My Last Request

Remember my last request,

not to send any gifts

if material tokens are gifts

I don’t know what you call gifting

love, friendship, sacrificing 

a life for the loved one.

Don’t even gift me sun, moon

planets and galaxies as I can’t play

them in my lonely moments,

if you can, make a small hut

somewhere in the galactic shores

play surf with me on the

unending sand collecting  shells.

I want a world with you

to call it my very own

give the warmth of arms

the gifts of joy and gifts of life

not tokens which cannot stand up

to my whining heart's lonely melodies

my throbbing pulses' love calls.

The promise of other life

in my today’s and tomorrows.

Sabita Sahu

Waiting For A call

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Two minutes, she said, I’ll call you. I held the phone slightly loose away from my ears, appreciatively looking at the slick instrument but heart, mind and soul fully focused to listen to vibrations and feel them in my palm. None came, she perhaps cut the line dead. My heart sank. Is  two minutes such battery consuming or so expensive that she had to off it! How long is two minutes, one twenty ticks, two rounds of the second hand, two 360 degree motions: but I can hold my breath for two minutes, there are people, especially, swimmers who can hold for more than five minutes. Why did she snap the connection. Did she do it deliberately or the insensitive mobile phone cooled off in indifference? Does she not know after how long, after how many eons of anxiety I wanted to talk to her? Two hours is a long time in a man’s life. Long two hours! Bhubaneswar to Delhi, Madras, Mumbai! When concorde operates one can go to Beijing even. Two hours sealed the fate of Napoleon. Two minutes after a  two hour hiatus is a blank in time. The world ceases to move, life is in coma. Nothing happens. No birth, no death, no motion. There is an inexplicable pause in sound and silence. Spheres are at a stand still. Eyes do not see as the nerves do not get signals from a blank mind. Breath is inaudible. The invisible air is dumb, the elements have suspended their functions as the prime mover is dazed.

I never imagine time, space and the creative process of supernal life could ever be self-apathetic. Nothingness reduces time to a non -being. Consciousness is being. If consciousness is stuck at a point of non-reality the sub- conscious too lapses into a stasis. Time and history get detached. Detachment causes a death in life. Poets call this a separation from the paradigms of being. The lover calls this separation- biraha which is like a pause in the heart beats- not death but worse. You feel death is more welcome than this nothingness. You stay put in a state of freeze.The sky, earth and all the shenanigans of cosmicity are on hold. You are divorced from the origins, your roots and your vital encounters with life.

Waiting for a call from your alter ego is painful to say the least, it reduces your being to a bundle of shame. Shame slowly leads to fear, the fear of being a non- entity. An identityless moron who is taken for granted. Whose soul force is undermined. Whose manhood is ignored. This fear of loss of personality leads even to self –loathing. Your existence falls apart. You are like a banned drug seller hiding your ware even from yourself.

Waiting for a confirmatory call from a potential employer is a temporary heartache where your being does not lose its power of defiance. You have done well, you deserve the job, if it is not offered, you feel cheated but you don’t feel everything is lost. You will try and retry and will succeed one day  like this year’s IAS topper Anudeep who after four failures found his name on the top of the list.This waiting gives you determination. You accept the challenge with defiance. As Churchill wrote- In victory magnanimity, in defeat defiance- you rise up to the binaries heroically. But when you lose your innocence you often lose the strength to fight back.

A political party can wait. A leader can wait. A jobseeker can wait. A favour seeker can wait. They may say in disgust – life is an endless argument before an empty Bench, there is no judge in sight-but they will wait, plead, argue, appeal, and even fight. That’s what man is. He will wait to fight to win or lose. He never gives up. Never says nothing- to be done.

But love is perhaps the only divine thing which man is not fated to win. There is no victory in love.  If you love someone she/ he becomes your total reality of this life and even of lives to come. Waiting for two minutes to listen to the golden voice of your love is more important than a Waterloo. If the call does not come the two minutes prolong to pervade all your time and space.You cannot say well, why wait for a proud woman, there are others. No, It would mean you never loved. Time comes to a standstill for a person who loves without boundaries of space- time, all limitations are meaningless. You lose patience which is your only possession and sigh away your deep agony.

