Monsoon Melody

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

After the fiery arrows of May-June fired by a loveless sun burn the forest trees; after the lotus in pale emaciation leans on the sticky mud half opened; after the torn earth engraves the smothered grass and shrubbery without any epitaph; after the rivers lose their youth and beauty and linger on the sandy bed like lepers in sleepless despair; after the newlyweds in post- coital sweat open their balcony doors to savour in the moon-drenched breath of late night; after the saint’s immortality loses count in his mantra recitation; after the denial of farm –loan waiver by governments; after the thatched roof catches fire while the half –clad  wage-earner sits down for his water rice; after frog marriages by foolish superstitionists; after the deities’ chariots are readied for the grandest show on earth; after the Football World Cup is nearing flash point; after parties for votes troll the skyway:  Falls the Rain.

The sky disappears, merges in the dark youth of the clouds like a bride losing herself in her dearest love after a long separation of longer months. Kisses of lightning and thunderous mating make the luminaries of the sky close their eyes imagining forlorn ecstasies. Then falls the juice of life. The earth waiting in all readiness after her purgatorial period absorbs with lapping joy the impregnating fluid emitting a scent of earthly Eden. Dry bones stir; grassroots in enlivening amazement grow inches to savour the joyful drops. Rivers blessed with renewal of their youth override the banks to show off their furious energy to the human dwellers in highland. New buds swell, crane their necks to sway in the splashing wind and rain. Wet birds looking like fur-pulled creatures, stop crooning, sitting on slippery branches in hungry silence. School girls under multi coloured umbrellas wait for the bus at street corners gravely watching the polish of their shoes go soggy. Water logged roads spray coloured water when cars pass by blaring horns. The footpath vendor covers his luke warm bara and chops with a polythene sheet mumbling a curse under his breath at no one in particular. Office goers in bikes wait under tin roofs of beetle shops smoking cigarettes. Housewives shout- I told you, bring more vegetables- now eat only potatoes: men half hear while dressing up for work. Temple priests rue the morning for rain washed bhakti business. Tea sellers in railway platforms run back to refill their kettles. Lonely men in shirt sleeves settle down to old news papers munching cream crackers in unswept rooms: dial numbers to unresponsive friends. Farmers wearing desi sombreroes walk bare foot to see whether time is ripe for ploughing the fields. A young lover rings up his love inviting her to lunch at Starlight in June Street. Old couples reclining on arm chairs relive their days in half smiles.

Life takes a turn. The summer sweat is now forgotten. Rain calls to life, to go through all familiar chores with intolerant delays and rescheduling of programmes. Trains and flights are delayed. But life goes on. The only thing that cannot wait is life. It will tick by come winter come storm. The rain too cannot wait; It will fall without waiting for the ambulance or the wedding procession.

My love too does not wait . She enjoys her rejuvenating bath in the first rain. She turns a child, floats paper boats, sings. If you ask her why on earth at this age? She will show her beautiful teeth, pearly and shapely and giggle. What’s age to do with rains? See, the birds after their initial shock have started flying from tree to the sky and down to other trees- the mango trees do not excite them anymore. See the old man in a plastic rain coat wading through the slush of lanes to go for his mid-day meal. Why shouldn’t I jump and sail boats- after all life is the only thing I have. Come you lazy lover, come with me we too like new lovers shall walk barefoot up to Cuttack eating nothing except our love which is still in it’s scarlet youth. Let’s walk miles and return miles to our poetry and candle light dinner at home if the electricity plays spoil sport. And revive early days in our endless night. Let the rain give a good bang to the earth- come out in the open- enjoy the jaltarang of the drops on our head and body and create anew what we have failed to do. Let’s create monsoon love and fulfil life and pay our tributes to the rain gods.

Gathering Cloud

The parched earth

looks up in despair

intent ears to listen

the splatter of drops

awaiting the dolled up

bride to drench them

wet all over.

Humans, plants, animals

are in welcome mood

sing in chorus greetings

to deities, some

offering Ray Ban to sun

to soften his angry eye.

The song of soul and

song of all , fall on the roofs

from tree tops to the roots.

O’ you sweaty bodies

cynical sleeves, peep out

from your hiding shelves

throw your anguish,

come be ready swell with

pleasure you sullen breed.


Sabita Sahu

Beach Sand

Ages and eons like your countless sands

pass by weightless sightless in silence.

Tempests’, tsunamis churn you changing

your mapless shape border and boundary

hurricanes spend their dying gasps

moaning on your lap. Emperors, kings,

sailors, pirates and the common

stamp on your chest their authority

in vain leaving no footprint.

Do you remember the hurried feet

that touched you like Columbus, Alexander

to embark for new lands in exotic triumph?

Do you remember the passionate lovers

the loafers and the stealthy ones

who have rolled over on your altar soul!!

Do you remember the cracking pain

under the merciless sun blinding you

lay in unprotesting helplessness.

It’s the sky that shed  tears to ease

your pain in stormy showers.

