Puja Shenanigans

Paddy plants in neck deep water

greening  earth moist and cool

cloud washed skies scrubbed for paint

less sweaty turbaned figures rise

on improvised ladders with mortar

teasing young women carrying bricks,

school kids, office clerks  all wait

 for Mother’s grand arrival

to replenish and bless them

once in every Autumn.

Shops open day and night,

mannequins in exotic designs

 entice young and old,

 the would be brides dream to

saunter royally in Elysian parks

with new strangers for new love.

The sick and the poor pray in pandals

 decorated like  Buckingham Palace

squeezed and pressed in pushing crowd

the rich like non chalant tourists

drive past the gold and silver Devi

from a horny distance in a hurry

to taste the new brand of Whisky.

Devi’s  unchanging smiles

continues till it melts,

this year too I wait with the same

dazzling faith for everything bumper:

crops,  happiness all time festive joy

shutting up my fate in the horoscope. 

Sabita Sahu

Legitimacy

       

 Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

What is legitimate?  If a child is born to a man and woman united in wedlock we call the child legitimate: if not we call the child illegitimate. The word bastard is also used in derisive contempt. Legitimacy seems to be an absurdity when I think of the creation myth of the world. What is legitimate and who decides what is legitimate? The society and the moral and legal systems created by men and women who cannot legitimately vouchsafe their own legitimacy. If God created man who created God? This question has often disturbed me. Is God a being with sexual desire and did He have a spouse and did he create knowingly and willingly human beings and nature with her skylamps and earth arbours? I don’t know. The One, The Rig Veda says, desire was the primal seed and it descended on the One who created it in His mind. The Rig Veda also says the one was  the Purusha – the Cosmic Person- and the Purusha was sacrificed by ’gods’(again something beyond my legitimate comprehension) on a Fire altar. One’s seed formed and produced the Golden Egg, or womb, the Hiryanagarbha. The egg separated itself into two shells. One became the sky, the other became the earth and the yolk became the Sun. The embryo was the female seed fertilized by the male seed, thereby came the entire rationale  of creation. Now the question is, if the cosmic seed caused both male and female, how could they copulate and how could they create life and other forms with what claim on legitimacy?

In the Christian myth Adam was created by God and later Eve was created from the Thirteenth rib of Adam. What is the relation between Adam and Eve then, if they are one surgically separated into another form-female, by the creator? We never bring the question of legitimacy to bear on faith, however, mythical it may be. Moral sanctity is perhaps built into faith beyond questions of legitimacy. When the Queen Mother Satayabati invites her own illegitimate son (if not rape child) to sleep with her widowed daughters –in –law to save the Kuru clan no eyebrows are raised. When Kunti in the Mahabharata in her adolescent  pleasure dome invited the Sun and others  to give birth to Karna and other ‘Pandavas’ legitimacy is raised only  in the  case of karna not other pandavas as she became the wife of Pandu. Karna had already been sacrificed as the unmarried Kunti  wanted  to save herself from social ignominy. Why? No answer.

The question of legitimacy is raised by Shakespeare’s Edmund in King Lear in a grand manner:

           “   Why bastard? Wherefore base?

               When my dimensions are as well compact,

               My mind as generous, and my shape as true.

               As honest madam’s issue? 

               Why brand they us

               With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base base?

If a marriage certificate makes the issues legitimate something is definitely  skewed with our moral –legal system. A honey child like Edmund is as legitimate as a child born out of wedlock. When Simone de Beauvoir  and Jean –Paul Sartre lived together without going to a church for a legitimation certificate questions were raised but they stood firm to their own system of faith in their life principle. Legitimacy is a crafty social trap created by men in power to decide right and wrong arbitrarily.

Legitimacy is a vast vague term to give a high moral pedestal to institutions which are not confined to sexual relations only. Often ideas are not legitimate, arguments many times are self- justificatory word play more cunning and ephemeral   than substantive. Politicians, thinkers follow the maxim- Winner Takes all – which are legitimized by muscle power. If marriage is legitimate what is divorce? Divorce like the instant Tripple Talaq is also legitimate fortified by patriarchy. The majority principle in democracy legitimizes everything by head count. If five persons legitimize a lamb as dog the dog it is. In civilization legitimacy stems from the legal system made by men only for a period of time.

For instance if an Indian spy steals miltary secrets from an enemy country, it is Legitimate and he is honoured as a hero. But if a foreign spy does the same in India he is hanged as enemy. If an Indian soldier kills a Pakistani soldier he is a true patriot: but can we extend the same logic to our enemies?  For the Pakistani soldier is also a patriot prepared to die for his country. What is the legitimate definition of a patriot then?

In all human institutions the systems always are unidirectional for the convenience of society. A dullard gets a scholarship due to caste compulsions but a brilliant ‘other’ is denied- all in the name of legitimacy. But legitimacy is a far abstract term, much above our functional efficacy.

