Happiness Is Not For Man

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

 

Pleasure and Pain, they say, are agreeable and disagreeable chemical reactions in the body. Ok. Let me dismiss them as aberrations of the system, a manufacturing defect deliberately left unattended by the Maker. What is happiness then?  A lingering sentiment where all wants, desires, aspirations, dreams are in a state of animated suspension? A happy man is ... what? Is he contented, desireless and therefore in a static state? I really do not know, for, in my childhood I read - Are you a pig satisfied or an Aristotle dissatisfied? I know I am not a pig. I am naturally dissatisfied with everything. The more I read, the more I discover my ignorance. My knowledge does not help me in fixing a blade in my Mac Fusion, I request others to do it for me, The more I see the state of the world, not only in 2020 but in all my years of silent encounters with reality I was never elated. A few scientific inventions, however, have made my senses wild in hope for happiness but I never saw or felt any static glow bringing cheer to all human faces. Happiness, I view as human happiness, not the personal happiness of a prophet or thinker or a political strategist who mesmerizes a large number of people to follow him. Private, personal frustration often makes a man devise a philosophy, a so called salvation path or an ideology which promises happiness. The people who followed Asharam or Ram Rahim or the Buddha or Shankar or any breathing creature, never lived their own lives. We follow an ideology or cult figure because we have no mind of our own to find happiness on our own. We always wait for a Messiah.  We always wait for Godot.

 

If happiness is really a worriless, healthy, prosperous, free, well loved, sexually satisfied, well respected and honoured state in a human being, it is available only in poetic imagination, in some gem studded Orb of infinity in which a person listens to the alaaps of Tansen at dawn, the Beethoven Jupiter Symphony while watching swimming nymphs being painted by  Botticelli in a moonlit night.  Such things make happy reading, not happy reality.  The human mind, we must remind ourselves is never happy, not meant to be happy as ideas, thoughts move in time defying logic in the mind.  But the fact is that the human grain cannot tolerate reality; if it is unchanged he is bored, if it changes rapidly he gets wild. Man is intellectually radicalised against his own civilizational values and the structures of his own making.

If man ever wanted to be happy, the present times are the best in the last about one million year old history of man. Food, house and medicines are available to more than 95 % of humans, although the availability is not equitable. But hunger-death, sickness - death have come down.  More farmers in India die committing suicide than due to starvation and disease. Wars of the mass destruction kind are almost gone. More people die of plane crashes and road accidents than by organised warfare. Yes, the argument will be based on Covid-19; the world has not yet found a vaccine and this coronavirus has changed the cultural patterns of society.  But by the year end more than three vaccines will be available and return to the old normal may become quite possible. But what is the old normal? Eat well, work hard, earn more, drink more and think of destroying India, China or some other country. Pakistan will stake her hunger against hate for India; the LOC and borders will always be hot. China would plot against America, India and other democracies; the latest being opium trade, getting supplies from Afgan Taliban. Despite all these deprivations of the human material the present period could keep a man happy in the post- covid decades. But who wants to be a good human being and live in peace with neighbours and fellow men?

 

The institutions built by civilizational values like Parliamentary Democracy, Supreme Court, Civic liberties, free speech and similar ennobling institutions do not keep people away from fakery, hate and violence. One argumentative thesis by way of explanation of the present and continuing danger facing modern man has come from Samual P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. The western values and the values of the Muslim world are almost always in a combative stage. And this clash both kinetic and simmeringly potential has kept mankind on edge. The Muslim world refuses to accept the modern education, work culture and institutions of free expression of ideas or individualistic lifestyle. Hence anger is nursed by groups of human kind who do not wish to be content. Nothing pleases them. They wallow in anxiety, uncertainty, fear and anger.

 

 Man creates order, harmony, balance and calls them classical values but romanticizes violence and justifies anger. In short, man enjoys polluting the earth, poisoning the air, killing other humans, hating his own breed- species and blowing up all bridges to human heart. If Cain killed his brother and raped his mother and ruined the future of  God's prized creation, why blame the inheritors for their transgressive shenanigans? Man never wants peace or happiness, in fact, he hates peace. A calm evening of human togetherness picks on his nerves. He breaks the calm of the head, bowing before some God at day break. Chaodelights him, cacophony excites him anatd love makes him a rapist. He will not change come Covid come Plague. Long live Man!

Deathless Life

Death is the only guarantee

to  life's intensity

love ennobles life to conquer death.

When heaven  sinks to hell

hell rises to meet the earth

and the three kingdoms of God

merge into a paradise of love.

