Remembering

How would you like to remember me

as Joan of Arc after deluge,

as Lakshmi after the churning of seas,

as ambrosia dripping from

the mouth of Vasuki,

as Cleopatra waving  the Nile

an invisible song in a dark alley..

Ha..ha.. ha... these are images

blindmen visualize

Don't you have eyes, look at me

and say how will you...

O' you! I always  thought

you in me, built into

my dream, my memory:

you as my jailor,who

fed me with smiles

by remote control.

I'll remember you as lovely

alien wings of a butterfly

murmuring strange sounds

whose heavy meaning eludes.

I'll remember your eyes

like framed beads winking

away my memory,floating

around a still point of my

Princess’kingdom of love.

Well thanks- but I'll remember you

As the sun flying around me

burning me to a flaming lyric.

Sabita Sahu 

Laughter

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

There are two types of people in the world, the agelasts and the hypergelasts- the non – laugher and the overlaugher. One wears a mask of a face and the other makes his face overwide to the accompaniment of high pitched sounds. Both are non- human, will of the wisp, not easy to understand. Laughter is a rebound of hilarity, a release of joyous feelings in gay abandon. It denotes a state of feeling, thrilling and amiable. Ancient scholars and sages in East and West have said, - he who laughs lives long. When a person laughs 315 facial muscles function but when a person cries only 13. Based on this the Grotowsky School of acting trains actors in muscle control and postures.

There are, however, many people who do not laugh even if their fancy is tickled by an incongruous event or an event of genuine bawdy banter. There are some who maintain gravity and suppress their true emotions. But normally a person laughs when he sees the mechanical in the natural, that is when something rigid and springy like the jack in the box happens. For instance when a healthy person especially a fat women slips on a banana peel while walking on a road and falls, your first impulse is to laugh. Unless she happens to be your mother. Laughter assumes the anaesthesia of the heart, that is non-involvement of personal emotions. Laughter is mainly a group activity. The social conscience disapproves of a peculiar or singular trait in a person to reform him. Any person who grows out of proportions with the social norms or behaves or functions above his station in life, he transgresses the accepted social praxis: the comic spirit eyes malignly at him. Laughter is the expression of a collective social psyche. You must have noticed that in a cinema hall when the auditorium is full, you burst out in full throated laughter at a comic scene. When the auditorium is half full or the viewers are scattered, your laughter is less boisterous. This happens because your social conscience is subdued. When you are secluded in a corner or when you are alone.

Laughter is a spontaneous psychic process and its quality depends on the level of sophistication of a society. In a primitive society laughter is rare as the consolidation of values, stabilization of societal norms takes time. When the middle class gets stabilized the norms of social behaviour become fixative in character. Laughter is not a moral judgement, it is a light hearted corrective measure which removes oddities and singularities from social behaviour. At the same time wit and intellectual humour too play a part in creating comic situation. Wit is the laughter of the mind. Alliteration when overused also provokes laughter.

Repetition of words or expressions at regular intervals after a time gets boring and this social boredom provokes the laughter of disapproval. If a teacher in the classroom says ‘for example’ after every two sentences, the students laugh. Similarly repetitive behaviour or appearance at a particular place without ostensible reason also makes us laugh.  The reason is mechanisation of a rigid pattern. Man by nature is flexible and dynamic, and therefore, whenever it shows symptoms of a machine or a string puppet his action provokes ridicule. In an office or classroom or a meeting situation if a person speaks or behaves in a manner transgressing the norms, people ‘condemn’ his ridiculous behaviour by volleys of laughter.

We have to however distinguish between ‘to laugh with’ and ‘to laugh at’. We laugh with a speaker whose witticism, sarcasm or tongue-in -cheek statement evokes intellectual sympathy. When your son or daughter tops the examination or gets a job you become happy and laugh in joy. A smiling thanksgiving to your deity also goes with it. This laughter is an expression of joy. But when a group of women in a ladies club sit together and laugh aloud continuously for five to ten minutes the dispassionate onlooker smiles not in joy but at the group of ladies who think laughing is a healthy exercise which prolongs life. Others go on clapping like an American audience after a philharmonic orchestra performance for full five minutes by way of appreciation. There are yet others who make mouths, pouting the lips in different ways to keep the face wrinkle free, in their bit to defeat time: if you are not a part of it you laugh. Shakespeare’s Puck would have said , ‘ O’ Lord What Fools these Mortals Be!’

But life is meant for laughter. Treat life as a funny game- wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh...  The world does not take care of itself and will not bother about you.

Mindclouds

Rains are over

cloud flakes float away

in involuntary laziness

lingering over ripening fields.

