Unsung Melodies

I never saw the rise and swell

of Baitarani waters from my window

the boatman's song eluded my ears

father's concern for my  mother

never reached beyond the sheets.

My high jumping  feet cute and shapely

kicked the medals  to ignoring friends

I sobbed in dark rooms for lonely relief,

the gathering clouds went without tears.

From frock to saree I grew unripe

my diary poems were dreams torn

when results graduated me to love

for the man who never looked at me.

Silent he was to my unsaid words

while the sandy beach counted waves

He went away leaving his silence

for me to fill with painful rhythms.

Wifehood came followed by whines

motherhood filled me with pride divine

book racks grew dusty and mouldy

I croaked in the kitchen the old melodies.

Now I have cleaned up the stables

my Pegasus is opening its wings

I'll move in space time-defying

and sing of life in forbidden rhyme.

Sabita Sahu

Loneliness

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

He who is alone is either a god or a beast, said Aristotle. Logic would ensure that loneliness is either  divine or bestial . If your loneliness is divine, you may load and bless the needy and despondent  people around. If it is bestial, you may kill and torture unsuspecting people. But man is midway between god and beast   and his loneliness cannot , I hope, be stretched up or down. A  lonely man is not a scarecrow, "A tattered coat upon a stick" as Yeats wrote  or  a demented man prowling  the midnight streets. He may be a discernible face in a crowd. He maybe a  mountain peak gazing at the vast sky for a kindred  soul. He may be a Hamlet questioning in silence the logic of the palace .He may be a genius searching for an answer to the oft - asked  question, ' whence we came whither shall we go'. He may be a responsible  President or Primeminister searching for revelations of a different kind  to save  his people from untimely death. He may be  a lonely poet scanning a word for his poem beyond all lexicons. Or he may be a sexcited man in a different city needing release of his urges. He may also be a T.S. Eliot who failed to connect  nothing with nothing. Loneliness is not being alone  without companionship, it is most often a state of mind, self chosen to ponder over a disturbing question concerning life's mystic challenges.

A political prisoner in a single cell or a Napoleon in an island is not necessarily lonely. Loneliness in the social  sense often means physical isolation. If a person is removed from his familiar reality he feels lonely as the landscape or the people do  not register on him. No memory is evoked, no  drama of live experience is re enacted. But this is not  loneliness . It is a temporary feeling of abstraction from reality which can be reinforced when the mind adjusts to the new scene. The left and the right brain, the creative  and the analytical will function together to create a new familiar reality,  Sita in her exile, her abandonment was not lonely. She was conscious of her motherhood and moved forward. Loneliness comes only when  person surrenders his freedom to respond  to his physical  or mental state. If a bird accepts  the cage and surrenders to the confined space and gets mentally prepared to lose  her birdness to controlling hands she loses her being forever. She is removed from her destiny  and   she compromises. Such creatures cannot understand loneliness. A lonely man is a revenge hero  biding his time to act. He is hopeful of change as he does not seal  his mind. He may shout in agony or seal his mouth  as though he has lost the power of speech but inside his mind his world moves faster than the earth's diurnal motion. But loneliness is not all these. God is the loneliest creature or divinity if you prefer. Loneliness is a virtue inculcated by a few fortunate men who create alternative worlds .   

The enforced loneliness in this Corona lockdown today is however, painful. I cannot walk on the road I built? Shops are closed. Sitting in a corner room I watch the sunset . I am a nobody here. I cannot touch my ailing mother, cannot talk with my grown up children. I have no work except the usual repetitions of the animal habits . What am I now?  An animal in a cage ? Have I lost my freedom to participate in the lila of life. I have lost my identity. If I connect my cell phone the voices on the other side sound like aliens lost in a world forlorn. I am no more  a part of the history making process- and history has come to a stand still . Time too is blank, not even a palimpsest to receive the new vocabulary of alienation. Man has always chased time to a future or dissected with analytical    scissors the palm leaf, heaps or walk back to the origins. But now time and space are both like imaginary hail storm full of lightning flashes and sterile thunder. Man closes whatever is open in the room, door or window, to shut out the fury of the elements. Where are those poets, sages, scientists who always goaded us  to fight? If I want to fight - I am always ready - but who is my enemy? A lifeless virus  who finds life in me, inside my wonderful body , grows in me -  is that virus worthy of my heroism ? I don't seek bubble reputation  in my allotted time. I have a face, a head, and a name; Yes a name; should I stake that name just for mere survival ? No, I will live. Man has lived in the world, climbing its peaks, swimming the seven seas, building bridges to heaven. Man has sung sweeter than the birds and air; man has created beauty on stone , strangeness on the prehistoric rocks. He has written epics, discovered all secrets of creation- almost -:   will he now die a secret death in a room which will be fumigated after he  stiffens?  

