Reservation Man

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

We are familiar with Reserve Forests, Reservatories for the protection of animals, trees and beasts or birds. Now in India we have another category in the social sector: The Reservation Man (Woman too). About fifty years ago the world became familiar with Organisation Man, a category of regimented minds functioning as robots in the capitalistic organizations. In India today we have now the Reservation Man who is at the mercy of the state. Like the human condition determined by nature, the state represented by elected representatives now determines the fate and future of a large section of the society. It was fifty percent earlier, now it is going to be 60 percent, defined by caste, economic condition and group strength to wield pressure on the state. It has the numerical strength to paralyse the state buy launching strikes, bunds and agitations. We are hardly Indians for we are free by constitutional authority to refuse to sing the National Anthem. We are free to spread canards against our own country, question judgements of the Supreme Court of India and even to question the constitution of a bench to try a long pending case. This defiant freedom is championed by political parties only to pressurize governments to yield to all legitimate and illogical self- stultifying demands. Democracy gives us the right if we have the numbers.

Ambedkar, the father of the Constitution wisely decided to give reservations to the  scheduled castes and tribes for ten years, to integrate into the larger frame of the society, people who were subdued and ill-treated for long centuries in our history, by giving them education and jobs. But after 72 years we see the same situation continuing with greater ferocity. The population has increased and naturally the other caste groups by their sheer numbers have agitated to get the stamp of Reservation. The Jats, Patidars, Marathas who have lived with pride and affluence now are demanding reservations only to get the identity of a political pressure group. Months before the election in Madhya Pradesh the so called upper castes, the Brahmins and others demanded reservation. They toppled the Government by voting for another party, thereby demonstrating their democratic rights.

The Modi Government sprang a surprise on the country on the last day of the Parliament’s winter session by introducing a bill for 10 percent reservation in the ‘unreserved’ upper class. The only grace of the bill is, it is caste religion neutral. Economic backwardness is hoped to be lessened by this bill. But what shocks the people who think reservation is a demeaning slur on the people in a democracy is the views expressed by the members of Parliament who participated in the debate. Those who are already beneficiaries of reservation, the OBC, and SC and ST argue that since the population of these reserved categories of people has increased, there must be a fresh survey and the present 49.5 percent should be raised to 85 percent.  Some even suggested 100 percent. Wow! We now have a democracy where the thought, debate based on new imaginaries of a new India are relevant. The numbers will decide our fate. Those who win elections are not really the prophetic intellectuals who can shape the destiny of a country. Bernard Shaw was always right: the right thinking people are always in the minority; they cannot be part of any pressure group. If the quota competition continues in the second half of the present century India would be a country of Reservation Men blindly voting parties who would perpetuate reservation.

Normally anyone would be tempted to ask: O’ you members of Parliament, are you not satisfied with ruining the Universities, killing gifted minds, levels of intelligence, creativity suppressing talents of generations? Are you not satisfied with the feast of ceremonial dullness displayed in our technical institutes? Are you not satisfied with killing innovation? If not, make the few who have escaped your net of perdition of your slaves by introducing 100 percent reservation. Kill merit to promote mediocrity so that by 2080 India would enter some book, Guinness or otherwise, as a country of Reservation Man where merit is a sin. Posterity will be proud of you politicians for destroying initiative and inquisitiveness.

If you wish India to be a better and more prosperous country abolish caste and religion from public life. Those who are poor give them scholarships and send them to good institutions. Make the Universities throbbing centers of excellence. Try and remove the stigma of reservation from the destiny of the people. Let man strive for his excellence utilizing his native talent. Do not create yes men; create men and women who would aspire for the  stars as proud individuals- not as caged birds singing what you teach them for votes.

Paradise

Come my forlorn denizen

the  breakfast is ready

rain water for juice

pearly dew baked in sunlight

garnished with my breath-

served on lotus petal

come, end my wait of centuries,

come dearest let not things get cold.

Lunch on the edge of shore

of  magic sand,puffy clouds,

saline spray as starter,

rhythm of bangles and anklets

as main course at sun’s winking delight

come love enjoy my fare.

Supper in the Island of flowers ,

warmth of  arms as soup, 

embrace as chief course

dessert a long kiss

to make  you forget the agony

and take you to the stars for good.

Come dear Paradise is here again...

