Gems - Jewells - Ornaments...

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Almost all the economies of the world have given up Gold Standard ,but women and men all over the world, especially in Asia and particularly in India continue to be in gold standard: the driving thought is ornaments make the human body more beautiful. A naked woman is not beautiful; nudity ornamented creates more beauty and stimulates desire to a boiling point. Vatsayana in his Kamasutra observes that a woman’s beauty attains aesthetic heights when she’s well ornamented from top to toe. The names of ornaments which are listed in Indian sahstras amazes the world. Our deities both female and male are decorated with gold, pearls, diamonds, emeralds - red and black rubies from crown to feet. Lord Jagannath of Puri is the most ornamented deity in the world. Five times a year He is decorated with ornaments of all sizes hues and verities. The Suna besha (ornamented form) of Jagannath attracts an eager crowd of more than Ten lakhs every year, particularly when the deities on their return from their annual yatra enter the temple all dolled up. The Indians all over the country love ornaments. Gold is also considered to be a saving against the rainy day. The yellow metal adds to the prestige of a family and enhances the personality of the men and women. Gold is the most important item in dowry. Often brides are rejected if sufficient gold is not given in dowry. Demand for dowry is now not virulent in marriages but parents of girls always keep gold as the most prized priority in their voluntary dowry list. Although in the rich and educated families the yellow metal has lost its sheen decorating the body with jewels occasionally for bridal nights and ceremonial occassions still continues. The tattoo has replaced carnal ornamentation but gold and gems are proud possessions of all families. Artificial jewellery too has come up in big way for fear of thieves but women wear the arty works keeping their ornaments in bank vaults.

India has been  the home of gems and ornaments right from pre- vedic days.  Books in Gemmology have been mostly written in India. These books date back to 5th century BCE. In Sanskrit poetry and drama a great deal of description of jewellery is noticed. A princess is seldom described without ornaments. Gems, stones, pearls and diamonds were natural crystals found in river beds. Even today gems are found on sand and gravel in some areas of western Odisha.  Ancient India was a land of gems- gold and diamonds were plentifully available in India. Dryden in one of his plays describes India as a land of gems. Before the Christian Era India was a prosperous nation. Poor neighbours attacked India only to loot this country for their survival. Persia, Afghanistan and some European countries had regular commerce with India wherein gems played a large part. As early as 2000 BCE Indian diamonds were used in Egypt and other countries for making tools. Gold was always considered as auspicious in India. Men and women wore rings in their fingers (in the least) to ward off evil influences or to attract magically men and women. Diamond was (and is) not only the most precious gem, it was considered to be fate changing and fortune enhancing. But diamond is also considered evil if it does not suit a person. The history of Indian empires is full of records how kings, princes, courtesans and common men suffered due to the hostile rays of diamonds. The Afghans, Khorasans and Moguls who came to India to loot her treasures were all victims of their greed for diamonds.

The Vijayanagar Empire in the past always prided for its gems. Almost 60% of the large diamonds came from south India.  The world famous Kohinoor looking almost the size of a hen’s egg weighed 109.3 karats: its present weight, however, is less than 100 karats as it has been cut for more beauty and glaze by the British. This diamond has changed hands and places with the Mogul emperors and aggressors is now the Jewel in the Crown of the British who refused to return it to India. But all those who possessed this diamond had fateful events and fatalities as recorded in history. ShahJahan, Nadir Shah up to the present day England – impoverished and powerless as she is now- had prosperity and calamity in mingled measures. Diamond merchants too enjoy and suffer both prosperity and ignominy, like Nirav Modi. The story of diamonds is full of romance and tragedy.

But India continues to value gold and gems even today as evidenced by her huge imports. The Bullion market is still the barometer of a country’s prosperity. The jewellery market has given employment to a large body of artisans. Diamond cutters of India are everywhere in the world, including China.

In the 21^st century digital economy, Ecommerce, data religion have replaced most of our old practices of living. But gold, gems and the artistry of ornamentation have not reduced our admiration for the stones as a bejewelled body is still considered to be aesthetic and beautiful. Even poor women from undeveloped areas deck themselves with plastic beads and artificial pearls.  Nothing wrong if the body beautiful gets more enthralling with metals yellow, red or black: who cares for inner beauty and by god what is that.

Wait Not

Wait not for the golden moments
they have no wings, no colours,
no merit on their own.

Give them  your hopes of all hues
seize their kingdom and expand
your fancied empire avoid lurking
enemies of love, beauty and power.