I feel legitimacy as integrity and illumination of the human spirit. Freedom is the essence of the soul, for it always operates in a spirit of love which is beyond the legal-moral systems. A free soul which loves all life and lives with instinctual fairness is legitimately divine. All contrarian views are illegitimate.

Sound of silence

I saw him gather shells on the shore

lingered for a moment of contemplation

threw all the shells into the sea

sat, eyes closed and senses shut

to breathe in the sea, suddenly

stood up and shouted competing

with the roar of the waves.

I wondered  was he sane,

doubted my own perceptions

when I saw him, walk towards
the sea, arms open to embrace

the ocean like his beloved.

I felt like warming up to him

to have a glimpse of his heart and mind

I asked: what are you doing here?

Without turning said he,

Sh..h..ss... don’t you see

I am speaking to my love.

Where is she? dared I

you blind woman , can’t you see

my love is everywhere,

in the sky, on the sand

and also in you,

I stood  transfixed

he moved away staring

at the horizon.

Sabita sahu

Wife Is Not A Chattel

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

That woman is a victim of patriarchy, I know is an understatement. Women in India and in almost all countries of the world are treated as chattel, a disposable possession. The female child was unwelcome. Indians, history shamefully records, never considered female foeticide a sin. In the 21^st century too, despite legal restrictions, some doctors oblige rich parents in destroying the unborn female foetus. The girl child is a liability not an economic proposition.  On the one hand mythology has created female deities at times more powerful than the male ones, like Durga, the three Divine consorts of Hindu Trinity- Brahma,Vishnu, Maheswar. Saraswati, Lakhmi and Parvati are for creative arts, prosperity and happiness respectively. But in the family situation the woman is the Gruhalakshmi, the deity of the home and she has to keep it shipshape for her husband and children. Women like nature is a display disc of beauty, order and pleasure. But she has no freedom to dream, to love, to entertain ambitions of power, adventure or self-fulfillment. Her husband is her god, master, owner.

The question of freedom of self, individual identity was raised by Draupadi in the Mahabharata when she was staked at the dice game by Yudhistira after he had lost his own freedom. Can a husband retain his ‘rights’ over a wife after he himself has lost his freedom? This question was not answered by the scholars and the wise men present in the royal court. Bhisma when asked however timidly opined that the laws of dharma are silent on it yet a husband’s rights over the wife cannot be questioned at any stage. Fate and metaphysical justice helped Draupadi in her moment of shame imposed by patriarchy and evil men, otherwise history of epic India would have recorded the most shameful chapter of man’s lewdness and moral fall as well as the sexist bias of patriarchy. In modern civilisation too women anywhere is a ‘Second Sex’  to borrow the title of Simon De Beauvoir’s epoch changing book on women, perhaps the most important book in Feminist literature. Since then much water has flown in the Ganga but women do not enjoy a changed status. In the film industry the item songs are still danced out to please the lustful eyes of men only. She is built for man; for his pleasure, for the prolongation of his clan. The housewife is now changed into homemaker but she is still used by powerful men for honeytraps.

But the most heartening thing has now been rolled out of the Supreme Court of India. Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a call for ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’, it remained mostly a slogan for a large percentage of India’s population. The educated and affluent women wanted more freedom, less moral policing and moral flexibility to prove their worth and fulfil their innate virtues in different fields of activities: the poor and tradition bound Khap –Panchayat victims fell to honour killing even for expressions of love, a value considered to be a wilful transgression by patriarchy. Violence and rape and other instinctual barbaric violations of their dignity continued despite political sloganeering and legal reddressals enforced by the establishment.

But the Supreme Court under the leadership of Justice Deepak Mishra opened up a few vistas for the oppressed women flapping their newly generated wings to fly away from the stakes of patriarchy. Tripple Talaq, a repressive non-Quaranic practice was quashed in 2017 to give the Muslim women some sense of security. The LGBT community was given the honorific Third Sex, and Article 377 was struck down to give the otherwise less fortunate people freedom to express their love and seek their pleasure. But the most forward looking judgement came in the form of decriminalization of adultery. Gender justice took another path breaking step when Justice Mishra made the human soul free of religious and sexist bias. Faith is the aroma of the soul and women now can express their faith in the Sabarimala temple where for the last 800 years women between 10 and 50 years of age were forbidden by the same patriarchy; Reason! Menstruation makes a woman impure! How can a biological function of the body, specific to women to procreate and expand the human race be impure?

Now the husband is a “manager of household” not a master. Woman is free to choose life style and love without patriarchal restraint. Hopefully freedom will not become a licence for bohemian shenanigans.

Remembering

How would you like to remember me

as Joan of Arc after deluge,

as Lakshmi after the churning of seas,

as ambrosia dripping from

the mouth of Vasuki,

as Cleopatra waving  the Nile

an invisible song in a dark alley..

Ha..ha.. ha... these are images

blindmen visualize

Don't you have eyes, look at me

and say how will you...