Sabita Sahu

Mother

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

‘Mother give me the Sun’, says the dying young man to his mother in Ibsen’s play. Can a mother give the sun to her dying son as the final toy for his calm sleep! Yes, the mother alone can, for she brings out life out of her innards after carrying for languid months of joy, pride and fear in her womb. When the babe kicks inside she places her palm to feel the nascent sensation in ecstatic thrill. She grows heavy and looks beautiful, her best in fulfilment of womanhood. When a boy is born the family and friends, relatives and neighbours dance around the new mother  with her  treasure in her lap in riotous feasting. A girl child, particularly in India, makes motherhood a curse. Like Ganga in the Mahabharat sacrificing sons in the Ganges families cut the umbilical cord in rage and throw the bleeding new born in ditches. A Muslim mother of a girl child may get a triple Talaq for her ill fated motherhood. Mother is after all a woman, she can be used and thrown for she is a mere child bearing machine for the pleasures of patriarchy. In my early youth, I remember to have heard a young man yelling at his mother for having given inadequate breakfast( He was Gluttonous): Mother I can give you everything a woman needs except one thing; you carried me for 10 months in your womb, I can’t ... I haven’t forgotten how a highly educated ( but unemployed) young man of a good family can shriek to his mother words that are too banal to even hear.

Sociologists too do not have a good word for the mother. Eric Fromm writes: Growth means the freedom of the child from the protection of the mother. And who is mother; She is your father’s wife. In India we have the story of Parshuram who killed his mother to satisfy his father Jamadagni. We say good things about the mother only in novels or on public platforms to woo them to surrender to our wishes. Modern civilization with all its modernity and liberalism has not given an identity to mother. A child or a person is known by his father, the mother’s name is expendable. Although we say that the mother is the angel of the house, she holds in display a happy family but always remains as a shadowy presence. We glorify the mother as the nourisher of the mankind but never give any social prominence to a mother. Even Shakespeare has not made a mother venerable. Hamlet speaks daggers to Gertrude. Her freedom, her love, her individuality are overshadowed by the Shenanigans of the male world. God is always the father: Christ is the son of God, the mother remains unmentioned, often unacknowledged.

In the Indian epics no woman is given the pride of place as mother. Queen Satyabati, Kunti, Gandhari- all have been extolled as woman but not as mothers. Sita in the Ramayana, is the most abused and dishonoured as mother. The most worshipped Avatar in India, the most honourable king Rama doubts her personal honour. She enters the family of Rama only after going through a fire test as her chastity is in question. The same question about Sita’s chastity is raised after she gets pregnant and the honourable Ramachandra discards her, doubting her motherhood. Why? Why does woman never get her due recognition as mother? We accept, rather take for granted her role in the family but never respect a woman as mother. She gives birth to man, sustains mankind but she has no honour as mother. In the 20^th century, the respect as mother was accorded to only one person- Mother Teresa. She never was a mother in the biological sense, but her qualities, service was endowed with the honorific – Mother. Is this not hypocrisy. A real mother is never honoured yet the quality of motherhood is acknowledged. This is ironical, and shows that we hoist the image discarding the real.

The mother is one you go away from, seldom come back to. She is a sacrificial figure not only in India but everywhere. Most Indian women raise their children in poverty and makes utmost sacrifice to make their children face the world with dignity. But she has no place in the lives of their children once they marry and live separately. Those who keep their mothers with them treat them as unsalaried servants. When the daughter-in-law expects a child in some foreign country, the mother becomes important. Mothers go only to serve their daughters and daughters in law during the period of pregnancy. After childbirth mothers are the nurses, cooks and free servants. Once the new mother becomes fit to resume the normal duties of life, the mother is sent back. She merely waits for a phone call on Mother’s Day, a day fixed by civilization to remember the mother at least for a day in the year.

 A mother’s sacrifices cannot be recompensed or refurbished or compensated. Till her last breath a mother wishes all the best for her children. Her unseen presence hovers around the children with blessings and she pines for them all the time. Children today are definitely conscious about the mother but do not show the concern she deserves. Ye children! Remember you are what you are because of a woman’s sacrifices: she is your mother. Show your love and respect for that’s all she needs.

Statue

You broke the statue

throbbing with living beauty

sun moon star studded

on the vast canopy of sky

shading the earth for life’s

perpetual celebration.

But your intemperate mind

saw death in everything

you broke the statue

which you never made

scorched the earth

to divide in maps

you made the statue a quarry

to sell chips of starlike glow

at tinsel market places.

The statues you make

The Bamiyan Buddha,

Konark, Somnath are

fodder to time’s ants:

now you stare at them

standing like statues

nerveless listless dead.

Come my dears be Human

put the stars in their place

make the green earth whole

for that is your role

to celebrate life here;

for man is a speaking statue

The greatest ever made.

