Vertical Till The End

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I am sure, I never wanted consciously to be born. How was I born into this hot, flat and perpetually overcrowded world, I don’t know. Is it process and reality? Is it  nature’s urge or as they say, God’s will - the biological inevitability of dynamic nature or what? I am not convinced by the logical and mythical arguments of people who were born before me; the theories of divine will, Karma or Original Sin or even Darwin’s Evolution. By fact check I know I was born by the sexual union of a man and a woman whom I call father and mother. The sky and earth are not my parents, but my present father and mother – both dead - who had nursed my growth and upbringing, educated me and did everything possible to let me fly my way in my part of skyspace.

From the early dawn of conscious living- I am sure I grew into a mature conscious being very early in life - I never obey orders: I obey laws, regulations, rules but not commands. I did my  school home task as it was routine. I trusted people, followed all disciplines as I was influenced by the Bhagawat and The Mahabharata at a very tender age. My values came from those epics. My sense of rhythms came from classical songs and also from Upendra Bhanja and Gangadhar Meher. I tried to create and compose songs and I did choric songs all my life, not as a professional but just to please myself. And I know I am a difficult man to please for I always search for alternatives in ideas, beliefs and rituals. My parents were deeply religious.  Every month they performed fire rituals and yajnas. I always opposed them much to their chagrin but I never tried to break their rhythms of life. I read whatever was available at home, at school and in public libraries. My favourite pastime was debate just for the heck of it. I often challenged my own convictions.

As I grew into a self-confident earning person at the threshold of youth my ideas gradually became more and more rebellious. I questioned the process of this birth, procreation and death routine of life enforced on us by so called civilization. Birth is a biological fact. Hunger and thirst are natural urges which must be constantly satisfied for survival. When assured survival leads to growth the sex urge disturbs for which marriage is institutionalised in societies, otherwise perversions will vitiate the moral equipoise of the society. Marriage or consensual living or just matting and aging, lingering with sans eyes, sans taste for a final heave of the frame before cessation. Then follows other rituals of the living for the dead.

 Well, why this process is enforced on man by civilization? If you ask a person, are you happy – he will say no in many devious ways. Man is never happy with what he has. No tower for man is tall enough. Empire State Building is now dwarfed by others, the Twin tower destruction notwithstanding; man will go on building towers touching the moon, till the moon and stars disappear from our galaxy. Man today wants to live for more than 150 years. Google team is researching to see that life attains double century now that a century is almost assured by our advanced medical science. The hospitals are ever increasing in number and size. Obamacare, Modicare , Ayurvedic , Homeopathic, Psychic cure, Yogic, Magic, Faith cure and exotic centres are ever growing everywhere. The reason is no man is ready to die.

I don’t know whether I should celebrate man’s obsession with living and the desire to continue even in a horizontal stage as a burden on the children, denying their fullness of life or to lament over human foolishness which has found no intellectual refinement down and up the centuries?  The surprise expressed by Yudhisthira in The Mahabharata answering the query Of Dharmabaka that every moment people die but those who are alive they think of life’s immortality. The irony of it all hits you on the face.

On the one hand we should be proud of man that his battle against death and disease continues unabated. The three original enemies of man were and are - Hunger, Disease and War as Yuval Harari puts it we have conquered to a great extent hunger. But not fully.  We now fight malnutrition, unhealthy eco –system and search for a home and sartorial joys.  Sickness and disease are almost conquered but not death. Wars continue, declared and undeclared; terror continues to walk in daylight.

I celebrate life, my personal life in many ways. I have lived life my style. I have loved soulfully. I have read beautiful things with love.  Why then should I yield my body to wither and waste surrounded by children and friends, causing pain to them, weaning them away from their life? People who vegetate in a hospital bed apply for euthanasia – a word I learned only in this century. I will leave the world while smiling at my beloved’s pranks; while singing for her my lifelong devotion to love; while lecturing in intellectual gatherings on the virtues of life, the joys of living and the divinity of human vitality and love. I will not apply to man or god for permission. Let me enjoy the pride of having ended my life as god’s rival.

The Unseen Agent

The unseen agent moves around

eats away my life in steady bites

I eat my hunger to keep him alive,

to make me move from dawn to dusk

to feed him what he loves to eat.

I search for him everywhere

in the kitchen, bedroom, toilet,

in the bathtub and TV programmes

he moves like a crooked shadow

beyond my grasp, beyond my pain

I give up and turn again

to  routines fixed by others.