 

When love feeds the needs

the atmosphere resonates

the rhythms of nature fill

the new  world with vibrant music,

the cosmic dance begins

eyes sparkle stars wink in joy

the earth holds the sky canopy

over the blooming petals of love.

 

Come what may, thunder or pestilence

all heartless and Aspic stings

we will not shrink in fear

nor shall we quake in dread:

For we are now love decorated

immortals of God's Hall of glory.

 

Our love dance, our agile bodies

Hand, leg, eyes, and heartbeats

will make our cosmic dance, a celebration

Heaven- hell, earth in unison

the most sombre coronation

of Love's Victory where God

would join our chorus of life eternal.

Sabita Sahu

 

Underlining

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I never prefer old books although they are available on the roadside pavements in big cities plentifully and at throw away prices. A brand new book, press fresh excites me like an oven fresh chicken leg. Holding such a book in my hand gives me sensuous joy. A new book has a smell like the scent of the earth on a monsoon breaking shower at dawn. Its touch enlivens me like a flower shivering under the humming bee. My eyes feast on the tome as though I am savouring grace. No, no exaggeration. Any new book thrills me even today. I place it against my heart and feel my beats, keeping time on the timeless Intellectual possibilities. When I start reading I begin from the first letter. If the book is dull, uninspiring and pedantic I don't throw it away. At least an author has spent countless hours to write it, has poured his/her convictions, however, mistaken and ill-conceived on midnight pages. The book may not be chewable or digestible yet it is a product of a mind however dull or stubborn. I respect an author's ego, if not his egoistic outpourings; I turn the pages with languorous resignation and keep it aside. If a book catches my fancy I enter the writer's mind and try to reconstruct it in my mind. But when I am with Shakespeare or Vyasa or Tolstoy I weigh each word, each phrase on the balance of Vasuki's hood.

I never put any mark or even a dot on a book lest I interfere or intrude upon a great mind's aesthetic architecture. I read, re-read a good book and try to gauge the expanse of a mind, the vision of a  genius. If the book withstands my probing questions and counter narratives, I touch my forehead with the book and reverentially place the book on the shelf. I never underline any sentence or stanza. Nor put lines on the margin. Except my signature on the title page I never put any mark anywhere. In fact, I never hold a pen/pencil while reading a book, nor do I take notes.

 

One day my Professor (BKT), my research supervisor saw some of the books on my study table and with a smirk said: These books are for show or what? Have you read these books? There is not a single line anywhere? I was not embarrassed. I said,  when I read a book I never underline any passage. If there are purple patches, I remember.  I trust my memory. BKT said, that's fine,  you do not want to disfigure a book but when you do research these marked passages come handy.  And I know you never take notes... I didn't argue. I said, I will underline things hereafter. BKT was a very perceptive intellectual but very meticulous, orderly and disciplined. When my thesis was submitted he warned me: Since you have not quoted and challenged any critic, the evaluators may think you have not read any secondary source materials. But the foreign scholars are hopefully, objective. They will certainly appreciate originality. I mused Amen.

Thereafter I made it a point to sit with a pen whenever I began reading a book. And also underlined certain portions which appealed to me or struck me as original. This habit continued till my 60th year after which I made this habit occasional. I marked only those portions which I may refer to in future. Today  I turned the pages of Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground and was at a passage which I had underlined, God knows when. The lines are,

"And what, pray, does civilization soften in us? All civilization does, is to develop in man the many sidedness of his sensations, and nothing absolutely nothing more. And through the development  of his many sidedness man, for all we know, may reach the stage when he will find pleasure in bloodshed."(sec vii)

To be honest I was surprised at the prophetic grandeur of the sentence. But I was also disturbed at the assertion that civilization has not taught us to soften in us the aggressive rebelliousness which causes bloodshed. Dostoevsky agrees that civilization opens up the many sidedness of the human beings. All emotions, passions, intellectual pursuits find a free atmosphere to be at full play. But will the post Enlightenment thinkers agree with him? Does civilization open up all sides - and here too scholars do not see eye to eye on many contours. If liberalism, democracy, globalization and secularism are true civilizational values why do thinkers like Justine  E. Smith (Irrationality) challenge Pinker and others? Bill Gates may accept the professed values of civilization but Trump does not - why? Xi Jinping does not believe in any nuances of civilization, except global domination. The true successor of Mao Zedong believes in a  profession of lies, deceit and hypocrisy, for  XI's or the CPC's brand of political faith has brought the 2020 world to the brink of disaster. What are the many sides which civilization opens up? Fellow feeling, togetherness, faith in the rule of law or bigotry and Jihad, honour killing or something else like - Every death diminishes me?   There is no unanimity in anything. What Nial Ferguson calls Civilization Harari may not accept and what Harari accepts as Civilization Sashi Tharoor may not concur in. How many sides do the humans have? Perhaps legion. But man has always enjoyed the Romance of Bloodshed. Staking his mortality he wills immortality by his sword. Dostoevsky perhaps saw more of gore than the well rounded human spirit making the world a concord of all tunes. And in the now world we see the truth of Dostoevsky's prophetic musings.

