Death Is Not The End

Death is a welcome balm

embalms life to eternal calm

not a foe but a lover true

comes for the final union

when the body tired of life

needs the lover’s arm: he comes.

As a universal lover, crowns  lives,

champions life with a celebration and

marks the end for a new beginning.

Welcome him and embrace him.

Death makes life so livable,

compels to live with the intensity

of a yogi’s stance, makes life

a private tryst with destiny.

Arrives like the last guest

at a wedding dinner, he brings the

last gifts, name, fame and identity

for having lived life with a vision:

greet him: go with him like a bride

he will beautify  your return after

a noon-nap to participate in

life’s eternal drama of rising

and falling curtains, repainted

to appear in another role.

Sabita Sahu

Free Sex

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Desire for sex is as old as mankind. In Freudian terms libido is the most powerful driving force in men and women. The evolution of civilizational paradigms include sex drive in different forms. Creation arguably centres round the phallus and for that reason phallus worship in different religions in east and west is observed. To curb this drive in the humans, religions and governments have laws or moral precepts: it is a sin to transgress the limits imposed by religion and a crime in the eyes of law. But defying all moral and legal forces men give free play to their libidinous energy. Clandestine sex, enforced sex(rape) consensual sex beyond the limitations imposed by society, extramarital, premarital sex, homosexuality and all  imaginable kinky sex is seen all over the world. In the so called high society wife swapping, group sex, competitive sex goes on winking at the norms of high society values. Pornographic literature and the Internet sky way porn do roaring business. In most countries homosexual marriages are legal. In India the transgender marriages may soon be decriminalized. No progressive writer bothers about Cenci  although father – daughter sex often shames us on the media. So what’s the problem? Bury all scriptures proscribing sex beyond the framework of marriage and abolish the oldest and now effete institution of marriage, and have a free sex society, if the word society in the meanwhile has not broken apart by the logic of the new normal.

The humanist ethic today is persuaded by the logic-if it feels good, do it-; all socio moral norms are anachronisms now. If the heart desires and the mind wills, conscience is trapped by passion to ineffectual protestations often unheard and always ignored. This is not necessarily a recent phenomenon; this has existed concurrently with creation. It is not man who because of his physical superiority subdues woman to sex; Women too have self- chosen sexual pleasures by their urges. Kunti in Mahabharat invited the sun, wind gods for the curiosity of sexual pleasure. Helen being a wife and mother voluntarily became bed mate to Paris in the name of love. Sexual urge defies god and man. In the twenty first century sex is just an itch; it can be scratched without the conscience ringing alarm bells. Films show stalking and even foreplay in the name of freedom of expression. Sex too is a freedom which men and women enjoy with or without sociomoral approval.    

The scientists say that the sex act simply creates a very pleasurable sensation because of chemical changes in the body. Tantrics argue that through sex a divine consciousness is awakened. If this be so why ‘fake’ moralists cry foul ?  Sex is a very private and sweet relationship between two persons. By opening it up to ridiculous levels of freedom we destroy its sanctity. Civilization lends a measure of sophistication to sexual union. It is not a canine act. Humans over the centuries have made this relationship between man and woman a royal artistic relationship. Poets have given it the most luxuriant metaphors. Upendra Bhanja, the Kabisamrat of Odisha has made sex a universal union of elemental divinities. It is the most intense experience where the body and mind reach a still point of spirituality after a participatory journey to the peak of human togetherness

Let not sex, spurred by passion destroy the consummation of human relationships in the name of libidinous freedom. The moral values fortified by modern laws are a good measure of maturity in civilization. Time, place and manner make sexual contact between man and woman a dignified and soul-thrilling institutions. Let us not move in the streets like “A beast with two backs” to borrow an image from W.B.Yeats, making the animals look at us with disdain.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Child Abuse In Schools