Look within your vast intricate web
starless gleam of divinity floods the womb
which lighted your path into the world
wake rise and conquer your share
make it a google teaser with pomp
your vitals enriching the dull canker.

Never look back nor pine over
lost moments, create your own globe
adding the brightness of your soul,
stars will burst like roses in your sky.

If you fall rise again, if you pause
move again, outdo the undone
hold the brush, paint your blank
canvas with new earth and heaven
carry your story, love and glory
plant your flag high and higher...

Sabita Sahu

Dream

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

                                                    We are of such stuff

                                                    as dreams are made on...

What is the dream stuff that man is made on? Shakespeare knew better. Did he mean the unreality, the maya which wields its magic to enthral us? Perhaps the very reality of life is unreal, evanescent like the pearl illusion of morning dew on faded lily petals at day break, but when you wade through the mud to collect the pearls only your fingers get wet, the sheen is gone. It’s like love: you worship your Princess, call her your soul force, spend a life time loving her but the gates of her palace never open, your songs return rhythmless, the tune is torn apart by the hissing wind. Or is it like climbing a slippery mountain, you strive, strain and go tantalizingly forward braving wind and rain but you never plant your flag at the top. Whatever it is , it is so passionately absorbing , goading you to move ahead forgetting the blood letting thorns, the failure writ large all around notwithstanding, you succeed in traversing  the road to nothing. You wipe the sweat from your forehead, gloat over the glories which none notice but you go on till it lasts- the journey, the dream, the desire, the hope, the aspiration to conquer one day and wear the crown.

Is dream an interlude or a full length play? If life itself is a dream what other dreams we are talking about. ‘Tell me not in mournful numbers life’s but an empty dream’- if this be so life is not dream stuff. Dreams are not always empty nightmares. Dreams of light, hope, symbolic solutions to problems and the fanciful exaggeration of absurdity also appear without verisimilitude in the theatre of sleep. Psychologists speak of multimodal simulation of perceptions. The problems bogging us down in our waking life, at times, are resolved through unconscious night visions.  Dreams lend themselves to multiple interpretations. But why should we trust what a person describes of his/ her dreams. Is it possible to remember dreams? Dreams do not have fixed dimensions of time and space.

Dreams are not predetermined screenplays, nor there is a director; unless we accept the theory the dreams are the messages sent by god or devil from beyond our galaxy. Freud said dreams are expressions of our repressed desires. Jung believed that dreams are expressions of mankind’s collective unconscious. Jaques Lacan says dreams are like “a charade where the participants must guess an utterance known to them, or its variant, with sole help of a mimed scene.”  Others say that dreams are the mind’s own device of junk clearance. But theories apart dreams are a part of sleep. An average sleeper has about three hundred dreams whether he remembers or not. During sleep Rapid Eye Movement takes place as the censor of the mind never sleeps. But dream theories can never explain the what, why and when of dreams. Like life, dreams too are beyond what and why.  Dreams have their own causation, their own logic.

Dreams occur. We laugh and cry in sleep. Those who remember dreams they search for the fairies, goblins, gardens, swimming fish, mountain peaks and even mating with beauties of other planets, when they open their eyes. The ‘real ‘ of dreams becomes unreal when the dreamer returns to his familiar world. At times a poet chases his dream in lyrical verse, a painter paints his octagonal paradise on a dream canvas. Often dreams are considered to be premonitions like Calpurnia’s dream. A man dreamt of climbing a peak for a week – and Freud interpreted it as a likely achievement. Yes, he was awarded the Nobel  Prize. Dreams are predictions of things to happen – good or bad. Most Indians say that a predawn dream always comes true. True or false dreams make life saucier.

But what about the day-dreamer! Some call it autistic, others call it idle dreams. Yet there are people who dream with open eyes. They create imaginaries of love; their beloved’s supernal beauty taking them to Cloud Nine, her deep -breasted embrace and tongue clicking kisses in the warmth of a love- bed ; their winning the laurel crowns- and they devote their days and nights to achieve  love, glory, fame and power. It doesn’t matter whether they succeed or fail but they strive, struggle, do tapas and live and die for their dreams of open eyes. Poets, philosophers and even politicians dream with eyes open. No why or what touches them.

Dreams are real as long as they last. And after they make you run, work hard, meditate and make all sacrifices the dreams outlast them. A man who does not dream is a block of wood- a woman too.

Sunrise

What force moves me

to rise up with the calls?

