Labyrinth

I searched the way to the sea shore,

like a shadow I walked to meet the sea

to say hello after  a century

seeing me the waves like
guilty assassins bent down,
their roar was less than a bleating.

Give me my love,

where have you hidden him?

how could you own him up

he is my treasure worthier than

yours.The sea sank down the sand
and the mud drew a labyrinth.

The air, the setting sun all 

looked grim as if ashamed.

I turned my face to the descending

darkness alone with him in my memory.

After three steps I heard- 

I am here my love to guide you,

the sea disgorged me and dried up

come let's fill it up again.

Sabita Sahu

Past Is Never Dead

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Past is never dead, future is never born, the present is the reality. People say, make a clean breast of everything, the bygone is bygone, make a new beginning. Yes, we make new beginnings but the past is a lingering stream, however, dry or thin, it moves alongside the present. The now moment is born of the past moment undivorced it gives directions unconsciously. It induces comparisons, suggests adjustments and here comes in the future. Since all moments are fleeting, the events too change colours. Childhood leads to youth and youth to age. At no stage childhood is obliterated from one’s memory. Similarly youth lingers in old age and man attains second childhood- old fools are babes again wrote Shakespeare. But the new old babe too has dreams of youth. The memory has no childhood or age; it grows exapands like drops of rain in puddles, then ponds, then rivers ultimately flowing into the sea as a whole comprising undistinguished childhood, youth and age. Memory is the foundation of dreams which are for the morrow. When someone says my dreams are fulfilled, he unconsciously admits that the bud has blossomed. Imagination presupposes memory and memory holds past and future on the tablets of the present. Life is an eternal present, all stages of life, all events, dreams, plans and futurist imagination flow along a man’s changing perceptions of reality which often compels adjustments to accommodate desires.

Ask a lover for whom love is a marriage of true minds, he will narrate his love as a perpetual quest for excitement. The excitement is not a physical passion or a desire for sexual union, it is the excitement of life which is temporary, evanescent and unsubstantial: the lover makes his life of love eternal, concrete and substantial for he/ she creates a world of his/her own unique, full and vast. He has no dead past. He remembers his tiffs, quarrels, swollen faces as well as the salacious moments of sweaty togetherness. He remembers his dreams of a new beginning every moment, his imaginative constructs of his own heaven. Also remembers the quagmire of hell he had to wade through in tearful eyes: And all this in his present moment. The past is never an isolated package which can be locked up in an iron box and thrown into the sea. The sea too is memory of this planet’s life. Yesterday is not a dead page of history. Unborn tomorrow is not a new species of time. Today comprises yesterday and tomorrow. Life has all yesterday’s in sequential order, however, disorderly the sequence be, and life is a ‘present’ with changing dates, new sunrises and sunsets in different seasonal moods of the mind.

Whenever the dread of the existence shatters our present we look back in love to the mother’s arm, father leaving us at the school gate and children flirting with things, humans, birds and beasts with restoring nostalgia. So, the past is with us in moments of joy, sorrow and boredom. A desert reminds us of our backyard garden and imagination makes us dream of the Nandan Kanan with its Parijats: the desert does not get transformed immediately into a childhood garden nor to the divine flowers of never to be seen heaven. The present runs continuous as we change in form and attitude under the pressure of our reality.

Diversity is the nature of life and in this diversity we feel constancy. A being constantly searches for himself, that is renews himself but all renewals happen in time which has no independent divisions or distinct categories. Language, culture, training, the office, marriage or love- all give us disciplines which are imperatives but nothing is a categorical imperative. Life always remains unformulated, open leading to discovery of the self. The knowledge which the discoveries give an individual is never complete.  Similarly a man’s constancy too is never complete. His past his future always make his present a throbbing moment of quest. Past and future however die when the present is static, repetitive and without quest. Of course such a present means the end-call it death or cessation of the being.

Gautam the prince and Buddha the enlightened one are not totally different. Overindulgence in beauty, youth, luxury and sexual pleasure suddenly lost their charm as Buddha encountered the other realities. The past stood as a contrast to the present and the renouncement that followed was not a u turn, rather a connective stimulant to new thoughts, new discovery of the total reality. Time only leads a man to self- knowledge. It may be a foolish or futile anagnorisis but it happens. Time with its past memory and evolutionary history makes a man what he is. The hero of life is recognized in the last scene but the previous scenes only lead us to the recognition.

Irony

In my sky of four clouds

twelve winds play to hide the moon

my love sits on the pock markers

where coal mines blast every noon.

He was selling dreams

sat on golden chairs, legs of sunny beams

I hated  him for he would paint me,

mixing diamond dust with ruby cream.

I left him at the coal field of life

to  darken himself in sweaty grime

to bring food for my hungry bones

to walk in streets of shady zones.

