Fasting

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

When Hessay’s Siddhartha matched the gold buckles on the shoes of the rich with his wait- fast- pray, Kamala naturally laughed: For a woman of Kamala’s beauty cannot auction love for nothing. Fasting in the Vedic civilization was a virtue. Those who fasted and prayed received divine mercy but love is soulful food which fasting cannot substitute. Fasting is self-denial: Love is self fulfilment. By denying the basic elements or materials for sustenance you can never attain love or god. Voluntary acceptance of pain is often thought of as appeasement of the spiritual powers. The basic philosophy is: life is an endless drama of pain. Relief can be given only by the divine powers. In the context of hunger, sickness and fear the ‘wait-fast -pray’ policy of religious masters was an escapist proposition for the ease of survival.

Fasting was always used as a moral force against autocratic powers to arouse mercy , kindness and sympathy in their stubborn hearts. Women always used it at home to bend the sympathy waves of the menfolk to flow with relenting fury. Mahatma Gandhi made fasting a moral weapon against the British Government during the Freedom movement. Gandhi’s Ahimsa and Satyagraha made fasting a spiritual force. The world admired it for it aroused the conscience of men who never thought beyond the sword. This soulforce as he called this Satayagraha was passive. Yet it shook the Empire to realize that physical power is not the ultimate force to subjugate people. The poor, hungry masses have soulforce before which the gun is not always effective. Fasting for Gandhi was an aspect of the Non –violence of the brave. Voluntary acceptance of suffering to protest against the suffering imposed by the British powers was not passive or expedient, it was a positive counter energy to remind the British that if a nation can abstain from essentials to claim legitimate freedom from oppression, it can go to any length to get what it loves most. Fasting was a political weapon for Gandhi. Its novelty astounded the world.

But after 1947 when India became a free country the same ‘followers’ of Gandhi used the political weapon against their own people to arm twist the elected rulers of the people. Anasana, protest fast, became so common that it was an emotional blackmail of the clever people and soon lost its moral force. But in India fasting as a political weapon has not been totally discarded. Anna Hazare, a Gandhian, perhaps brought fasting to its last gasps by overuse and abuse.

But religious rituals and practices still include fasting as an appeasatory self- flagellation in most Hindu homes. Almost every Monday is a fasting day for devotees of Shiva. Tuesdays and Saturdays are for Hanuman. Those who cannot fast at least don’t eat meat or fish on these days. Besides these all festive occasions are fasting days for Hindus. The Nava Ratri is very auspicious for people and men and women fast for the good of the family. The belief is life cannot go on without divine blessings and appeasement of gods, therefore, is a bounden duty. The hindu widows fast on all occasions for what they know not. If life has denied things in this birth the next birth must be better and for that advance merit must be earned by self- denial. It seems pre paid service is the order of things.

In Islam too Ramzan is followed for a month. During day time no food or water is taken by the devout muslims. Kartik for the hindus  is as important as Ramzan for the Muslims. A month of prayer –fast keeps the elderly (even middle aged) and the widows in particular glued to the temples. Suppression of all human desires and sublimation of instincts fortified by month long fasting reserves space for the individual in the world soul. Modern science, the knowledge society, the pragmatics of new knowledge have no impact on these hindu practises. If you argue with a Vrindavan priest, he will flatten you with the argument that fasting cleans up the body system,  prayers purify your soul and  purity is the only merit  man should crave for : life is a continuum, death is a pause to permit the spirit to put on  a new garb, These rituals are pre ordained requisites for an improved situation in your next birth. One has no questions to know the form, nature and content of purity for a snub would be the answer.

Ask any medical practitioner, his patients mostly suffer from acidity, malnutrition and anaemia; and the cause is frequent fast and irregular food habits. But the devotees of next Dream Life will smile away the comments and go to the puja room gulping a few tablets. Religious faith is required for peace of mind and comparative moral purity in living; No debate. But self- denial, I think, is too harmful to the body and soul. Let’s sing the praise of gods in full belly and in full throated ease.

Happy Life

Oh’ its Saturday again

wife’s delight husband’s fright

she’s off her daily chores

shopping all day Big Bazar or More

fill the trolley from morn to even

yet her shopping pending remains.

He follows her every where in the Mall

when she hurries to grab things all.

