Know Me What I am !

Why tears roll down  my cheeks

heart palpitates when I think of you!

You say I do not care for you.

Why then a stabbing pain throbs

my heart when I touch you?

You say I am lifeless

How then when our lips meet,

bosoms press tight like mating birds;

you say I am inert, a sod

yet my heart misses beats

when your eyes wander far off.

When I listen to your flowing words

for endless hours I go dumb

and you say I listen because

I have nothing to say,and do not
send the ball back to you.

My love for you deepens
where age and looks have no count

Yet you say I look for attractions

which my lost youth never did.

No doubt the trust is scanned

efforts to get closer fail, but

the heart and soul are full

of the same love to match yours

although  unfelt, unseen ,unsaid.

But I am no Mira to prove

my love is true and divine.

 Sabita Sahu

Yes Love Is Tapas

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

What do they really mean  when they say love is a tapasya ? Poets, philosophers and saints eulogize love in their songs, speeches and writings. Often I am tempted to ask how many of them have really loved, have gone through the fire test. Tapsaya stems from tapa  that is heat, the heat of the soul, a flameless fire elevates the lover to a new sphere of illumination; a glowing awareness of life makes the lover more life worthy than the nonlover. History records countless episodes of lovers. The high and the mighty kidnap the women they love. The meek and the weak pine away their lives in the tapa  of separation. The star-struck lovers- Laila- Majnu, Shirin- Farhad, Romeo- Juliet, Kedar-Gouri die waiting for things to happen:;for some supernatural agency to magically unite the lovers, and waste away their lives.  What is this love? An emotion, an overwhelming passion, a psychic obsession , a world substitute dissuading  the lover from his natural propensities to fulfill his potentials in the real world he is born into; or a deep craving for sexual gratification with a man or woman he/ she  chances upon in a moment of surrender to his/ her  carnal desires? Or is it a divine inspiration to build and create a more beautiful world of joy, companionship with a person in whom one sees a Being of suprasensory  perceptions than the world he/she  is suffocated in? What is this love at first sight? At a glance you see only external beauty symmetry of limbs or the Being of soulfulness?  

Questions I know are instruments of dissecting logic which will make this divine passion a spectacle of depravity. The man who loves never asks questions, he simply loves and is prepared to wait out  his life in hope, however dark and misty it maybe.  Does he wait  for time's mercy or societal grace and what does he do while waiting?  Again I am asking questions which do not have any acceptable answers. If a man loves a woman it is like Purusha and Prakriti interacting for  creation. Love has a beginning but no end. It is time neutral and value neutral as it is arguably the greatest value in reality. The lovers may not meet. May not play the worldly game of housekeeping. For a true lover love is a meditative  dedication to his love. His love includes beauty, harmony, proportion, music, sculpture, rhythm, which includes  nature, the elements and even the cultural environs in his love. A lover is a true artist, poetic metaphors hang from his lips, his eyes radiate courage, compassion and inclusivity. His love does not vacillate in separation, his determined love  energizes him to create not poetry or art alone, his love attains a  dignity of higher mind. He sees his love as the universal goddess. He worships, adores, pines for her but develops a larger heart which lavishes good things on the deprived. He loves the sorrow of others in his own tears of separation. He works,  moves, sleeps less, projects his imaginative metaphors to awaken dull reality. He has no expectations but gives and gives what he has and what he creates.

But at times he finds his love unresponsive, indifferent if not  selfish and callous. For a moment he falls into the pits of agony and wordlessly howls out his soul, becomes small in his own esteem. In such cases we see some revenge motive entering some lovers who really do not  understand love beyond breasts and buttocks. Yet others hit the bottle and ruin their lives. And a few commit suicide. In 1992 I wrote a long essay in the Samaj in several  instalments where my contention was love is really a yajna in which you alone read and chant your mantra, pour your energies into the cauldron of fire like the priests pouring ghee and enjoy the sight of the rising flames almost  burning your body. Your mind is unwavering. Once you love a woman  she is everything that God has created and more: For you make a more beautiful, more hospitable, bright and soulful universe of your love  by sincere and honest devotion to your universe enshrined in the woman you love. If she is unresponsive , indifferent or alters when alteration finds' that is her choice. Love does not make you falter or change your devotion. If you held her feet once in your heart that is a sacramental contract with eternity. If she tries to break your  yajna it would mean your  fires are not high enough to engulf you in divine light. No Tapabhagna like Urbasi-Menaka can divert your love. Love  her more, desire  her more, bleed for her more and let the heat refine your love  for angels to covet for.

