. P.Lal who too responded with the proposal of photo-stating the materials and sending them after the payment of charges as required for the research. Somehow I got the address of Mahapatra and he was kind enough to send me the books. Similar had been the case with Daruwalla. But Nissim Ezekiel asked to write to Oxford Univ. Press, Delhi, but the books too were out of stock. It took time in corresponding with, getting the reply by post, sending of the M.O.

Relationship is a long poem consisting of a few pages, not so many in numbers, but is in continuation of his relationship with Orissa and the Oriya space, culture, history, myth, tradition and mysticism. Here he grappling with the topography and cartography glides with map and map-making, telling of his connection with the land of his birth, rearing, education and growing up. Just with the visionary glides and escapades he keeps on rolling and gliding, sometimes on the boat with the boatmen, sometimes with the sailors on the ships sailing on the sea and sometimes by the shore seeing the sea shores. The Oriya landscape with the rivers, forests, hills, lakes, sea beaches, historical sites, hamlets, exotic flora and fauna he binds them into a whole to weave the myth of his own delving to take the visionary flights. The Ganga kings, who to tell about? Who there to tell about the Konark Sun temple? How the sculptures and figurines of it inscribed upon the walls? What are they indicative of? What the motif behind? The tourist spots and destinations pleasurable and refreshing, where does mind get lifted to? The wooden statues carved out of fresh wood and placed in the Jagannath temple so bizarre and grotesque lift us from our busy schedule to see the Rathyatra and the gods and goddesses on outing, the chariot pulled by the mammoth of crowds following, held by reverence and piety, looking back in wonder and astonishment, devotion and religiosity and so full of festivity, mirth and joy. To read Jayanta Mahapatra is to feel that the history of Delhi is not the history of India. The history of Bihar and the U.P. is not the history of Indian politics. While doing his M.Sc. from Patna Univ., he would have definitely felt the caste system prevalent in Bihar.

The poetry-work, Relationship appeared in 1980 from the Greenfield Review Press, Greenfield Center, New York 12833, USA. With an extract from Whitman’s Song of Myself before the start of the poem, the small book opens up in its way opening the avenues of thought and idea, dream and vision; widening the spectrum and horizon of our delving. Relationship as a work cannot be analyzed, paraphrased and annotated as because so many abstract things have been assimilated into the poetic texture of the poem delving deep into Oriya land, cartography, history, art, culture, society, tradition, belief and heritage and living. How the people are, how the land is, how their living, how their language! How their deity, belief-system! His language is so metaphoric and mythic here reminding us of the Irish myth and mysticism of W.B.Yeats. What is this Orissa? How the stories of it? How to express his love and gratitude for the motherland, the place of his nativity is the question! It is Orissa which is his love; it is Orissa his dream and imagery and with it he sleeps and awakes and arises from slumber.

Wearing the mythically embroidered bespangled coat of Yeats, he starts the tale of Orissa and Orissan myth and mysticism engaging his inner space:

“Once again one must sit back and bury the face
in this earth of the forbidding myth,
the phallus of the enormous stone,
when the lengthened shadow of a restless vulture
caresses the strong and silent deodars in the valley,
and when the time of the butterfly
moves inside the fierce body of the forest bear,
and feel the tensed muscle of rock
yield to the virtuous water of the hidden springs of the Mahanadi,
the mystery of secret rights that make up destiny;”
Relationship, The Chandrabhaga Society, Cuttack, Second Indian Edition, 1999, p.9 ) 

A poet he can show what it is in regional history and how have we kept our histories ignored. What more do we know about our histories? Just others’ versions we hear. We do not have our standpoint. We could not take a note of that. The replica of the Konark Sun-temple is the replica of his poetry; how the wheels of it, the wheels of the chariot and how the horses of Suryanarayana! Who made the Konark Sun-temple and how? Who were the architects? Who the forgotten masons? Just like the vagabond Whitman he wants to gloss over with his visionary stance. His leaves are not the leaves of America, but of Orissa. Plucking the green grass blade, Mahapatra like Tennyson wants to pipe and sing a song. Yeats’ An Acre of Grass not, but the whole panorama and landscape of coastal Orissa is the dream vision of Jayanta Mahapatra.