I sulk he carried pans of fire

worked in earnest in swampy quagmire

but he was in moon singing his love

I slaved in mills living in alcoves

Today my face  is burnt, hands frozen

he makes rhymes like pizza tokens

the clouds recede and winds fall

he shows the moon like roti standing tall.

Sabita Sahu

Temples

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I visit temples as others do, not necessarily with faith in a deity or to beg for blessings or to ask for mundane things or even to pray muttering the poetry written by other poets. I do bow down and chant: If you be let me also be. I don’t know what my words mean for meaning would depend on my  mood, my state of mind which often is manipulated by the situational ethics of moments which flow defying my logic. I do the parikrama admiring the images, statues and icons; linger over the imagination of the sculptor, try to penetrate the mind of the artist, his imagination and aesthetic vision. The poetry on stone or other materials often move me to contemplation on subtleties beyond palpable comprehension. I listen to the noise made by other visitors, intimate things spoken in low tones and watch their closed eyes and wonder what stillness throbs inside their minds! When jostling crowds push or priests utter Sanskrit blessings proportional to the money put on the plate I smile with a cynical grin and move away. Outside the sanctum sanctorum and the structure of the temple the lamps with flickering flames glow in bubble reputation for a few breaths and die out releasing smoke. Their fragrance is otherworldly. The flowers are momentary commodities bought and thrown at the side deities, bells tingle the ears with a mocking sting like an alarm clock at midnight. Joyous and morose faces light up when the deity is seen for a split second. Tirupati, Siridi, Jagannath Temple- even Meenakshi, Rameswaram nowhere can a devotee  have a one to one talk with the deity- he has to simply say all in one breath.

Outside the structure devotees squat, gossip and eat. If you associate cleanliness with culture you will be disappointed nay outraged. Hygiene, sense of order, spiritual discipline and other such civilized virtues are not the focal areas in our temples. After a brief sight of the deity the body with its hunger returns with a vengeance. Devotees settle down on the uneven shabby floor or wherever some sitting space is available and spread the leaf with ravenous appetite. Their worlds return with boisterous volubility effacing the deity from the present moment of prandial joy. The sightseeing, seashore soiree and glass clicking parties rise up with furious urgency as the leaves are thrown inviting the dynasty of flies and the other unseen microwinged creatures.

Often coming out of a temple and going towards my car I have asked myself: What is a temple? A place of worship where a deity is enshrined; a work in architecture; a theatre of composite art or a place of human beauty? Temples started as places of worship. Before the eighth century a tree vermillion smeared was also a place of worship. The visualization of god in a human form or monkey and elephant form was in practise before the Buddha came. But as population grew, village settlements came up, temples were built in large numbers. As the economic condition improved large areas were given to temples. Singers, dancers, artists, intellectuals and the literati thronged the temples. Royal patronage encouraged staging of plays, intellectual debates on aspects of philosophy. New schools of thought came up. As the Hindus believed in pluralism and polytheism, accommodation of all faiths, all intellectual views and schools of thought temples too displayed different deities. The Jagannath Temple at Puri is a veritable universe of human diversity. All faiths find symbolic representation in Jagannath. This makes the temple a modern club where faith, art, intellect, administration and management are complimentary to each other to make life celebration a humanist pride.

But what are these temples today? I am tempted to call them Multi National Corporations. Their worshiped deity is the product and devotees are consumers as well as investors and directors. The temple authorities sell their products in a competitive world market. You may also call them hotels.  Long ago in my adolescence I had read in the Hindustan Year Book, the greatest Hotel in the World is the Jagannath Temple at Puri. On occasions even more than a lakh people eat the Mahaprasad. In the Golden Temple at Amritsar they have a 24x7 kitchen and no visitor returns without being fed. The Sai temples are mushrooming all over the country and each temple is a hotel catering to the public proportional to the elasticity of their purses. This hurts me and my association of purity of motive with the temple.

I now feel that human body is a sacred temple. Cultivate all cultural diversity with the unifying faith of love and lavish it on the body. The soul will rise in love to embrace life in wholesome delight.

Naughty Titli

I thought you would

come like a butterfly

or a way lost swallow

tearing in twittering anger

to atone for your own folly.

But you came in vengeance like

an eagle to claim your lost kingdom

your wings flapped in furious rage

the sea lost its colour and swelled

as if struck by pestilence.

The waves rushed to swallow

whatever habitation came on its way.

Trees swung in madness

broke fell and flew on

to strike unsuspecting heads

going to seek a living.

Have you gained your kingdom Titli?

why this unwanted war on innocent

 habitats to overcome your agitation.

Come to my humble abode

I’ll feed you tear saturated love:

Be yourself titli

hum your mating tunes

around our pain soaked world

we need it, we need you

to revive our faith in love.