A Dull Evening

Tired and soaked in sweat

I unbuttoned my Kurti,

threw on the bed to free 
my sweat  washed body,

wished for his soft hands

to wipe off the sweat and

smear sandal and menthol  paste

all over  singing with deep 

monotone, his love for me

to cool me down to accept reality.

Wishes are just fantasies

never can face them with a smile.

I am lonely though in a crowd

and insensitive to pain

no fancy for pleasure,

If you can-

give me my senses back,

fill them with life

take me wherever you

create a sea for me

I will forget the shore.

Sabita Sahu

Nothing Is Empty

Does life return to touch

the untouched waves on the shore,

mindless days pass bodiless,

new years make entry and exit

without disturbing time or history.

But why be angry why push

adrenalin with the force of failure?

If life is empty, exhale it

inhale something new,

a new emptiness for a change.

Is emptiness a  new creation

another soft fall of failure,

well, the game is not over

wait for the last spark or flicker

to glow and burst
into a flame of hope.

Yes, the land will turn fertile

green and full

the untouched waves will come

to wash your feet with foam.

Sabita Sahu

Expectations

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Man lives in the now moment. His memories make his today  resonant with expectations: For ha had planned, dreamed, imagined things to happen in a particular pattern. The conscious mind always lives the future in the present, imagining a scenario to unfold like a tape as visualized, scripted and directed by him. The dreaming consciousness is therefore a very significant element in the Indian 'om'(Aum). Man cannot live without dreaming about a future. Of course there is one bold argument that if you already script a future you are most likely to be frustrated. Your script not in a social vacuum. The script has other characters, dialogue, locations and also has its own pace and rhythm. Since you are not god or the manipulator of your own reality, your  script cannot be  superimposed on other characters. The other characters too have their own scripts. The dialogue also has dialogue- choppers. At times the characters in your script are too unreal to be true. you cannot expect a person to behave or speak according to your visualization of the screenplay. The location too may have its own moods to swing according to the elements. But man cannot live without expectations. He imagines a future and works, strives, dreams for it.  But his expectations may go awry. Hence expectations have frustrations built into it. Man, however, never stops from dreaming.

And this dream kills you, frustrates you often makes you a laughing stock in self-immersed realization of your foolishness. If you  imagine your love to come all dolled up for a midnight walk in a mangrove forest listening to the muffled roar of the sea under a clear crescent moon and wait you may face a sudden  storm. Or she may never turn up . Or she dislikes your idea and prefers to sleep at home to say sorry next morning. You will simply waste your time  in visualizing  a romantic outing and get sick in frustration and give up dreaming altogether. Expectation often robs you of  your  intensity of imagination. If you are a poet or artist you may turn cynical and start suspecting everyone. The ancient wise men, therefore say: Don't expect anything from life. In an Islamic scripture it is said "If you are in the morning, don't expect the evening to come in your life; 'if you are in the evening don't expect the morning to come in your life'. Well, it is horrible to expect anything. No welcome or farewell could be planned. No fulfilment in love or life should be expected. You will ask: How is it that some people get what they dream of? May be they are neither lucky nor blessed. But mere mortals are neither lucky or blessed. Therefore dream is forbidden to them. But if not dream  what else?

The other argument is Existential . You are in a  godless world. There is no one to protect or guide you. You have to carve your own destiny by your own efforts. But efforts also do not produce the expected results. A brilliant student fails in  Maths: The Examiner rubbishes his brilliance. A good actor does not get a break. In such cases the argument is, something was wrong in your efforts or you merely had an overestimated ego. You thought of yourself what you are not. Then when Santiago (in Old Man and the Sea) went to catch fish for  his survival into the deep sea was  he not adequately prepared? Did he not fight with the Marlin who was also his equal in all respects. He did his karma but could not get fruits. The Gita says, never expect fruits but do your karma. That is life is niskama karma - work (duty) without desire for anything. If this is life, it is a challenge- for not to have any desire is also a desire planted in you by authority.

Does it therefore mean that man is almost a  lifeless sod on  which the winds blow, seasons sweep and finally he dies? When spring comes why should the flowers bloom? When you see beauty and goodness why does your heart flutter in elation ? Is it only a stimuli  to bring about a chemical reaction in your body? Man cannot live like a stone  being impervious to everything. When a thorn  scratches  the skin you feel pain: similarly  when you see goodness in a Gandhi you admire; you get attracted by beauty . You  desire another human being. All these come naturally to us. How can we subject ourselves to the external forces- natural, social, global - without expecting to participate effectively in the larger reality?

