A Woman She Is !

Born as a boon to dream parents

She grows carefree till given away

For social customs and family pride.

When she errs or does a wrong
Family demands answers long

But she smiles from dawn to dawn

For days on end, months and years

Spreading musk and soft cheers.

She moves faster than the clock

Winding her chores with zing and care

Slips and falls but gathers strength

To defeat the shafts of time's quiver.

But when she retires with midnight sweat

Like a soldier resting with battle wounds

No hand comes out to put the balm

On her sore mind, body and soul

Yet as a friend , lover and mate

She joins her husband till the end.

Her presence in the family

Makes the home a fragrant zone

As if she is the angel of hope and joy

Yet none cares for her being a toy.

What shall we call her,By what name?

A pillar of strength , or a lifeless sod!!

No lexicon has a suitable  word

To describe or by a name enframe. 

sabita sahu

Justice

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

What is justice? The modern jesting pilate will ask and move away plugging his ears.  Right through human history the strong have given justice to the weak, the rich the poor and the powerful to the meek, the intelligent to the dullheads.  When the German soldiers ran over France in the beginning of the Second World War they raped the French women saying the conqueror has every right to rape them. But when in 1944 the Liberation army drove away the Germans and freed France from German occupation, they too raped the French women claiming every right as liberators. In nature matsyanyaya  is very much in operation, the big fish eat the small, the tiger eats the cow and the lizard the fly.No one thinks some judicial or moral imbalance has tilted the ecological or moral equilibrium. No injustice has been done to the weak and meek as it is the wont of nature. The carnivorous will eat the herbivorous and no eyebrows will be raised. When Cain killed his brother Abel and told his mother Eve and when Eve charged him, Cain said,  “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God’s moral sense was not incensed. The earth did not have temperature nor did the stars shed tears of sympathy for the weak and meek. It’s only the weak that cry of injustice that too in a temple or lonely place. They ask for justice from gods. Only when survival was assured the weak vowed for revenge, to pay back the same violence in the name of justice.

What we call justice today is a civilizational value, for civilization creates a value system where the unequal temper of nature is mitigated by rules, laws, ideals and actionable truth. There are judges in proper gear, a sober and staid person presides over a dispute presented by lawyers from both sides. Evidence and logical proof,  however fabricated or concocted, are weighed by the figure of justice (A Blind Woman holding a balance) and a pronouncement is made. In the first flush of civilization the village elders or school masters or priests acted as judges. A landlord or a chieftain also performed the role of a judge who was a god – substitue: Now the judge is appointed by the  Government of a country on the recommendation of an advisory or expert committee or a collegium. The judge presides over a law suit mostly involving the criminality of man. But justice is beyond criminality. Inequality in status, position, social bias derived from religious or intellectual authority, customs and practices and above all identities imposed by tradition or historical necessity often demand justice. Which judge can restore the dalits of  India or the slaves in the Greco-Roman  markets or even the African Americans to psychological dignity retrospectively? Slavery is gone, negro is a taboo word and dalit is now more respectable than harijan but what social justice has wiped off the historical memory? John Rawls’ idea of ‘fairness’ in justice envisaged a ‘primordial equality’ to borrow a phrase from Amartya Sen, which in my view seldom obtains in concrete situations. Impartiality, biaslessness are ideals which normally do not operate in real life situations. Justice must appear to be fair but fairness differs from person to person, class to class and also from age to age. In  Indian Jurisprudence, practically a British Legacy, the principle is: let thousand criminals go scot free but let not a single innocent person be punished. This too is a fair principle. But in the variegated theatre of life no one is satisfied with any judgement.

We ask for justice from God, from Governments from law courts,  from parents but if our actions are not ratified we cry foul. Man does not accept any proclamation of justice. He goes on appealing and at times he becomes the judge, jury and executioner, when his personal sense of justice is frustrated.

Justice delayed is justice denied , they say, yet prolong their own agony by delaying it on some plea or other. Ayodhya  Ram Temple – Babri Masjid is a case in point. Law can not decide all litigations. Man must give himself justice by becoming more tolerant of others' views, religions, rituals and attitudes to life and living. Niti  everywhere is based on values, nyaya too is based on values. But values must sustain life and civilization.