But man has conquered everything with love. Christ, Buddha, Gandhi  won all human wars with love. Can Corona understand  My Love ? If I sing - come my love, live in me, together we will love the mountains, valleys, slopes, gradiants of the earth, shapely, luscious and seductive like Uravasi - Meneka. We will keep the rivers crystal clear, mountains and virgin forests eternally charming like dew washed buds at dawn. We will eat whatever the earth gives and never shall we greed for more. We will sing for our love from distant shores and never admit separation to our perennial union. We will love man for all his shortcomings irrespective of his caste, religion, nationality.  We will hold the banner of peace in the hands of love.  Will Corona respond?  If not let us break this lockdown and do what we have been doing  with greater vigour. Let's bury loneliness in the Choric song of life and wish victory to man.                                                                             

Corona 's Home

Tired of roaming around

in the unwholesome air

he enters the body of the

human being to taste the

choice of its own life,

it enters the lungs to breathe

and purify its own blood.

The allure of unknown

unseen predator has

darkened the earth

Mother Nature is quiet

watching her children running

here and there to save their lives

whom they call humans.

Man is maddened

by the internal strife

he runs to the doctor,

who isolates him prisoner like

without guilt or crime.

He prays wishes to light a lamp

before his deity

but all temples are closed

as He is quarantined.

The leaders of the world

feel  helpless,

man is the plume of creation,

now is gilted waiting for the end.
Making the body home for the alien
he has alienated himself.

Who and what is this Corona,

has it come to make us more

aggressive in thought and action

more violent and inventive to kill,

or Corona has come to teach man

how to behave, admire, respect

and submit to Nature:

Nature is the only God Principle

and man must surrender his ego.

Is this Armageddon or Kurukshetra

we need not know:

Life is to be lived

to do good to each other

with Nature as the

presiding deity of our actions.

Sabita Sahu

The Corona Lesson

Prafulla Kmar Mohanty

If my memory is not been quarantined by Corona, it was Boris Pasternak who asked after he saw children play in the streets: Children which century is this? Today an alien visitor moving around the world may wonder : What is this planet where the humans have lost their freedom? The birds fly as their wont, animals move even into human territories. But man is in chains not by chance or choice, by fear; fear of an invisible virus. The virus kills at will, fearlessly moving  all over the planet without any trace of curtailment  slowing it down. If Corona has negatived human Free will, man must rethink his destiny. He is no more his own destiny maker, for , to carve out his own destiny he needs freedom. Any society which believes in human rationality assumes freedom as the essence of the human being. Since the Greeks this reasoning faculty in man is primarily worshiped by civilizations as the prime material of all human institutions. The Indians call Dharma(not religion)the moral responsibility of a citizen or human being to determine life's course of action. The infected will was more harmful to the life system in the world than the vile energy abroad.  Dharma controlled this will for man's freedom to infect it to make the human will freely operational . This Dharma was Moral Reason. But Dharma often failed to reign in the irrational desires . Man used his freedom not within the confines of reason but beyond the pale of reason. Dreams, desires, ego trips  too supersedes the limits of possibility make freedom of man an instrument of defiance. The display of power to conquer the harmony of the eco system and raise his own towers of glory made nature a devastated field of human exploits. Freedom became  a super Enlightenment too big for its own boots.

