No Ice For Me

I have walked on fire thus far

now don't need ice any more.

I am too warm with my  work ethics,

I can spread energies all around me.

I have passion to build and create

to help the helpless  and feed the

hungry at the temple door  and

finally return to my sweet love

with my warmth through alien landscapes.

Ice will halt my steps- but

I have work to do -

to lift up hung chins

bring smiles in toothless faces,

to worship life, for it gives love.

I give light to inflame love

I'll put all my fire to

illuminate the lost horizons.

Sabita Sahu

Landing On Moon

Prafulla Kmar Mohanty

Sun, Moon and Stars are the only luminosities in human myths and reality which have permeated our imagination since the birth of man. Moon is always a lovable curiosity, for, it is beautiful yet has dark spots and patches, as Eliot wrote  'a washed out smallpox cracks her face'. It is serene and its beams induce desire in the lovers. Poets, painters and gilted lovers stare and  look at the moon for hours. In my early youth I used to spend the whole night , once in a while , on the Gopalpur sea beaches singing at the Moon, songs of slow rhythm. My mother , I remember, sang  "Come you Moon Uncle , Fall in the hands of my Kanhu" while playing with her grandson. The Moon for most cultures in India and abroad is feminine. For us Moon is male , our mother's brother. But for the west she is a woman, Greek myths make her Phoebe. She is a paragon of beauty. The full moon night is a metaphor of grace, prosperity and peace. Her silver rays are symbolic of cool resplendence suggesting royalty of life's peaceful synergy. Poets use the moon as a simile. A beautiful woman is always  compared with the moon. Lovers see their absent beloveds in the moon and write poems of sorrowful melody. But the moon is also an enigma for it waxes and wanes. Its fortnightly growth into full from  and its slow decline into total annihilation are also used in poetry to indicate rise and fall, glory and ignominy in human affairs.

Astrologically the moon plays a significant role in the natal chart of a man or woman. It shapes the body, gives splendour and fortune. In Indian sexology the moon moves in the body of a woman. According to the tithi the parts of the body become erotic zones and lovers ought to know those zones in sex play. The Odia poet Upendra Bhanja has given elaborate erotic descriptions of such zones. In classical feminist theories the menstrual cycle of a woman is controlled by the moon. The moon takes 27 days  and six hours to orbit the earth and a woman's period follows it. The Earth is a Woman and the Moon is a Male who moves around her in sexciting vigour. The Moon is a great lover in our myths. He enticed the wife of Brihaspati, Jupiter, and fathered Mercury. Tara although a married woman, fell for the charms of the most  handsome Chandra. Such myths abound in world literature and their charms have not diminished over time. But Aero-space science and technology have challenged these myths to almost insignificance.

Man has already landed on the  Moon in the last century. Niel Armstrong and others have walked on the  Moon. Now the Indian Chandrayana 2 also has attempted to land on the moon. The mission however has not been completed. The Moon is just a satellite of the earth. It is no one's Uncle or Aunt. It is not a supernal beauty like Aphrodite (unseen) or a modern Miss Universe. It is not even a beauty brand. Man has seen its craters, its rocky dusty face. The NASA scientists suspected that the moon is dry, waterless like a ruined piece of dried earth. There is no possibility of life. There is gravity but no water.  But the Indian Chandrayan I in its moon photographs raised a modicum of hope that yes there is water- not rivers, streams or oceans- but dried out substances suggesting its presence. The Indian moon craft has landed on the dark side of the moon, a first for mankind. The Rover will start its movement and search for water and other traces of life sustaining materials. Some venture capitalists have already planned  for  setting up honeymoon hotels, pleasure trips and all other mad chase of exotic pleasures. If the presence of water in the moon could be established beyond all reasonable doubts, it would be a great leap forward for space science. But what will the poets do? What will the lovers do ? Will they stop looking up the sky sniggering at the moon? Can the moon be ever wiped off our historical memory? Can I myself stop looking at the moon for hours on end slowly moving in a boat in Chilika? ...

No one will wait for answers. The unmarried women will sing praises of the Kumar Purnima Moon. The girls will wear new dresses and observe their Janhi Osha- a festival of the Moon. Poets will ride the moon with their lady loves even in New Moon nights. The seashore would be crowded as ever on the Autumn Full Moon nights. And I will always see my love as the moon- Full and glowing in the night, stiff and angry at noon and smiling in the evening- waxing and waning as the mood takes her on.