RADHA

 (  A Dialogue  )

SABITA SAHU :  Who is Radha?  How did she come about?  We don’t meet her in the Mahabharat-

PRAFULLA MOHANTY  :  Who is Radha is a very difficult question, cannot be answered at least to my satisfaction in a few words. In Vyasa’s Mahabharat there is no Radha. In the Srimadbhagabatam too there is no Radha. Perhaps Jayadev’s Gitagobindoa is the first text which introduces Radha as a consort to Krishna-

S.S  :      Jayadev’s Gitagobinda belongs to the 12^th century’ CE, What was the need for the 

creation of Radha?

P.K.M  :  When the Purusha and Prakriti of the Samkhya system became acceptable the sages thought of a kind of cosmic energy which functions as the Prime Mover of the Purusha. Vaishnavism too had its impact. Radha is Prakriti or Yogamaya, the power of illusion that moves the visible universe. This energy is known as Devi or even as the mother of the entire reality. Radha means one who holds the universe. She is the Allhadini shakti, the joyous energy that spurs the creativity of Krishna-

S.S  :  But Radha is normally understood as a lover. In the Riti tradition of poetry in the seventheenth and eighteenth century, mostly Radha is shown as a love Goddess.

P.K.M  :  Yes, Rupa Goswami and the Brahma- Vaivarta purana as well as the Sur Sagar of SurDas made Radha both a universal mother and a human lover. In the Riti school of poetry, after chhayavad, Radha became a human lover, a Nayika. But credit must be given to Jayadev for having introduced Radha as the consort to Krishna both divine and human.  The Riti poets, however, played with Radha as a beautiful woman in love with Krishna both as woman and goddess.

S.S  :  What about the Radha of Rasa Lila, Radha Prem Lila celebrated by the common people?

P.K.M :  At the popular level the emphasis is on sexuality and carnal beauty. The dance and drama forms made Radha a sexciting Nayika .

S.S  :  Why then should we call her as the greatest lover?

P.K.M :  Because she loved Krishna with body, mind and soul. Radha combines love, devotion and creativity at a cosmic level.

S.S  :  Why then are we celebrating St. Valentine and not Radha? She should have been the ideal lover for the Indians.

P.K.M  :  Yes, I couldn’t agree more. As long as you think that the western myths are superior you will never celebrate your own myths.

S.S  :  Let’s start a movement then—

P.K.M  :  Don’t try, Let Radha be what she is in our historical memory.

S.S  :  (Smiling ) I feel like championing a Radha movement – well only in our blog. Thank you.

Woman Is Not Second Sex

Is it only a day or calendar date

We take pride to celebrate

As Mother’s Day or Women’s Day.

Just to wipe off memories

The next morn in tearing hurry!

Where then are those chauvinistic hands

That fought to protect Knight like

The honour and chastity of women

A self – pandering gesture of male ego

A shroud of deceit on libido?

Why then do we rip open her clothes

In Hastina, Delhi and homes

Throw her like Nirbhaya in dump yards

And run away like cowards?

You men remember for ever

Do not test her endurance

She is not a plaything or second sex

She is human with power immense.

She creates mankind, nourishes

Nurses and protects without hope

For gratitude or recompense

She does not wait for the gifts.

Never desire for power and pelf.

All she needs is dignity and honour

If you can, give her love

And respect her for what she is.

Sabita Sahu

Equality

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I remember to have read the story of an octogenarian couple taking a hotel room to celebrate their fiftieth marriage anniversary. After dinner and some loveplay the man told his wife: Darling, we two are the best in humankind but I am slightly better than you. In Orwell’s Animal Farm four legged  creatures are better than the two legged at the beginning. But nowhere does history or literature give us an example of two persons or things being equal in all respects . The feet and eyes are not paired in man or women as  equal units. Two trees of the same family do not grow as Siamese twins unless mechanically trimmed (Bonsai ) by a professional. If two persons or things are similar in all respects it is a freak of nature. People talk about equality only in the economic sense in the society. Had man been of the selfsame stuff in all countries the West  could not have dominated the East for long centuries. A greater part of humanity was subordinated by Western civilization disproving Abraham  Lincoln’s  Gettysburg exhortation that “all men are created equal”. Orwell’s “some are more equal” in a world of glaring inequalities is a politically correct expression of man’s position. The human condition induces struggle for survival but the best and ’more equal’ alone survive. Darwinian evolution and the civlizational evolution are parallels in inequality only.