 

I was delighted that I had underlined something which is perceptually universal. I could see that line, faded and smudged, as I ran through the book. Yes, underlining is good although one part of my spirit still believes that a book's appeal should be virginal. But I will make the compromise, I will underline, sideline with coloured pencils and make the pages more colourful than those could be.

The Half Sphere

The half-moon peeped through

my window grill at midnight,

the midwinter chill

pinpricked my pores,

I opened my hair and 

went to the terrace

without any woolens,

everything was half at the moment,

my half-lived life

my studies not been full

even my dreams half-buried under

the half formed snow.

 

But the fullness of my being

is ready for  full encounter

my pride is full

my desires are full

full is my body and mind,

the sky above is always full

my efforts, however, are not so.

 

When my love whispers from afar

with full-throated glee

half-joking, half-serious:

Should everything be half,

I said no, the half will be double

come let's make the world full together

no belly will be half full

no sleep shall be marred

by half dreams broken into doom

The hemispheres are we

we will join the spheres and

 make the earth fulfil herself.

Sabita Sahu

Moony Memories

Another day of excitement

I stood against the towering

roaring  waves, to see the

divine love of moon and sea,

soft and slow was the breeze

everything was in its motion

to witness the unique union.

 

All decked up like Venus

bright and beautiful,

the moon peeped out

tearing  the clouds

to fall on the body of the sea

to be swayed by the waves

and enjoy the glides.

 

The sea caressed her

with every unfolding wave

and with every rise she came up

with a splendid smile to end the battle

to lose and merge with him.

 

Suddenly the memories arose

love stirred in my heart

creating typhoons in 

my silent thoughts

fanning my thirsty emotions

to carry the flight.

 

If I have self insulated myself,

love me like the raging sea

ready I am to  dance with

the waves  and can make no

mistake to live a life

I desire to live.

Sabita Sahu

Ram Mandir Bhumipuja

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Those who say and write, The Ram (Janmabhumi) Mandir Bhumipuja (ground breaking) on August 5,2020 amid Corona chaos was deliberately fixed to add injury to insult to the protesters of Article 370 abrogation are braying off the mark. Whether the coincidence was fortuitous or willed the fact is, history was restored after a gap of 500 years of a cultural void. The Hegelian Spirit of History has now regained its self-conscious  Freedom. Hopefully this Freedom will determine its own pace  and course. The cultural dimension which is the primum mobil of history will now give  its clockwise push to make the culture a reinvigorated  entity, free to expand its pristine value structure. Therefore the Bhumipuja at Ram Janmabhumi to raise a grand temple should not be viewed through any political or sectarian lens. The Mandir is only an artefact, a visual wonder perhaps, to arouse the aesthetic sense of the devotees and visitors. What matters is the spirit, the essence, the symbolic value construct of a culture which in its mazy course is still the sustainer of a civilization. If Ram's Ideals, values his sense of moral governance are valid and dynamic the post Bhumipuja generations of  India must demonstrate by their words and deeds  that man can make the world his home in sun and shower. If this is not the lesson imparted by the ceremony, the ceremonial visual tapestry will hang on a date in a calendar.

 

Ram is worshipped in India as an avatar of Vishnu, the administrative  head of the Universe in the Trinity imaginary of Indian thinkers. The epic Ramayan, composed by the sage poet Valmiki  may or may not have any authentic historical reality as no record of Rama's birth and his life's works exist. The Indians termed the epics Ramayana and Mahabharat as history (Itihasa) and as such the work of Valmiki can be accepted, contrapuntal challenges notwithstanding. Scholars are, however, at variance about its date of composition. If the popular belief is believed Ramayana predates the Vedas but most modern scholars believe that the epic was written sometime between 300 BC and 200 CE. But in popular imagination  Ram is forever, does not matter  BC or CE. Now the main question is why is Ram a permanent feature of Indian memory? Even the neighbouring countries like Srilanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia , Philippines and Iran, Afghanistan have versions of the Ramayana in their social lives? The episodes of the epic are still enacted in Thailand and Indonesia, and in Iran only very recently some sculptural evidence of a Ram Chariot and Hanuman's kneeling obeisance posture has been found. This definitely suggests the impact of the epic and its eponymous hero on a larger territory beyond the borders of India. Ram's geopolitical fame and his  practised values definitely have touched a universal human chord. We can  assert beyond an iota of  doubt that Ram was historically real and his name and deeds had spread far and wide.  Now we can ask the other question: Why was Ram admired if not worshipped, by a large segment of humanity spread over South East Asia and beyond?

