Witness !

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty
The word witness brings to the  mind one visual image: a man or a women in a witness box answering questions of lawyers after swearing on a sacred text to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. He also attests to the truth of a person's statement on a legal document or attests someone's  signature. He may speak or write or point out if his senses are shut by divine or mundane denial . In short a witness is one who is a testifier of truth of a person, an event or statement. In this sense witness is a man whose eyes. ears are functioning normally, What he can see or hear he can certify as truth if questioned in a dispute. This assumes that the witness has a good memory and his recall is good. He cannot use his imagination and paint it on 'truth'. But when we say and write this mountain is a mute witness to my youthful  love. I have moved on its rough tough and uneven body holding the butter soft hand of my lifelong love who now is beyond my reach somewhere to play golf with her new paramour: what do we mean?witness to what? Our passionate motions or the pure physicality of our relationship? If there was an element of exploiting the available opportunity which could be betrayed when chance throws up in its fickle fancies a more attractive alternative: was that too witnessed by the craggy immortal? well, such  a question, you would say, is not contextually valid.

When we say eye witness we mean a brief description of an event or happening or incident in which the witness was not a participant or protagonist but in whose presence something happened. In other words he was an 'observer'. Unless his observation is sharp, eyes and ears see and hear beyond images and sounds rhythms and environmental statistics he cannot be an observer. Reality of any situation is of fleeting, moments loaded with emotions, ideas and perceptions melt into an event so fast that the best of senses often are disaffected by the mind, that is the whole scene or moment becomes impalpable. The view, the viewer, the object and the observer often are merged into one whole; the interpretation is not always symbolic but any gap would suggest incomplete or parrtial observation. In such cases what will the witness speak? Things as he saw and understood or things as they happened? In any case a good cross examiner will punch holes and widen the gap by asking loaded questions?

The poets, painters and performing artists often claim fidelity to reality? Does Wordsworth's cuckoo or Keats' Nightingale sing in your garden?Reality is always painted with imagination: Shall I call thee a bird? asks Wordsworth and gives the alternative of a wondering voice. Has he discovered a new species? No, he rather makes  the bird a nonbiological specimen. That's the wonder of poetry we say but the poet is not a witness testifying the birdness of the cuckoo. Similarly the Nightingale of Keats is a dryad or an immortal which no court will record as evidence.

Once I was in a courtroom giving evidence in a case where a colleague of mine was abused by a few students. the lawyer asked me 'were you present in the scene?' I said 'yes'; What is the power of your glasses?' he asked. I said, 'the glasses are powerless for they could not slap the abusing students.' the courtroom burst out laughing. The learned magistrate got the hint and punished the accused. Later when I thought about my own evidence I too smiled. I did not speak as a witness I merely snubbed the defendant's lawyer. But the  truth was driven home.

A witness is not a caged parrot repeating without understanding what he speaks. A witness is not a camera with the shutter open, recording transactions of reality. The witness has his own preoccupations,bias and preconceived notions of the sound, intonation and rhythm of words. And when he testifies he draws on his memory which in the meantime is loaded with other impressionistic details. What he speaks is the present version of a moment in the past. It is like God creating the world and naming the objects with imaginative absurdities of the fleeting moments. may be for this reason he does not remember whom he created in what frame of mind.