Equity, for me, is more acceptable than equality. Half or more of the human population is poor, lives with less than two dollars worth of living and shouts the loudest for equality. Which will never come. If we believe that man is created by God, we tacitly acknowledge, the superiority of the Maker. This maker or God is present in some form, seen or unseen, in the King, Prime Minister, Father, Employer and all kinds of leaders. If people follow a leader or obey a master equality immediately becomes acontextual  if not irrelevant . Honestly who claims equality with whom? The weak claims equality with the strong. The strong never claims equality with the weak. In democracies the ballet paper, now the EVM button, makes every one equal. But once the elections results are  out the mastery if not tyranny of the winner begins. In the general drama of life it’s only the weak, poor and defeated who claim equality with their opposites. The high brow – low brow, have-  have not conflict is mostly and primarily economic. Once the survival constraints are overcome the power concept enters to distrub the socio – political atmosphere. Even the complexion of the body makes people superior. Nobel Laureate Chinua Achebe once said that when the Englishmen came to Nigeria, they doubted whether the blackmen had souls. This story continues even today all over the world and conflicts do raise their ugly heads.

Cultural  inequality is another divisive factor in contemporary reality. Anti Semitism, Islamophobia and many such other phobias divide the human world into combative cultural fragments. If all the resources of the world are equally divided among all the 688 crore(or more) people of the world somebody will yell “my share of the sky has no stars”. Man is born unequal because each human being is unique. When socialists try to put them all on the same platform, the surface will crumble. Each according to his ability and each according to his need also has turned turtle in the march of civilization. Man is an overreacher. He aspires to rival God. The only creature who is never satisfied with what he has is man. He will gamble for more even if he is reduced to a zero like Yudhistira.

Stones and bricks can be made of equal size, shape and weight . But man is born unequal. We will never play equal music in the human symphony even if God conducts the Orchestra.

Why Do We Live ?

 (A Dialogue)


SABITA SAHU :  Why do we live ? Is there any purpose or life is a mere biological process with a   beginning and end?

PRAFULLA MOHANTY :  This question has disturbed man right from the beginning.The Persian, Vedic sages asked it and today the Scientists. I may laugh it away, saying we live as long as we are not dead. There is no purpose or goal. Life simply is.

S.S   :   How can you laugh it away? Why did man grow from the HomoSapiens to the present data processing stage? If there is no purpose life would stagnate.....

P.K.M  :   This question is a human constant. Those who thought of the anthropomorphic origin of man believed that God creates life and gives the human being a purpose. The purpose varies from sage to sage, saint to saint but no answer can satisfy you. In Genesis(I:28) God asks man to multiply, to replenish and subdue the earth and to have dominion over land, air and sea. Man has done all that. But the Vedic scholars believe that man is a moral being and should fulfill God's purpose of making this earth a place of love, work and knowledge worship in a holistic harmony. Why then all religions and civilizations make this world a battlefield and work towards the extinction of man?

S.S   :   May be that is the purpose of life to work towards self annihilation.

P.K.M  :   No; self annihilation cannot be a purpose of God or man. It happens because we wish to dominate. We have not yet controlled our greed for land, air, and water. Our power is our bane.

S.S   :   Do you then conclude that there is no purpose? Birth and death and  no tomorrow?

P.K.M  :   If there is a purpose it is at the individual level. Live to your full potential, without trying to curtail another man's potential. Never be lost in living which happens to the 'one and half inch' souls.

S.S   :   Do you mean to say make yourself happy without hampering another's happiness?

P.K.M   :   Yes. That is perhaps the only purpose. If you seek  beyond it our dialogue will never end.

S.S   :   (smiling) O' well! Thank you.

Urge of an Orphan

How long shall we carry

This sobriquet of orphan

On our lean chests,

To be chased out of this world

Like unwanted intruders.

Are we born out of love

Or simply bedroom acrobatics

Of a moment of flickering candles

And counting of dirty notes

In scornful measures?

Are we a burden on mankind

To be forsaken forlorn,

Our screams and broken dreams

Do not reach stubborn hearts!

We urge to be lifted, cuddled

By arms of motherly love,

Fatherly care and attention

We must live in a home and family.

This is our only prayer

To God who brought us here.



