Second Childhood

Strange is the story of life:

begins with the prattle

ends with the babble

as people grow from green to yellow

limbs crack and wither, memory

plays truant-they know not what they do,

take solitary walks with their Maker

to relive memories, lean on the

raw and green for reassurance

of their identity. The turmoiled mind

fails to defend what has been,

hope and joy like enemies betray

when their power to scream decays.

Are they specimens for pity and

sympathy? No, when our need for

them is past their prime, their need

for us begins, they lean on us

to straighten their backs.

Let’s stretch forward to hold them

with love, care and patience.
that's the language they understand

to crown their memories.

sabita sahu

Poverty

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty


Once in an after-lecture interaction I was asked how I defined poverty: My impromptu answer was- I define a richman as one who can fulfill the needs of his imagination. What I imagine is also within the parameters of my total reality. Someone prompted ‘for instance’- I smiled and said, for instance if I can’t pluck out the stars to distribute as toffees to you I am poor indeed. The audience laughed, a young girl said- in that case we all are poor. But what is poverty in human experience? Why do governments all over the world take up poverty alleviation programmes? Is it for the rag pickers or star pluckers? Again there was a roll of laughter. Without the slightest hint of embarrassment I said: If you have the World Bank prescription of two Dollars a day in mind we have to go by statistics. In India we have about 36% of the population below poverty line. But when you think of a place to live in, some clothes to wear and two square (or triangular) meals a day, I don’t know whether the WB has any specificities to prescribe.

In the beginning all humans were born poor. None had any other inheritance except bland nature, hostile forests and pathless futures. What was the meaning of poverty or prosperity then? Yes, there was pain of hunger, fear of predators and death perhaps was an incomprehensible, mystic beyond their ken. How could the naked Homo Sapiens come to the present level over the long arduous centuries? They fought hunger, sickness and poverty, overcame them and launched empires of their own, more organised and even powerful than nature. Those who begged of fruit trees, later of the gods, then from kings and ministers – this word poverty relates to their state which they could not change or improve. Poor are those who give up half way through the struggle and depend on divine or human mercy. Also when people are rendered helpless by famine, flood, earthquake, tsunami or a bomb attack, they often lose the fight as the opposing forces are too strong to overcome. But the human mind is such that it will find out alternative ways of survival although in penury. But even in such circumstances man refuses to yield, for his ego will never admit defeat. Poor are those who surrender their pride at the slightest hint of adversity. The welfare state, however caring and benevolent, ought to rejuvenate the calamity –struck defeatism in destitutes instead of treating them as venerable burdens on the resources. Give them doles but never make their dolorous lives  accept their state as the inalienable  fate imposed by God or reality. Teach them to rise, raise their self respect, give them work and create environs for their self fulfilment. If you give them rations (or rice at Rs. 2 a kg) they will be shameless slaves of the state or the votebanks of political parties: their human qualities will be enslaved by the senses. Their moral being will perpetually submit to authority; they can never fight to emancipate themselves.

In India farmers commit suicide which is definitely sad. But why should a loan burden or a crop failure lead a person to suicide? We must remember – those who kill themselves are afraid of life. They are cowards who refuse to go through the vicissitudes to prove their human worth. Government instead of giving compensation for such people should condemn their cowardice. The society too should encourage such distressed people to keep on fighting and not to leave the stage altogether like bad actors.

Poverty, as has been said, is a state of mind. Physical poverty apart, we have emotional, intellectual and moral poverty to contend with. Most human beings suffer from moral poverty. The leaders who loot in the name of service, the traders who hoard things to create artificial scarcity and the teachers who believe they have nothing more to learn and many such other professionals who treat the others as their potential victims are poor indeed. A man sitting in a Mercedes is not necessarily rich if he plots to exploit innocent people. Gandhiji believed in the moral lessons given in primary schools that God loves the poor: it is a consolatory precept. God loves those who love themselves and strive hard to advance in life. Monarchies killed this instinct in man. Tyrants forcibly suppressed free play of the human will. But in a modern democracy man is free to endeavour to change his conditions. Loans are available to start enterprises. He who is proud of displaying his poverty today and claims sympathy-charity-doles, in my view, is morally poor which makes his physical poverty ugly. Poverty should be transcended by the dignity of pride, for, that is what man is made of.

O’ My Sweet Nothing

What magic it was who wielded

I don't know there was nothing

my heart was ever empty, a shell

without meat, your presence,

absence, memories and

experience made no  difference.

