Nothing Is Empty

Does life return to touch

the untouched waves on the shore,

mindless days pass bodiless,

new years make entry and exit

without disturbing time or history.

But why be angry why push

adrenalin with the force of failure?

If life is empty, exhale it

inhale something new,

a new emptiness for a change.

Is emptiness a  new creation

another soft fall of failure,

well, the game is not over

wait for the last spark or flicker

to glow and burst
into a flame of hope.

Yes, the land will turn fertile

green and full

the untouched waves will come

to wash your feet with foam.

Sabita Sahu

Expectations

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Man lives in the now moment. His memories make his today  resonant with expectations: For ha had planned, dreamed, imagined things to happen in a particular pattern. The conscious mind always lives the future in the present, imagining a scenario to unfold like a tape as visualized, scripted and directed by him. The dreaming consciousness is therefore a very significant element in the Indian 'om'(Aum). Man cannot live without dreaming about a future. Of course there is one bold argument that if you already script a future you are most likely to be frustrated. Your script not in a social vacuum. The script has other characters, dialogue, locations and also has its own pace and rhythm. Since you are not god or the manipulator of your own reality, your  script cannot be  superimposed on other characters. The other characters too have their own scripts. The dialogue also has dialogue- choppers. At times the characters in your script are too unreal to be true. you cannot expect a person to behave or speak according to your visualization of the screenplay. The location too may have its own moods to swing according to the elements. But man cannot live without expectations. He imagines a future and works, strives, dreams for it.  But his expectations may go awry. Hence expectations have frustrations built into it. Man, however, never stops from dreaming.

And this dream kills you, frustrates you often makes you a laughing stock in self-immersed realization of your foolishness. If you  imagine your love to come all dolled up for a midnight walk in a mangrove forest listening to the muffled roar of the sea under a clear crescent moon and wait you may face a sudden  storm. Or she may never turn up . Or she dislikes your idea and prefers to sleep at home to say sorry next morning. You will simply waste your time  in visualizing  a romantic outing and get sick in frustration and give up dreaming altogether. Expectation often robs you of  your  intensity of imagination. If you are a poet or artist you may turn cynical and start suspecting everyone. The ancient wise men, therefore say: Don't expect anything from life. In an Islamic scripture it is said "If you are in the morning, don't expect the evening to come in your life; 'if you are in the evening don't expect the morning to come in your life'. Well, it is horrible to expect anything. No welcome or farewell could be planned. No fulfilment in love or life should be expected. You will ask: How is it that some people get what they dream of? May be they are neither lucky nor blessed. But mere mortals are neither lucky or blessed. Therefore dream is forbidden to them. But if not dream  what else?

The other argument is Existential . You are in a  godless world. There is no one to protect or guide you. You have to carve your own destiny by your own efforts. But efforts also do not produce the expected results. A brilliant student fails in  Maths: The Examiner rubbishes his brilliance. A good actor does not get a break. In such cases the argument is, something was wrong in your efforts or you merely had an overestimated ego. You thought of yourself what you are not. Then when Santiago (in Old Man and the Sea) went to catch fish for  his survival into the deep sea was  he not adequately prepared? Did he not fight with the Marlin who was also his equal in all respects. He did his karma but could not get fruits. The Gita says, never expect fruits but do your karma. That is life is niskama karma - work (duty) without desire for anything. If this is life, it is a challenge- for not to have any desire is also a desire planted in you by authority.

Does it therefore mean that man is almost a  lifeless sod on  which the winds blow, seasons sweep and finally he dies? When spring comes why should the flowers bloom? When you see beauty and goodness why does your heart flutter in elation ? Is it only a stimuli  to bring about a chemical reaction in your body? Man cannot live like a stone  being impervious to everything. When a thorn  scratches  the skin you feel pain: similarly  when you see goodness in a Gandhi you admire; you get attracted by beauty . You  desire another human being. All these come naturally to us. How can we subject ourselves to the external forces- natural, social, global - without expecting to participate effectively in the larger reality?

Man must dream, frustrations notwithstanding. Man must script a future. Expect things to happen in a particular way. But the characters he dreams of have their own dreams, aspirations, societal obligations. You can't fix others into your dream structure. Your expectations should end after you visualize your dream. Therefore dream. Visualize without expecting anything. That is what man is for.