Mom, Hey: Tea, Lunch,

time for school, office.

I skate from corner to

corner mumbling prayers

asking happiness for all.

Body and mind rebound

In unresponsive pain.The
kitchen smiles: hungry,

unfulfilled, empty, quick.

In lonely hours when

sleep evades me, I rush

to the study table to find-

where is me? I see, responsibility

god , life work and worship.

I turn to the brightening East

and kneel down in prayer.

Away Away…

Do dare to fly away

from those who bring you down

to the slush of nameless nothings

focus your vision beyond inanities

on the riches of luminous soul.

Obstacles will impede you

fake ropes will tie you to slave

in countless chores where the soul

knotty and soiled will wither:

do not brood ,weigh not pros and cons

march to conquer new frontiers.

Cling to the horns of storms

to relish and achieve alterities

Swim the void to discover

the heart of darkness

bright, pure ,shine divine.

Sabita Sahu

Fire

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Fire is life , the elanvital, the driving energy of the cosmos. Fire is the only element which goes up. It gives light and heat.  In Hindu mythology fire is born out of water. The fire-breathing Mare moving on seabeds symbolises the potential force of Doomsday. The golden seed of Agni in the cosmic waters ’to hatch into the universe’. The Vedas , Satapatha Brahmana clearly suggest that fire is born of water. The seed is fire and the womb is water. The whole of creation mostly centres round fire and water. Fire is male water is female: the universe is created by their union. Fire symbolizes power, energy, creativity and vitality. Water symbolizes fertility, immortality, peace and creative powers. In Hindu symbolism Shiva is both fire and water. Shiva is born from the golden egg in water. His dances- Lasya and Tandava- therefore are the artistic manifestations of fire and water. Fire burns and is terrible, water harmonizes and sustains. The figure or image of Shiva is the archetypal metaphor. His interior is hot and fiery. Because of this kind of interior he could swallow the poison that came out of the churning of the sea. But on his head he wears ganga and the moon. Shiva is more powerful than other gods as he maintains the spiritual equilibrium between fire and water, death and life, creation and destruction.

Fire is of two forms for most Indians. Fire is love and sex, Kama; it is also lust and destruction. The other form is the energy of meditation –tapas. Meditation controls the energy of sexual drive and becomes in turn another potent energy. Asceticism, chastity, renunciation are as powerful as sexual energy. Mahatma Gandhi is a case in point.  He was not an ascetic in the mystical sense. He was a true ascetic as his self – control, abstinence, love of truth and saint like devotion to ideals of life made him a powerful being of whom the powerful British empire was mortally afraid. The power of chastity has always been glorified in our literature. Those who master the art of saying no to their desires are definitely powerful. Renunciation and service of the poor and helpless are also the power of tapas. The word tapas means heat and this heat is more potent than kama or the sex drive. In the 20^th century if we saw the great Mahatma, we also saw Mother Teresa. In the vedic civilization the saints practising asceticism were as powerful as Indra, the king of heaven. Indra had fire as kama , which includes heroism and the power of  a great  warrior. Fire is like the Sun and Moon in the sky, mutually complementing life and the cosmic energy.

The Greeks thought fire was the exclusive property of heaven. Prometheus  who stole fire and gave it to the heathens, therefore, was cursed and punished and his brother Atlas is still seen even today, holding the Globe (like Vasuki) in their myths. Fire is divine for it gives more light than heat if the people know how to use it. Fire is simultaneously the creator and the destroyer. Balancing fire in life is the most urgent need in the Human world.

Fire is also a purifier like water. It purges the body and mind. Fire as purifier, destroyer, redeemer and energizer sustainer as well as that consumes like time’s agency has entered in a big way all human society. Love and sex are always described through fire imagery. When desire is inflamed men and women, passion –struck, climb mountains and swim oceans. The fire in the belly makes human beings great achievers. Athletes, sportspersons, thinkers and infact even politicians of all hues are motivated by the fire within to win, conquer, rule and reign. Fire power is the measuring rod of military might. Often we say- he made a fiery speech and set all hearts afire. Someone is a firebrand politician or someone has the fire in him to fight till the end.

But fire that burns and consigns things to ashes is to be contained. Fire also emits light and gives life. Shakespeare‘s Othello in his soliloquy before he ‘sacrifices’ Desdemona uses “Promethean heat” which may relume the life of his love: but he by another fire, the fire of jealousy, extinguishes D’s light of life.