Sabita Sahu

Conspiracy

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

These days one regularly hears one word: Conspiracy. Mob lynching, they say is the conspiracy of one community to kill members of another. Conspiracy, they cry hoarse, when cows are smuggled out and sold in another country for rich tables. What was it, when Duryodhana’s soldiers and advisors attempted to steal the cows from Virat’s kingdom in the  absence of the king and his army in the Mahabharata, if not a conspiracy to smoke out the Pandavas from their period of incognito exile? The Jatugriha; the invitation of the Pandavas for a dice game by Dhritarastra: the claim to the Ayodhya throne by Bharat’s mother for her son on the day of Ram’s coronation; Sita’s abduction by Ravana (yes a vengeful conspiracy);Krishna’s plot to take away the armour from Karna- you name it! The list is endless. Political conspiracy apart the god- myths are full of conspiracies to defame, demean and dethrone rivals in anger or jealousy. Corporate conspiracy is a modern day scourge on our systems of capitalistic economy. Communal conspiracy, caste-creed conspiracy and the laughably intriguing small time conspiracies which we watch everyday on the Tele serials to defame a close family member are our daily bread, however stale or bitter: But conspiracy has its wide network as the second nature of human civilization.

What is conspiracy? Why does man conspire to bring the fall of another human specimen? Conspiracy is like a guerrilla attack on a known and powerful person or group when he/ it is least prepared or even aware of it. Who conspires? One who is weak and jealous; one who cannot take his target head on; one who feels small because of his/her own shortcomings. A strong man, a man of honour and valour never conspires: for he is confident of himself. He may not be flawless but he never stoops to conquer. At times ideological misconceptions too lead to conspiracy. The murder of Mahatma Gandhi, John.F.Kennedy, even Indira and Rajiv Gandhi’s murders have been plotted by groups whose ideologies are shy of confronting the heroes of nations. Such heroes at times fall victims to conspiracy of the mean and weak people. The conspirator is a coward. But often we see men of great honour too conspire in the name of some skewed logic of morality. Brutus kills Caesar in the Capitol in a stance of conspiratorial heroism. After the death of Achelles, in Homer’s great epic poem Iliad, Ulysses says: with the death of Achelles gone is Greek courage; but not Greek cunning- and the result in the Trojan Horse, a fatal gift which destroyed the towers of Troy. Greek cunning proves to be anti-heroic thievery slurring their victory to posterity.

The murder of Abhimanyu is a hateful illustration of conspiracy. Seven chariot warriors of the Kuru army, each one wearing a laurel crown of military glory conspired to kill Arjuna’s boy, Abhimanyu whose display of warfare shamed them to guileful meanness. This illustrates the shady machinations of tinsel heroes and brings self – condemnation forever. Conspiracy always robs the world of its most priced virtues. This also proves that a true genius is never accepted by the human beings. We see that in our myths, stories, literature in general and in social life too. We justify the early and untimely death of a great man, saying – whom God loves dies young. If this be true even, God does not appreciate genius in man, his own creature.

In the story (true) of Dharmapada who laid the pot at the peak of the Konark temple, we notice the same pettiness, jealousy and inhumanity in man. The twelve hundred artisans could not place the  Kalasa, could not complete the time bound work. The boy Dharmapada, all of twelve years , son of the chief Architect Sibei Samantaray, who had gone there in search of his father could do it with ease and perfection. These artisans, including the architect, fearing decapitation at royal command, almost compelled the boy to make a sacrifice of his life to save the so called artisans and sculptors from ignominy. Genius is always sacrificed at the altar of immoral, self-seeking cowards. Is this the price of genius: death by deceit, conspiracy or meanness?

In the modern world in which the Sapiens are more educated, trained and much better off than their early centuries counterparts, conspiracies are technologically hatched for political gains. After the Second World War the computer and the Internet have given scope for cyber conspiracy. Pentagon can be hacked, the fighter planes cannot take off, bombs may explode, data would be manipulated by remote control and even wars can break out by spreading fake news.

The powerful conspire to retain power; the poor and the jealous cowards conspire to destroy towers of civilization: and the great intellectuals play safe by resorting to the conspiracy of silence! Borrowing Huxley’s Brave New World, I may say, hurry! Let us conspire against each other to bring mankind to God’s shame and regret for having conspired to create man for his own sadistic entertainment.

Give Me Something New

Give me pain

I’ll love you more,

nail me on the cross

I’ll give you release,

Beat me bloody

I’ll drown you with kisses

throw me to hell

I’ll take you to Garden of Eden.