In our Corona captured world today, this irrational freedom  which man overplayed is now in prison, a prison of a new order of reason to tame man's arrogance. The entire world today is in a lock down. Man has surrendered his freedom to survive . He has done this willingly as he has realised the consequences of his own excesses. But can we call this an anagnorisis? Has he been enlightened afresh that the irrationality with which Man has used his freedom  has now been punished. If the Corona virus has made its home in the plentiful space of human body, it is because man has irrationally entered into all space hailing it  as the triumph of his reason.  Corona too is using its freedom irrationally to teach humans that if you are free to interfere with the freedom of nature's multitudes, the other free agents have the same freedom to lock you down. If man has learnt this lesson from the crisis of his own making, it would mean that reason still is supreme.

This crisis will blow over like the great wars, Spanish Flu , H1N1 and other such reminders of human unreason. But what will happen to his overleaping ambitions ? The individual now is more powerful in democratic countries and considers himself  as the state. The social media gives the individual the power to use expletives at the leadership or another individual or origination with self - declared impunity. One can denounce justice, law, policies with all irrational crudities as though he/she is god. Every social media user is playing god. The basic reason is each individual has his own idea of a country and  knows how best it could be administered. The individual decides economic policies and decides what justice is. The people are now free to hate. Openly one can express hate for love has no meaning in public life. Religion too is blamed. Countries denounced. Trump can lay the blame on World Health Organization and choke its funds. The response of countries  in this crisis is individualistic. China is blamed for this Virus and naturally China accuses the USA with more sinister things. The Islamic countries blame the Christian countries . India blames  the Nizamuddin religious conference for aggravating the crisis. Hate, mutual suspicion are faces of unreason. If man fails to recognise these faces in this crisis, he has learnt no lessons.

What is required today is a united approach to this Corona crisis. This is not a Chinese or Italian or an American crisis. This is a human crisis. The fate of humanity will be determined the way we approach the crisis. If we think that each country will evolve its own way of solving the crisis, it will be the height of unreason. If China would try to capture the health  care market of the world that too will be irrational. The world must come together to save man by  a rational approach . And this rational approach now should  mean human togetherness. Science,  economics, politics and welfare system must now be shared freely between all countries. The world should not allow any country to face ruin. The depression- recession that will certainly follow this  crisis must be tackled by a united human effort. A new human globalization should emerge after this crisis  which should be moderated by all our efforts put  together. Man is one, despite clime, colour, language and religion. This world is meant for man's temporary sojourn. Let man live his time with some happiness and fulfilment. This should be made possible by united effort. Boundaries and differences should be de-fenced. Freedom should be used for man's happiness selflessly. This is the New Reason. Freedom is never individual for it leads to defiance of nature. Freedom is an attribute of humanity

O Saviour.

I don't know who created me

If He is God, so be it: 

But I have seen who saves life 

brings back from the jaws of death

the sick despairing man

waiting  for the last leaf to fall

in the turbulence  of stormy nights

wakes up to a new dawn of hope.

People say Doctor is the second God...

TRUE.

He heals  wounds, softens pain

brings cheers to life's destiny,

he stands between death and rebirth

like a benign  angel of mirth

his words join broken ribs

he is the lover of life and lives

in unparagoned purity dazzling in whites.

O' Doc live long to cure

the sick diseased and blind

you are the God of the body

and also the deranged mind.

May your maker bless you all

for he makes the fall for you to raise

love the sick and bless them with life

God will call you by the bedside

when he rolls in regret for pain

which he causes for no real gain.

Sabita Sahu

She And I

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

She and I have spent life's major years in Platonic togetherness - whatever it means. If by Platonic you understand  a spiritual bonding of unexpressed feelings, may be you  may not be wrong. This togetherness of course is a misnomer for we lived almost exiled from each other after a few moments of incomprehensible innuendo, that too in nonserious casualness. But I was serious, eager, honest and intense. My words which ought to have provoked a response perhaps fell flat or taken as light austerity not to be responded. But that was the end of a moment of togetherness and the beginning  of a spiritual agony for which I could not find any self transcending elixir. We parted ways. Our addresses were lost to each other and presences were almost banal even in memory flashes. But I loved her every moment and she expressed her admiration whenever I became a subject in a conversation. If I call this Platonic togetherness I hope my onesidedness will be appreciated.