The ATM card gets sweaty and tired

yet she picks things not required

hubby follows with bags and kids

humping yet unbuckled at the knees

a vague smile hides lines of worry

fluttering he says ,yes baby-yes baby,

when the day shopping quota gets over

they enter a joint in rush hour

kids run, the hubby saunters

wife click clocks to a corner

what a bagsful day for the wife

not happy but ok the day is ripe.

Evening tea and more shopping

Kid's park and late dining,

that’s the baggy theme of saturday

matinee show and eat out on sunday.

Wife is happy as a lottery winner

what else matters spring or winter!

Sabita Sahu

My Valentine

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                  

It won’t be wrong to say

I have my valentine, yes I have

he stands apart from the rest

like a jewel on my crest

who created and reserved for me

the choicest and the best!

When I make promises to him

his eyes light up, he burns

in thousand volts expectation

brightening my fused youth,

but when I plan a long drive,

the  road is closed for repairs

the hotel  for candle light dinner

gets raided for rave parties

gifts and return gifts embroiled

in verbal duels make him look

a long neglected patient, he lights

the last cigarette on earth in sulk.

We have no time to celebrate

yet every moment is a celebration

of love which swells the winds

to blast off a few Taj Mahals.

We like bow and arrow shoot

targets in the dark when the world

sleeps but we are too far apart,

nadir and zenith never to meet

here: hereafter or ever: yet

we are tied with the bond of love

care and other worldly concerns

which no other valentine had

mine is the best in earth and air.


Sabita Sahu

Hope

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Hope is an abstract word and it has as many connotations as there are individual men and women. The animals too, perhaps, entertain hope, may be in the context of their survival. A man who hopes for things indirectly indicates that his past, including the immediate present, has not given him nurturing memories. If memories are pleasant dreams are juicy. If dreams are juicy hope is more colourful. But if a man has bad memories of his past he may hope for a change in his present screenplay of life. But if he convinces himself that nothing will ever change his life, he may rethink his life and will decide whether he would go on with his unchanging, flaccid and stagnant life. If he decides to put an end to his life it may be on an impulse or after a conscious admission to himself of having failed to carve out his own being. Reality is always a challenge irrespective of his position in family, society, world, his dreams and aspirations. As one grows from the stage of the babe in the nurse’s arms (or the hell- hole) to pre-adolescence a bond with life is already struck. Living creates desires and dreams. Hope naturally makes him strive for a better tomorrow. How can someone tear off the bond, cancel the unwritten MOU?

Albert Camus in his Myth Of Sisyphus has called living a habit. “Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognised, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.” I am tempted to ask, who in the world is not feeling, at some point or other, the futility of living a life of daily martyrdom? The priest, the devotee, the kings, conquerors as well as the sick get moments of the absurd. The desire to play destiny maker  to one’s own life and put an end to that absurdity with a ‘bare bodkin ‘ often pushes us to the brim .But should we all kill ourselves ? Failure has several faces and man is fated to encounter such faces daily. A world conqueror like Napoleon after victory at Corssica rolled on his large bed shedding tears of failure for not having conquered the heart of Josephine. But he did not go in for suicide. Even as a half blind prisoner at Elba he dreamt of a comet in the sky to appear at his death.

Dreams are endless. Failures are endless. Suffering too is endless. But euthanasia is the last thing one should desire. I am not an advocate of fate or destiny. In the modern world man himself carves out his own destiny. In the process failure comes. Frustration comes. Nature too is now cramped and cribbed by man’s adventures. Nature protests. Man suffers the consequences of his own technotronic attacks on nature. A tree blown bare and bald in a super cyclone again smiles with foliage. Nails, they say, grow in the coffin. Man’s mental fight against all odds goes on in ceaseless reinforcements: why then acknowledge defeat? Some battles will be lost in the general war of life. A failure or defeat or despair should not lead man to jump off a cliff. Suicide is not even the last choice of a soldier, unless he is a Roman Fool.

Whoever gave us this life wanted us to live it fully. If life is a poisoned chalice drink it to the lees: the afterlife may be ambrosiac. Hope for the best because the unborn tomorrow may reveal the garden path to your Princess. Love always gives hope; if not today , tomorrow; if not tomorrow the day after and so on. Hope keeps your nerves agile makes your body and mind ambulatory. Hope is future, the unseen, the unknown possibility to put life on track.