O’ beach you are a constant lover

always wooed by the furious waves

foaming,roaring to embrace you but

never achieve union beyond touch

yet the script of life changes

every moment to new themes

you wait for a new path of new morn.

Sabita Sahu

What Globalization: Whither Literature (2)

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

But in the contemporary world it is not possible to live in isolation. We have to partake of resources available in the world for survival. And for that we must have alliances, treaties, pacts with countries whether we share common language- literature and culture with them or not. Survival and the desire for growth and development makes enemies join at the dinner table. Cultural identities undergo transformation for capitalistic ventures. Post Second War capitalism jointed most of the world with a corporate culture. The multinational corporation and inter- governmental  financial and other deals made the world ‘borderless’, a term coined by  a Japanese corporate consultant Kenichi Ohmae in the 1990’s. This corporate capitalism led to a profusion of literature in Business and Corporate management, Medicine and Health studies and other allied fields of interest. But imaginative literature or classicization of human affairs was not in their focal area. These corporates emphasised liberalism and secularism without which it was not possible to pursue their corporate interests in a borderless world. This was termed towards the close of the last century, Globalization. Basically it is an economic globalization where attractive products of different countries will find a global market.

By Globalization we normally think of economic globalization.The world as one market where the products of the world in a competitive market will enter into global capitalism. Literature in this so called age of globalization is a product, marketable and consumer friendly.The product attractively packaged and competitively priced must be backed up by bold and aggressive advertisement.The publisher like a corporate participates in the capitalistic venture with the products of his country. If it is a MNC (Multi National Corporation) like Viking, Oxford, Harper Colllins, Penguin and the like it has to invest a pretty penny  to familiarize its brand  in the cities of its presence.

In the Indian context any corporate publisher would wonder: what is Indian literature? India writes in many languages and cultural voices vary in tone and tenor from language to language. The works written in English mostly look at India with borrowed western eyes or through a native Chasma scanning the virtues of an irretrievable past. The bhasa literatures project an Indian-ness through local prisms. How then an MNC select his product for the world market. Globalization presumes a borderless world but borders to exist. Nationalism is a potent energy. Patriotic nationalism expressed in one language  is all the more powerful.  I shall do well to quote the German philosopher Johan Ficte ‘ Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins’. (Address to the German Nation 1806) Geography, Culture and language create their own exclusive appeal  which may not move the buyers of bhasa products to throng the book stores in foreign cities. If a great work from bhasa literatures is chosen as a product, there is another difficulty. The work must be translated into English for English in the present day world is the only comprehensible language of communication. But when a great work is translated into English, the aim of the translator is to cater to the taste of the English reading public. The translator sacrifices the local and the Indian nuances and the voice and rhythm to please the English knowing people. Moreover translators in India and in Odisha too are a rare specimen. However, competent they may be like the Voyager to the moon they please neither the population on the moon, nor the earth dwellers by their accounts.

The other, more intricate problem is globalization often undermines democracy. The local units in a globalised world are not treated equally. The identities of literature-rich but week in money and bargaining power are often hidden on the stalks and booksellers never display them. The advertisement for these products, therefore is never aggressive. The identity of the country’s is never recognised . As the neo-liberal global trade in literature seldom recognizes and often undermines the literature springing from a democracy or nation-state, MNC’s shy away from aggressive marketing . A Salman Rushdie or Vikram Seth may push into the market fortified by  a Booker prize but in  general , bhasa literature of great literary value loses out in the competition.

Is there any hope then? Well, as I am an optimist, great works in Indian literatures may one day find place on the display table in foreign cities; provided translators emerge to communicate the human universality in Indian literature in readable English. I will conclude my brief presentation in the words of Aime Ce’saire : And no race has a monopoly on beauty , on intelligence and on strength : And there is no room for us all at the randezvous of history.

Absurdity

What power moves the earth

who makes the sun burn above

no mystic philosopher can tell

no Einstein can ever measure

the depth of this absurd earth.

I hold on my palms heaven and earth

one is hot burning my left palm

the other cool and bright on the right ,

I weigh them with burning joys

the heavier is my left globe.

It is pain fire and brimstone

but it is my birth place, my home

I throw heaven to its place

to burn my dreams to flaming life.

Sabita Sahu

What Globalization: Whither Literature (1)

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Globalization is a much hyped term lost in ambiguities. When you think of literature in the Age of Globalization the ambiguities lapse into confusion. One may ask in all sincerity : Is there an Age of Globalization? If the answer is yes, when did it begin? For the sake of argument one may say, it began in 1827. On 31^st January 1827 one of the greatest literary names in world literature Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ruminated, “National literature is now at hand and everyone must strive to hasten its approach”. And he also added ‘if we really want a pattern, we must always return to the ancient Greeks, in whose works the beauty of mankind is constantly represented. All the rest we must look at only historically; appropriating to ourselves what is good so far as it goes'. In this sense the beginning of Globalization of literature can be traced back to the Greeks. Speaking to a Calcutta audience in 1907 Rabindranath Tagore has said : ‘Our goal is to view universal humanity in universal literature by freeing ourselves from rustic uncatholicity’. In the colonial and post colonial times a feeble effort was definitely made to establish a  global tradition of literature highlighting the literature of the East mainly to counter the language and literature of the colonial masters, that is to say to undermine the overarching  influence of English literature. The desire to create a ‘One World reality’; however, could not take off as the local and regional identities could not assimilate human diversity in any meaningful way. If it was to be all inclusive the idea of a universal library was built into it. But ill conceived as it was, it became difficult to give it form, shape and validity. In the absence of a system of evaluation of national literatures from a borderless world perspective, a universal library is effete. There are libraries, particularly the Library of Congress in America which stock and stack books of other nations. But no sense of world literature or universal humanity emerges as translations of these works into English often take away the local flavour and anglicize them, thereby dissuading the non- English readers into indifference.