Negativity

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Negativity is the pastime of a few intellectuals, obsession for some politicians and a born womb- inheritance of a good number of naysayers. Some people enjoy negativity just to create controversies. Some  others are attitudinally negative out of jealousy. If they see a beautiful woman they will sigh like a demented philosopher and say- yes she is beautiful but beauty is transient, time will cause wrinkles on her shining skin, her golden breasts will hang like rotten mangoes just to touch her naval. There are  yet others for whom nothing in God's vast acres is good, nothing is pleasant. They are what the late lamented Arun Jaitley coined , "Nawabs of Negativity". There are people for whose palates nothing is tasteful. If a flawless Royal Dinner  is thrown on the marriage celebration of the  Princess these nawabs of negativity like the old Brahmin, in an old story I remember to have read, will say  "If it is too good how can it be good; it may satisfy the tongue but it will not be good for digestion". Such people, if they are taken to heaven- if there is a heaven somewhere- they will certainly say, "If there is no contrastive disorder Order has no meaning". These people are incurable specimens of negativity.

A Greek dramatist wrote " It is better not to be born in this world full of pain". I would like to ask, if you are not born how would you experience the pain of the world? Life is a cat and mouse game. If you are chased by a cat you run like a hare  to a lair of safety. Once you are safe in the dark corner of your hiding place you feel blessed. If a cat misses its prey it would curse itself. But if you catch your prey and make a hearty meal of it you  will say like my sometime friend in my salad days. "What a lovely  world God has created"!- for his favourite Lobster breakfast. The World is beautiful for its variety and plenty. You see light and shade, enjoy your (stupid) joys and suffer your( cursed ) pain. But at times the pain of separation is also the most enjoyable feeling this world offers. You write volumes, wait out the unending hours and  sing woeful songs requesting, cajoling the clouds or the wind to carry your bleeding heart for your love's mercy. The binaries of life  make life desirable despite the prickly pears wounding your kissers. The world offers choices. You can be what you wish to be or you can wait for nature and society to shape your body and mind. But most philosophers and thinkers, poets and politicians are positive in their approach to Reality. The horrors of life must be vanquished by human intelligence. If floods come and devastate life does not end. Man is the greatest survivor and in order to survive you have to utilize all the negative intelligence positively . The politicians all over the world are a hated lot because they often fail to use their  positive thinking  in making the world a good place to live in. But those who blame them, do they have an alternative in their mind? It is easy to  say that the world is  an unmanageable place. But man has managed the world for millions  of years by his positive thinking. The negativists have not given us any alternative world. They do not have the blueprint of  an alternative scenario of life.  Negativity and cynicism are impediments on the  path of the positive visualizers of life on the planet. Negativity stops progress, halts life, increases pain, the pain of nothing happening anywhere.

Death is the natural negativity to life. But death has not stopped the world's forward movement towards progress of life. In the world today man's life is more comfortable, the world is more livable than it was ever before. But negativity is also essential  for it inspires thinking, it gives energy to penetrate the layers of clouds to reach light. It induces human  energy to fight against all the enemies of life- hunger, sickness and old age, even death. It is negativity which creates  the scenario of horror and doom, thereby forcing human consciousness to fight the doomsday possibilities with redoubled vigour. Negativity is like the other side of hope, faith and light which man would like to reach by his determination to survive meaningfully.

But those who always see death in life are not human. The stubborn negativist  deserves expulsion from human society. But man has accommodated all negativity. Even Caliban whom Shakespeare abandoned in The Tempest has his place. The stubborn inhumanity of some negative specimens too are needed by the society to appreciate the glow of positive thinking. Despite negativity we now fly in the air, sail beyond the seas and create gardens in icy fields. The most unresponsive lover too is a darling:  We should win them with more love. The negative minds need our love for they are loveless barren wasteland. Let us try to make gardens of them.

The Sea Calls Me - Sandra !

 

May be my dainty footprints

on the sand reminded

him of our unflinching love

of time tested bonds beyond births,

Sandra- He called me while I was

bowing down to Lord Jagannath.

His call invited me in lovely rhythms

the midnight rain of the season

pushed my steps to the shore

the beach was lonely, dark sombre,

the waves gave me a roaring welcome

wet, shaky and  ecstatic I stood

Sandra, he called again in foamy delight

spreading his wide mouth to kiss my feet,

but when I advanced  he receded.

O' sea take me in

enter my soul and body

my mortal eternity of separation

I pine birth after birth

quench the fire and calm my soul.

give me the depth of your being,

O'  'Father of Fire' give me light

to find my way to complete the circle

my agony is too much for my life

fill me up , be one with me

come with one final roar make me

one with you  be my saviour my love!