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

When I read somewhere “schools are modern temples where life is moulded by knowledge – smiths for this- worldly salvation...” I wince. My ire rises. What salvation? Every other day I read in the papers and watch on television about a girl being raped. Girls between four and twelve are molested and raped by teachers, clerks, peons or game instructors. In some schools, Ryan for instance, boys of tender age are even killed by maladjusted boys with gay abandon. University teachers, research supervisors, principals shamelessly make these temples hell-holes of ignominy. Schools these days are the nightmares for parents. Restless mothers wait for the kids’ safe return. Bus, car, taxi or other transports are not safe. Even boys are not immune from monsters of depravity. This is not an urban exclusive. The rural schools too are defamed by the same perversions of human nature.

How could such things happen in India? A hoary culture boasting of five thousand years of unimpeded flow of rich humane values could not have sunk to these depths in just seventy years of Independence and territorial integrity? In the days of the great epics, we do not have evidence of co-education. In Drona’s classes or Vishwamitra’s ashrams, girls are not to be seen? Yes’ we get evidence of rape, kidnapping, and pre-marital or extra-marital sex but paedophilia is not reported. The heroic ages of Greece and Rome have not been infamous for such pervert kind of sex abuse. One may argue, since the schools in those times were in open spaces child sex was impossible. While I accept the spirit of this logic, I am tempted to pay tribute to the society where such unnatural things, perhaps, were not given moral approval. But in contemporary times despite spectacular improvements in the education system and vast changes in the infrastructural environment how could this psychic malady surface without any historical continuity?

Admittedly man is a predator, sexual overdrive is not unnatural in these times of opulence and opportunities. Exposure to sexciting scenes, especially pornographic literature or net pornography may lead a person to turn into a sex maniac; but why the school? A government or private school appoints, at least tries to appoint men and women of comparatively good character. A background check of the other employees is also done in the case of non-teaching employees. Qualified persons manage and administer the schools. Security guards and CCTV cameras watch or suppose to watch things, yet such abuses happen. Should we then say that such occurrences are few and far between and should be taken as individual aberrations? But the frequency and extent of such abuses are now alarming. Last week two female teachers sexually molested a seven-year-old girl as reported by a national daily. This prompts the question; are we so maniacal and our libido manifests so forcefully that all societal and civilizational norms are flouted without any moral compunction?

Punishing the offenders is one way of looking at these problems although that seems to be the Hobson’s choice in all modern states. However, the punishment is dependent on evidence, proof, courtroom pyrotechnics of high-priced lawyers and Tariq pe Tariq. But the survivor is psychologically ruined. The survivor feels vanquished; his/her being smarts to death with self-conscious, self-deprecation. No compensation or punishment to the offender could ever heal the unseen wound.

I am not foolish enough to preach moral education in the schools or moral counselling to the staff. Morals in the democratic society are self-chosen and restraints self-imposed. No coercive imposition of values can change a person’s instincts. The fear of punishment may be deterrent but the death penalty for rapist has not acted as one. I feel the cure lies elsewhere;  in the inherited family values and the knowledge base, we provide in our curriculum. We teach to prepare citizens who will be resources to the state. We never prepare students as beings, as individuals with a sense of human dignity. Modern curricula are abstract, in the sense that these train men and women to be technicians of algorithms, genes and database. The knowledge laboratories must now rethink and produce individuals who will use knowledge with a human face. Otherwise, the data-centric worldview will run its course and no one will complain of crimes.

Reunion

It happened without

planning or premeditation

he agreed, his indisposition

was no barrier, we met in our

small crowded city, in a joint

noisy, hot and busy.

After the greetings, the order

for soup and starter and feeling

of relative unease at the meeting

slowly the old events were relived

with memories of bitterness sweetened

by the present moment of togetherness.

 I have always tried to unite

him with the family but was

always repulsed- and rightly so

he was stubborn to my pleadings

my requests were smiled away

again we became dear strangers:

The nearness that was magical

broke apart, the charm countered

by sulking logic disappointed me,

what looked like done was undone.