A lone half naked boy

standing on the river bank

stretches his arms to catch

the cloud flakes to make

kites for autumnal fairs.

The landlord’s daughter

selecting cards, closing

the bedroom doors

for her November wedding.

Returning school children

propose to donate their picnic

money for Kerala flood victims.

After post-lunch fiesta

the beautiful mother of two kids

biting her nails dreams of

a long holiday next monsoon.

Suddenly the sky darkens

roll of thunder make

the boys run home,

the would be bride

peeps through the railings

in bemused apprehension.

 Sabita Sahu

My Most Embarrassing Moment

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

My host informed me at the breakfast table, Prafulla! You remember about this evening’s dinner invitation! The Japanese Ambassador’s wife will felicitate you after your presentation. You know I am invited because of you, otherwise these culture buffs never bother about us, and we are bank note counting machines who cannot distinguish between Expressionism and Avantgardism. My host used these two terms to impress me and I acknowledged to please him, saying prudes and snobs are everywhere. If you give them importance their inflated egoes will ride roughshod on your emotions. Ignore them. You are what you are. By the by what should I speak on this evening can, you suggest....What can I suggest; best you speak on Indian culture or about your own language and related things.

As our car approached the gates of the massive structure with wide lawns and a burst of exotic flowers all around, I asked my host: what place is this? O’ did I not tell you, this is the mansion of Archibald Leech, a world renowned heart surgeon and a very prominent promoter of social work and international Cultural Synchronizer. Your name was recommended by Prof John E. Altazen, Dean University of New Orleans. Yes, I said, Altazen has invited me I thought that it would be held in the University. Yes, but some public men wanted it here as many foreign dignitaries would come and you know the hospitality costs- my host smiled. Come, you will meet many people...

After long forty five years I do not remember the details of my speech but I spoke on the principal tenets of Indian renunciation and how it has given the value base to art and literature in India. The time allotted to me was thirty minutes but I exceeded freely as the receptive audience did not betray any symptom of boredom. The applause and the ovation they gave still rings in my ears. But more than that I remember the most embarrassing moments of my life that followed. After the meeting, the party began. It was 8.15 pm but the light outside was like our 4 pm sunshine in May. I was gheraoed by a few admirers and also a few journalists. After 15 minutes somebody I knew called me, rather rescued me from probing questions eating away into the party time. He gave me a glass of whisky and we moved out into the lawn. The party was around a swimming pool- not exactly around, on two sides of the pool. The pool was comparatively large. The water was clear like crystal and still as if a transparent pearly sheet was on the surface. It was glistening in the early evening light. I don’t know why I doubted whether it was water so still and clear or a glass cover over it reflecting the mellowing sunlight. Unconsciously, the whisky definitely was not heady- may be the pleasant events of the evening were an elixir- I wanted to tap the surface with my shoe and I did. I fell down with a splash stabbing the ears of many despite the mood created by the jazz over the wire recorder swaying the guests and they came running to lift me up- my suit dripping the pearly liquid of the pool and my eyes blinded by my mind’s agonising shame beating my heart to a cacophonous asymmetry I came up and stood on my legs shaking in listless embarrassment. Strange voices showered their concerns thinking I had a fit or something. What happened, are you ill, head reeling or what? I had only a sheepish smile on my face. Then they laughed, o’ the drink, may be you had one too many. I had no explanation to offer. Kind hands held me and took me into a room. My shoes and coat were removed. Someone dried me with a dryer, another brought a full sleeve sweater.  I felt warm and somewhat comfortable. I put on my shoes again. But how to salvage my pride? The man who was the darling of the hundred odd guests, felicitated and honoured, applauded half an hour ago shall not leave this place as the butt end of laughter. I must regain the attention of  the party. I was determined for I was not really drunk or had any ailment. It was curiosity and may be an illusion I chased to my fall in the pool.

I went to the centre of the party. Picked up the mike and said, Ladies Gentlemen and Friends: I will now give you a few songs in Indian languages and show their parallels in English and American literatures. I had full faith in my singing abilities although I am not a great singer. I started with an odia song from Upendra Bhanja. My second one was from Tagore and the third was form Hindi. I translated each song into English after rendering it and pointed out the parallels in English. The party became warm, cheers encouraged me; request for recitations from English came from Madam Ambassador. I recited from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet.  My dramatic rendering and my English floored them. I rose up tall to their unending applause. And then I joined the party with my confidence restored, my pride salvaged.

Living

Have you forgotten the hands

that knitted your fortune,

What fortune , 'O' that beggar to...
Oh no! no beggar no millionaire

how ungrateful you are !

