An Evening Of Politics...

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

One evening I was browsing a novel in my room when I heard a familiar voice asking my wife, 'Is the Saheb at home?' I came down recognizing the voice and the demeanour and paused to slow down as I saw four others with Gopal, my best friend and worst critic who was also an open minded extrovert serving as resident editor of a prominent national daily . After the general bonhomie, tea and  wife made pakodas, Gopal suddenly asked me: Why don't you join politics? I could sense alertness in the ears and eagerness in the eyes of the by now no more strangers four and tried to gauge the seriousness of the question. I smiled and said,' I don't mind joining politics but who will take me? 'The by now familiar strangers identified themselves and one of them, one  Radhakanta Mohapatra said, in a sober voice: 'There are people to take you into their party with open arms. You are a man with an immaculate reputation as knowledgeable, articulate and your ability to charm an audience with your oratorical powers are well known. If you simply say 'Yes', Mr -( he gave the name of a national leader) will speak to you over phone. I sensed the seriousness and even the purposefulness in the intonation and body language of Mr Mohapatra and  said, ' I am 45 now. I admit yes I have some sound reputation and above average qualities. But I have a family and except the job I hold I do not have any other resources... Another slightly elder to all of us in the strangers group spoke a dialogue chopper - you will get five times your salary plus car and house.

I felt like giving a loud guffaw but restrained myself. I said, gentlemen, politics is an art of nation building. Throughout civilization we have put codes against insecurity, indiscipline and distrust. He who lived in an area of his birth called it his own for fear of losing it to others who have strayed into his area. Suspicion and fear of other men was more than this distrust of animals. He had to fight for survival against hunger, sickness, and yes, death. Some godmen came up to comfort man and secure his life in this lifespan of his, in whichever part of the world he lived in. They comforted him saying, life is temporary there is permanent joy and peace after death in that 'Unreturned World.' they advised and propagated  love, devotion and surrender to the unseen forces. Then came the physically powerful and intellectually very clever people . They became chieftains, captains and formed teams of men to expand their territory and framed rules for men under their control to keep them restrained and loyal... Gopal this time gave  a real guffaw saying, O' the professor has started his lecture... The others too laughed. I felt embarrassed. Gopal said, ' why don't you say what these people have asked ? You should join politics.'

The senior man said, ' yes Sir, intellectuals like you must come to politics. You now see Sir, most politicians are using muscle and money power and exploit people. I stopped him and said, 'Intellectuals demand mostly two things: Freedom and space. They don't covet positions or money but they must have operational freedom of the mind.' He said, 'Yes Sir, you will definitely get that freedom but you have to work within the framework of our Ideology.'

That's very tempting but what is ideology of your party? He paused for three breaths and said: 'You know it Sir . We believe in justice for everyone, equality of opportunity and universal coexistence.' 'Why  do you have reservations then? I asked, ' By giving reservations and doles you are in a way killing the spirit of a man. He becomes a psychic cripple. That's why he forms a group and claims identity and as the economy grows he demands a larger share of that  economy without contributing anything. His  initiatives and innovative thinking get stilted. He prefers to remain as a pressure group. Is that not  injustice to the other low income groups who strive and struggle for their own place in the history?'

'You are right Sir but politics has its own limitations.

What limitations? Your limitation is the vision you  have  been perpetuating for your hold on the people. If Kashmir is on the boil for 70 years it is because we don't want to solve the problems. if you want me in politics first of all grow out of  your radical innocence. I am not a superman, no god, but I think man must be free to create his own opportunities. The political masters ought to create that atmosphere and run the state as referee,. Sorry I can't join because I am a misfit...

Colourful Holi

Green, Saffron, Red and Blue!

These colours cannot hide

the bone dry utensils

in a poor man’s house,

cannot smear the joy

on the faces of orphans

cannot brighten the fate of

ditched widows nor can they

bring smile on my face.

See the children playing

in mud and slush

with dirt on their bodies,

let’s go to the streets

with colours of love and care

let’s lift up the urchins

take them to pools of light,

oceans of Holi love

the eighth colour,
of which the rainbow
would shame into the clouds.

We have our colours
bright and lovely to make
the sun and moon colourful,

This Holi gives us the purpose

let’s not mar it with powders.

Sabita Sahu

Witness !

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty
The word witness brings to the  mind one visual image: a man or a women in a witness box answering questions of lawyers after swearing on a sacred text to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. He also attests to the truth of a person's statement on a legal document or attests someone's  signature. He may speak or write or point out if his senses are shut by divine or mundane denial . In short a witness is one who is a testifier of truth of a person, an event or statement. In this sense witness is a man whose eyes. ears are functioning normally, What he can see or hear he can certify as truth if questioned in a dispute. This assumes that the witness has a good memory and his recall is good. He cannot use his imagination and paint it on 'truth'. But when we say and write this mountain is a mute witness to my youthful  love. I have moved on its rough tough and uneven body holding the butter soft hand of my lifelong love who now is beyond my reach somewhere to play golf with her new paramour: what do we mean?witness to what? Our passionate motions or the pure physicality of our relationship? If there was an element of exploiting the available opportunity which could be betrayed when chance throws up in its fickle fancies a more attractive alternative: was that too witnessed by the craggy immortal? well, such  a question, you would say, is not contextually valid.

When we say eye witness we mean a brief description of an event or happening or incident in which the witness was not a participant or protagonist but in whose presence something happened. In other words he was an 'observer'. Unless his observation is sharp, eyes and ears see and hear beyond images and sounds rhythms and environmental statistics he cannot be an observer. Reality of any situation is of fleeting, moments loaded with emotions, ideas and perceptions melt into an event so fast that the best of senses often are disaffected by the mind, that is the whole scene or moment becomes impalpable. The view, the viewer, the object and the observer often are merged into one whole; the interpretation is not always symbolic but any gap would suggest incomplete or parrtial observation. In such cases what will the witness speak? Things as he saw and understood or things as they happened? In any case a good cross examiner will punch holes and widen the gap by asking loaded questions?

The poets, painters and performing artists often claim fidelity to reality? Does Wordsworth's cuckoo or Keats' Nightingale sing in your garden?Reality is always painted with imagination: Shall I call thee a bird? asks Wordsworth and gives the alternative of a wondering voice. Has he discovered a new species? No, he rather makes  the bird a nonbiological specimen. That's the wonder of poetry we say but the poet is not a witness testifying the birdness of the cuckoo. Similarly the Nightingale of Keats is a dryad or an immortal which no court will record as evidence.

Once I was in a courtroom giving evidence in a case where a colleague of mine was abused by a few students. the lawyer asked me 'were you present in the scene?' I said 'yes'; What is the power of your glasses?' he asked. I said, 'the glasses are powerless for they could not slap the abusing students.' the courtroom burst out laughing. The learned magistrate got the hint and punished the accused. Later when I thought about my own evidence I too smiled. I did not speak as a witness I merely snubbed the defendant's lawyer. But the  truth was driven home.

A witness is not a caged parrot repeating without understanding what he speaks. A witness is not a camera with the shutter open, recording transactions of reality. The witness has his own preoccupations,bias and preconceived notions of the sound, intonation and rhythm of words. And when he testifies he draws on his memory which in the meantime is loaded with other impressionistic details. What he speaks is the present version of a moment in the past. It is like God creating the world and naming the objects with imaginative absurdities of the fleeting moments. may be for this reason he does not remember whom he created in what frame of mind.

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.