Yes, he comes like an obedient student

I receive him with a smile
like a waylost soldier
tired, sick and unarmed:
he watches me when I sleep

but slides away when I rise

to bask in the crimson sun.

Sabita Sahu

Suspicion

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

In Shakespeare’s Othello when Iago seeing Desdemona come out of Cassio’s tent casually commented – Ha’ I like not that - Othello’s face fell , seeds of suspicion were planted deep in his heart. Why? It was because he was always unsure of himself as the right person for Desdemona. His racial identity and his physical state (the young effects in my body are now defunct) often goaded him to a psychic self – loathing. This sub-conscious realisation of his own weaknesses and the unadmitted unacknowledged inadequacies were struck by the diabolical mind of Iago. The simmering uncertainties of his ego were enflamed into suspicion. Ordinarily suspicion is not accepted as a vice but it is. It corrodes a mind, takes the person away from his / her reality and makes the person so self- immersed that he starts at a shadow, doubts every move of people except the persons who skilfully play on the protagonist’s mind leading him to see what they show. Scepticism and cynicism always lead to suspicious activities. Iago’s scepticism made him suspect everything. A man who fails to achieve or to fulfil ambitions or to attain projected goals becomes suspicious of people and their words, actions. Suspicion makes a person a killer, for, his own honourable ego refuses to make any compromise once suspicion enters the being of a man. Othello kills, destroys his love and in so doing destroys innocence.

Suspicion, in the sphere of politics, is a royal virtue, for power games move along lines where suspicion is a precautionary measure. Both Machiavelli and Kautilya have made suspicion a weapon of self- preservation. In the modern days too, politics induces people to suspect each other. The divide and rule policy of the British government  followed universally is to create  suspicion between groups, castes, religions and even languages so that  perpetual strife between peoples and groups would give the ruler choices to manipulate for their own advantage .

Suspicion is not always born naturally. Inner discord, upbringing and circumstances of childhood and youth make a person suspicious of people and ideas. In today’s India, rumours and fake news enrage people and the nursed suspicions get released to certainty. The lynching mobs, the cow vigilante groups in India act on suspicion of cow killing or cow lifting. They kill the hapless person(s) on mere suspicion.  The Facebook and the WhatsApp rumours about child lifters also leads to murder. If you ask why don’t they report the matter to the police or hand over the suspected cow killer or the child lifter to the authorities, you may get the most unsavoury answers – maybe it is racial hatred that comes out and the annonymity of a mob gives the individual the vicious release of his hate in terms of gory violence.

Today suspicion is not a rare vice. Parents are suspicious of children. Spouses ruin marital life by mutual suspicion.  Chiefs in government or organizations always suspect another talented person for fear of losing control. Even teachers are suspicious of scholars, scholars of valuable research. Motive hunting goes on at every level. Speeches are analysed, sentences are contextualized and attacking points are sharpened. The man who suspects and spies has his own moral logic and even political justification. The ‘Vishkanya’ the poison woman’ used by the kings in the past had its own morals, the safety of the kingdom and the people had its own infalliable logic. The modern version of it is the honeytrap and extraction of secret information. In a terror- ridden world suspicion is a normal expedient value which people must pursue and practice for survival constraints.

But strangely suspicion is not included in the list of deadly sins; the Indian Shadaripus too do not include suspicion. The Arthashastra considers the inner enemies more dangerous. The senses are to be controlled hence one should give up desire (kama), anger, greed, arrogance, pride and excitement. Spies in the Arthashastra are advised to avoid liquor and women but the modern spies like James Bond(007) are romanticized by sexy dolls and liquor is a mere water substitute. But suspicion of people, places, governments, gadgets and words are shown in our undercover and overground activities. Krishna and Shakuni move the Mahabharata plot forward by strategies based on suspicion of nature man and motives. The present day society is almost vocalized by suspicion, measures therof and counter measures. Suspicion now should be added to the list of enemies of man as the worst and the most fatal.

Futility

Spring and summer return dumb

murmurless waits the earth

to watch the cycle of nothingness

in vivid cycles of birth and death.

Parents disappear from sight

mangoes fall like pelted stones

urchins pick up 

trees never see

pain chases pleasure

like night the day

no gauge to size up

unsung lyrics written long ago.

