Half Truth

I don't know how many moons

became full and sank at the horizon

the last three months are a blur

disappeared like the forgotten eclipse.

Sky  I did not watch although

I am a moon gazer watching wakeful

the changing colours - silver to yellow

when dreams evade my imagination

despite pill induced sleep late very late

but I wake up with a dream half remembered

half startling me to a sweaty morning,

I try to recollect my dream sipping

my half cup tea tasteless odorless.

I need not rush anywhere

no bus to catch, no office to push files

I start the computer for the pending work

when my cell phone rings

Good morning Princess Sophie - Good morning

Yes, Good morning my Prince charming

but who is this Sophie

You, you my love, today you are Sophie

yesterday you were Juliet,

Tomorrow you'll be Satanica - ha-ha !

Breakfast comes, messages flow

I  walk to the bathroom to get ready

for another day of social Sabbath

God sleeps and I wake to life.

Sabita Sahu

The New Normal

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

The new normal is to live with fear. Wear the mask when you leave home. When you come back throw away the dress in the wash drum. Sanitize your hands. Wash your face, legs - even shoes. The vegetables you brought from  the market must also be washed in warm water. Maintain a distance of two yards from everyone in the family - wife, children, parents, servants. Never allow anyone into your home. Practice Yoga at home. Watch Yoga videos or programmes on TV. 'Watch Astha Channel' friends advise( over phone). If you follow the instructions of Baba Ramdev your immunity will increase. The damned virus cannot attack you, even if it does you will not be seriously affected. Never go out for morning jogging  or your dog walk: Walk on your terrace. Never spit on public places etc, etc. The Ministry of Health spokespersons  warn everyday, channels repeat the message  a dozen times a day. Newspapers warn everyday. The World Health Organization too gives this handwashing, masking, social distance maintaining mantra as the panacea for  this Corona pandemic.

All this is for life; to avoid the hospital bed, the ICU, the Ventilator and the unclaimed state of your body if you die. And life means mere living, prolonging your moments on this planet by distancing yourself from your dear ones. If your mother develops temperature you panic how to take her to the hospital. You have no driver, Ola - Uber services are not available, the hospital ambulance or some govt vehicle may arrive after twenty calls to the given numbers. Finally if she gets admitted in a  hospital you cannot attend your dearest patient. Your wife would refuse standing six feet away from you. You cannot approach any neighbours - your bridge friends, your peg up friends, your colleagues and cousins- for fear insulates all human hearts against the divine values of sympathy, compassion and love. Fear binds your feet from moving towards your dead dear ones with whom you had spent a life time.

The towns are dark, gloomy  and empty. Roads are blank deserted and eerie. At times you see migrant workers families walk in the hot sun with kids on shoulders and bags in hand. The women too sweat out as true and devoted followers of their hungry, penniless and betrayed men who walk thousand miles to their homes and secure environs with hope and faith. All this for dear life - to keep base life afoot. The masters they served in the distant lands, the skills they exhibited did not deserve sympathy or help. But are they welcome at home, sweet home , for which they braved the angry sun and hazardous asymmetrics? No, the pandemic has emptied all juices of humanity from the human heart. But you can't complain. The Corona days will be like this. You will work from home. Sitting before a computer  in casuals you will do the biddings of your boss. Uncertain of salary you will certainly please or pretend to please your pay masters.

If you are a superannuated person you have few options.  The temples are closed. Parks are closed. tea addas too are closed.  Your septuagenarian friends are no more available within the limited elbow room you have. You can read newspaper or books if you are a bookish type. If not sit before the TV and watch retros of old epics  and mythologies. If your mind does not that way tend you can throw tantrums at your wife. Shout half articulated expletives at the inefficiency of Governments at handling Corona Crisis. Find fault with everything- the lockdown and the  Unlock I. You may ring up your old colleagues and admirers, if any, and pester them with questions like,(a) Is it God's way of punishing human arrogance? Why shouldn't Govt. do something for the middle class? Why should we pay taxes when Govt. is incapable of handling a crisis? How could China be so inhuman? The land of Confucius and Daisaku Ikeda has gone bunkers, does China want to have a world empire?

And if you are in love, if you are a true life -time lover you will find sunrise, sunset the crescent moon- all mocking birds in flight, they come unobserved as you wait for the call of your soulmate. The mobile phone is the only sun -moon to brighten her face. Her voice warbles in your ears like Cuckoo's. You know she is on the other side of daylight, in the deeper recesses of the seven seas. She does not tiptoe on the horizon teasing you to swim to her. She is only a face on a phone screen, wallpaper doll moving hands and eyes from lord knows where. She is nearer to the eye, farthest from sight. But choicelessly you video conference with her. You can't kiss her masked  face. She would remind you of your birthday promises which you have not fulfilled. All your promise of filling her blank years and ushering in her blissful midcentury starlit canopy over her thinning hair will strike you hollow. She would smile without lipstick and ask: Where is your celebration, the candles and the roses all the way from here to eternity?...