But why does this happen? Should love overpower your soul force? Well, no answer or explanation will ever satisfy a lover for whom love is the only name for life. Yet … well  the phone is vibrating, a ring resonates the heart.

All is not lost. Nothing ever is lost except the silliness of overarching impatience.

Night’s Tale

 I wandered alone in silence

the starless night swaddled in darkness

attacked me in anger, frustration
ignorant of night's follies

which men indulge in arrogance:

I wanted to swallow the dark night

for my scant food does not lessen

the burden of earth or crude hunger.

Don’t open the window for the  dark

to descend on my heavy soul.

How strange no stars could guide

to the temple where Asifa was tied

in malignant ropes of silly pride

ears too failed to hear the cries

the angel made, even temple bells

could not chime her pain.

How long she could bear

the torture the brutes gave her

O’ you men what pleasure did you get

tearing the delicate frame

of a girl of just eight, darling

of her parents eyes: if flesh

you need, be a customer

in the Red zones where shops

are open for your itches,

for God’s sake spare these tiny souls

who have not seen life yet.

Asifa is now free from the body cage

defiled  by predators of lust

the grave now is her home

allow her to rest in peace.

I’ll now place sweet jasmines

to mock at the night on her grave

and bind the night in the hollow

of my eyes never to witness light.

Sabita sahu

Birthday

What’s in a birthday! A day to remember when your cries widened the lips of your family members in beaming joy! And count the numbers year by year. The day I was born the sky was rent with lightning, it rained daggers stabbing the earth to bleeding slush as though Krishna came slicing the jailed womb of my mother. May be it was a hospital labour room, dingy, bloody and screams of women deafening the nurses and midwives to indifference. I don’t remember. Never had the urge to ask my mother. But I remember the celebrations since my fourth year. Mother would dress me in new clothes, dot my forehead with sandal paste and vermillion over my eye brows, father would take me to a temple – Nilakantheswar; we would walk along ridges of farmland and some puja would be performed. Neighbours would be invited in the evening. Mother would serve some delicacies and the celebration would end.  The next morning the same books, school, class and my own inventive devices to get more from life.

My disenchantment with my birthday came in my tenth year. How is a birthday special? How is it different from the rest of the days in a year?  Every moment children are born and so do birds, beasts and insects. Everyday the sun is born out of the dark womb of the night, every evening it dies beyond the horizon. This coming hither and going hence runs in symmetrical perpetuity balancing birth and death in the human condition. How is birth different from death except being two states of life. Without death life is not complete and without birth this daily encounter with death’s multiple doubles can never manifest their wrathful forms. I am born to die so I should rue the day I was born.

On my tenth birthday I had my birthmate, a beautiful torn-frocked neighbour in my street run over by a speeding bike. Her left thigh bone was perhaps fractured. I put her in a rickshaw and took her to the city hospital. I had no money to pay the fare; the rickshaw puller sent my fourteen generations to hell. The expletives still ringing in my ears, I lifted the girl and ran to the Doctor who was kind and attended to her immediately. After an interminable hour she appeared, smiling tears half hanging from her black, bleary eyes: No fracture only a crack. But she should not walk for at least ten days. How do you feel Namita? She looked at me for a second- I ‘m hungry, she said, tears rolling down her cheek. I leaned her on my shoulder, matched my steps to her limp. I had no money to feed her. My failed malehood wailed.

It was Namita’s birthday too – celebrated with pain, hunger, bruised and bandaged in life’s march into time. I told mother to give her some food and she did after remonstrating my action. I did not eat. Birthday also comes like sandstorm in a garden. Flowers droop, saplings become rootless, trees bend in shattered pride. I left the house and walked barefoot up to the station.  The horns of the train wailed hunger in my ears, the crowds of self- immersed men and women bargained their passage home. My blistered feet turned homeward, my birthday was a famished noon tide. The shores of life seemed devastated by their own storms. I gulped my tears and returned home -no school, no nothing.