He gave his years, sweaty days,

night pills and you measure

things with money...

Yes: what other measure

you have? Monkeys jump from

tree to tree- rich men play

in farm houses, everything is for sale

sell if you have, buy if you can

whatever your measure - no way.

But death, the end certain

Why not live? 

You call this life?

No, no living LIVING.

Ok. Thank you, good tea,

let me go plant some life

for a living you know !!

Sabita Sahu

Vertical Till The End

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I am sure, I never wanted consciously to be born. How was I born into this hot, flat and perpetually overcrowded world, I don’t know. Is it process and reality? Is it  nature’s urge or as they say, God’s will - the biological inevitability of dynamic nature or what? I am not convinced by the logical and mythical arguments of people who were born before me; the theories of divine will, Karma or Original Sin or even Darwin’s Evolution. By fact check I know I was born by the sexual union of a man and a woman whom I call father and mother. The sky and earth are not my parents, but my present father and mother – both dead - who had nursed my growth and upbringing, educated me and did everything possible to let me fly my way in my part of skyspace.

From the early dawn of conscious living- I am sure I grew into a mature conscious being very early in life - I never obey orders: I obey laws, regulations, rules but not commands. I did my  school home task as it was routine. I trusted people, followed all disciplines as I was influenced by the Bhagawat and The Mahabharata at a very tender age. My values came from those epics. My sense of rhythms came from classical songs and also from Upendra Bhanja and Gangadhar Meher. I tried to create and compose songs and I did choric songs all my life, not as a professional but just to please myself. And I know I am a difficult man to please for I always search for alternatives in ideas, beliefs and rituals. My parents were deeply religious.  Every month they performed fire rituals and yajnas. I always opposed them much to their chagrin but I never tried to break their rhythms of life. I read whatever was available at home, at school and in public libraries. My favourite pastime was debate just for the heck of it. I often challenged my own convictions.

As I grew into a self-confident earning person at the threshold of youth my ideas gradually became more and more rebellious. I questioned the process of this birth, procreation and death routine of life enforced on us by so called civilization. Birth is a biological fact. Hunger and thirst are natural urges which must be constantly satisfied for survival. When assured survival leads to growth the sex urge disturbs for which marriage is institutionalised in societies, otherwise perversions will vitiate the moral equipoise of the society. Marriage or consensual living or just matting and aging, lingering with sans eyes, sans taste for a final heave of the frame before cessation. Then follows other rituals of the living for the dead.

 Well, why this process is enforced on man by civilization? If you ask a person, are you happy – he will say no in many devious ways. Man is never happy with what he has. No tower for man is tall enough. Empire State Building is now dwarfed by others, the Twin tower destruction notwithstanding; man will go on building towers touching the moon, till the moon and stars disappear from our galaxy. Man today wants to live for more than 150 years. Google team is researching to see that life attains double century now that a century is almost assured by our advanced medical science. The hospitals are ever increasing in number and size. Obamacare, Modicare , Ayurvedic , Homeopathic, Psychic cure, Yogic, Magic, Faith cure and exotic centres are ever growing everywhere. The reason is no man is ready to die.

I don’t know whether I should celebrate man’s obsession with living and the desire to continue even in a horizontal stage as a burden on the children, denying their fullness of life or to lament over human foolishness which has found no intellectual refinement down and up the centuries?  The surprise expressed by Yudhisthira in The Mahabharata answering the query Of Dharmabaka that every moment people die but those who are alive they think of life’s immortality. The irony of it all hits you on the face.

On the one hand we should be proud of man that his battle against death and disease continues unabated. The three original enemies of man were and are - Hunger, Disease and War as Yuval Harari puts it we have conquered to a great extent hunger. But not fully.  We now fight malnutrition, unhealthy eco –system and search for a home and sartorial joys.  Sickness and disease are almost conquered but not death. Wars continue, declared and undeclared; terror continues to walk in daylight.

I celebrate life, my personal life in many ways. I have lived life my style. I have loved soulfully. I have read beautiful things with love.  Why then should I yield my body to wither and waste surrounded by children and friends, causing pain to them, weaning them away from their life? People who vegetate in a hospital bed apply for euthanasia – a word I learned only in this century. I will leave the world while smiling at my beloved’s pranks; while singing for her my lifelong devotion to love; while lecturing in intellectual gatherings on the virtues of life, the joys of living and the divinity of human vitality and love. I will not apply to man or god for permission. Let me enjoy the pride of having ended my life as god’s rival.

The Unseen Agent

The unseen agent moves around

eats away my life in steady bites

I eat my hunger to keep him alive,

to make me move from dawn to dusk

to feed him what he loves to eat.