.sabita sahu

Relationship

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Crowds flow on the roads; crowded buses and trains move along fixed or diverted routes; families, offices and countries functionally move forward from day to day, year to year. Yet we say we are lonely in a crowd. A 19^th century Romantic even said, I am less alone when alone, nature is company enough for me. A modern man or woman has now no time to discover his/her loneliness. We wake up to work and while working fall on the bed. Ask any man or woman to visit your house, the reply would be, I would love to but I have to find time you know! Time is lost to every one; even lovers are often late for the rendezvous. We move fast, invent fast cars, bullet trains, supersonic jets and spacecrafts but do not reach anywhere. All our anxieties, self-imposed tensions do not lead us anywhere. We do not know where to stop. We only take uneasy pauses; the result is we are not related to anything. Our relationships come crashing down. Friendship, marriage, contracts and promises of eternal bond never continue beyond interests. We marry saying we will be faithful to each other till death do us part. But we have no time for each other. The wife is busy in kitty parties, ramp shows, parlours and fashion parades while the husband has no respite from meetings, presentations, promotional trips and business parties. Executives spend more time in hotels than in homes. The middle class mostly suffers from workplace alienation and carries a morose temper home. He speaks, if at all, about his problems without caring for the other members in the family. The poor men and women have only one meaning of relationship , that is sex, that too a compulsive release of tensions in dark sweaty rooms. Politicians behave like individuals. They say openly relationship is not permanent, interests are.

This pursuit of interest is the bane of modern civilization. The Smartphone helps the modern individual to wallow in his personal world. He has no time for his worries. He does not want love, peace, friendship or patriotic commitments towards his country. His only need is success. He must succeed in life whatever be his calling. He can harm the interest of others and can even kill to climb to the top. But he doesn't know that it is lonely at the top.

Today nature is replaced by civilization, morality by law and all horizontal relationships by vaulting ambitions. Democracy guarantees free expressions and scope to ride your dream horses on your own steam. Automatically man becomes a loner because those close to him are also launching their own dream ships to the stars.

He who is alone is either god or a beast, said Aristotle. How true! He meant that God is naturally alone but within the society if somebody is alone (he/ she) is not human. But today Aristotle is an anachronism. Postmodern man is deliberately lonely. He feels that he will right the wrongs of God ,the creator. He will make the world more beautiful, more life- friendly, more organized and more livable. In the process, however, he makes the world hostile and falls a victim to his own heroic forays into God's domain.

The only panacea for loneliness is relatedness. Man must connect. Man must love other human beings. But who knows what love is and who cares!

Thoughts for the week

1)  If  you believe, no proof is necessary; if you don't no proof is enough.

2)  Politicians of all hues have denied a future to the people of Kashmir.

3)  Love purifies the soul.

Emancipation

Am I real, a legitimate human

In this strife–ridden indifferent world

Where every moment spurs anew

To shed copious tears like morning dew.

Nine months of cosy confinement

Without the Father’s lingering shadow

I was safe in the darkness of the womb,

But I came out to seek and explore

Pursue study and discover,

Defying the mortal challenge of birth

To create and play new notes of symphony.

But unmerited suffering snuffed the fire

To question and probe, seek and drive

Landed me in mire, my creative throb

To blow the efficacious trumpets

Started slowing halfway through the journey.

Is this the clime I dreamt?

Is this the space all aspire?

To burn out their native desire

To be, to flow, to pulsate with grace

No, I’ll have none of it,

Let me choose a small shelter

Where a heart of love's dream altar

Shall hold my being like Gibraltar.


sabita sahu

Lullaby

                                                                                             Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Years ago there was no electricity; kerosene or castor oil was at a premium for the poor village folk , life was slow and the rhythms of reality were tuneless. Those days rearing children was also a challenge for the rural poor. When night came like a wave of murk enveloping the contours of visible reality the mothers wanted the little ones to sleep away the night. Feeding them early and taking them to bed was otherwise necessitated to give the womenfolk especially the young mothers some rest and respite to attend to other chores in the family. To lull the young ones to sleep the mothers usually sang lullabies using the backs of the children for caressing rhythms. Music has a soporific effect not only on children but also on men and women of all ages. Music soothes the frayed nerves. For the children the lyric was not important as they were too young to understand but the rhythms,the tune and particularly the mother’s reassuring love sent them to sleep. Poets in the villages and towns wrote lyrics for lori or lullabies. In Odia lullaby is called ‘Nanabaya Gita’. Baya is not suggestive of madness, baya was used by the poets and mothers to mean innocence. The small child was taken through the lyric and the tune to a fairyland of celestial joy. In my childhood, I remember my mother sing a sister of mine to sleep. The lyric was ‘Dho re baya dho, jeyun kiari re gahala mandia sei kiare re so.’Although this is a lullaby it has a deeper interior of human truth. Surface realism and mysticism have been intertwined to create melodic charm and a hallowed kind of mystic joy for the child. Often the moon is invoked by mothers to fall in the hand of a child –O uncle moon of heaven/descend on the palm of my kanhu- as if Yasodha is singing Krishna to sleep. The mother’s elevation to an epical height and the child’s identification with Krishna make the lyric exotic.