But some power stopped the A/C

silencing the crowd having lost

the sight of the family reunion.

Where the hearts and the souls were

rejoined to fill the widening gap like

a written script conceived earlier
stopped the breath for a while.

Sabita Sahu

Deny Not My Love

             

Was it my shallow action or

harsh words that pierced

your heart, I saw a streak

of pain on your face, I swear

never I meant anything,

punish me if you wish

but with a hug and long kiss.

My heart is not strong

enough to bear your tears,
let me lick the rolling dew

till you dry up and brighten
your day with my smile,

touch me, hold me, feel me 

forever and not just for a while.

Words need not explicate

how much my love is for you

but I assert , none can savour

or ever equal as I do.

If to love is a sin or crime,

I’ll do it again and again, till

all songs lose their rhyme.

Sabita Sahu

Pollution

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

'Come my love, come to my village, you will breathe fresh air, pure as God’s breath’: the lover invites his city girl. Is it just pollution in the city air which she must leave behind for a brief while or there is something more in the village air for the lovers? May be the lovers think that since the industrial waste is not released into the crystal streams, factory fumes do not cloud the air, fields and orchards do not release particulate matter  the villages are healthier in their fostering care of human love. But go to any village you will see bikes, tractors, trucks, a few pumps and other diesel guzzling contraptions choking the air. The stubble burning before a new season of winter crops darkens the sky and poisons the air for at least a month. The beautiful nostrils of your love will start irritating in no time and she will sneeze her way back early.

Today all over the world efforts are being made to keep the city air clean, for, all cities are growing in population beyond the capacity of their territorial limits of sustainability. The technologically updated devices meant for comfort of the body emit gasses into the air which imperceptibly pollute the air. Pressure of ever increasing population leads to clearing of forests and transforming farm land, marshland and wasteland into concrete jungles. High-rise structures even block the skyline; the new generations of humans   see only the midday sun; the beauty of sunrise and sunset is only a text book experience for most of our city children. More people mean more roads, more factories, more busses trucks, more cars, more constructions and dust and more of lung diseases.

A month ago a very unsavoury scene was witnessed by the world in the Feroze Shah Kotla stadium. The Srilankan cricketers threw up in the field. The next day one or two Indian cricketers also vomited. It was due to polluted air they breathed. It slowed down their pace and choked their nose and throats. If this happens in an open cricket park in the capital of India, what about the other cities and towns where such things are the new normal?

Pollution is the price of civilization. All countries believing in unlimited growth, unlimited prosperity pay the price. Nothing is available in the world which does not come to its last cycle. And nothing comes free without exacting its price. But pollution is quite a heavy price to pay for evasive and evanescent pleasures of life. Nature sustains humanity but when the epitonic limits of nature’s tolerance is crossed nature fights for her own survival.

Civilization creates multiple levels of pollution. The ultimate pollution, however, is war. The wrongs pursued by civilizations often draw the battle lines. But before the kurukshetra happens man must learn to yield and bend a little. In other words man should give up some dream luxuries and comforts and opt for moderations in all spheres. The world can never become a heaven of plenitude. We must therefore settle for less. Our pace must cope up with the accommodative agreement of nature. We already suffer from other pollutions which are off shoots of our civilizational errors. Jealousy, revenge, intolerance and moral turpitude have already given us restlessness. To add to our psychic blues if the environmental pollution- a monster of our own making- chokes us to death, the failure of civilization will be a sad inheritance for our children. The future generations will never pardon us.

We multiply at will. We fight in the name of faith. We fell trees and burn forests for our ever expanding needs. The sky today is hole – dark. The earth is porous and hollow. Our seas are poisoned by our atomic tests. How long can we live with fossil fuel and the killer instinct? This earth has given us everything. Now it is payback time. The five elements of reality of which we humans are also composed must be saved. For that we have to curb our magnanimity a little and learn to live with less. If we distribute nature’s bounties without considerations of power (whatever be its form) between us and share all problems equally, nature will play the eternal mother and sustain us. But can man be so refined and good? Perhaps not. Therefore nature will make us good by using her tooth and nail.