The Trespasser

If God and nature blessed us with

beauty, love, mercy, compassion

who created this terror

this murder blast and horror!

The melody of non-violence rang

through the mazy course of history

How could Bin Laden, Azhar

blast away towers, cities and homes?

Man creates war to rule and loot

man creates terror and deceit

hold him guilty Lord

change his power to saint of love.

Let no Christ ride the cross,

let no rage blast homes,

make life a song of love

without 'Kasab' and 'Afzal !!

Sabita Sahu

Wow I'm Eighty Today !

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I woke up this Sunday to the chants of Happy Birthday from my loved ones ethereally whispered and sonorously communicated, disorienting me and my alignments with reality. What! I am eighty today! What is eighty ? A number or something beyond my comprehension in the schema of time? Well, one day I was born -that's for sure. If my birth was on a dated , numbered calendar date I was not responsible for it. But my parents must have been  delighted otherwise they wouldn't have given me an upbringing and education to face the time revealed challenges to make a man of me. I have lived a constrained yet free, pursuing my evocations with my inborn impulsiveness and impatience.

Should I now give a balance sheet? To whom and what for ? When you come to the world you have to live choicelessly. What you make of your life depends on your own circumstances and opportunities;  you know not where you came from and what for. Also you know not whither you would  go.  All you have is time measured by seconds, minutes, hours , days and years. Between your coming and going you have some conscious time which you must utilise to make yourself, if at all, a Being, Of what stuff or essence   you yourself ought to decide and work hard towards it through your education- formal, informal, intuitive. If you do nothing that is allow yourself to be played upon by nature and society and float like an atom in a magnetic field, that is your choice. But if you think you have to find out your own salvation and  create your own heaven  and hell, You may have to take the  available time span of your life as a race to glory, whatever be its contours.

From the beginning of my wingy days  I wanted to be a teacher: not that I had great things to teach but to learn. Learn how to go beyond the focal area of my eyes to see the unseen like chasing shadows in darkness. Hence my life is less sleep and more dreams. And dreams of the ecstatic in the humdrum made my life what I have made of it , if I ignore fate, destiny and the cosmic curve which apparently bends every moment.

I loved all  beautiful things of nature: sky and its luminosities, earth and her sea, forest, storms and all manifested mood shifts. I admired beauty in all its forms; flowers, women , words, rhythms, bubbles and craggy paths like belly folds (not tyres of fat) in an aged belly dancer. Death never disturbed me as I knew it was a given. Yes pain I hated. Any kind of physical pain. Tension was my middle  name for a man superimposing a phantom reality on his encountered reality will accept tension as a natural concomitant of his transcendental fantasies. I was never heartbroken by any betrayal, failure or frustration. I always made detours to find alternative  paths to my extraterrestrial energies to lift me up above the socio- political, governmental pressures denying me my due. Yes I have never entertained the idea of revenge to get even with my secret enemies. I have always ignored the hidden snakes, jumping over them to my self made paths. I was my own  master. I respected the wise, knowledgeable and the just. Respected institutions.  Although my faith in religion, rituals, God and the other world are shaky  I was never an iconoclast.

I have raised a family thereby fulfilling societal obligations. My wife and children are all good and noble souls. But I am not a confined family man. My world is vast and various with multitudes of imaginative structures. I love the human being; I don't love animals; without hating them I tolerate their presence and respect their Darwinian rights to life. I can never  kill even to save myself. I can never hate even if I am hurt beyond measure. I love the rivers, lakes and seas. Anything that is vast, deep and mysterious invites my soul. I am repelled by superficialities and all  artificial  constructs for tinsel glory.

I have discovered love as the only perennial value that can sustain the soul in its salvational quest. And I have loved with single minded devotion without expecting anything carnal or mundane. I have lived with sprightly convivial wordlessness.

What else could I have done? A good job, a good family, some praise, fame, respect and love and a house to live in, good food to eat, good things to wear and a salt-pepper fullness. If I feel empty that is my  stylish fullness of being. My dreams have not stopped  haunting me. My songs have not stopped throbbing my heart. My love has not ceased in my eighty year old heart. Well I have lived, yes lived in style and flourish. I am proud of my fourscore  and look forward to more songs of love, poetry and truth.