How long to watch 

the fleeting scenes

the silent parade of

the seasons, mind and heart

losing count of nature's motion.

If all this is to 

draw a zero,

the finger and sand are enough

why need book and degree, 

pen and brush

to imitate the dots

leading to a dark infinity.

Sabita Sahu

Ganga Calls Me...

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

When the winter night descends with vaporous heaviness shading the sky, the stars invite me with their half twinkly mischief, I pedal my rented bicycle on rough short cuts to Ganga at Triveni Sangam. The nip in the air, the irregular growth of flower plants amidst bushes unrecognisably dense and the unpaved road pathlike leading me to the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the unseen Saraswati at Sangam.  In half thrill and half fear I turn from the Katra roads to the seven kilometres of mercurial joy through scattered settlements singing all the way. The Ganga calls me, The Yamuna beckons me: come you lover boy, see how we swell with history; we flow time on our bodies, flow with hilarity where kings and paupers watch us to assess our ageless strength, when lovers beseech us to unite them, when Krishna and Radha sulk and make up in fanciful orgies. We shudder and fidget when armies shear our bosoms with their boats and ships to attack and kill people on our banks and beyond. We cease to breathe and flow when new born girl children are thrown into us, when dead bodies are thrown into us as if we are dumpyards, and we cry when tortured young women and jilted lovers jump into us to save their self respect from sexual bestiality. We are vocal and eternal witnesses to man’s glory and depravity. When men and women worship us, drink our waters as ambrosia we bless them but when they throw all sorts of rubbish into us we protest in turbulent fashion and warn them not to take away our purity by their philistine ways. But we love them- humans and all life. Those who write love lyrics on our banks, sing ballads to their lovers, play the mesmorizing flute as Krishna did we also turn lovers. We bless them, empathize with them and often greet them to their freedom with ripply smiles. We carry their flowers, fruits with unease but tolerate human folly to the best of our patience. They have dirtied us but we in unprotesting helplessness silently wither away ...

I listen to Ganga and Yamuna. I listen to their songs and moans. I pedal my way to them to see their pearly expanse. Yamuna is darkish, deep and sober like a woman who has seen the romance of life as well as the horrors of mans irrational logic.  She has felt the naked warmth of luscious Gopis as well as the poison of the king cobra kalia. She has made way to  Vasudeva carrying the new born Krishna on his head going to Mathura to save the new born from the wrath of Kansa; she has witnessed terror and glory calming her soul to follow the rhythms of time . Ganga is full and empty as the mood takes her on. Flowing from the matted hair of Shiva she is the life giving fluid from heaven and also the moral arm of death, punishing errant humans transgressing life –enhancing values.  She is short tempered like a proud maiden, beautiful  and haughty: she is also a sage in contemplation.  She has often changed the course of history to bring humans to the moral path. She saves souls purifies body and mind but always ‘tameless swift and proud’.

I row with permission of the boatman and watch the bubbles of water born and reborn at the aft of the boat. I sing for Yamuna imagining the childhood pranks of Krishna. Poetry becomes reality, reality envelopes me with benign beauty. Suddenly the boat enters Ganga ,I lose balance, I fall into her bosom under the eighth day moon. The boat man saves me. I return the next night as if nothing has happened. The boatman smiles and leads me on.

During my postgraduate days at Allahabad this was my daily routine. If it rained I did not venture out. On all other nights I rented a 9 to 9 bicycle from a cycle shop near Holland Hall paying only eight annas, half  a Rupee for my – what shall I call it – an adventure bug biting me or the perennial charm of a river flowing from god knows  where with her grace and life force. Rivers are time’s darlings flowing with life giving waters sustaining civilizations.

But now when I ask myself what was the attraction, why did I go every night to boat in Yamuna (Ganga was of variable current, not favoured by boatman in lonely nights) at the risk of my studies without knowing how to  swim; my answer would be- I don’t know. Maybe I was in love. The river like the primordial Aphrodite spread eagled on earth’s bosom calling me to absorb my mind and heart to a romance of living. What’s life after all? Not a time span for birth- procreation – death with a pseudo game of housekeeping thrown into follow Trivarga- Dharma, Artha, Kama. Not a challenge of the Maker or just nature’s mischievous off shoot of purpose to spend time from the cradle to the grave experimenting with your imagination of Man’s purushakar with ideas, norms, forms, inventions in impalpable encounters where defeat is the only truth, if there is something called truth anywhere. Yes I was in love with rivers; all rivers big and small. I wanted to wear the river around my neck and have orgiastic pleasure. My body they say is 7o percent water, the earth too is surrounded by 70 percent water. I wished to play with the rest thirty percent for I am not a body. I am an essence of extra corporeal stuff. Now the Ganga calls me Yamuna calls me the hidden streams call me to be my essence here, now everywhere.