You were not my mate

nor you were my fate

seasons moved, spring summer

rolled in their rhythms,

never noticed your name,

your smile, style and profile

never came  in my dreams even

but in some corner of heart

there was a speck of desire

to meet you again 

gave the pleasure of pain

Your absence made me realize

the first pang of separation

I never felt before even while

walking on the sea shore with

your songful charm and savour!

you came unnoticed to devour,

I was left with my unsaid love.

my nothing is now my everything

you are my past, present and future

I have no gesture to show my love

yet I chant sing and recite every moment.


Sabita sahu

My Religion

 Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

If I am to choose a religion today, I will choose none. This answer may shock you for religion is man’s identity today next to his official ID. The passport or Adhar card without which you are officially dead, is the definable identity of a man or woman in a modern state. But religion is the identity  of a person in his social  life. You will ask, then you must have a religion or at least belong to one. Yes, I will say I belong to  a religion because my father had a faith inherited through generations without asking questions or exercising choice. I am  a Hindu as my father was a Hindu , his father was a Hindu...and ad infinitum. I never go to a temple, I never observe the rituals, never read the Gita or any religious scripture, I don’t fast on ekadasi or eclipse. I eat all types of food- beef, pork- whatever comes on my plate, I haven’t married on the altar to the chanting of Vedic mantra or somebody's badly pronounced  Sanskrit. I don’t remember when Navaratri comes or when the Holi colours scald unsuspecting skins, I have never  bathed in the dirty waters of the Ganga although I have boated in the ‘holy sangam’ for more than 200 times, I don’t perform shradha ceremonies for my parents: Yet all records say I am a Hindu.

Now coming  to your question my love, If I am to choose a religion today I’ll choose none. I view religion and God business as an unnecessary luxury for which I have no time and no need. I need not submit to a fictional reality which religion creates. How can I believe that God has created men and women just to multiply and conquer the earth. Woman in God’s scheme of things is less intelligent, cannot be even trusted to testify in a court case. She is a commodity for man’s use. If God has given life and shape to man who created sickness and death? Gods never fall ill, they never vomit blood, they eat the sacrificial offerings and are always happy. They never face ecological problems or tsunami nor do they face the wrath of vigilantes. Man faces all disasters, blizzards before dying on a farm or in a hospital. What is God’s purpose then, If he has created men, animals, insects and nature? Are the created objects, things including men and creatures meant for God’s recreation? Are we the motley jokers to entertain gods who  are perpetually bored? We have no identity then!

No, I don’t want the identity of a creature of God. This religious identity of man  has created a new problem for man besides  hunger disease and death. And that is hate and war. Ever since man wore this identity, this planet is soaked in blood, the atmosphere is fetid in hate and is crouching in fear. The religious leaders make all constitutions invalid. The fear of the other world is added to the available fears of the human condition. Civilizations with science and technology dispel some natural fears but they cannot contend with the fears created by religion. The fear of hell and the lure of ‘Heaven’- no matter how many storeyed- make life on earth a far more sinister proposition than Dante’s Inferno.

I am my own God on earth, not immortal like the perpetual dictator, but mercifully mortal, a creature with birth, growth, manhood, old age and death as changing scenes in a theater. I love man admire woman, take delight in biodiversity and try to befriend all those who appear, however briefly in my sphere of activity. I respect my parents who brought me to this beautiful earth; I love with all divinity and purity at my command the woman I live for and appreciate everything that man does except his hate, anger and greed.            

Life is the greatest gift of nature. This earth is the loveliest theatre to play my chosen role. My quest for knowledge is never punished here as in the Garden of Eden. My birth is not a sin to be washed away in austere penance rituals. I never harm others’ interests. I obey the law of the land and pay my taxes, stand in a queue for my turn to come. And I love my beloved children and share their happiness. Above all I love the most graceful woman on earth.

This is my religion. Come my love: lets sing love’s sweet songs of life to man and forget gods, devils and heaven and hell.`

Hungry No More.

Left the bed early after
the wild night’s wakefulness,
tied my hair, changed the night gown,
when I heard the first caw from the
garden outside looked at the reddening
sky reminding me the world I hold on my

shoulders, whether it cares for
me or not I don’t know.

Tea I made and served others,
whose worlds move on different axes,
prepared sumptuous breakfast, fed
everybody, they left never looked back
to see my plate was empty or filled.