But time brought us together, that is we met very late in life again casually . We were not sights, only sounds over that wonderful machine, the cell phone, when she made a formal wish on a New Year's Day. I made that call an SOS and poured my swelling oceans in controlled flow lest it drowned her. She took a very long time to sift the dross  and salinity to savour the sweetness. Our sounds became songs and songs became sights and  a real spiritual sweetness  made me a sober seeker of love without any togetherness. We met hardly for a  minute in a year, two four times but I was more than the eager Sun to rise early and set late lavishing all my light and heat  on her. She never bathed in the light nor singed in the heat but her petals opened up everyday. At night too some petals spread their drooping scent to keep  me awake although she never had any measure of it.

One day we met, I don't know whether in dream or in reality but I remember what happened if that is a happening. We were in a  SUV sitting close together- I do not remember what she wore, a dress or saree and don't remember whether her hair was open or tied into a bun. But she breathed and I sighed. We stopped at a green coconut vendor. I asked the driver to bring two coconuts. I drank mine through a pipe of straw, she just held the straw in her mouth and perhaps stopped sucking after a sip but held it in her hand. After I finished mine and threw the coconut on the roadside, she just placed hers  on the floor board. I lifted  it up and drank it using the same straw which she had kissed.

She grimaced, I pretended not to notice. Then we  alighted and I led her to a Mall- I forget the name. When we moved together into the shop or Mall whatever, everyone looked at us. The salesgirls and the boys gave us an admiring welcome as though we were royalty or a celebrity couple. She was not herself, I was not myself but both were  real as though in a film set before the rolling camera eyes of the sales persons. The other customers all looked at us as if we were the most admirable couple on a very late honeymoon. I asked her to select something and she eyed back telling me to do that for her. A plumpy, laughy salesgirl brought a stack of dress and spread them over the counter. I said, choose and she buried her eyes into the display. I picked up two, she rejected. She picked up two and I rejected. The girl showed us one bright beautiful flowing dress without frills, she had no thrills. Then I said, well then, let's go. And she readily got up from the stool. My eyes fell on  a ruby studded pink dress on a mannequin, and I asked the sales girl to take it out. She did. I looked  at her, her eyes widened. She looked at the price tag and I said pack it for us. An elderly man, maybe the shop owner brought two beautiful sarees. I just gave it a glance and asked him to pack them. Both? Yes I said. I gave my card and she held the packet looking more confident .

When we came to the street many eyes  scrutinized us whether we were real and from this planet. She was annoyed and I was amused. I asked her to enter another shop for cosmetics. She all on a sudden held my left hand and almost dragged me towards the car. The passersby stared at us.  We sat in the car and the car moved. Now let's go to some swanky place and have lunch. I am not hungry she said. Me neither I chimed. But let's eat together  for the first time. I'll feed you, you will feed me and life will be drained out. She smiled this time  and said, no I'll feed you what I have cooked for you during the blank years. Come let's go home. Home! Where? It's not on the surface of the earth. Not brick and  mortar, mud and wattle, it's a Faith house a faith which I repose on my unconfessed love and I'll feed you love which will satiate your  hunger till time's end. I laughed aloud. No thanks my hunger is  My faith , don't break it.

Song Of Life

What is beautiful here -

the sky is void,
the moon's craters are burial pits

flowers smell foul in hours

the earth is a graveyard of dreams.

And love a fresh wound

oozes out the soul drop by drop

sleepless nights choke the nerves

man unwishes life for relief.

Desires and dreams are whimpers

from the depth of seas and shark teeth.

He who thinks of peace turns into pieces

make my heart a steel box

let it not blip on hospital beds.

If I have years left 

if my calendar still flaps

in the breath of your  love,

If I have words on parchment

seal them in a   dark closet

leave me blind in the deserts

to sing and relive my lost years.