There are still some people who think why repeat the past in the present if no redemption is insight? The answer to those nay sayers is: because these chain repetitions of negativity may one day break and new light flash illuminating your dark reality. Hope keeps you alive. It makes you think, plan, plot and try. Waiting for Godot is worthwhile even if Godot never turns up, for the wait strengthens reason. This reason is strengthened by hope. Hoping against hope comes naturally to human reason. Those who feel life is absurd do not know how to live. Life is  a work of art  if you know how to hold the brush of your being alive.

The Return Gift

O’friends moving on bikes

cars and foot, if you have ears

listen: the city cracks and croaks

beep-beep, stop this mad rush
stand, slow down your pace

else you’ll be lost

never to be found again.

The proud skyscrapers
concrete steel and glass
without a blade of grass
the blind-eyed stars

blink at your arrogant dare.

Forests are no more dark

or deep with green mystery

hot air chokes the lungs,

the foamy gutters, bald yards

the billowing chimney, acid gas

the black soot showers are

our return gifts to nature,

poison to her sustaining bowers.

Our studies, research, inventions

are a Frankenstein monster

will devour us into its maws

mocking our suicidal wisdom.

Beware now and change
look afresh at your own game.


Sabita Sahu

Tolerance

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Wise men say: If you live in this world you have to tolerate even if a stone falls on you. But why should a stone fall on any one? They would smilingly argue and say-storms and blasts are nature’s inequilibrium: to restore balance such unnatural things will happen; since man is the best of nature the offshoots of the balancing process will fall on man only. Trees get uprooted, mountains crack, the sea gets churned but they never complain because they can’t; they never invented language. But they too suffer and wait for nature’s rejuvenating touch. Man is unrenewable, he comes for one life, therefore he does not tolerate the onslaughts of nature and the society which is of his own creation. Tolerance is a virtue of patience, patience is built into the human system; man’s psychic composure depends on this virtue which man must inculcate in his growing process. Since man is equipped with intelligence and a moral sense he alone can assimilate pain and psychosocial insults rationalising events and issues diligently. The desire to survive and the necessary struggle make the human beings tolerate all natural and societal slings and arrows with equanimity.

All religions, Hinduism in particular extol this virtue, as negative aggression shown towards unfriendly values is often self- stultifying. Priests and preachers with scholarly pretensions say, in line with Jewish revaluations, that ‘the wretched alone are the good: the poor impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by god...’ The soul sickening debate in the mind of Hamlet is unresolved- "whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...” for religion always advocates tolerance of all onslaughts of fortune or powerful men, is a great human virtue worthy of God’s attention. We have been coaxed with the lure of heaven to be tolerant, cowardly accepting injustice without facing the challenge manfully. We never fought sacerdotalism, imperial autocracy and exploitation of aristocracy. Poverty and deprivation were the will of god, the reward in this life for sins committed in the past birth. We were forced to confess to untruths to protect the powerful. In short tolerance was always accepted by us against our grain for fear of base life.

In the twentieth century E.M.Forster advocated the same negative virtue after Europe’s experience of the War made him humble. He argued, it is now no more possible to love the Germans but we have to tolerate them. The Germans too have the right to live in this world. Is tolerance, turning the other cheek to the enemy, a value that can replace love? Is it love of the enemy or fear of survival? Frankly I don’t know.

In the present day world ISIS menace was tolerated by the powerful countries till Iraq was decimated. It was politically correct for some countries to overlook the menace. But when the survival fear, came tangibly near it became politically correct again to resist it. But it was late.  The cost was enormous. India has been protesting the terrorist killings in India for more than twenty years. Even today countries still debate who is a terrorist and whether in Jammu and Kashmir it is terrorism or a freedom movement. So called intellectuals in India and elsewhere still advise restraint and tolerance. If tolerance is an ethical value how is it that it has now become a political virtue?

The religion which Gandhi followed, a sort of political Hinduism, demonstrated the power of tolerance. In Dandi the salt makers were beaten black and blue but their bleeding heads did not bend. We still are proud of that. But where is that pride when lynch mobs kill a serving DSP in Kashmir? Those who shout against Indian Army for having fired upon stone pelting radicalized youth do they hold the banner of tolerance? A meek surrender to death is neither a moral nor a political virtue. Often we pay the price for our tolerance in the name of political expediency or ethical values. The dalits have paid the price over the centuries. Cow vigilante groups kill Muslims to protect the cow mother simply because they are a part of the Hindu majority assuming the minority will tolerate without protest: Why? Gods in our myths and epics never tolerated injustice; the Saints and Sages too were intolerant of insult or atrocities. Why should the weak always tolerate? Tolerance is not a virtue. Human dignity should not be compromised by this negative virtue. Manliness is a proud virtue: it should not be sacrificed on the altar of tolerance.