I have forgotten my birthday, even the month and year. I have grown, perhaps mature to be indifferent to all Namitas of the world. If you are born, you have to live a life. There is no rule, no Samhita to direct the course of your life.  You have to live to die one day: but how? The how should be answered by you only. You make your calendar, sleep with dreams of tomorrow, cajole your dreams to come every night, shuffle your fancies and place your cards face down. But I've had to show my cards, often losing the stakes. I have become a pop singer. I play the Mandolin in birthday parties.

When rich brats hire posh hotels, invite friends, classmates, neighbours, teachers, relatives and place Black Pagoda Cakes on well decorated tables I raise the pitch and pace of my Mandolin. I lead the dance, the children and grownups in their Ritu Jain designer fineries , clap and dance, their jewels shine, their well made up faces  broaden with loud laughter, their feet, although missing beats and steps , claptrap to  long applause. No one looks at me except the videographer yet I create the rhythms of joy for those boys and girls who enjoy their birthdays floating in the gathering like Champagne glasses on the toasting hands. Dinner, drinks, music, and cake cutting, teasing, praising, jealousing- all go on in varied sequences. The Mandolin gets subdued, the drums go silent, and the light fades. I return on my bike to my shanty.

Namita knocks at midnight plus after her hotel room stints, her garish make up blurred by tired limbs and says- I’m hungry,  Do you have…

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Draupadi

                                                                                                           

Shall I call you Princess Draupadi
or fireborn orphan from no human womb

invoked, invited by a conjurer’s chants

a package deal for Drupad’s revenge?

You never played puchi on Yamuna banks

no mother’s breast fed you life into veins

you came as heroine to twist and turn

the fate and the course of this great land.

For you the Princes tested their powers

hitting the fish- eye moving on a mast

but he who won had to share your soul

you rolled on five arms like  a mute doll.

You were a commodity for customers five

rending your soul in your body divide-

yet you reigned, Empress of hearts and minds

to be a wager by your own lord blind.

Unclothed you were to the shouts of whore

you questioned the rights of men and bore

the insults in tears and disheveled hair

roamed in the forest from lair to lair.

Yet you mothered the universe

in your hand was the Akhaya Patra

you fed birds animals and humans

your mind heart torn apart

in summer winter and rain

you caused the war

history accuses you of revenge

epics give you thousand names

yet you shampooed your matted hair

with the blood of the arms of nemesis:

were you happy and fulfilled

I’ll never know nor wish to know.

Your children were killed

Husbands abandoned you

When you fell on stony slabs of snow,

no arm rested your bleeding head.

You came from fire

ended on ice bloodied by your own

what shall I  call you Princess or sod,

Princess of history or woman defiled

You came like magic went like stone

Lightning blasted leaving dark zone.

Sabita sahu

Danda Nata

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Superstitions stem from fear, the fear of the unknown. This fear stems from ignorance of reality. Ignorance stems from incomprehension or incomplete understanding of the world. Of course the reality of the world can never be fully explored. Certain things will elude us. All our modern sciences can boast of partial understanding of reality. But culture society and civilization are all evolving concepts and no society or civilization at any given point of time can claim perfect understanding of anything. The Rigveda, a 3500 year old Indian text raises seminal questions whose validity remains unchallenged despite the explosion of knowledge over centuries of quest for knowledge. The Nasadiya Sukta (Hymns of creation) raises issues which no knowledge can ever resolve:

Who really knows? And who can say?

Whence did it all come? And how did creation happen?

The gods themselves are later than creation,

So who knows truly whence this great creation sprang?

Who knows whence this creation had its origin?

He, whether He fashioned it or whether He did not,

He , who surveys it all from the highest heaven,

He knows- or may be even He does not know(x 129)

If creation precedes gods, it is man through his quest for knowledge of nature and reality created gods. The sages, prophets and men of perceptions created religions which became life management systems tying up a group of human beings with a cosmology imaginatively conceived and convincingly professed whose logic did not extend beyond acceptance. Refinement and reformation by later generations of imaginative philosophers supported by texts and discourses have made religion acceptable to larger groups. To engage the minds of people in an active celebration of life, rituals have also been created to suit human minds in their seasonal variations. The religion of the Hindus is open to a variety of streams and faiths branching off the central faith in the Principle of Brahmanic Energy. Sectarian variations spearheaded by some sages too have been  permitted within the Sanatan umbrella. When agriculture came up in a big way  some rituals associated with fertility myths were added to the existing sets and some were abandoned like the ritual worship of Indra, the rain god.