O' you! I always  thought

you in me, built into

my dream, my memory:

you as my jailor,who

fed me with smiles

by remote control.

I'll remember you as lovely

alien wings of a butterfly

murmuring strange sounds

whose heavy meaning eludes.

I'll remember your eyes

like framed beads winking

away my memory,floating

around a still point of my

Princess’kingdom of love.

Well thanks- but I'll remember you

As the sun flying around me

burning me to a flaming lyric.

Sabita Sahu 

Laughter

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

There are two types of people in the world, the agelasts and the hypergelasts- the non – laugher and the overlaugher. One wears a mask of a face and the other makes his face overwide to the accompaniment of high pitched sounds. Both are non- human, will of the wisp, not easy to understand. Laughter is a rebound of hilarity, a release of joyous feelings in gay abandon. It denotes a state of feeling, thrilling and amiable. Ancient scholars and sages in East and West have said, - he who laughs lives long. When a person laughs 315 facial muscles function but when a person cries only 13. Based on this the Grotowsky School of acting trains actors in muscle control and postures.

There are, however, many people who do not laugh even if their fancy is tickled by an incongruous event or an event of genuine bawdy banter. There are some who maintain gravity and suppress their true emotions. But normally a person laughs when he sees the mechanical in the natural, that is when something rigid and springy like the jack in the box happens. For instance when a healthy person especially a fat women slips on a banana peel while walking on a road and falls, your first impulse is to laugh. Unless she happens to be your mother. Laughter assumes the anaesthesia of the heart, that is non-involvement of personal emotions. Laughter is mainly a group activity. The social conscience disapproves of a peculiar or singular trait in a person to reform him. Any person who grows out of proportions with the social norms or behaves or functions above his station in life, he transgresses the accepted social praxis: the comic spirit eyes malignly at him. Laughter is the expression of a collective social psyche. You must have noticed that in a cinema hall when the auditorium is full, you burst out in full throated laughter at a comic scene. When the auditorium is half full or the viewers are scattered, your laughter is less boisterous. This happens because your social conscience is subdued. When you are secluded in a corner or when you are alone.

Laughter is a spontaneous psychic process and its quality depends on the level of sophistication of a society. In a primitive society laughter is rare as the consolidation of values, stabilization of societal norms takes time. When the middle class gets stabilized the norms of social behaviour become fixative in character. Laughter is not a moral judgement, it is a light hearted corrective measure which removes oddities and singularities from social behaviour. At the same time wit and intellectual humour too play a part in creating comic situation. Wit is the laughter of the mind. Alliteration when overused also provokes laughter.

Repetition of words or expressions at regular intervals after a time gets boring and this social boredom provokes the laughter of disapproval. If a teacher in the classroom says ‘for example’ after every two sentences, the students laugh. Similarly repetitive behaviour or appearance at a particular place without ostensible reason also makes us laugh.  The reason is mechanisation of a rigid pattern. Man by nature is flexible and dynamic, and therefore, whenever it shows symptoms of a machine or a string puppet his action provokes ridicule. In an office or classroom or a meeting situation if a person speaks or behaves in a manner transgressing the norms, people ‘condemn’ his ridiculous behaviour by volleys of laughter.

We have to however distinguish between ‘to laugh with’ and ‘to laugh at’. We laugh with a speaker whose witticism, sarcasm or tongue-in -cheek statement evokes intellectual sympathy. When your son or daughter tops the examination or gets a job you become happy and laugh in joy. A smiling thanksgiving to your deity also goes with it. This laughter is an expression of joy. But when a group of women in a ladies club sit together and laugh aloud continuously for five to ten minutes the dispassionate onlooker smiles not in joy but at the group of ladies who think laughing is a healthy exercise which prolongs life. Others go on clapping like an American audience after a philharmonic orchestra performance for full five minutes by way of appreciation. There are yet others who make mouths, pouting the lips in different ways to keep the face wrinkle free, in their bit to defeat time: if you are not a part of it you laugh. Shakespeare’s Puck would have said , ‘ O’ Lord What Fools these Mortals Be!’

But life is meant for laughter. Treat life as a funny game- wipe your hands across your mouth and laugh...  The world does not take care of itself and will not bother about you.

Mindclouds

Rains are over

cloud flakes float away

in involuntary laziness

lingering over ripening fields.

A lone half naked boy

standing on the river bank

stretches his arms to catch

the cloud flakes to make

kites for autumnal fairs.

The landlord’s daughter

selecting cards, closing

the bedroom doors

for her November wedding.

Returning school children

propose to donate their picnic

money for Kerala flood victims.

After post-lunch fiesta

the beautiful mother of two kids

biting her nails dreams of

a long holiday next monsoon.

Suddenly the sky darkens

roll of thunder make

the boys run home,

the would be bride

peeps through the railings

in bemused apprehension.

 Sabita Sahu