Mist

Mists block the ideas

clouds of confusion block the sky

how can I pierce the layers and fly,

can't blow them away

can't lose them even

all are mine.

I had only one idea: love

Christ said love

Krishna taught love,

love amends , mends fences

who then taught hate

for what purpose.

The mists before me are

the shenanigans of hate

I must make ready my

quiver and bow

to blast them away:

But do I hate 'Hate'

should I kill life for living

No I will kill hate with Love,

kissing away all hate.

Now my mind is clear

like the autumnal sky

come my dear let us rise high...

Sabita Sahu

Success

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

A victor gains new friends: A loser loses all. The world loves a flower in bloom, never waits for the stemless fall of a rose to say alas! The reason not far to seek. The world loves the winner, lauds the champion, extols the successful and thereby  pats his own Purusartha vicariously. History does not record the failures for that is of no value for posterity. What man needs is the celebration of life not regrets for failures. The language of  denigration is for the failures. Man has come to the present stage of his civilization ( self created) after a struggle of millennia. He has grown, expanded and has become powerful: That is the story of success, Surviving the vicissitudes if man has now become self confident to plan for his future how can man accept failure and why should he listen to sob stories? The present day writers who write such sob stories about defeated men and women are reasonably ignored. Man needs a hero who has fought his way through fire and brimstone and has brought the gem of life to brighten the paths of other men. He may fall  on the enemy's sword and die in the end but it will be a heroicdeath. In such cases he would be  glorified for his deeds which were successful. But in the present day world there are people who celebrate the birthday or death anniversaries of terrorists like Burhan Wani and Zakir Musa. The villain too claims heroism. It is an aberration in our value structure but such celebrations are often stillborn. Evil too has its own admirers for men want to succeed even in the art of eliminating genius in every field.

When a film succeeds, that is joins the 100 crore club, the hero is catapulted to dizzy heights. The director,  script writers all become celebrities and pricy.   But when we hail a Salman Khan success I doubt whether success has only one  meaning: get rich by catering to the baser and easily excitable instincts in man. Success, however , should not be  measured by  money and power. The success of Purusartha or manliness (gender neutral) ought to be measured by intent, work ethics and dedication of a man. Someone who discovers the unpercievable mysteries of life and nature is often derided by men habituated to and practising one idea or view of life. A Copernicus or Galileo is heard to accept by people who have  spent a life time in believing Ptolemy. But when you see the rise of a new star in the firmament  you are delighted for you see possibilities of things happening. But when a star explodes and disappears in the infinite space of blue you are  saddened. Society takes it as an evil omen. But when a heroic man adulated by people suddenly does something ignoble you get horrified. The darling of the masses suddenly becomes a target of man's  anger and hate. This happens because we expect constancy and consistency in all successful men; not stagnancy or fall, moral or otherwise.

Tendulkar in his days was master blaster. People chanted  Sachin Sachin all the way he went upto the crease and expected a century in each of his  innings. And he did not disappoint . The nation conferred on him a Bharat Ratna and expected  of him performances in social life as he did in his cricketing days. Similarly when the Indian Cricket Team goes to play in the ICC World Cup. We expect the team to come back to India with the cup we had pinned our hope on Virat Kohli's team and the team was definitely the world cup favorite. The team won handsomely against all teams except England. But in the semi final after limiting Newzeland to a meagre 240  we never expected  the famous trio- Rohit Rahul and Kohli to duck out at the most crucial moment. At three down for five India fell from grace. The darlings had to hang their faces and the fans out of  their regard for their past performance had muted their superlatives. But Indian middle order and the tail ender Ravindra Jadeja fought like real heroes with the old tested War Horse MSD. The world lavished all praise on them including the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi . As Macduff in Macbeth says seeing the chest wound of his dead son- why then God's soldier be he- the team's performance thanks to Jadeja , Dhoni was not a tame surrender. They died fighting. And that is the meaning of success even in defeat. Defeat becomes a temporary setback if the hero fights till the last moment straining his nerves. Man is not always crowned with success, what really matters is the positive intent, the grit and determination to fight. William Blake has said, man cannot cease from mental fight: and that is the mantra of success. To close with the words of Churchill : 'Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm'.