My hunger turned into anger,
felt humiliated and neglected
could not concentrate on any work,
with jumbled mind prepared khichidi,
that was half burnt, thought  then I
angry for what, with whom
and why? Who cares except the
one who like me prepares burnt
khichidi  and eats with pleasure.

Yes, I thought of him, and ate with
pride and simulated joy; waiting for
my love who loves my anger
and eats it with the hunger of
a life time, leaving me
hungry no more.



Sabita sahu

Leave Me Alone.....

 Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I am young. I have the energy to hold the earth like Atlas. I have dreams to launch spaceships to put out all candles of the sky and burn my own stars I have created in the laboratory. My passions are immeasurable. My ambitions are Herculean, my love will stun Cleopatra, my reach is unlimited. Sitting with a super computer I can hack all devices, accounts and bring the world to a standstill. I can do what my temperamental brothers over the countable centuries could never do. Yes, I can hold the universe as a grain of sand in the hollow of my palm. I work for twenty hours to create and destroy.

But when I go home my mother asks me what I ate whether what she calls, junk food, or what she had given in the hot box. Father asks – did you read that book? That’s very important for the competitive examinations you know. The library bought ten copies of the book at my request. Father runs back when shouts of joy are heard from the TV room- his star Kohli has scored his 32nd century. I run up the steps to my room, bolt it from inside and fall on the bed. Mother’s -o’ listen, eat these sandwiches- rebounds against the doors.

I take Ritalin when I sit in the old fashioned classrooms as my attention wavers. I get stressed listening to dull lectures and irrelevant rhetoric. In the university play fields I have no place in the playing eleven of the cricket team. I play basket ball against my will but my team regularly wins championships. Father has forbidden the play field- recommends the gym to me. Well! why should I be commanded by everyone to do this or that? Why should someone tell me what to read and what job to apply for? Mother wanted me to be a doctor, father an IT professional or a Management Guru. None asks me what  I want to become-BECOME no I want to BE. Parents, teachers, advisers please stop bullying me. Let me be what I wish to be. And I wish to build and create. I want to fight the enemies of life. If you tease me and say what will I eat, where will I sleep and such nonsense, I’ll say I’ll eat the sun piece by piece and sleep on the starry bed of the sky. You think I am mad! Then don’t ask me anything. Leave me alone. Millions like me roam in the streets searching for ideals to follow. What world have you left behind O’ my great grandparents? A world where I cannot breathe; where the climate goes North by Northwest because you wanted the West to come to the East, where gaping manholes swallow pedestrians midway to their homes; where lakes foam and fume, water tantalizes the farmer to his suicide; where dragged from a train a woman is raped on the footpath- onlookers like four legged brutes take pictures to ruminate in moments of shameless privacy to savour in human barbarism in primitive ecstasy; where bullets are sprayed on music revellers by a demented ideologue of the devil; where; where your chancy birth to a religion makes you superior to others; where atom and hydrogen bombs are bandied about on whims; where God’s acres are reduced to rubbles to justify ownership; where love and faith  are commodified in the name of modernity; where all values are  sacrificed for vote bank politics and where man wishes to live for two hundred years with medicines...

Well, don’t play with my passions. I am a simple human being. I want to live in a comfortable home where love bonds the human other into a relationship. I want a fair job which will absorb my soul and give freedom to search for new things that will delight man without ecological despair. Life should offer challenges to show and prove that man is a creative soul in a world full of such human beings who never bother to chisel out a stone knife even for hunting like the Homo Erectus.

In short let me live like a man with love and creativity to make the world more beautiful. Let me leave behind a more hospitable world than I was fated to inherit. Let me be a glowing part of God’s scheme of things- If there is no God, let me create God and worship Him as a referee to judge me in the final reckoning.

Resolve

How many times do I need

to wear my armour to fight

the unending battles of life’s
phoenix falling to rise again?

How long can I enflame

my desire to live , how long

enforce my weak shoulders

to carry the arms in this

time eaten body and mind?

My growing years have slowed

my pace,my steps infirm,

my  memory unresponsive,

I depend on my family to remind me

I am not sick and lost.

But I can’t sit here to brood,

analyse and ask, although

I am frail bereft of zeal,

I have to fight my battles

long and deep with my love’s

empowering and indomitable will.

I have done my worldly duty

yet I’m not done, I still

have dreams forlorn.Come my love,

my dearest friend hold me tight

and breathe your magic into me

send me again to fight and heal.


Sabita Sahu