In the Bollywood films lori continued almost to the eighties. In poetry it was seldom used even during the last quarter of the last century .The Lullaby, grandma tales and story telling to induce sleep in  a child have vanished from the urban scene altogether. In the villages too the joys of electricity have brought in their train ,the Radio, TV and after the mobile phone came,the video games and other electronic games. The modern society in the name of cultural evolution and sophisticated living has left behind the relics of the past. Life is so fast paced today that little boys and girls sleep alone, without their parents,whiling away the lonely hours with gadgets which bring glaciated mountains and Stone Age horrors to their gleeful imagination. Human beings at every stage of history are born into social groups behaving in a particular manner in response to the challenges of their times.When living eases the imitable patterns of cultural inheritance change. Fear, fatalism and existential crisis have now been overcome to a large extent. Naturally the mystic rhythms of the lullaby have now been given a go by. Parents compel their sleepy children, at times even forcefully, to study, learn so as to compete for survival.

The lullaby is now needed more by adults than children to snatch a few hours of sleep for the call of the morn. And the lullaby is replaced by sleeping pills or Patiala pegs.

Thoughts for the week

  1)  The mind is a switch board but only one switch should  be on at a time.


  2)  Perfection limits the possibilities of growth.


  3)  People rise in love they never fall.

A New Big Bang

What cloud blanket did you spread

the sky has become exotic and red ,.

what did you whisper in the ears of space

that emitted fresh energy in grace

forcing the travellers to orbit around

each other's emerald round ,

and collide for a new Big Bang

to usher in another Three Minutes

of  new frescos of life designs

in time's heart soul and mind !

Is it a curse or  divine blessing

which like a coat of dreams

brightened unfaded in silent smiles

for a quarter century of glowing love

in a life span of warm resolve !

You've taught love's fortitude

in a world fraught with  duds and dudes

to hold love and pain in the palms

and feel a life time of bliss

with a heart's passion and nobility .

sabita sahu

Freedom Indeed

                 

                                

                                                                 Prafulla Kumar Mohanty


Man is free and sacred: This is the basic truth in both the Western and Eastern Intellectual Traditions. By freedom is not meant political freedom although that too is built into the spirit of Freedom which leads to self-fulfillment. Freedom and sanctity lead man to create value systems which govern, moderate and move civilizations in a dynamic harmony. This harmony was the central focus of globalization. It was visualized by some persons like Martin Luther King (Jr.) that mankind will move in a circle, children of all hues and ideologies holding each other's hand and singing of universal brotherhood will march like God's soldiers to carve out a new paradise. But those dreams are now effette. Globalization has been checkmated by nations too self-immersed to think of others. Globalization was purely a business proposition of late capitalism. It has failed to make the globe a human hub where mutual respect and tolerance were to be the bonding factors. The latest scene in a dramatic freeze is seen at North Korea, much to the chagrin of the tolerance brigade.


The human being in the present day world is either keenly observed by the state or totally ignored. Those ignored are unworthy specimens of humanity not worth a camera eye. But those who have some value to project, some ideas to promote, some words to propagate or money and power  to flaunt- are always watched .Along with them the normal passionless, middle path man is also watched as he could be a potential follower of the endowed men and women. It's the fear of dispossession which prompts the powers that be to keep a close watch on people. When one  walks on the road the CCTV camera catches his movements. When one buys provisions in a market or saunters into a Mall the hidden camera follows him/her into all corners. Airport, Hotel, School, College, Railway station, Bus-stand, a dining place or even in a friend's house we are followed, photographed and recorded as though we are spies, thieves, murderers, rapists or enemies of the state.In short man has no privacy, not a moment for himself to check on his own identity. Is this the civilization we aspired for?

`No man is an island', true, but no man is a thoroughfare either.The sanctity and freedom of an individual must be protected by the state, not spied into or usurped:For only in the moments of privacy the world of a sensitive being expands into love, poetry and other creative genres which sustain civilization. Man today is naked, all his hairy details are maneuvered and manipulated, all his numbers on chips, cards and plastic are operated upon to reduce him to a zero. Obey, bend, kneel in unprotesting silence or be a guest in Tihar.

Is this what we struggled for over the centuries? 

Thoughts for the week

1)  The darling of the masses may become the target  of their hatred in no time.

2)   Peace of the living is always turbulent.

3)   Love is the celebration of the joy of living.