I search for him everywhere

in the kitchen, bedroom, toilet,

in the bathtub and TV programmes

he moves like a crooked shadow

beyond my grasp, beyond my pain

I give up and turn again

to  routines fixed by others.

Yes, he comes like an obedient student

I receive him with a smile
like a waylost soldier
tired, sick and unarmed:
he watches me when I sleep

but slides away when I rise

to bask in the crimson sun.

Sabita Sahu

Suspicion

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

In Shakespeare’s Othello when Iago seeing Desdemona come out of Cassio’s tent casually commented – Ha’ I like not that - Othello’s face fell , seeds of suspicion were planted deep in his heart. Why? It was because he was always unsure of himself as the right person for Desdemona. His racial identity and his physical state (the young effects in my body are now defunct) often goaded him to a psychic self – loathing. This sub-conscious realisation of his own weaknesses and the unadmitted unacknowledged inadequacies were struck by the diabolical mind of Iago. The simmering uncertainties of his ego were enflamed into suspicion. Ordinarily suspicion is not accepted as a vice but it is. It corrodes a mind, takes the person away from his / her reality and makes the person so self- immersed that he starts at a shadow, doubts every move of people except the persons who skilfully play on the protagonist’s mind leading him to see what they show. Scepticism and cynicism always lead to suspicious activities. Iago’s scepticism made him suspect everything. A man who fails to achieve or to fulfil ambitions or to attain projected goals becomes suspicious of people and their words, actions. Suspicion makes a person a killer, for, his own honourable ego refuses to make any compromise once suspicion enters the being of a man. Othello kills, destroys his love and in so doing destroys innocence.

Suspicion, in the sphere of politics, is a royal virtue, for power games move along lines where suspicion is a precautionary measure. Both Machiavelli and Kautilya have made suspicion a weapon of self- preservation. In the modern days too, politics induces people to suspect each other. The divide and rule policy of the British government  followed universally is to create  suspicion between groups, castes, religions and even languages so that  perpetual strife between peoples and groups would give the ruler choices to manipulate for their own advantage .

Suspicion is not always born naturally. Inner discord, upbringing and circumstances of childhood and youth make a person suspicious of people and ideas. In today’s India, rumours and fake news enrage people and the nursed suspicions get released to certainty. The lynching mobs, the cow vigilante groups in India act on suspicion of cow killing or cow lifting. They kill the hapless person(s) on mere suspicion.  The Facebook and the WhatsApp rumours about child lifters also leads to murder. If you ask why don’t they report the matter to the police or hand over the suspected cow killer or the child lifter to the authorities, you may get the most unsavoury answers – maybe it is racial hatred that comes out and the annonymity of a mob gives the individual the vicious release of his hate in terms of gory violence.

Today suspicion is not a rare vice. Parents are suspicious of children. Spouses ruin marital life by mutual suspicion.  Chiefs in government or organizations always suspect another talented person for fear of losing control. Even teachers are suspicious of scholars, scholars of valuable research. Motive hunting goes on at every level. Speeches are analysed, sentences are contextualized and attacking points are sharpened. The man who suspects and spies has his own moral logic and even political justification. The ‘Vishkanya’ the poison woman’ used by the kings in the past had its own morals, the safety of the kingdom and the people had its own infalliable logic. The modern version of it is the honeytrap and extraction of secret information. In a terror- ridden world suspicion is a normal expedient value which people must pursue and practice for survival constraints.

But strangely suspicion is not included in the list of deadly sins; the Indian Shadaripus too do not include suspicion. The Arthashastra considers the inner enemies more dangerous. The senses are to be controlled hence one should give up desire (kama), anger, greed, arrogance, pride and excitement. Spies in the Arthashastra are advised to avoid liquor and women but the modern spies like James Bond(007) are romanticized by sexy dolls and liquor is a mere water substitute. But suspicion of people, places, governments, gadgets and words are shown in our undercover and overground activities. Krishna and Shakuni move the Mahabharata plot forward by strategies based on suspicion of nature man and motives. The present day society is almost vocalized by suspicion, measures therof and counter measures. Suspicion now should be added to the list of enemies of man as the worst and the most fatal.

Futility

Spring and summer return dumb

murmurless waits the earth

to watch the cycle of nothingness

in vivid cycles of birth and death.

Parents disappear from sight

mangoes fall like pelted stones

urchins pick up 

trees never see

pain chases pleasure

like night the day

no gauge to size up

unsung lyrics written long ago.

How long to watch 

the fleeting scenes

the silent parade of

the seasons, mind and heart

losing count of nature's motion.