Sabita Sahu

He And She

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

He and She lived in the same street. Neighbours, well almost, just three narrow straight houses apart. Both were poor, that is above the BPL but not very affluent. Both were in the same school She one class lower. Both walked up to the school at 9 am. She was with her widowed mother and He in  a nuclear family. She drew water from the well at nightfall and He sang songs on his terrace at the selfsame time. She mumbled her happiness to the rising moon and He made mouths at her. One morning He saw Rangoli at Her doorsteps and rubbed his feet on the blooming lotus. She threw a mouthful of water at Him and He asked her to visit the Devi Mela in the evening. she was 12 and He was 13, together they were a quarter century. They visited the Devi Pandals, ate ice sticks yellow and red and promised to each other never to part in life. Returning in handholding joy they went to their respective  homes.

Time flew as they walked on. He matriculated and went to College. She failed in English and was married off to a widower, about twenty years her senior. He wanted to shoot the Sun with his brother's catapult and kick the earth with his first time full shoes but fell sick for a day and rested sobbingly in his room. Father was transferred to  another city. He moved to a hostel . Time attained speed he graduated with distinction and was sent on a scholarship to another city bigger, holier and older. She became pregnant and her husband fell down somewhere and died, the news never appeared anywhere. She wrote a long letter which she did not post. He always thought of her but never could visualize her fading features. He was invited to a Christmas Carols by a classmate. A She of charming smile and quickfire articulation. She was rich, He was on a scholarship. Both jointly topped the exams. She prepared for competitive examinations, He prepared for life. He expected her to write to him, She expected him to write to her. Expectations clashed and communication was exploded into silence.

Life is to be lived. No plan, faith, attempt, effort, blessing is outside life. Some habits like going to the temple in the morning or taking black ( green etc) tea are formed while living. He got a job, a managerial position with good salary, a furnished house, car etc to which he became habituated in a week. Parents wanted him to marry, he did, that is, he sat on the altar listening to the Sanskrit verses recited by a priest. All his childhood friends, schoolmates and some prominent men and women of the society attended the marriage reception party. He saw the well parloured women by her side and introduced her as his wife. The night he spent with his wife gave him his first experience of sex which he repeated in life. The children were born, a he and she, healthy and handsome. His wife was a good cook. The dining table never disappointed him.

He had promotions, became the chief, owned a palatial building in Mumbai, his Harvard educated children settled in America marrying native beauties, his wife had her own world of parties and celebrations: And He retired into silence. One day at about midnight, three days after his retirement, he got a call, surprisingly a video call from an unfamiliar number. The face smiling on the screen raised a whisky glass- cheers! Do you recognise me? He recognised her, Yes, said he, why didn't you write or speak to me? She laughed. She was almost the same after so many years, the same vivacity, the lips luscious and hands shapely. Only her hairstyle was different, short and flowing, coloured naturally. She said , 'speaking now, yes may be after a long pause of unsighted blankness. I kept all accounts of your professional rise. I applauded many a time your celebrity status, watched your TV interviews with pride, read your innovative ideas, often tempted to  contradicting them publicly but mostly I agreed and enjoyed. O' you want to know about me? Sure, got into bureaucracy joined the Rajasthan Cadre, rose to the level of Secretary and took voluntary retirement five years before my sixtieth year.  You too look healthy and young, good for you. O' why didn't I marry and raise a family?  May be I waited for an ethereal word too long and the desire for the worldly things dried up. I served my stand  and now I teach and educate a few orphans. Now tell me, are you happy?' It was His turn to laugh - what's that? Happiness ? Life I have lived as culture and society ordained. I never waited for ethereal words. Life is life, you have to be at it every moment, where's time to bother about happiness and fulfilment? True, She said taking a sip, as you go on  many feeling- cocktails you drink. At times neat, at times with other liquids. But your feelings shine only in your private , personal world. By the by I will be at Hotel Marriot tomorrow, suite 477, would you come for a drink with me to celebrate our having lived separate lives although ..... I will, I shall, 7.30 sharp.

Next morning I received an envelope from my childhood She who had parted ways early. The letter was long poorly written in bad Odia. She had  listed out her pain, sorrow, humiliation and suffering. Strange! It was written twenty five years  ago but posted last week. He sent 10 Lakh to the address given and dressed up for the first and last dinner with his sophisticated   bureaucrat. How will the evening go He  wondered! Well as life has gone in hours and years. Don't think like mortals in time and space.