Pearl

Half alive was I, left unnoticed

lying on an ocean bed half hidden

from the sun, moon and human

don’t know who was he, who

sent him,God, fate or his free will,

picked me gently on palm,

wrapped me in a velvet cloth,

dusted me off the grime of time
insensitive to my innate gleam

polished with love, separating 

from grey mass transformed me
to a coveted pearl profound

worthy of life's golden round.
I am  proud out of the shroud

to adorn  the neck, ear, finger
of men, women and lovers keen

a prized gem, my shine divine,
enchants and enriches royalty:

I owe  the palms that released me

from the slushy sandy shell
as resurrected dew of nectar
fit to be crest jewel on the crown
of life's variegated kingdom.

Sabita Sahu

Donations

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

When the Puja-Ganesh, Durga and Saraswati puja, Dola and Holi festivals etc come close, closer come groups of young  enthusiasts for donation. This English word has found meaning in almost all local languages of India by overuse. Perhaps the local word chanda is somewhat bashfully demeaning the status of the enthusiasts who move from door to door, at times from shop to shop with receipt book in hand, asking for help. The word donation gives the ‘asking for help’ group who organize street or area puja pandals some respectability. Puja donation in offices and certain organisations is compulsory and therefore is bereft of feelings. In the schools too it is almost mandatory for the god and goddesses of learning festivals. But when groups of young persons come calling in early evenings and demand an amount fixed by them for houses, the word donation loses its civilised meaning. If a householder politely expresses its inability to donate the youth brigade raises their voice and pitch. If the refusal is stubborn the group hurls expletives and at the dead of night a few stones as loud reminders. In erstwhile Calcutta refusal to donate often invited crude hand grenades before the regime change. But today violence and intimidation are perhaps few and far between. People voluntarily donate if not out of fear at least to get rid of these donation seekers. People these days are comparatively well off and a small post- demonetization five hundred rupee note is normally given as donation. Those who can afford donate in thousands if not in lakhs. In certain cities the rich and the powerful spend lakhs to celebrate pujas in an enviable scale. In such celebrations volunteers don’t move from door to door; the money comes plentifully to the group leaders who go to town with the free flow for a few days.

But such things are quite natural.  In a society where income inequality is alarmingly glaring at us, a few rupees for youthful pilferage is winkable. Only when extortionist behaviour harasses people questions may be raised against collecting donations for common social festivals. If it is a Puja or a collective function where society participates, people must form a committee of responsible persons to collect donations and manage such functions. The committee should be made accountable to the people.

But when political parties collect donations from the public questions crop up because there is no transparency of accountability. When Arvind Kejariwal formed the Aam Admi Parrty on principled politics, corruption free and committed to the people donations from India and abroad poured in. But it shocked people when the AAP website did not reflect certain transactions and people started raising fingers at the AAP leaders. Political parties cannot run without public donations. The public too should not mind giving donations to political parties as these parties serve the people. If transparency is demanded of them the political parties should receive all donations in shape of cheques. But the small contributors are not supposed to write cheques. Whatever rules are framed parties will find ways and means of jumping them. Similar is the case with temple donations.

Devotees put money in the boxes kept in the temples for donations. In the Tirupati and Shiridi temples and also at Lalbag and Siddhi Vinayak administrators and organisers try to maintain an acceptable system of transparency. Even with strict vigil, at times, human weakness surface. For such things the legal system happens to be the last resort. In politics the donations are of high volume and naturally pilferages are large. The law must take care of political donations.

Donations are a social tax. It is often self –imposed and voluntary. But if force is used to collect donations for social celebrations where people gather to participate, it is unacceptable. If it is a tax of love let people pay voluntarily to make the celebrations lovable and enjoyable. Those who collect such tax of love should also be loveable and polite. They are not the Enforcement Squads of the Tax department. They are people inviting participation of others appealing to their sense of charity. Donation should be a token of joy not a scornful ’good riddance’ fee