Give me something

beyond pain and pleasure

to make me feel original

beyond human measure,

I’ll hold time on the palm

to be my own shrine

for mortals and spirits.

If you can’t give me

what I wish for

tears and laughter

I’ve no need for

Let me be what I am

beyond your love

don’t throw at me

what is already mine.

Sabita Sahu

Happy Sunday

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

God, after naming his created wonders for six days made Sunday the Sabbath day for rest. For the Jews Saturday is Sabbath. If God needs rest after working for six days, we mortals ought to have everyday a rest day for we always feel restless in God’s wonderful creation where from sunrise to midnight we have to work for survival. But all workplaces, government and private corporate offices, give us Sunday for rest. This Sunday some call Happy Sunday for they can laze over the bed longer than in other days without rushing through morning ablutions and gulping some breakfast while buttoning shirts, answering phone calls and go out to catch a bus or to start the bike, car or cycle. The unlucky ones walk their miles to places of work mumbling curses on the traffic. Housewives, at times unbrushed and unteaed prepare breakfast and pack lunch boxes for their harried men without any complain although some shout- get some bread when you return; and yes don’t forget to bring my backache medicines...O’ he is beyond the gate now... Sunday is different.

No need to rise early. The morning cup can be sipped while reading the Times of India. An appointment for a massage and facial can be made. A visit to a few friends' houses and dine out programme are also a possibility. But so much of unfinished work, postponed to Sundays every weak day beckons like a hangman in wordless gestures. My dearest often wanted to visit the Mahakal temple with me as she is worried over my asthma. She never says so but I know why she wants me to visit Mahakal temple and perform a yajna. Every morning after she gets up, and she is always an early riser, she plays on her mobile Mahamritunjaya mantra much to my anger. But I do not express my anger ever in words. I understand why she does that. Her faith in astrology disturbs her routines. Even in sleep on most nights, she babbles. She spends most of her time in her Puja room. She works hard. Cooks for our children, our son and daughter. Washes clothes in the machine, telephones our family dhobi and gives him clothes for ironing. Collects her puja items and serves breakfast for me, our children. Picks up her fresh dress and enters the bathroom but comes out fresh in a trice to see me off at the gate. Prepares the kids for the school, both are in Sai Inter-National. The school bus starts at  8.50. She leaves them at the stop, about 100 meters away from our gate. Locks the front door and then sits for her breakfast. She was an athlete, a sprinter. But now she doesn’t find time even to go for a walk. She is putting on fat which does not burn in the household chores.

Today is Happy Sunday again. Last night she convinced me that I accompany her to Mahakal temple, just 30 kms away, a famous place for Shiva devotees. She has made all arrangements. The list given by the priest has been fully procured. Last evening she had gone with our driver Ram, to get things personally. The children too are eager to go on a outing, if not a family picnic. She had bought new smart dresses for them, shoes too. She is a great woman of taste. She is a good cook, a good housewife, a good lover but always apprehensive of something happening to me. She consults astrologers about my future. This yajna is their idea. Well, if a yajna reassures her, so be it. I wanted her to be happy and in good cheer. She has lost all her other interests. She used to paint. Not a mean painter. But she gave up all those things after the children were born. Constantly she thought of their education. Both Harish and Meena are good at studies. Both are smart and hard working. But my wife always is worried about this and that. Her smiles are rare, always a few lines appear on her forehead. I often ask why, why? She smiles away in mock pleasure O’ nothing – everything will be fine. God is there, nothing will happen. Well what are you worried about? Nothing. Life you know; living it is worrisome.

The driver came. Here are the flowers Madam, the 64 lilies, 128 lotuses, the incense...Ok, keep them in the car. We’ll start by 9. The puja will start exactly at 11 A.M. Why are you not dressed yet? Put on that dhoti and silk kurta I have kept on the bed. You’ll look more handsome. You wanted blue silk, blue it is. Go. I went to change my dress. The children were looking very smart in their new dress. She was clad in a white silk saree looking like a goddess. Her long open hair was once thick, now not so thick, yet she looked younger and elegant.

I came out from the bed room. She looked at me with glowing eyes. She was happy to see me in my exotic handsomeness. Well let’s move I said. She held my hands. I called the children nearer. I held them and we moved. We crossed the threshold and I brought out tickets for a film show. Children and my dearest- morning show, lunch at Meridian and then a drive to Mahakal for darshan. Happy Sunday dearest - No yajna is superior to the yajna of living together- come. She finally laughed- Happy Sunday at last!