Election’s In The Air

Blaring loudspeakers

push the late risers

the tea sipping men

the bleary eyed housewives

look out for the passing

hoardings of candidates

party symbols, slogan shouting

to reach people in homes,

factories and offices,

the crowded street unmindful

moves on, for his own election.

People canvas door to door

giving chits, smiling promises

in big rallies Neta’s speak-

Nay - scream

rulling party must be dethroned

opposition party must be

blocked midway... 

cash and liquor

fly and float.

The hired intellectual

moralizes in papers

gives verbose arguments

the ordinary voter asks

the panwala,

who will come this time

who will be our bhagya vidhata,

he mutters with a downing smile,

whoever comes

will not come here

he will send his men

for his midnight smoke...

Sabita Sahu

Violence is Our DNA!

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

We kill to survive, is our convenient logic. As fear of death lurks at every step of our existence we have polished our logic. We kill to eat; kill to loot other peoples’ harvest; kill for revenge; kill for conquest ... and the list is long in mankind’s history. We invade territory for domination, for heroism, for lust of power, for women: And for excitement. We watch cock fights, bull fights and like Nero watch man fighting a lion to his bloody death and shout in joy; clap in frenzy when a hero falls in a single combat. We kill animals, birds and men to appease gods and goddesses for power, knowledge, mystical prowess for wish fulfilment. Timur Lane, Mahmud of Gajni kill for gold, gems, slaves. And today we kill for oil, for religion- this however is ancient practice; today it is less heroic. We call this terrorism and counter it with civilizational pride, which is acceptable to all rational institutions of justice. If the ISIS kills  in the dark of night for Islamic state we kill for democracy and human rights in open daylight with moral justification. But kill we must.

We kill wives for sexual philandering and wife’s lover out of jealousy. Macbeth killed his royal guests for ambition, to wear the golden round on his head, however illegitimate it maybe. In modern democratic elections we assassinate characters; kill reputations in bloodless manner; we kill with technology, scientific inventions, destroy cities in the name of scorched earth policy. With our new knowledge of cyber space we kill without weapons, hack military secrets. We can now kill by creating artificial cyclones, floods and droughts. Fake news is now another weapon which can kill without any bloodletting. Why?

Why, is a taboo adverb. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die-wrote Tennyson. Kill or get killed envelop the entire gamut of human experience. Avail the chance to kill and dominate or fall to the sword of the other man. After bloody wars the victor does not say ’pardon is the word to all’. War crime Tribunals are set up to find out the guilty and hang them. After the Second World War Nazi warlords were tried at Nuremberg and history recorded the justice- killings in glowing letters. When the Japanese ‘hero’ general Yamamato was asked for his final word before he was hanged by the Americans he is said to have stated: ‘You reached Japan before I reached America; I would have asked you the same question had I come to America first. Yes, this is the logic. Kill before you get killed.

In social relationship in India especially, we had the practice of Sati, that is, if the husband dies his surviving wife, however young and blameless, must hold the body of her husband in full bridal gear and burn with her husband to the chant of mantras by priests and to the noisy praise of thousands of onlookers. Mercifully this practice is now banned by law. But one is tempted to ask: Is cruelty in our dna? Are sadism and even masochism built into human nature?

We hate violence, not by natural compassion in our nature but perhaps out of fear of similar fate waiting somewhere in our journey in life. Budha was the first wiseman or sage who thought of non-violence. He perhaps extended the logic of natural death against violence to creatures. Since we are born to die one day why should we kill: But this truth is not accepted by man in his death-certain life till date. In the 21^st century, in spite of the knowledge explosion and the historical memory of the devastation caused by violence we kill for the same reasons we have tried to overcome by pity, compassion, mercy and other values. Ashoka introduced the Buddhist ideals of non-violence in his life but it did not last even a half century. After Ashoka’s death people slowly returned to the animal ways. Gandhi revived the same non-violence with more refined logic to put the idea as a counter measure to Hitler’s hate-kill anti –semitism. But we continue to be violent.

 It is obvious that man refuses to learn from history. Passions, hate, ambition, revenge and such like negatives have not yet been transcended despite philosophy, ethics, justice, literature and politics.it will remain as long as our dear dna does not have a metamorphosis.

Friendship

Health makes life worthy

No, no -wealth say others

but a friend in need

is the joy of living forever.