Light is life. It stems from fire but it redeems and prolongs life. What we need today is light: the light of love to enkindle all avenues of life, not the fire which singes and kills with pain. Fire should be worshiped as light to brighten things not to darken all luminous values.

Monsoon Melody

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

After the fiery arrows of May-June fired by a loveless sun burn the forest trees; after the lotus in pale emaciation leans on the sticky mud half opened; after the torn earth engraves the smothered grass and shrubbery without any epitaph; after the rivers lose their youth and beauty and linger on the sandy bed like lepers in sleepless despair; after the newlyweds in post- coital sweat open their balcony doors to savour in the moon-drenched breath of late night; after the saint’s immortality loses count in his mantra recitation; after the denial of farm –loan waiver by governments; after the thatched roof catches fire while the half –clad  wage-earner sits down for his water rice; after frog marriages by foolish superstitionists; after the deities’ chariots are readied for the grandest show on earth; after the Football World Cup is nearing flash point; after parties for votes troll the skyway:  Falls the Rain.

The sky disappears, merges in the dark youth of the clouds like a bride losing herself in her dearest love after a long separation of longer months. Kisses of lightning and thunderous mating make the luminaries of the sky close their eyes imagining forlorn ecstasies. Then falls the juice of life. The earth waiting in all readiness after her purgatorial period absorbs with lapping joy the impregnating fluid emitting a scent of earthly Eden. Dry bones stir; grassroots in enlivening amazement grow inches to savour the joyful drops. Rivers blessed with renewal of their youth override the banks to show off their furious energy to the human dwellers in highland. New buds swell, crane their necks to sway in the splashing wind and rain. Wet birds looking like fur-pulled creatures, stop crooning, sitting on slippery branches in hungry silence. School girls under multi coloured umbrellas wait for the bus at street corners gravely watching the polish of their shoes go soggy. Water logged roads spray coloured water when cars pass by blaring horns. The footpath vendor covers his luke warm bara and chops with a polythene sheet mumbling a curse under his breath at no one in particular. Office goers in bikes wait under tin roofs of beetle shops smoking cigarettes. Housewives shout- I told you, bring more vegetables- now eat only potatoes: men half hear while dressing up for work. Temple priests rue the morning for rain washed bhakti business. Tea sellers in railway platforms run back to refill their kettles. Lonely men in shirt sleeves settle down to old news papers munching cream crackers in unswept rooms: dial numbers to unresponsive friends. Farmers wearing desi sombreroes walk bare foot to see whether time is ripe for ploughing the fields. A young lover rings up his love inviting her to lunch at Starlight in June Street. Old couples reclining on arm chairs relive their days in half smiles.

Life takes a turn. The summer sweat is now forgotten. Rain calls to life, to go through all familiar chores with intolerant delays and rescheduling of programmes. Trains and flights are delayed. But life goes on. The only thing that cannot wait is life. It will tick by come winter come storm. The rain too cannot wait; It will fall without waiting for the ambulance or the wedding procession.

My love too does not wait . She enjoys her rejuvenating bath in the first rain. She turns a child, floats paper boats, sings. If you ask her why on earth at this age? She will show her beautiful teeth, pearly and shapely and giggle. What’s age to do with rains? See, the birds after their initial shock have started flying from tree to the sky and down to other trees- the mango trees do not excite them anymore. See the old man in a plastic rain coat wading through the slush of lanes to go for his mid-day meal. Why shouldn’t I jump and sail boats- after all life is the only thing I have. Come you lazy lover, come with me we too like new lovers shall walk barefoot up to Cuttack eating nothing except our love which is still in it’s scarlet youth. Let’s walk miles and return miles to our poetry and candle light dinner at home if the electricity plays spoil sport. And revive early days in our endless night. Let the rain give a good bang to the earth- come out in the open- enjoy the jaltarang of the drops on our head and body and create anew what we have failed to do. Let’s create monsoon love and fulfil life and pay our tributes to the rain gods.

Gathering Cloud

The parched earth

looks up in despair

intent ears to listen

the splatter of drops

awaiting the dolled up

bride to drench them

wet all over.

Humans, plants, animals

are in welcome mood

sing in chorus greetings

to deities, some

offering Ray Ban to sun

to soften his angry eye.

The song of soul and

song of all , fall on the roofs

from tree tops to the roots.

O’ you sweaty bodies

cynical sleeves, peep out

from your hiding shelves

throw your anguish,

come be ready swell with

pleasure you sullen breed.