If all this is to 

draw a zero,

the finger and sand are enough

why need book and degree, 

pen and brush

to imitate the dots

leading to a dark infinity.

Sabita Sahu

Ganga Calls Me...

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

When the winter night descends with vaporous heaviness shading the sky, the stars invite me with their half twinkly mischief, I pedal my rented bicycle on rough short cuts to Ganga at Triveni Sangam. The nip in the air, the irregular growth of flower plants amidst bushes unrecognisably dense and the unpaved road pathlike leading me to the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the unseen Saraswati at Sangam.  In half thrill and half fear I turn from the Katra roads to the seven kilometres of mercurial joy through scattered settlements singing all the way. The Ganga calls me, The Yamuna beckons me: come you lover boy, see how we swell with history; we flow time on our bodies, flow with hilarity where kings and paupers watch us to assess our ageless strength, when lovers beseech us to unite them, when Krishna and Radha sulk and make up in fanciful orgies. We shudder and fidget when armies shear our bosoms with their boats and ships to attack and kill people on our banks and beyond. We cease to breathe and flow when new born girl children are thrown into us, when dead bodies are thrown into us as if we are dumpyards, and we cry when tortured young women and jilted lovers jump into us to save their self respect from sexual bestiality. We are vocal and eternal witnesses to man’s glory and depravity. When men and women worship us, drink our waters as ambrosia we bless them but when they throw all sorts of rubbish into us we protest in turbulent fashion and warn them not to take away our purity by their philistine ways. But we love them- humans and all life. Those who write love lyrics on our banks, sing ballads to their lovers, play the mesmorizing flute as Krishna did we also turn lovers. We bless them, empathize with them and often greet them to their freedom with ripply smiles. We carry their flowers, fruits with unease but tolerate human folly to the best of our patience. They have dirtied us but we in unprotesting helplessness silently wither away ...

I listen to Ganga and Yamuna. I listen to their songs and moans. I pedal my way to them to see their pearly expanse. Yamuna is darkish, deep and sober like a woman who has seen the romance of life as well as the horrors of mans irrational logic.  She has felt the naked warmth of luscious Gopis as well as the poison of the king cobra kalia. She has made way to  Vasudeva carrying the new born Krishna on his head going to Mathura to save the new born from the wrath of Kansa; she has witnessed terror and glory calming her soul to follow the rhythms of time . Ganga is full and empty as the mood takes her on. Flowing from the matted hair of Shiva she is the life giving fluid from heaven and also the moral arm of death, punishing errant humans transgressing life –enhancing values.  She is short tempered like a proud maiden, beautiful  and haughty: she is also a sage in contemplation.  She has often changed the course of history to bring humans to the moral path. She saves souls purifies body and mind but always ‘tameless swift and proud’.

I row with permission of the boatman and watch the bubbles of water born and reborn at the aft of the boat. I sing for Yamuna imagining the childhood pranks of Krishna. Poetry becomes reality, reality envelopes me with benign beauty. Suddenly the boat enters Ganga ,I lose balance, I fall into her bosom under the eighth day moon. The boat man saves me. I return the next night as if nothing has happened. The boatman smiles and leads me on.

During my postgraduate days at Allahabad this was my daily routine. If it rained I did not venture out. On all other nights I rented a 9 to 9 bicycle from a cycle shop near Holland Hall paying only eight annas, half  a Rupee for my – what shall I call it – an adventure bug biting me or the perennial charm of a river flowing from god knows  where with her grace and life force. Rivers are time’s darlings flowing with life giving waters sustaining civilizations.

But now when I ask myself what was the attraction, why did I go every night to boat in Yamuna (Ganga was of variable current, not favoured by boatman in lonely nights) at the risk of my studies without knowing how to  swim; my answer would be- I don’t know. Maybe I was in love. The river like the primordial Aphrodite spread eagled on earth’s bosom calling me to absorb my mind and heart to a romance of living. What’s life after all? Not a time span for birth- procreation – death with a pseudo game of housekeeping thrown into follow Trivarga- Dharma, Artha, Kama. Not a challenge of the Maker or just nature’s mischievous off shoot of purpose to spend time from the cradle to the grave experimenting with your imagination of Man’s purushakar with ideas, norms, forms, inventions in impalpable encounters where defeat is the only truth, if there is something called truth anywhere. Yes I was in love with rivers; all rivers big and small. I wanted to wear the river around my neck and have orgiastic pleasure. My body they say is 7o percent water, the earth too is surrounded by 70 percent water. I wished to play with the rest thirty percent for I am not a body. I am an essence of extra corporeal stuff. Now the Ganga calls me Yamuna calls me the hidden streams call me to be my essence here, now everywhere.