Man must dream, frustrations notwithstanding. Man must script a future. Expect things to happen in a particular way. But the characters he dreams of have their own dreams, aspirations, societal obligations. You can't fix others into your dream structure. Your expectations should end after you visualize your dream. Therefore dream. Visualize without expecting anything. That is what man is for.

The Trespasser

If God and nature blessed us with

beauty, love, mercy, compassion

who created this terror

this murder blast and horror!

The melody of non-violence rang

through the mazy course of history

How could Bin Laden, Azhar

blast away towers, cities and homes?

Man creates war to rule and loot

man creates terror and deceit

hold him guilty Lord

change his power to saint of love.

Let no Christ ride the cross,

let no rage blast homes,

make life a song of love

without 'Kasab' and 'Afzal !!

Sabita Sahu

Wow I'm Eighty Today !

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I woke up this Sunday to the chants of Happy Birthday from my loved ones ethereally whispered and sonorously communicated, disorienting me and my alignments with reality. What! I am eighty today! What is eighty ? A number or something beyond my comprehension in the schema of time? Well, one day I was born -that's for sure. If my birth was on a dated , numbered calendar date I was not responsible for it. But my parents must have been  delighted otherwise they wouldn't have given me an upbringing and education to face the time revealed challenges to make a man of me. I have lived a constrained yet free, pursuing my evocations with my inborn impulsiveness and impatience.

Should I now give a balance sheet? To whom and what for ? When you come to the world you have to live choicelessly. What you make of your life depends on your own circumstances and opportunities;  you know not where you came from and what for. Also you know not whither you would  go.  All you have is time measured by seconds, minutes, hours , days and years. Between your coming and going you have some conscious time which you must utilise to make yourself, if at all, a Being, Of what stuff or essence   you yourself ought to decide and work hard towards it through your education- formal, informal, intuitive. If you do nothing that is allow yourself to be played upon by nature and society and float like an atom in a magnetic field, that is your choice. But if you think you have to find out your own salvation and  create your own heaven  and hell, You may have to take the  available time span of your life as a race to glory, whatever be its contours.

From the beginning of my wingy days  I wanted to be a teacher: not that I had great things to teach but to learn. Learn how to go beyond the focal area of my eyes to see the unseen like chasing shadows in darkness. Hence my life is less sleep and more dreams. And dreams of the ecstatic in the humdrum made my life what I have made of it , if I ignore fate, destiny and the cosmic curve which apparently bends every moment.

I loved all  beautiful things of nature: sky and its luminosities, earth and her sea, forest, storms and all manifested mood shifts. I admired beauty in all its forms; flowers, women , words, rhythms, bubbles and craggy paths like belly folds (not tyres of fat) in an aged belly dancer. Death never disturbed me as I knew it was a given. Yes pain I hated. Any kind of physical pain. Tension was my middle  name for a man superimposing a phantom reality on his encountered reality will accept tension as a natural concomitant of his transcendental fantasies. I was never heartbroken by any betrayal, failure or frustration. I always made detours to find alternative  paths to my extraterrestrial energies to lift me up above the socio- political, governmental pressures denying me my due. Yes I have never entertained the idea of revenge to get even with my secret enemies. I have always ignored the hidden snakes, jumping over them to my self made paths. I was my own  master. I respected the wise, knowledgeable and the just. Respected institutions.  Although my faith in religion, rituals, God and the other world are shaky  I was never an iconoclast.

I have raised a family thereby fulfilling societal obligations. My wife and children are all good and noble souls. But I am not a confined family man. My world is vast and various with multitudes of imaginative structures. I love the human being; I don't love animals; without hating them I tolerate their presence and respect their Darwinian rights to life. I can never  kill even to save myself. I can never hate even if I am hurt beyond measure. I love the rivers, lakes and seas. Anything that is vast, deep and mysterious invites my soul. I am repelled by superficialities and all  artificial  constructs for tinsel glory.

I have discovered love as the only perennial value that can sustain the soul in its salvational quest. And I have loved with single minded devotion without expecting anything carnal or mundane. I have lived with sprightly convivial wordlessness.

What else could I have done? A good job, a good family, some praise, fame, respect and love and a house to live in, good food to eat, good things to wear and a salt-pepper fullness. If I feel empty that is my  stylish fullness of being. My dreams have not stopped  haunting me. My songs have not stopped throbbing my heart. My love has not ceased in my eighty year old heart. Well I have lived, yes lived in style and flourish. I am proud of my fourscore  and look forward to more songs of love, poetry and truth.