Sabita Sahu

Puja Shenanigans

Paddy plants in neck deep water

greening  earth moist and cool

cloud washed skies scrubbed for paint

less sweaty turbaned figures rise

on improvised ladders with mortar

teasing young women carrying bricks,

school kids, office clerks  all wait

 for Mother’s grand arrival

to replenish and bless them

once in every Autumn.

Shops open day and night,

mannequins in exotic designs

 entice young and old,

 the would be brides dream to

saunter royally in Elysian parks

with new strangers for new love.

The sick and the poor pray in pandals

 decorated like  Buckingham Palace

squeezed and pressed in pushing crowd

the rich like non chalant tourists

drive past the gold and silver Devi

from a horny distance in a hurry

to taste the new brand of Whisky.

Devi’s  unchanging smiles

continues till it melts,

this year too I wait with the same

dazzling faith for everything bumper:

crops,  happiness all time festive joy

shutting up my fate in the horoscope. 

Sabita Sahu

Legitimacy

       

 Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

What is legitimate?  If a child is born to a man and woman united in wedlock we call the child legitimate: if not we call the child illegitimate. The word bastard is also used in derisive contempt. Legitimacy seems to be an absurdity when I think of the creation myth of the world. What is legitimate and who decides what is legitimate? The society and the moral and legal systems created by men and women who cannot legitimately vouchsafe their own legitimacy. If God created man who created God? This question has often disturbed me. Is God a being with sexual desire and did He have a spouse and did he create knowingly and willingly human beings and nature with her skylamps and earth arbours? I don’t know. The One, The Rig Veda says, desire was the primal seed and it descended on the One who created it in His mind. The Rig Veda also says the one was  the Purusha – the Cosmic Person- and the Purusha was sacrificed by ’gods’(again something beyond my legitimate comprehension) on a Fire altar. One’s seed formed and produced the Golden Egg, or womb, the Hiryanagarbha. The egg separated itself into two shells. One became the sky, the other became the earth and the yolk became the Sun. The embryo was the female seed fertilized by the male seed, thereby came the entire rationale  of creation. Now the question is, if the cosmic seed caused both male and female, how could they copulate and how could they create life and other forms with what claim on legitimacy?

In the Christian myth Adam was created by God and later Eve was created from the Thirteenth rib of Adam. What is the relation between Adam and Eve then, if they are one surgically separated into another form-female, by the creator? We never bring the question of legitimacy to bear on faith, however, mythical it may be. Moral sanctity is perhaps built into faith beyond questions of legitimacy. When the Queen Mother Satayabati invites her own illegitimate son (if not rape child) to sleep with her widowed daughters –in –law to save the Kuru clan no eyebrows are raised. When Kunti in the Mahabharata in her adolescent  pleasure dome invited the Sun and others  to give birth to Karna and other ‘Pandavas’ legitimacy is raised only  in the  case of karna not other pandavas as she became the wife of Pandu. Karna had already been sacrificed as the unmarried Kunti  wanted  to save herself from social ignominy. Why? No answer.

The question of legitimacy is raised by Shakespeare’s Edmund in King Lear in a grand manner:

           “   Why bastard? Wherefore base?

               When my dimensions are as well compact,

               My mind as generous, and my shape as true.

               As honest madam’s issue? 

               Why brand they us

               With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base base?

If a marriage certificate makes the issues legitimate something is definitely  skewed with our moral –legal system. A honey child like Edmund is as legitimate as a child born out of wedlock. When Simone de Beauvoir  and Jean –Paul Sartre lived together without going to a church for a legitimation certificate questions were raised but they stood firm to their own system of faith in their life principle. Legitimacy is a crafty social trap created by men in power to decide right and wrong arbitrarily.

Legitimacy is a vast vague term to give a high moral pedestal to institutions which are not confined to sexual relations only. Often ideas are not legitimate, arguments many times are self- justificatory word play more cunning and ephemeral   than substantive. Politicians, thinkers follow the maxim- Winner Takes all – which are legitimized by muscle power. If marriage is legitimate what is divorce? Divorce like the instant Tripple Talaq is also legitimate fortified by patriarchy. The majority principle in democracy legitimizes everything by head count. If five persons legitimize a lamb as dog the dog it is. In civilization legitimacy stems from the legal system made by men only for a period of time.

For instance if an Indian spy steals miltary secrets from an enemy country, it is Legitimate and he is honoured as a hero. But if a foreign spy does the same in India he is hanged as enemy. If an Indian soldier kills a Pakistani soldier he is a true patriot: but can we extend the same logic to our enemies?  For the Pakistani soldier is also a patriot prepared to die for his country. What is the legitimate definition of a patriot then?