 The last lines of the poem take us to a different pedestal of make-believe dream sequence:

Is anything beyond me that I cannot catch up?
Tell me your names, dark daughters
Hold me to your spaces

In your dance is my elusive birth, my sleep
that swallows the green hills of the land
and the crows that quicken the sunlight in the veins,
and the stone that watches my sadness fly in and out
of my deaths, a spiritless soul of memory
(Ibid, p.38 ) 

Who are these dark daughters? Are these the poor toiling masses of our agrarian countrified society? Are these the poor daughters of India whose tales of pity and pathos we often hear it? Are these the tears of Sita and Yasodhara falling from their feminine eyes and cheeks? Are these the dark daughters of the temples working as devadasis or yoginis? Are the priests and the middle men okay? Are the astrologers and palmists and soothsayers true to their kindred souls? Scholasticism is good, so is classicism, but where do we go to finally? Can we detach ourselves from our bare realities and earthly connections? Can we close our eyes from seeing the trouble and tribulation of the common masses? Does hunger not malign us? Are the people not living below the poverty lines? What man does not do for the stomach?

Down the memory lanes, where does he want to go? Where is he going?  What does the poet mean to say it? Is it his day dreaming or night dreaming? In a vision where does he want to lapse into? Does he want to identify his self with the self of the motherland? Here his stand is mythic and mythological, so full with the flight of imagination, dreamy glide and slide, so full of generalizations.

Divided in twelve, each section tells a tale of own. The first is grappling with myth and mysticism, the making of the land, the drift of time and the phallus stone overshadowing it all. Against the backdrop of the sea and its hazards, dark forests and dark myths of creation, he tells the tales of life and this living of ours, that of the Oriyas. There is something of Riders to the Sea of J.M.Synge in it.

The second is autobiographical but written in the form of a reverie as Dream Children by Charles Lamb is. Marking the grave of his mother, he ruminates over the passage of time as which becomes what in course of time, how memory and reminiscence play a role in human life and the images keep shifting like the sands of time.

The third starts with the first rains washing the lands and stones, sin and blood and here lies in the story of the Daya river on whose banks the Kalinga and the Ashokan armies clashed. The imagery is one of The Waste Land and The Rime  of The Ancient Mariner. There is something of the Tower of Silence imagery when we think of the skeleton remains, bodies cleansed of rotting flesh. The penance of Bhagirath and the doing away of the sins of the sons of Sagar come to the mind as and when we sit to discuss it.

The fourth tells about his imagistic meanderings and loiterings. What he means to say it is not clear. The burden of peace, how to take to? Voices of children have always wronged.

The fifth as an ode to sleep though is not is all about the soothing flight of imagination, the visionary glide taken, the dream dreamt through, with the help of imagery and reflection, nostalgia and remembrance. If sleep is soothing, where will it land, all know it.

The sixth is again a glide in which he speaks of the gathering of clouds, rains and the Ganga kings and their ruins. None to  say where he goes from where.

The seventh is all about who stands where, who is for what if the notions keep shifting, images keep swapping places. The ideas are not clear here. If one searches Jayanta Mahapatra  for meaning, one will be at wit’s end.

The eighth is all about his connections with stones, the stones of history and archaeology, geography and architecture. It is the Konark Sun-temple that he discusses it here indirectly in a visionary style of rambling. The sweep and glance of Mahapatra is splendid.

In the ninth starting from the myth of happiness he lurks around  shuttling in between dreams and imagery.

The tenth is a door relating poem in which he speaks about stumbling upon the peepul tree and the meditational connect. Slipping through the doorways and planks, one can glimpse the outward world. The doors of dreams keep unfolding and opening new avenues of thought and idea. Just lie you by the door and go on seeing the ways.

The eleventh starting with the mirror mirrors it all happening underneath the consciousness layers of his heart.

The section twelve is about the dark daughters of the temple complex, of the countryside whose trouble and tribulation keep it swapping, taking forms, bearing fruits. None strove to know what it ailed them, their spirit and self. His style is folklorish and mythical as he keeps telling in a tell-tale way of deliberation. The dark daughter, why are they? What the cause of their darkness? Are they dark really or are affectionate daughters? Can daughters be dark? And even if are, what that to? What is it the myth of darkness, is it of the Dark Goddess? There is something of the Lingam-Yoni motif, the Prakriti-Purusha concept and the Shiva-Durga story indirectly relayed through the dream vision. But the base is one of proposition and supposition; the mythic base and he taking visionary flights. What we see as things is but mass and matter and the shapes keep changing. What it is today will not be tomorrow. The human mind is always in a flux. So are the fleeting images and impressions of life.