No thief can steal

the soul’s joyful union

raises fragrant melody in air

with love’s eternal flair.

Our roads are separate

paved with life’s concerns

but they meet like parallel lines

at the abode of loves infinity.

No words, no tunes can shape

a friend’s infinite landscape

no celebration need we friends

each moment joins all ends.

O’ for a life of friendship

I’ll sacrifice all dross

and dare damnation

for life’s united motion.

Sabita Sahu

A Visit To Jagannath

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

With great fanfare last Sunday I visited, rather started with reluctant enthusiasm to go to Puri to pay obeisance to Jagannath, the deity of deities. Reluctant because I had to rise early to catch a glimpse of Jagannath when hopefully there will be less crowd and the April sun would be less unkindly. My family’s desire was the chief motivator. The car was fast, the driver my son was alert, the journey was smooth. There was a floating cloud cover shading the Sun’s eyes, the breeze was somewhat cool and I thought by the time the Sun fully focuses on us we may have completed our Jagannath darshan. We parked the car and boarded the temple service bus and got down about a less than one km distance from the lion’s gate. I did not wait for the other members of my family nor did they tell me to wait. I walked fast without gallivanting and reached the shoe stand. I looked back to see the four other members of my family. I knew my wife was slow moving and my son , daughter-in –law and Grand daughter must have been slowed down to cover the distance. I waited with all the patience at my command which is nothing to write home about. Minutes ticked by. I saw the movement of people, observed an old couple smiling at something, some rickshaw drivers heckling non- odia tourists and waited. Fifteen minutes passed. My patience which is always thin began to reduce to airy nothing. I wondered whether I am at the right shoe stand. Yes, normally when we come to visit the temple we keep our shoes here. But other stands have come up and who knows where they went! I moved up and down the space adjacent to the barricades and felt my pocket for the phone. No all our phones were kept in the car dash board as mobile phones are not allowed inside. I was out of my wits. I must have waited for more than 45 minutes. What happened? Have they ignored me or assumed since I came ahead I must have gone inside. I thought of entering the temple alone and went back to the shoe stands which were crowded and noisy by then. My enthusiasm was deflated. I must now stand in the queue, deposit my shoes and go to the other end to walk through the water blocks and enter the barricaded slow moving crowd. O’ God why do you cause such problems for the impatient specimens like me!

I returned to the spot where I was waiting earlier. If I go now it is not possible to see them in the crowd. And when they go back to the car after their darshan and do not see me they would certainly panic. I then decided to return to the car park. Ok Lord God; I came to pay my respects and to appeal to you for... for what? For having a full life lived with half involvement, half certainties! Or what? Normally my prayer is “God be happy with us. We mortals will never learn the full meaning of life. Take care of the half lived half.” I repeated it looking at the temple and marched the whole distance to the car park, compensating for the morning walk which I had missed.

While walking back I thought: they say unless Jagannath calls you, you can never see him. Well, I came without his call perhaps; but the gates of God’s abode are always open for all people. The devotee, the agnostic, the sick and even egoist. I am not an egoist nor a devotee or an agnostic. May be I am a Free Thinker with an open mind. But should I be punished for having returned from the gates? If you did not want me I wouldn’t have started. And when I was there you caused circumstances bordering on tragicomedy. I consoled myself and paid my respects to the Lord while walking back.

I waited near the car. My family came sullen sulky and sultry. The rest was a mood swing from angry exchange to a compromise of silence.

As scheduled we went to the seashore. I sat in a beach chair looking at the sea. The waves were in a pleasant mood. The foam was silvery. The roar was a proud declaration of superiority. I silently brooded, eyes closed, on the best half of my life which like Jagannath never invites nor repels but the result is a big zero, a large cipher which I have drawn with meticulous attention.

Then we had a good lunch at Lee Gardens and rode back. All the way home I was thinking was it my pride or God’s insolence which made the zero luminous with illusory lights of love’s indulgence.

Flux and the Still Point

The crowded waiting hall

resonated in my world

the noise of the temple,

the market place and

the loud recitation of the poets

in the sparsely populated

conference hall militating
against my softer, feelings.

The dew washed grass

at the soft rays of the sun

beckoned me away from the
hall to forget my destination

and to wander without

reaching anywhere.