Sabita Sahu

Beach Sand

Ages and eons like your countless sands

pass by weightless sightless in silence.

Tempests’, tsunamis churn you changing

your mapless shape border and boundary

hurricanes spend their dying gasps

moaning on your lap. Emperors, kings,

sailors, pirates and the common

stamp on your chest their authority

in vain leaving no footprint.

Do you remember the hurried feet

that touched you like Columbus, Alexander

to embark for new lands in exotic triumph?

Do you remember the passionate lovers

the loafers and the stealthy ones

who have rolled over on your altar soul!!

Do you remember the cracking pain

under the merciless sun blinding you

lay in unprotesting helplessness.

It’s the sky that shed  tears to ease

your pain in stormy showers.

O’ beach you are a constant lover

always wooed by the furious waves

foaming,roaring to embrace you but

never achieve union beyond touch

yet the script of life changes

every moment to new themes

you wait for a new path of new morn.

Sabita Sahu

What Globalization: Whither Literature (2)

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

But in the contemporary world it is not possible to live in isolation. We have to partake of resources available in the world for survival. And for that we must have alliances, treaties, pacts with countries whether we share common language- literature and culture with them or not. Survival and the desire for growth and development makes enemies join at the dinner table. Cultural identities undergo transformation for capitalistic ventures. Post Second War capitalism jointed most of the world with a corporate culture. The multinational corporation and inter- governmental  financial and other deals made the world ‘borderless’, a term coined by  a Japanese corporate consultant Kenichi Ohmae in the 1990’s. This corporate capitalism led to a profusion of literature in Business and Corporate management, Medicine and Health studies and other allied fields of interest. But imaginative literature or classicization of human affairs was not in their focal area. These corporates emphasised liberalism and secularism without which it was not possible to pursue their corporate interests in a borderless world. This was termed towards the close of the last century, Globalization. Basically it is an economic globalization where attractive products of different countries will find a global market.

By Globalization we normally think of economic globalization.The world as one market where the products of the world in a competitive market will enter into global capitalism. Literature in this so called age of globalization is a product, marketable and consumer friendly.The product attractively packaged and competitively priced must be backed up by bold and aggressive advertisement.The publisher like a corporate participates in the capitalistic venture with the products of his country. If it is a MNC (Multi National Corporation) like Viking, Oxford, Harper Colllins, Penguin and the like it has to invest a pretty penny  to familiarize its brand  in the cities of its presence.

In the Indian context any corporate publisher would wonder: what is Indian literature? India writes in many languages and cultural voices vary in tone and tenor from language to language. The works written in English mostly look at India with borrowed western eyes or through a native Chasma scanning the virtues of an irretrievable past. The bhasa literatures project an Indian-ness through local prisms. How then an MNC select his product for the world market. Globalization presumes a borderless world but borders to exist. Nationalism is a potent energy. Patriotic nationalism expressed in one language  is all the more powerful.  I shall do well to quote the German philosopher Johan Ficte ‘ Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins’. (Address to the German Nation 1806) Geography, Culture and language create their own exclusive appeal  which may not move the buyers of bhasa products to throng the book stores in foreign cities. If a great work from bhasa literatures is chosen as a product, there is another difficulty. The work must be translated into English for English in the present day world is the only comprehensible language of communication. But when a great work is translated into English, the aim of the translator is to cater to the taste of the English reading public. The translator sacrifices the local and the Indian nuances and the voice and rhythm to please the English knowing people. Moreover translators in India and in Odisha too are a rare specimen. However, competent they may be like the Voyager to the moon they please neither the population on the moon, nor the earth dwellers by their accounts.

The other, more intricate problem is globalization often undermines democracy. The local units in a globalised world are not treated equally. The identities of literature-rich but week in money and bargaining power are often hidden on the stalks and booksellers never display them. The advertisement for these products, therefore is never aggressive. The identity of the country’s is never recognised . As the neo-liberal global trade in literature seldom recognizes and often undermines the literature springing from a democracy or nation-state, MNC’s shy away from aggressive marketing . A Salman Rushdie or Vikram Seth may push into the market fortified by  a Booker prize but in  general , bhasa literature of great literary value loses out in the competition.

Is there any hope then? Well, as I am an optimist, great works in Indian literatures may one day find place on the display table in foreign cities; provided translators emerge to communicate the human universality in Indian literature in readable English. I will conclude my brief presentation in the words of Aime Ce’saire : And no race has a monopoly on beauty , on intelligence and on strength : And there is no room for us all at the randezvous of history.