Sometimes we ask ourselves if Relationship is Kubla Khan of Coleridge and he writing under the impact and so is Mahaptra too here under the charm of dream sequence but without taking anything. Where will the parachutes of imagination will land them to, God knows it. Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet likes to silhouette and in his poetry imagery plays an upper hand with faith being so shaky and frail. The pencil images do not remain the same as they change it from time to time.

Jul 23, 2021

The Indian Upon God: WB Yeats

 BY: Bijay Kant Dubey

I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moorfowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.
I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.
A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?
I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

Who is the Indian described here? What is he discussing? Is it about Indian faith and belief system? Or, Indian culture, philosophy and religion?  What the matter is? Or, Yeats himself under the influence of Swami Purohit or Mohini Chatterjee is reflecting upon? When was the poem composed? But apart from all that it is quite clear that he has been under occultism, Eastern philosophy, theosophical society, myth and mythology since the start. Whatever be that, The Indian Upon God as a poem shows the poet’s grappling with mythologies and poetry as he interweaves them into his poetry as art motifs. His sense of Indology, India and Indian culture, Vedic and Upanishadic vision, spiritual studies, transcendental approach and pantheistic realm is so strong and rarer that we feel awestruck with that in coming to terms with such a lore draped in verse. Taking the cue from the Genesis of the Bible, he goes on elucidating in his style. But to understand Yeats is no easy task.

The Indian Upon God as a poem is all about how do the Indians perceive God and hold it to be and their concept of the Over Soul and realization of the self. To perceive God is to see it in all. Where is God not, in what is it not? God is everywhere, in each and every object that see we, find we. Taking a pantheistic stand, the poet tries to discern it by alluding to in his personal way of reflection. Nature so freckled and wild is the image of His. Just we should have the vision to see and feel it the whole pantheistic panorama. He is Matter and Mass, Mind and Spirit, Over Soul and the Over Spirit.

The poet passes along the water’s edge below the humid trees with his spirit rocked in evening light, rushes round his knees and he drifting far. In that mood of reflection and visionary glide, loiter and steps taken, sleep and sighs take over the spirit. While moving ahead, he sees a moorfowl pacing and dripping on a grassy slope. The flocks getting round or strayed far in circles cease to chase and the eldest of them is heard speaking: 

Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.

Herein lies in the understanding and metaphysics of W.B.Yeats and his grappling with Indian thought and wisdom. The poet comes to feel where peace is, what does the soul want, where to go ultimately and what it is that lasts for. A communion with the soul in the midst of Nature is the essence. Some sort of peace is needed to carry on the discourse.  The Maker of the moorfowl is but an undying being and without thinking of the fowl and its image how could he have the wild bird? He lives beyond the sky. The rains drip from His dripping wing and the moonbeams from the eyes. How amazing is it that taking the bird he composes the metaphysical lines! The poet wants to say that the One who has made us has also made the moorfowl. 

The poet moves a little ahead and hears the lotus talk about how it has been in the image of His and how Divinity is almost like that:

Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.

How mystical are the lines said through the depiction of the lotus and the stalk! How the lotus in scenic and panoramic in penetration! Who has made it the world and who rules it? He hangs onto a stalk. He is but a lotus, the Greater Lotus which but you know it not! He is the Lotus Divine! The Lotus of Wisdom and Knowledge! The Pearly Drops scattered over the petals! The lotus petals splashed with water drops, dew drops, growing in the midst of water are but the imagery and painting of His!

Again, he makes a room for himself and moves forward, but gets intercepted by a roebuck lying in the gloom with a unique starlit glitter in the eyes of it ready for its turn to say, break upon:

Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?

The poet means too say that it is the same Creator who has made us has made the roebuck. The idea carries the kernels of thoughts as discussed by Blake and Hopkins. In the eyes of the roebuck, God is but a creature like them as because He could not have had He not thought in that context. The colour design, the marks, are but the things and ideas of His and without whose mercy it could not have been conceived. God as the Stamper of the Skies is an impressionist line expressing about the impressions made by Him. It is He who has fashioned the world as per His image and the world bears the stamps of His.