Ball Games

He throws fire balls at me

when the wintry sun winks

in the haze of half seen sky.

He throws Ice balls at me

when the surges of love swell

my decorated body waiting for

his arms in moony delight.

I mix the fire and ice

make it an ocean of love,

he raises a sand storm

to bury my ocean in sulking haste.

I leave my words buried in me

the network of elements goes dead

the sky masters indifferent  to

start a picnic with the fairies.

Sabita Sahu

Farewell

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Airports, Railway Stations, Bus stands often are mute witnesses to individuals or groups returning after bidding farewell to friends- of all denominations- bosses, protocol officers and children or parents. Fare Thee Well, may the gods land you safe at your destination- bonvoyage, best of journey or simply All the Best are often said with flowers. Waving hands wish the journeyers or travellers hassel free and safe journey. In some cases kisses are blown by individual men and women, substituting words by gesture. Rarely a person communicates in silent suppression of some feeling- joy or sorrow, goodwill or formal responsibility; unless the person making the journey and the one who sees off are too sophisticated to be formal . Farewell is a goodwill gesture, socially practised as it  softens relationship. When foreign delegations come and go there is welcome and farewell. When students take admissions there is a welcome now-a-days – but when I joined school and college there was no welcome. In the University at Allahabad there was a welcome both in the PG class and in the hostel, and also a farewell. If you ask why there was no welcome in my school or college, I need not hazard a guess. With certainty I can say that poverty has its own culture. When there is no great historical memory, no pride for the Kalinga War foisted by Ashoka on a brave, proud people for princess Karuvaki, resulting in million deaths of Odias, how can there be any values attached to the human life to welcome or bid farewell in routine affairs!

Welcome and farewell represent the softer nuances of the inner being when the outer body feels secure and hopes for  prolongation, inspires involved motivation to indulge in larger social life. One may argue, since there is no welcome to life in this indifferent world including the vast expanse of splendrous nature, how can there be a farewell ! Who welcomed the first life that appeared on earth? What arches were raised, what timbre rose out of the mountains, valleys and fronds for man? But we have survived in this planet and have grown in numbers spreading out all over this earth? We value life. We welcome the new born. In the poorest of the poor families smiles broaden faces when the first cry of a babe reaches the eager ears of parents. The neighbours greet the new born, the mother is taken care of , love is lavished on the tiny new life, wishes sincere or formal are poured on life. This happens in civilization. And in this civilization farewell too is given with love.

Love is the binding element in the society. It connects people, bonds are formed, and relationships are forged. The self emerges out of the soul and relates itself to things and people in social commerce. When a man or a woman goes to a far off land we gather and show our affection wishing the person well. We bless people to prosper and fructify their dreams. We wish people to do their best to achieve and accomplish. When a soldier goes to the battlefield we wish him to comeback in one piece after achieving his task of killing the enemy. This wish is observed in a ritualistic fashion. Mother kisses his son who goes for a job in a distant place. This is the inherent value in all farewells: life should prosper, should not fall prey to deceit. In Hamlet when Polonius in his own characteristic style bids farewell to his son going to study abroad, he among other things tells his son-“never a lender nor a borrower be”; that is to be your own benefactor without depending on transactions which may be troublesome. Similarly a wife bids farewell to her husband wishing him to come back victorious. A lover gives farewell to his/ her ‘life breath’ wishing everything that nature and society can afford to brighten life.

Farewell is a projection of a soul force on another soul with love. The Ka is given like a wish to a person who enters another reality. This is extended to persons retiring from office. A man who dies he too is given a tearful farewell for the nirvana of his soul. Farewell is an acknowledgement of the worth of a life. The soulful farewell that was accorded Atal Bihari Vajpayee by a grateful nation strengthens human faith in the human being. Farewell is a soul transcending ritual which ensures peace in the other world- if there is any. Civilization is richer when a man is given a sincere send off for new pastures or the unseen afterlife abode. Farewell makes us richer, elevating the soul to divine heights.