Reservations

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Who are these queuing up before free ration shops, faces contorted in simulated humility, eyes popping up in wonder and gratitude, the bent heads acknowledging the merciful highness of the dole givers? Where are those championing human dignity who always advocate human rights and the value of human life? Do they gnash their teeth in impotent rage at this sorry sight of man? No. They don’t, for, their advocacy of human dignity is often confined to the political authority’s recognition of human dignity. And that often means give the poor doles. Let the unfortunate specimens of humanity queue up, satchel in hand or beg for money or provisions to keep base life afoot. They write articles,  in argue panel discussions to give the poor and weaker sections of the society free food, free house and make them feel eternally grateful to the welfare state- the mai baap government. The clever among the activists who have some education and gift of the gab, they organise rallies and gherao government officers or ministers and demand reservation on caste basis. The argument is: these unfortunate victims of Manu have been exploited by a wrong perception of man –made divisions of upper and lower castes. The rich and powerful put them under the mat which has become a self-deluding historical habit which they haven’t shaken off. What’s to be done then? Give them reservation in schools, jobs and even promotion and make it hereditary.

B.R .Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian Constitution could look into the future and see that the perpetuated reservation will be another historical blunder, for, human beings always prefer to live under the benign shadow of divine mercy or its worldly substitutes practised in a welfare state. He recommended a ten year period of reservation for the scheduled classes and tribes. But the law makers saw the vote potential in reservation and expanded it to include other castes and vote power groups capable of wielding pressure. The constitution is amended every ten years and the ten year periodicity is gleefully extended to rejuvenate suffering men and women in the coming decade. And this is done to right a historical wrong. History cannot be brought to the right moral path retrospectively, rather the present generations enjoying reservation will have greater demands as their positions improve and the current history will pave the way for future distortions as the socio-moral-economic gaps will widen following the law of nature.

This is already happening as the new champions of the poor exploit the situation politically. Guzars,Jats, Patels, Marathas now a days do not beg or request or appeal; they resort to the blackmail of violence. Now the minorities demand reservation. Some state governments grant them reservation flouting Supreme Court directives not to exceed 50% of the total number. After a few year the so called upper castes will demand reservation as a large percentage of meritorious youth fail to access the available opportunities.

It is an unfortunate irony of history that man who considers himself as the best creation of God  does not hesitate to label himself helpless, to stretch out his hands to receive doles of political mercy. Some states also prepare long lists of want only to make them eligible for central assistance while the historians record their proud culture and heritage. If man is a paragon of virtue how can he pose himself as destitute only for the state’s mercy? Is it not a shame on governments to politically exploit poverty in the name of welfare? If the rich and the powerful, in history, exploited the hapless poor for their own comforts and threw doles at them to record their own names in the annals of philanthropy how were they different from the present day representatives of people?

Man is a natural seeker of opportunities. In the past, those who utilized opportunities or snatched opportunities from the jaws of adversity have contributed to human dignity by their resourcefulness. The poor young persons of today need such opportunities. A welfare state’s primary purpose should be to uplift man by providing opportunities; not to enslave them by giving them reservations. The present government should create institutions of excellence for them and encourage them to compete. Ignite their native intelligence, teach them not to fall prey to history as interpreted by vested interest groups and pseudo intellectuals. Explore the talent centres and utilize those to carve out new patterns of reality. Make them feel useful to society. Bring them out of the traps of their own making and make them feel human with a natural sense of dignity.

Who Has Failed !!

Imagine the internet is jammed

google and all motions of the earth

forfeit their properties, the ticking clock ,

the blowing wind  turn turtle

breathless men running to the bank

return in panic seeing the lock.