The poet passes a little further and marks a peacock saying:

Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

If we take the peacock’s version, who is that who has made the green grass, worms and its feathers? He is a great peacock which dances all through the night. His languid tail is above us, lit with the myriad spots of light. God is the Peacock of peacocks. It is really splendid to see God through the peacock imagery. Side by side it is amazing to see the peacock so wonderfully painted and designed. Colours take us to a dreamy plane of thinking. How would it have been the brush and colours of God that He applied in making the peacock and its feathers! Really, the riot of colours is appalling, bluish, blackish, greenish and freckled and at the same time so fanciful, frenzied, imaginative and dreamy! The words ‘a monstrous peacock’ and ‘languid tail’ relate to something as awe or bizarre inculcated in.

We do not know if an Indian poet can write as such. William Butler Yeats is really a great poet so mythological and profound in his expression unparalleled in history, a paragon of poetic artistry and consummate craftsmanship. Had he visited India, it would have been great, but he could not! And we too failed to invite him!

Jul 19, 2021

Indian Weavers: Sarojini Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Weavers, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.

Weavers, weaving at fall of night,
Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . .
Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,
We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.

Weavers, weaving solemn and still,
What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . .
White as a feather and white as a cloud,
We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

Did Sarojini start writing about Indian weavers, palanquin bearers, fishers, boatmen and bards herself or someone else suggested her to do so? And it was none the else but Edmund Gosse and Arthur Symons who told her to celebrate, sing of India. Let us think of Sarojini with Edmund Gosse and Sir Arthur Symons and let us without them in the absence of the British mentors. None has striven to know, none has striven to care about. Let us think of Sarojini without Indian stuffs and connections. Poetic talent cannot get reared so easily if there are no gardeners to look after the garden of poesy. But in the case of Sarojini she got it everywhere.

Indian Weavers is without any doubt a song so lovely and charming bringing to our memory the weavers at work, making the cloth, netting, putting on the frame, measuring, printing and designing however be the method of their work. To read the poem is to be reminded of the textile industry, handloom and machine-made cloths. Here mainly the dreamy and colourful side has been touched upon. Something it is of course of the veil and shroud. Weavers, Indian weavers, how did they make the cloth? How had it been their craftsmanship?

Addressing the weavers in an indirect way with the answer tendered to or given, the poetess begins her poem with a lyrical excellence of her own. She asks how they are making the garment so attractive, catching the eyes of the on-lookers, making the dreamers dream about, putting desires on fire. The weavers respond to that they make the garments for a new-born babe so blue like the wings of the wild halcyon. Here the picture and image of a wild halcyon dances before the eyes.

Weavers keep weaving, keeping busy with work even at the fall of the night. Again, she asks why the garments are so bright.  What the reason behind? How their art, weaving art and colour design? How their concept on the canvas of the cloth? Weavers respond it that they make green and purple marriage veils for the queens to put on, wear it. The marriage veils appear to be just like the peacock feathers enchanting us with the colour design so dreamy and pearly indeed, looking rainbowish and drizzling. Here the mind gets lifted to embroidery work and bespangled designs.

But same weavers are found to be solemn and grim when the talk of the white cloth arises it. Dressed in whites sometimes looks it well, but sometimes the whites are used for the shroud to be cast over and cover up. Nuns and widows too don it. In the moonlight chill they weave the white cloth. Moonlight has been pulled in to suit the poetic purpose.

Some colour concept and the fabric design go on doing the rounds here in this poem. The poetess has added poetical colours to it as because weavers do not inculcate in specific times for weaving cloth. But something of it depends on colour choice and perception no doubt. They make cloth keeping in mind common sales, festivities and age bars. What do the people like? What is the occasion of use? But notion and rationality are something different. Something is definitely relating to capacity. Can many afford to purchase? At that time many used to go half-fed, half-clothed. Actually, just for a colour match she has arranged the scenes for the poem as she does it in the poem pertaining to glass bangle-sellers. The contours of fabrics, art work and motifs designed, colours given, painted and printed, how to tell of an age gone by and the history of art coming down to, continuing for so long with the change in models and techniques?



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