Sabita Sahu

I Am Right : You Are Wrong

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Since language mediated reality dominated human consciousness two words, Right and Wrong, coexist in all human discourses. The conversation may be just a chat between a  couple (after two years of marriage), father and child, teacher and student, neighbours, public debates, parliament, debates in a democracy, arguments in a court room or anywhere else in state-center, country-country or even young or mature lovers who vow to die for each other, these two words will occur several times and the powerful between them or the specimen of patriarchy would be right. If it is not accepted by the other party  the result is quarrel, divorce, war or murder. The church, temple and mosque supporters have been killing publicly declaring the victims a heretic before burning him/ her at the stake. The other religious zealots too kill. The strong in argument  and weak in strength or power concedes defeat at a public place but  nurses his hurt  with million nourishments to his ego and thinks of himself as a revenge hero. In literature the revenge hero has his pride of place. The weak and the meek become strong in villainy and clandestine  machinations like Iago or Shakuni. Might is always Right. In India the sages and scholars have approved of Birabhogya Vasundhara, which is also true of Timurs and Ghajinis!

In the modern world Galileos are no more punished but nations which are powerful in military might may have claims on your rights and ideas. The Gulf countries are always wrong, for they are weak in money and muscle. China is right to claim Sikkim and Arunachal; Pakistan too is right in sending terrorist to India out of spite with the plea of freedom for kashmir. The United Nations becomes a divided nations the moment a Trump or Ji Jinping asserts a right which flouts International law but if a weaker nation raises a universal issue, genuine, authentic and peace disturbing it is cold shouldered by the P5, for they would decide what is morally, legally and politically right for the good of mankind.

But there are exceptions. When Taliban is created by the Americans to counter the  advance of the Russians in Afghanistan, they were right: For what they did was for world peace. What they did in Iraq was also right. They attacked Iraq accusing Saddam Hussain of stockpiling Weapons of Mass Destruction; but no WMD was found anywhere. But whose sense of Right was powerful enough to challenge America? In the world politics of power equations today every leader is right . Even Imran Khan is right to surrender the power of an elected Government to his Army General  Bajwa by yielding to the demand of a three year extension  post - retirement. Right and wrong have no relevance when need, greed and power politics decide the future of a country.

Changing the political metaphor when we look into our daily  martyrdom of morals we are often bewildered. When a mob lynching happens over a silly unreasonable issue two groups representing right and wrong start  debating on national television in India. The anchor helplessly acquiesces  in for loss of TRP. But if an anchor shows some grit and opposes what is morally and legally wrong  the power group calls him/ her a soldout media person. In the name of free speech the right claimers parade statistical lies without fear . The nay sayers often carry  the day by the decibels they raise. If a Rapist is a religious leader his statement is institutionally supported proving yet again, the victim is always in the wrong.

 Right and wrong are now divorced from morality. It has more political overtones, that's why  we try to make politically correct statements despite the voice of conscience whispering what you are saying in the public is a trouble  avoiding logic far removed from truth. A woman now can say to  have sex with another person consensually is not a betrayal of love. I love you beyond the chastity of the body. A man too is now legally free to have  another woman without transgressing the charmed circle of his family. A lover who forsakes the world for his beloved is now considered a fool. Even his lady love often says you are right in your love for me but wrong to expect positive response from me. You go on pouring your soulful love on me, delight me by your poetic words, write volumes of poems for my entertainment: that is your Right and the right way to treat your love . But if you expect the same kind of participative response in word, speech and action, you are wrong.

Right and wrong have now constitutional validity. If my right does not violate the Constitution I am not wrong. But if I think my unegoistic word and action is Right I am wrong.  But if  I feel what you feel is the right thing to write, speak and do, do it without bothering about the others' cry of wrong  wrong  wrong.

I Am The Richest

I am the richest, proudest of all

my garden glazes with Tulips

my sky rains nectar of hope

my sun, moon, stars

gleam in glamour

move around me for his love.

He smiles bounties,

fulfills my dreams

he has no conditions

none can outbid him

in loves plenty,

goodness is in his soul

charity is his mind's frame

riches are uncountable:

He is no god- He is a man

all women dream.

He is humble yet subtle

makes me feel an Empress

by his love and grace,

his love expands like gods mind,

He is my wealth my world

my desires end- wishes on hold

I am the richest, proudest of all.

Sabita Sahu

I am The Butterfly Of Mehul Forest

Bowing down I have  never

displayed my smallness ever

nor bent my knees for mercy

never ask for gold mansions

never expected gifts or presents

I am the butterfly of Mehul forest,

where is the strength in my wings?

To hold your empire's scepter

to fire shafts from your quiver.

I am happy with the fragrance,

colours enchant me

I have lived thus through love

I fly with pride, not begging

or asking cajoling , flattering

I call my soul with songful air.

Don't feed me with rubies

like a caged bird

don't smear my delicate body

with arrogance

leave me alone in the

revolution of birth and death

in this changeful earth;

for the love of love for love's worship

in verses of undying lyrics

that is  my palace melody

the success of my grace and beauty

the glory of life in mortality

in this world of laughs and tears.

Sabita Sahu