The creation of the Trinity-Brahma the Creator ; Vishnu the Administrator and Shiva the Lord of time and death also brought changes in the worship mode and the accompanying rituals. Since the season of Danda Nacha(nata) has just come to an end I would like to touch upon the ritualistic practice to highlight   my conviction how faith and rituals are appeasatory agrarian rituals. Man’s desire for well being compels him to practice even masochistic rituals.

Danda Nata is a penance ritual. The belief that low birth and penury in this life is because of prarabdha or some sin committed in the past birth has been ingrained in the minds of people much before the theory of karma was preached. And the remedy for this painful low birth is expiation by self punishment. This Danda Nata, some scholars believe, originated in the10th century BC, in the Suktimati civilization that came up along the Tel river. It is a ritualistic performing art. We can say Danda Nata is the first pre –dramatic form of India in which the processional forms took roots. The name derives from Danda (staff or stick) which symbolizes the Phallic authority of Shiva. The staff and the smaller two sticks or the earthen bowl represents the male and female sex organs.  The Danda also stands for the body- temple- stupa in an imagistic form for the illiterate people. The earth, water, fire and ether, the body and the elements represent creation. The human creative process is represented by the phallus and the female organ. It is in this sense a fertility ritual associated with the agrarian cycle. The festival begins 13 days before the Visuva Sankranti which ushers in the rains. Danduas gather at the Kamanaghar or the house of desires – to be freed of pain or bad luck or to ward off evil or to get a son. Danduas gather at midnight and take a ceremonial bath, after which sacred threads are given to them and they take a vow.  Danduas are made to believe that the sins of their previous birth would be purged if they voluntarily undergo penances. The penances are Dhooli Danda, Agani Danda(fire), Pani Danda (water) and the punishment in the forest. The danduas for these 13 days stay away from home and all worldly pleasures. All caste barriers vanish as they perform acrobatics, music with sincerity and commitment. The Kamana danda and the canes symbolize Shiva and Gouri. The Yajna or the fire ritual revitalizes the danduas to perform life’s activities with purity and commitment. The Chadheya with his three –eyed staff is Shiva and the person in the role of Chadheya identifies himself with Shiva. The Bana Danda suggests a life of retirement. It is similar to the Vanaprasta. Phallus and fire are the beginning and the end of this ritualistic performance. Life is energized by the element of Fire – vitality which also purifies the soul. The Dandua returns to his family and society as a purified soul to make a new beginning with his worldly life.

After this very brief account of the danda nata I may say that this festival is now confined to very few places. The tribals are now modernized. The rituals now include many images which dilute the austerities. But in Ganjam, Koraput and Bolangir it is still performed although the tinsel bravado and artificialities have entered the performances in a fantastic way. Hosts too are now few and far between. Yet what is of great satisfaction is that despite adulterated filmy gimmics danda nata is still not listed as a dying art.

God Is In Me

O’ God ! if you are everywhere

if this  reality is your structure

why do we search in temples,

mosques, churches and miracles

you are omniscient you know all

you hear our unsaid prayers down the hall.

Why then chant we in voluble measures

your glory in prose and lyrical meters?

You are father of all ,why then

we fight for Mecca and Kashi.

We feed you honey, milk and fruits

but turn out the poor and sick like brutes

you say you are  in every living being

why then the poor and weak are nothing?

But I know where my God is

you may agree or disagree,

I know who ,what, where he is

I feel and trust him in calm and ease,

he is my best friend ,my worst enemy

he is my poison, my honey,

he is my love, my hate

he is my frustration ,contentment great

he is my desire , my dream

he is my anger, my hunger.

My god is my faith my earthly success

he makes me work hard for his own grace.

He is in me and I in him

no temples or prayer  is for me.

Sabita Sahu