 

A human being is raised to a deity status when his values are seen as the most respectable for mankind and his works or deeds, his judgements, heroism - restraint and above all his administration and governance of human affairs are felt as life ennobling and ecofriendly. Ramchandra of Ayodhya is one such(literary) deity for men and women who have heard about his stories, that is his life's highs and lows, achievements and sacrifices. Born a Prince  (a miracle birth induced by divine elixir) his childhood was spent under the tutelage of a strong willed disciplinarian Biswamitra; his reversal of fortune came on the day of his coronation as king of Ayodha, caused by human agents; his life in exile turned its course when his wife Sita was kidnapped by Ravana, the most powerful king of Lanka - but he did not succumb to his gloom. He forged new friendship with Sugriba, a king  with a monkey totem and Hanuman a scholar son of the Wind God and a great being of physical and moral strength. He built an unheard of bridge over the ocean from the southern tip of India that is Bharat to Lanka and attacked the forces of Ravana to rescue wife Sita. He won; destroying evil he established the Rule of Dharma. He restored the kingdom to Ravana's brother Bibhisan and returned to Ayodhya. When some low caste people questioned Sita's chastity, as a king he respected public opinion and banished his Sita, an expectant mother. And he ruled his kingdom without discrimination - caste, creed, gender; respected freedom in all  individuals, never greeded for another's land and made his people love  each other...

 

Today if Rama is still remembered , with worshipful love , it is because Ram stands for 'rectitude', that is moral uprightness and courage to implement moral convictions. Ram respected his father -mother ; loved his siblings; honoured and obeyed his teachers and  all learned men and women; never harmed anyone as long as he was not attacked; respected and redeemed his commitments to friends, honoured his words to the detriment of his own interests , protected the weak and supported the poor, never compromised his values. He made  sacrifice of his personal life to please the people. In this sense his exiling Sita when she needed him most is a personal sacrifice. The Ramayan created Ram as the ultimate human ideal, fit enough to be a king. A king has no parents, no family, no luxury and no self indulgence. The king lives and dies for the people. Sleeping on the floor and eating the plainest food his life is dedicated to the larger  family - the people. The king lives  for his people as their Sevak - Servant not master. 

 

But that does not mean  the king will give up arms and negotiate  for peace. He should create fear in others for only then respect comes. A strong man is grudgingly admired by enemies - a weak man is often ignored. Rama was and continues to be this ideal human being - royal, heroic and kind. This Bhumipuja for  the Ram Mandir ought to be a pledge to redeem Ram's debt to mankind; to make India that is Bharat, free from fear, the fear especially  of foreign aggression and create mutual love among the people irrespective of caste, creed and other man- made discriminations.

 

Modi (Narendra Damodardas Modi, the present Primeminister of India) laid the foundation brick as a fated man to restore India's historical pride. But history of the future must move as Ram has already shown in all affairs of life management. If this event is just a foundation laying ceremony the future historians will record it as  an act of Hindu Supremacist triumphalism: If it is a relaying of the Ram values in public and private life  Modi will definitely find a respectable place in the Pantheon of the future. Restoration of values must move forward along  creative universalism.

Arise My Pen

My Covid struck pen lay supine

dust settled my desk held its weight

This pen has recorded the Hero's exploits,

measured the hooves of the charging stallions

and also the tears of the victims

described the gold dust flying

from the flails of invaders

Golden temples and silvery moons

have fallen, lay covered

under the debris of time.

Today my pen coughs, sneezes

the ink flows in droplets of pain,

the masked men heaped like rotten

fruits are thrown into ditches

for feasting magpies to damnation

wherever I look I'm beaten by

the whimper of helpless men ghostlike

covered from top to toe

as if shrouded mankind

hides its history in shame.

Where do I find my Love

the promising saviour

the vaccine for torn lungs!

Is he headed towards inferno

searching for Beatrice in hellfire!

O' my pen, my long night's dawn

rise up, call him to kill this Corona

and sing of man's new history.

Sabita Sahu