 You will turn morose and watching her radiant eyes speak with a hesitant voice: This New Normal will change in a few months my Love. Next year I'll compensate with redoubled vigour.

Waste

The waves of my mind are still

my roaring passions are indrawn

I am now sinking into my depths

in hopeless surrender to silence.

I recede from earth sun moon

the sea nymphs are gone far inland

my limbs have denied to hold my fancies

my mind has lost all romantic agony.

May be I have wasted my time

waiting, praying in futile loneliness

now I am calm patient ,

no pain no joy stirs my mind

I  need only a silent end

no wish for rebirth or redemption

let the ashes be buried or

vanished in air I don't care.

Sabita Sahu

Life is For Ever

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Does anything end in this world? Man visualizes the last scene of everything because man is mortal. Anyone born on this earth dies. Anything that begins ends. Dreams end in nightmares, a smile ends in tears, the most beautiful rose fades away into black morbidity. A man celebrates birthdays and his children, if at all, remember his death anniversaries. A song, a play, a book, a building begins only to end at a point. All these are scenes of a reality which records many a repetition of a process - Beginning, Middle and End. If there is no end it becomes a drag on our time. If a man lingers painfully the children lose patience. They pray 'O' God don't give him more pain. Let him go peacefully. We wish everything to end in an orderly fashion. We glorify life and often glorify death too.  If somebody dies serving the country we call him a martyr. A brave soldier who measures his bloody length on the ground is crowned by his death. The end is natural but we wish to make the end grand.  The stoic philosopher's generalizations are not very welcome. If the beginning was grand the end too should be fantastic. But how many people accept the end of things in their own life? When youth ends a  strange cynicism begins although we say age brings wisdom to man. The end is never accepted gracefully.

A love begins, grows, deepens, matures but does not endure. All great lovers glorify separation and pain. Except in the poetry of Upendra Bhanja, the most respected Kabi Samrat in Odia literature, love has not been shown by any other world poet as the most sustaining value of life. This love begins in courtship of a classical kind, fructifies in passionate union, matures in separation and attains wisdom in old age. When the lovers sit in languor wearing silver crowns on their heads, love's timeless kingdom rules and reigns with love. But this poetic stance and worship of love cannot transcend death. Love may outlast the lovers but the lovers must die as is the law of life. Fame, glory, poetry, virtue may be immortal but they cannot conquer mortality. The end must come to everyone, everything even our planet and solar system. If the Earth started with the Big Bang it may end with a bigger Bang. But should we write the scenario, the screenplay of the end?

When the Two World Wars in close succession raged the civilization of half of the world the end of the world was grimly predicted. The doomsayers and negativists thought the end had come. But No. The green shoots of life reappeared under the debris of civilization. The prophets of doom are always overeager to visualize gloomy scenes where murky death overpowers life. When the last scene of a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy is viewed by a sobbing audience the next sunrise seems to be beyond the human sky. When Gandhi died many thought India's soul was permanently lost. But no such thing happened. The great Ashokan massacre of Kalinga could not decimate the Odia; he arose within a few hundred years to build the Konark and other architectural masterpieces. River Saraswati died or rather dried up into a sandy bed. But that did not declare the end of Indian civilization. Civilizations change external contours for the inner soul never dies. The Greeks today are no more what they were in the Homeric times but they will have the revival of the Ulysses spirit one day,   maybe in centuries ahead. India was almost written off during the Mogul- British Rule. But see where she is today in the 21st century. The end is not a finality; it is at best a pause into a new melodious thunder.

Man never accepts an end, especially the Hindus never take death as final. A tree falls but the tree is never dead. As clouds all on a sudden darken the bright blue sky, some calamity, death or defeat motheats the human grain but in a brief while the sky returns to a brighter, clearer glow and life resumes its flow. But most human beings particularly the 'educated' ones see death everywhere. The opposition parties in democracies see the ruling class as harbingers of death. In India, many politicians of such mindset think of Primeminister Modi as the  Covid virus, as if covid will take India back to the stone age. Nothing outlasts the process of change; no death disease disaster can ever seal the fate of man. Man is the only creature who fights all calamities, withdraws from the burning fields to fight another day and fights. After the Kurukshetra India was not destroyed. After the 1929 Depression America was not impoverished. The Spanish Flu, Sars have not struck infertility to the human womb. This Covid too will be defeated. But man by habit will write, predict and talk about Doomsday.

No one has seen the last scene of anything. If Hamlet's last scene is littered with dead bodies Elsinor will not die under Fortinbras. Life will spring piercing iron surfaces and new roses will always bloom. Time has no end only stops or pauses. Therefore my friends never write The Last Scene of anything. The last perhaps is the First of the new Resurrection.

Fight Corona

Why stay home  like cowards
how can police and nurses
save weak men and women in masks
why should governments  do everything
for weak lazy morons like us.

Come out let us go to our fields
let factory chimneys exit smoke
labs, offices, schools and shops
run with  the fury of life
meet humans, dance and sing
blow the conch, beat drums
resound the skies.