Lovers will sigh longer than God’s

yawn, businessman cannot see

the stockmarket crash, the

digital banners will blip endless

and fall in unknown gutters without

trace, patients will wait for doctors

and doctors  for revival  of computers:

but death will not wait at all.

Man’s mind functioned god like

created a digital world, mocking

his primitive mind but if the

net fails ,the wheels will

make everything a picture still.

Who has failed? God’s

best creation or man’s

best creation? Who will

decide there’s no judge in-sight:

when the puppet turns puppeteer

none will be there to cheer.


Sabita Sahu

Creative Freedom

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

All over the civilized world freedom of thought and speech, particularly in the creative spheres, is respected. Of course there are a few countries like China  where freedom is defined under ideologies of regimentation. In India the constitution guarantees all citizens the right to free expression of ideas. A poet can create new myths, reinvent old myths and episodes of history and can also make ideological interpretations totally unwarranted by the situational dynamics of the original. A.K.Ramanujan’s 300 Ramayanas is a case in point. The original poet- mythmaker is dwarfed by the later poets who gave their own ideological spins or unreined their fancy to come up with strange metaphorical signposts making Valmiki look sheepish for having composed the original Ram story in epical measures. I don’t, however, deny creative freedom to restate, rewrite or retell a myth or creative piece which has permanent appeal. But when Ramayana is the subject Valmiki comes to the mind of every student of literature; not the other versions of Kamban or the Buddhist and Jain poets. If a poet rights certain mythic wrongs using his creative freedom he is welcome. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound unchains the hero by his profound sense of freedom and reinvents poetic justice. But the same cannot be said of Tate’s King Lear which kills Shakespeare’s brilliant masterpiece. I am positive Romila Thapar who argues for the acceptance of variants of the Ramayan will not accept Noam Tate's Lear.

In today’s India we function like the all-licenced Fool in the Elizabethan plays without, however, the subtleties of life perception. I can make Gandhi a traitor and Subhas Bose a seditious protagonist of anarchy without batting an eyelid, for the constitutional guarantee is deliberately misunderstood by ideological tomfoolery. Today in the guise of freedom of expression expletives are thrown at will, at political opponents and if it is an election campaign platform one may wax eloquent mortgazing logic to hate and passion. Every politician and for that matter every journalist is an authority on religion, economics, ethics and what not! An actor who normally mouths words written by others may also comment on the ethical substance of epics in the name of freedom of expression. Creative freedom may make Vyasa dance a bhangra and Padmavati dance in the royal court. The most abused term today is this freedom which creates hate and ill will between communities.

When the opportunity came to India in 1947 to create our identity as Indian we failed miserably. Our long history, instead of becoming the story of one nation comprising different religious and linguistic identities in a creative whole was appropriated by communal interest and their historians of colonial legacy. The majority community was so disorganised that they couldn’t establish whether the Aryans were indigenous or as claimed by the colonial researchers. When the constitution was drafted they couldn’t decide what ought to be the correct meaning of Secularism: They thought Secularism meant equal attention to all religions. And this creative indecision has given rise to all our problems. The temple, mosque and church like thre spears pierce our creativity whenever some original mind tries to create a new narrative.       

The Hindu Code Bill, the Muslim Personal Law Board provide new metaphors for creative discourse. The Rastriya Swayam Sewak Sangha has another creativity which systematically challenges the left and left of centre by using creative freedom, to hurl parliamentary abuses against the ruling leadership while the later consciously uses creativity with the authority of power.

In the so called art world creative freedom is seldom seen except in a scene or two of countable good films. In the plastic arts hindu goddesses are shown as underwater nudes in the name of freedom. Only the hindu deities, scriptures and philosophies are taken jibes at because in no other community literature, philosophy and art have sweep and imagination. The creative freedom of the epics, puranas, sculptural depictions of history or events of perennial appeal are so vast and various that the creative freedom of some so called liberals is limited to hindu bashing.

Freedom and creativity are always on a delicate balance: if creativity crosses the line it is reduced to bathos.