Poseidon's Darling

Prafulla kumar Mohanty

I was in a 'boat house', that is an upturned boat raised on the fore, sides covered with plastic sheets propped by bamboo sticks. Often fisherman hit the sack there to go early to the sea for fishing. I had to run into an empty boat house as the Rain's fury increased after 9 A.M.I was determined to spend the night alone on the shore to watch the Bay of Bengal at Konark last Sunday. I was away from the usual haunt  of tourists by almost a mile , almost to an abandoned part of the shore. My day was spent in the temple  watching the filigree on stones, the time eaten, saline wind licked, noseless, handless damsels imagining their pristine forms and fantasizing with them somewhere beyond Eden. Watching the sea in the dark starless night and the beating drops of rain mocked by the roaring waves through a small opening in the boat my face and hair were drenched almost to blindness. But this stubborn me refused to withdraw from the scene to my own endless fantasies. Time was withdrawn from my dynamics. Only dark roar, dashing waves and long withdrawing rumble of  the waves and the lashing rain were my focal points. May be after what  seemed like a millennium, the rains relented to a steady drizzle. My tired body's message was signalled to my eyes, the lids dropped only to open with a start. But what did I hear! Some sound like shoes on wet sand, soft rhythmic but smart, accomplished by the mild splash of water filled shoes ! Who could it be in this witching  hour of rain soaked night! Then materialized a shape, the shadowy figure was shapely advancing towards the sea just about ten yards away from my houseboat which in the meantime was flooded. She held an umbrella. Was she real or a hallucinatory deviation of  my fantasy!

Has someone, a gilted lover or a life- frustrated women come to put an end to her life? I was disturbed. But when she stepped back to avoid the rushing flow of the wave  I was reassured. Why should someone come with an umbrella if death is in her mind? Is she alone or others are with her; other romantic companions? I tried to see in either direction. No, no one is with her. She is  alone, on her own. Is she an Indian or a foreigner ? Such fancy to enjoy the rain lashed sea  at the dead of night is not very common even with our elitist mod, fashionable women. May be she is an exception. Yes, may be...but but what's she doing? She kicked off the shoes as if kicking the drizzle happy heavy air and stood barefoot. Then she folded the umbrella and dropped it on the sand. What! will she strip next I was bemused despite my condition. She opened her wet hair. Watching from behind I could faintly notice her figure, not slim or plump but like a hyphen between them. The wet pyjama-kurta clung to her body and she looked in good shape. Her broad shoulders, plum buttocks, pillars of legs, the v of her back and the pinnacle of bushy  hair  fired my imagination. Then she raised her arm over her head and said something which I could  not decipher. But in a namaskar posture she turned 360 degrees muttering something . And I saw her frontal figure when  she turned towards me. In that split second I saw her oval face closed eyes and beautiful body move away in a stance of prayer. Was she praying  for some dead soul? My guess was wrong...

She again turned towards the sea. This time she almost danced. What she spoke I can't say but I imagine she said:

"O' mighty ocean, O 'Baruna! Am I not your paramour for eternity I was your first lover Euronemo like I emerged from the eternal space to envelope you in my passionate embrace. You swelled , widened and became large to accommodate my for I am vast whatever  be my shape. You are my life element  I am your lover  for without you I have no life. I am your lover in all ages and climes. And you could not hold me in your arms and released me to the gods, demons and men. Since then your complexion is dark , blue , green and you roar in agony for me . I come to you everywhere. I am your essence, beautiful, graceful, songful, lifefull but I too am nothing. You roar away your agony but I cannot even whimper. I swallow my tears and my stomach rumbles with love. Can you now embrace me? Can  you hold my elegance in your heart? No you can't move for if you do you will destroy life. Be there and see me. I have come to kiss you wild...

When I returned from my closed -eyes monologue I saw only blankness. She was gone, Was she my lost love or Poseidon's? Only she knows.

Freedom

Are you not happy  I am away

you can't taunt me with your jibes

at my non participation in your

god forsaken banal fantasies

riding the Pegasus of your dreams.

I am not chained by the ebb tide

the repetition of forward backward

which I have watched at midnight

pitying the sea's tight routine

I am free on the sands away from

your frowning lessons on every thing

free to move in the lord's precincts

without your overlording fancies.

I am free of the demands of others

their frowns of disapproval of my ways

I dance stepping out to marriage parties

eating at will dreaming of all

who made me cloistered toy

now I know who I am undefined

I am myself in gods territory.

Sabita Sahu