The idea of one world has never been nor can ever be a reality. Geography, climate, economic conditions, political situations and also religious compulsions will make the people different. Mankind is one, at best, is a poetic statement but as we advance in time each human being is a separate mankind. Think for yourself, is the new humanist education which means contain the universe within yourself. Hence a  literature representing mankind as a whole is unthinkable. National governments too experience this difficulty of making laws for a country. Each human being has his/ her world view, national identity and social configuration.  All efforts, therefore, to create a world literature of man have not succeeded till date. International conferences and comparative accounts of literatures never arrive at a global view of man. Africa, India, the Muslim countries are so diverse and deviant from each other that to place their literatures on the same platform with the literary west is too idealistic to be practical. After the second world war when decolonization happened a new reality emerged. All decolonized countries in the way of political freedom suddenly tried to rewrite their history as a continuous process leading up to a national identity. The colonial times were treated as veritable aberrations. Scholars in all the decolonized countries tried to make the past their present.  Their desire to showcase their identity as unique had built in elements of intellectual isolation.  A non- compromising self esteem forced them to an unacknowledged spiritual alienation. …(to be continued)

Nothing Waits For Nothing

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Dawn! What dawn? The dawn of a new age delivered by the womb of time? Or a routine pre- sunrise glow reddening the east like the lubricating blood making birth a slippery tale of painful beginning? How do I bother! And why should I? Does the sun wait for my moony night to linger my passions on my love’s arms? Does anything wait for anything? The earthquake does not wait for the city to evacuate forewarned. The petals don’t wait for the stroll of the princess into the garden to smile at her in full splendour. Life does not wait for death, death for life. Time is such an unseen song which moves unheard from one beat to another like juxtaposing the east and west for shock effect- you may call contrastive melody. The day does not wait till you close your accounts, write your will or to buy a kg of rice for your starving family. The wife does not wait for her husband to return exhausted, the husband does not wait for his wife’s return from the club. The ball does wait for the fitness of the leg, nor does it wait for the referee’s whistle to enter the post.

Why then people wait for things? They wait for results, wait for holidays to start, for the rain to stop , for promotions to come before time, for the doctor to cut your tummy to remove the gall bladder. Why? When things happen like the motiveless malignity of a villain to work on his machinations to strike when you are not alert or ready or aware - well go on doing what your mind wills you to do. And there is the rub. The mind hesitates. Measures the pros and cons, weighs, calculates and often gives up.

Never wait for things: if you can seize upon the moment and bend it to do your bidding to say it is never possible. Yes- life is meant to make the impossible possible, to play with sun and moon in the park of your own making. We know, we are not welcome here; there is no band waiting for us. Nature laughs, cries, invites, ignores, grows calm like the fallen dew but creates the illusion of pearls: we must create our own nature to enlarge the given territory of life. God’s little acre should be your own vast kingdom. Build your own gold palace. Carve out your own destiny. Your own river of sorrow, your own ocean of happiness. What is happiness you may ask? Well, it is only a chemical equilibrium in the body which gives you a state of well being. It may be irrational like my friend saying I love the world for its grapes, for the lobsters. You create your favorites, your fruit Friday, your love sonnets. Ride on the wings of butterflies- if they cannot hold your weight create strong sturdy butterflies more colorful with exotic colours. Create your music, however, cacophonous they may be. Sing and dance for if you don’t the eyes will be moist when your love does not respond; if she ignore your cooing calls, if she does not keep  the dinner date or repulses your advanced lips- your eyes will stream down wetting your face and drowning your heart in the Red sea. Create your own love; give her the beauty of your own imagination, fly in the sky like skylords. Life offers nothing. You come crying and go without the senses functioning or obeying your commands.

You come for a brief moment, make it long, never ending. Never wait for anything because it’s a waste of your given moment. Make your life a dream.  Live in dreams, love in dreams, 

work dreamlike without asking Freuds the rationale behind what and why of your dreams. You create your dreams and spend the given moments as if you hold time in the hollow of your palm. Spend the moment like an Emperor ordering his reality for posterity to remember. If the future generations laugh at your Taj Mahal doesn’t matter. At least you have made them react to your deeds. Live, dream and die a dream death without waiting for anything to happen. Things happen for their own needs. You make your needs happen even though the dream happenings are not palpable. But do and dream and live every moment.