Am I lost

a  stranger to myself

no I am not like the

demented human beings

lost in their mobile phones.

I am firm footed

and know where

I’ll find myself.

Sabita Sahu

Resolve Your Own Contrarian Challenges

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Like the Ruling Party and Opposition in a Constitutional democracy faith and scepticism are built into our life systems. No culture is free of this duel in the personal and social battle fields. When someone demands proof of God the other ‘believer’- a non- believer too has his own codes- advances contrarian logic. No one is prepared to accept the other’s point of view .S]uch duels are also fought between vegetarians and meat eaters: Democrats and Republicans; between religions, castes, races and even between regulars and lesbians: Why? The reason I believe is a sense of superiority which is claimed by one’s faith in God, religion, ideal, practice or habit or whimsical insistence on one’s egotistical sublimity. The non-believer, the Free thinkers claims superiority over the other. This merely proves that all the men are not equal; all minds do not have the same wave length, all tongues do not have the same tastes and so on. This corroborates the theory that all human beings are slaves comprising perceptions and sensibilities which make them individually unique. Rarely two such unique individuals agree on anything unless the object or subject of their agreement satisfies both individually.

Marriage is one such agreement between two individuals and it has withstood the test of long centuries. But how many marriages keep the spouses happy? The couples claiming compatibility and mutual happiness seldom admit in public that one of the spouses, by whatever compulsion accepts the views, habits, thoughts, faith and shenanigans of the other. It is at best an accommodation or a compromise where one of them settles for half. And this has been advanced as a practical philosophy for man, right through the centuries. We have to accept the One as the finality: if not half Mind, half Matter: if not mind will not matter and ‘matter’ someone will say ‘never mind’.

But there are many for whom faith leads to only fear of this world and apprehensions of the other world, which faith imposes. And they live a life of abnegation of the self. There are others for whom this life is the one, only and final. Once you die, there is no tomorrow. For both these groups- definitely a large chunk of mankind- there are certainties of food, healthcare for the body, power, direct or vicarious or rudiments of it for the mind.

If they are worried about the soul’s final journey, they live a life of self-denial. Those who live only once, they try to ‘loot’ all pleasures available in the world by their mind, that is using their  intelligence they carve out for themselves a large share of pleasure without bothering about ethical purity. What matters is the satisfaction of one life for which means and ends have no logical connection.

But there are many who cannot make both ends meet by honest labour. They do not have the mind to loot reality as their desires are not propped up by courage. Their faith is: He who has given us life will fend for us. And they die with this faith often on the roadside or on railway tracks. For such people the power to choose is denied as they do not want to exercise their choice either way. They live an other directed life. In modern democracies peoples’ representatives think for them in the Parliament. Thinkers and planners come out with schemes- often doles, reservations etc but when they get the minimum they demand for more. Like the jailed criminals demanding, free air, sunlight, wide space for movement and nourishing and tasteful food, the protected groups demand more of life. They develop the new faith of group strength. They come out to the streets and break and burn without caring much for lathis and bullets. The new faith is, manmade Governments are god substitutes and they must give what the others enjoy by birth, education, intelligence and hard work.

So what is the difference between faith and scepticism? The man of faith surrenders to one set of ideals. The contrarian too surrenders to spiced up nothings. Both remain unfulfilled. If a new ‘man’ decides to find a new middle path should he love another’s ideal or deny himself all ideals and live like a camera lens picturing things without looking at any one frame? The 21^st century has empowered the individual to live alone without ideals except pursuing that one thing which assures him the basic needs. Should man live a self- fulfilled life without knowing what fulfilment is? Or should he choose one set, either way, and join the group for finding some joy of discovery of meaning? Well, you choose if you have a choice to exercise, independent of all contrarian equations.

Old Mirror

 

What do you look for- in me

youth or the soul mind of sweet

school days, mother's love, tutor's cane,

flowing hair, evening prayers

where are they gone to which

cabin of time’s non-stop express?

Dreams of marriage myths and
tales of  soulless murk lost
in the heavy key ring pressing
my belly to languorous despair.

O’ mirror  I’ll clean and polish you

and return you your youth

if you can show my soul’s delight,

wings of my mind's flight

where the fleet of my Prince

has cast anchor at what shore!

Sabita Sahu