In all human institutions the systems always are unidirectional for the convenience of society. A dullard gets a scholarship due to caste compulsions but a brilliant ‘other’ is denied- all in the name of legitimacy. But legitimacy is a far abstract term, much above our functional efficacy.

I feel legitimacy as integrity and illumination of the human spirit. Freedom is the essence of the soul, for it always operates in a spirit of love which is beyond the legal-moral systems. A free soul which loves all life and lives with instinctual fairness is legitimately divine. All contrarian views are illegitimate.

Sound of silence

I saw him gather shells on the shore

lingered for a moment of contemplation

threw all the shells into the sea

sat, eyes closed and senses shut

to breathe in the sea, suddenly

stood up and shouted competing

with the roar of the waves.

I wondered  was he sane,

doubted my own perceptions

when I saw him, walk towards
the sea, arms open to embrace

the ocean like his beloved.

I felt like warming up to him

to have a glimpse of his heart and mind

I asked: what are you doing here?

Without turning said he,

Sh..h..ss... don’t you see

I am speaking to my love.

Where is she? dared I

you blind woman , can’t you see

my love is everywhere,

in the sky, on the sand

and also in you,

I stood  transfixed

he moved away staring

at the horizon.

Sabita sahu

Wife Is Not A Chattel

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

That woman is a victim of patriarchy, I know is an understatement. Women in India and in almost all countries of the world are treated as chattel, a disposable possession. The female child was unwelcome. Indians, history shamefully records, never considered female foeticide a sin. In the 21^st century too, despite legal restrictions, some doctors oblige rich parents in destroying the unborn female foetus. The girl child is a liability not an economic proposition.  On the one hand mythology has created female deities at times more powerful than the male ones, like Durga, the three Divine consorts of Hindu Trinity- Brahma,Vishnu, Maheswar. Saraswati, Lakhmi and Parvati are for creative arts, prosperity and happiness respectively. But in the family situation the woman is the Gruhalakshmi, the deity of the home and she has to keep it shipshape for her husband and children. Women like nature is a display disc of beauty, order and pleasure. But she has no freedom to dream, to love, to entertain ambitions of power, adventure or self-fulfillment. Her husband is her god, master, owner.

The question of freedom of self, individual identity was raised by Draupadi in the Mahabharata when she was staked at the dice game by Yudhistira after he had lost his own freedom. Can a husband retain his ‘rights’ over a wife after he himself has lost his freedom? This question was not answered by the scholars and the wise men present in the royal court. Bhisma when asked however timidly opined that the laws of dharma are silent on it yet a husband’s rights over the wife cannot be questioned at any stage. Fate and metaphysical justice helped Draupadi in her moment of shame imposed by patriarchy and evil men, otherwise history of epic India would have recorded the most shameful chapter of man’s lewdness and moral fall as well as the sexist bias of patriarchy. In modern civilisation too women anywhere is a ‘Second Sex’  to borrow the title of Simon De Beauvoir’s epoch changing book on women, perhaps the most important book in Feminist literature. Since then much water has flown in the Ganga but women do not enjoy a changed status. In the film industry the item songs are still danced out to please the lustful eyes of men only. She is built for man; for his pleasure, for the prolongation of his clan. The housewife is now changed into homemaker but she is still used by powerful men for honeytraps.

But the most heartening thing has now been rolled out of the Supreme Court of India. Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a call for ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’, it remained mostly a slogan for a large percentage of India’s population. The educated and affluent women wanted more freedom, less moral policing and moral flexibility to prove their worth and fulfil their innate virtues in different fields of activities: the poor and tradition bound Khap –Panchayat victims fell to honour killing even for expressions of love, a value considered to be a wilful transgression by patriarchy. Violence and rape and other instinctual barbaric violations of their dignity continued despite political sloganeering and legal reddressals enforced by the establishment.

But the Supreme Court under the leadership of Justice Deepak Mishra opened up a few vistas for the oppressed women flapping their newly generated wings to fly away from the stakes of patriarchy. Tripple Talaq, a repressive non-Quaranic practice was quashed in 2017 to give the Muslim women some sense of security. The LGBT community was given the honorific Third Sex, and Article 377 was struck down to give the otherwise less fortunate people freedom to express their love and seek their pleasure. But the most forward looking judgement came in the form of decriminalization of adultery. Gender justice took another path breaking step when Justice Mishra made the human soul free of religious and sexist bias. Faith is the aroma of the soul and women now can express their faith in the Sabarimala temple where for the last 800 years women between 10 and 50 years of age were forbidden by the same patriarchy; Reason! Menstruation makes a woman impure! How can a biological function of the body, specific to women to procreate and expand the human race be impure?

Now the husband is a “manager of household” not a master. Woman is free to choose life style and love without patriarchal restraint. Hopefully freedom will not become a licence for bohemian shenanigans.