Defy this tiny killer,
yes- a few have died
and will die, but if human
sacrifice is the ultimate,
so be it: let's join hands with
the covid fighters,
let's die to live  again and grow
let's not cow down and howl
like trapped animals in a cage.

Sabita Sahu

Learn Humility

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

Life is a journey from crisis to crisis. Man is the only creature who has demonstrated time and again that no crisis or great calamity, no Cloud burst, no Tsunami, no Covid or Sars can  ever wipe him off the surface of earth. We say with enthusiastic  optimism, every crisis is an opportunity. What is the nature of the opportunity  is however another question which will be asked after  the opportunity faces another crisis. India in particular, has survived many a crisis. Invasions,  famines, captivity, loss of freedom, floods, droughts and  manmade communal carnage and many such natural , unnatural supernatural disasters  have not yet destroyed the will to live and conquer. What we have conquered or achieved should not be asked at this point.  Human history has recorded the onslaughts of nature and fellow men but man has survived to record his plight. This endless process is what we call life. We turned to God, religions ,ideologies and cultural practices to save ourselves. But the connotations of safety, joy , peace and well being have changed over time. Man's resilience and adaptation have braved all life threatening disasters in course of  our history.

But have we ever learnt any lessons from all these? When the Amphan struck in the midst of Covid pandemic India did not cower under the wrath of the unseen powers. We lost our well nourished trees, harvests,  lives, property and above all our faith in the Saviour. But when the cyclone blew over we sighed in relief and returned to our old games of blame politics and hate. We saw the same things after the two Great Wars. During this Corona crisis also we try to blame China. Nepal comes out with a new map claiming rights over parts of India's territory. We have never learnt to be satisfied with what we have. We covet territories to satisfy our expansionist desires. The kings of yore went on expedition  to conquer territories of other kingdoms. We stole cows from other kingdoms; forests for wood and agriculture; we looted temples and destroyed them in the name of religious pride; we fought wars ruining human habitation, Kurukshetras were created for ego and exclusivity and also killed for revenge without caring for consequences.

What right do we have to kill another human being when we cannot create life? The elemental world is for everyone, be he a man, animal or insect. Life is not our monopoly, infact man has no right even to use this word monopoly: But this word too is a part of human vocabulary. Corporates too claim monopoly as do irate lovers and possessive men and women over their lovers, children, property and almost everything. Even God is monopolized by certain religious ideologues.

But when rights, monopolies are fiercely attacked by virus, what do we do? In our competitive survival instinct enters the old diseases of jealousy, hatred and oneupmanship. And all these old traits of man are under attack. We may survive  this and find  something a pill or vaccine to contain Corona? But what then? What lessons have we learnt from this crisis? We spoke of enlightenment. We have shored some wisdom from turbulent seas, we have gained insights into life and nature: Where are those when the language of hate, power, rivalry, domination and opportunistic exploitation of man is freely used- not  by the meek but by the so called powerful?  How long can man play these games making his own rules?

Man must remember, if his memory has not failed him altogether that no man can rule the world. Man comes to the world for a brief while not to seek bubble reputation but to make this earth the greatest monument of life. All his powers stop at the elements. If the air ceases to flow he will die. If light fails life will never generate.  He should learn to be grateful to the merciful plenitude of nature. Show your powers not to conquer  for your victories are temporary. No victor in the world, Alexander, Napoleon left his mark on earth as one who has heightened human virtues. Victories have only created fear, death and devastation. Man cannot conquer earthquakes or cyclones. All his victories are over men and animals. And the dust of time settles on it burying it to posterity. Man should learn the only lesson after having lived for millions of turbulent years: Humility.  He should display his art of living in all spheres, produce his poetry, music , sculpture and even the art of war to please man, to entertain man, for, life is not always a bed of roses. His spark of life should illumine not burn. He must understand and empathise the pain of man. Feed the hungry, wipe off the tearing eye, stand by the weak and meek. Love the human being for he is hungry for love. Make life on earth a choric panegyric for the Maker. Never try to substitute Him.  This world does not pay heed to man's pompous arrogance. This world loves, love, beauty, compassion, heroism to save the victim. Humbleness is the greatest virtue in man.

Now the world is in the grip of fear, the fear of death, the fear of recession. The fear of hunger and poverty. Fear as all scriptures say, is the beginning of wisdom. Humility is the only  wisdom, man ought  to learn to make  life liveable. 'Take Physic pomp', man at best is a forked animal. Humility will make him a legitimate spark of the Life Force.

Hold Me If You Can

I know death stalks every moment

life cheats me, but I have

my ways to live on

without blackening my heart.

To please others I cried alone

wiped others' tears despite my own

smiled at everyone knowing well

how they mock my smiles 

so what if they are stuck in time

with paralyzed nerves.

I give light like the Sun

give breath like the air

do I wait for permission to give,

I give because I have to keep

my senses on line

I don't wait or need recompense

my being and sense of existence

all that I have for myself

and for you.

I own the earth, air and light

I have the  lease till death.

I am proud as I own you

and will leave this earth

to the other world , you in me.

Sabita Sahu