“Characterless”

 Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

I came across the word for the first time in my teens, in M. Hiriyana’s Indian Philosophy: God is ‘characterless’. What he meant was attributeless, what we call “nirguna”, that is without the social predilections of qualities of head and heart unbiased and uninvolved in personal preferences. But my, the then understanding of character had made me laugh: If less means a quantifying word (adjective, noun, adverb) then God is without ‘character’. I too was biased by the proverbial precept, “… if character is lost everything is lost.” Today, however, I have no regard for that and such percepts which are half witted utterances of elders to confine the human essence in sexuality. Foucault would have laughed at such things while pardoning Hiriyana for bad English.

Character has several shades of meaning. It means the handwriting or even alphabets; an identifying trait of a personality. In literature, especially in fiction and drama, character is the emergence of a personality in his actions: the protagonist’s attitude, his intellectual and emotional response in a crisis, his decisiveness or withdrawal, his sense of responsibility, the language he speaks in critical situations, and particularly the values which he upholds or flouts comprise his character. If he makes his destiny by his own actions we call him a worthwhile character. There are also some men and women who are inflexible, rigid and stubborn, thereby displaying static traits. Some spit and scoot (hit and run) jokers are also referred to as characters in a negative sense- oh! What a character. But down the centuries character is associated with sexual purity. A philandering bum is not called characterless but if a woman jumps the medieval virtues she is immediately denounced by patriarchy. One may be honest, hardworking, sincere and truthful but if she loves a man outside the charmed circle she is called a slut. A whiff of suspicion ruins the reputation of Sita. No one, including her great husband Ramchandra appreciated all her virtues of purity in devotion, total commitment to her husband, her cultural grace, feminine majesty and refinement; the moral balance tilts against her in irrational suspicion of her ‘character’ – she becomes characterless as if all her virtues are not even fig leaves to cover Royal shame. In the American novel The Scarlet Letter, the heroine is shamed and condemned for adultery. Hester Prynne’s daughter Pearl (the most lovable bastard) too is abandoned by the society. But the ‘Love‘ which she lavished is decimated by hate.

 

The human society has no place for love. The most hateful value is love. Human hypocrisy is boundless. Jesus is worshipped as he preaches love. Krishna too is worshipped despite his riotous sexual indulgences: the argument is Krishna is a God, the most brilliant, divine redeemer. His character is gold. All greats in the world are judged by their contributions to humanity. Their greatness never gets the moral tag, “characterless” even if they deflower thousand virginities and spend nights with voluptuaries in their heavens.

 

In the entertainment industry character does not matter. The affairs, escapades, public flaunting of frivolities are materials for glossy magazines which the laity pours over with pornographic curiosity. They are the new gods and devis. In the lower stratum of the society none bothers about character. In the high flying society none has time to think about chastity. The powerful conquer character, the weak lose it in one night.

 

But strangely people accept a liar, manipulator, cheat, rapist, arsonist as a leader. The seat of power it seems purges all sins and transforms the leader into a divinity. There too character is above sexual purity. A typical case is Rose Beauharnais who later in life became the paramour and wife of Napoleon; and by virtue of her marriage to Bonaparte sat on the throne as Empress. And once that happened none remembered the star of fashions, the orgiastic sex doll which Rose was before right from her puberty.  Before she attained her new name Josephine and her new status she was under everyone’s sheets. She slept with the rich and also with the servants. Love was not her profession but Rose professionally utilized her physical charms to rise the socio-political ladder in Revolution battered France.

 

Character should not be defined by sexuality. A person may indulge in the passions but if the nightly transgressions are transcended by life changing virtues the improprieties of the body are not remembered. But the hypocrisy of the human mind is so obviously biased against women that genuine love is hated as crime. Meera was poisoned but Radha (an imaginary damsel) is adored as Goddess of love. The patriarchal double speak is now more prominent in social media where tongues wag in taxless libertinism. If I say Trump is a character people will agreeably smile, none would have dared to call him characterless. If you remember the famous saying- Elizabeth was a virgin behind her back – people will raise eyebrows scratching their cheeks. A wit may whisper, leave the other things to their biographers’ footnotes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am Not A Caged Bird

Today my patience breached the banks

the foamy waves of suppression leaps out:

Why a slave for your mom and pop- a cook

and pleasure doll for your kinky fancies,

why dowry demand when I am  worth a fortune

you should know and ye all here and there

I am  no thirteenth rib, I am myself, a being

capable of carving out my destiny.

Mom mocks me from kitchen to the labour room

why a silly girl child, it's male we wanted

you brought a liability not worthy of our name

she cannot save us from perdition

you now agree our son will marry again.

Is a girl a curse, I shouted, who brought you

and all human kind? The Apollinaire male?

Why should I wait for your midnight revels

your drunken orgies, I have a body, a mind

I am of fancies poetic, music exotic

and friendship of equal majesty, dignity

I am not a dumb damsel a puppet parakeet:

I am what I am, not born to mother you

or be ready for anytime rapes 

burning in cold fury.

I view the world with wondrous eyes

my vigour and will cannot be enslaved

as though I am a bondslave bound by fate.

family is not a business, it's a world,

parallel to what God devised, we are

commissioned to make our world great

by mutual love, not to bargain for profit

for your corrupt treasures.

I am a free soul bind me with love

respect my identity I will give you bliss

enclose in my heart you and yours: But

spare me this caged bird torture.

If you can't I will fly away

on my soaring wings which have God's urge

to fulfil myself and give my account to him.

 Sabita Sahu.

My Love Castle

I built my love castle

in lonely pride

fighting with dignity

my own battles

to establish my empire

with joy vast and wide.

 

My fancy imagination wandered

beyond the shadow

whatever my heart can hold

don’t try to measure my

love with money

It’s a treasure can never

be purchased or sold.

 

They say they have completed the race

senses perhaps have lost,

The white hot pitch romance

with life has frozen

to savour the sip of life.

 

But I have fixed the ladder

on a boulder

to soar above the world

towards unknown quarters

to join my broken pieces with my sweat

and create relationship

till matters come to end

don't ask me what matters

Life matters, Love is life,

If you pause you lose

if you overrun you miss

I know- I'll be steady

keeping my nerves ready.

Sabita Sahu

Womb Is Not Tomb

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

The petals of nameless flowers are falling off. The leaves dry and green float zigzag in the winnowing wind. The TV blares from some distant houses its daily dose of rapes, drugs, sleep-in dharanas, IPL scores and Covid statistics. The digital media posts hatelines while the Ladakh border melts the early snow by snow boots and fake propaganda. Yet I read poetry of dead poets about dying men. The LED lamp on my table never blinks at anything. The phone rings -my Samudi is dead, my son’s father in law. I sat glum a moment and passed on the news which they already knew. The phone is a great communicator of bad news. The dead man riseth: Ha, he is no Christ, no second coming. I console myself, he is relieved of mortality, his paralytic nerves are now redeemed. Death will take me when He is ready. I am always ready. Ripeness is all – I remember. I resume reading Till Day You Do Part, Peter Handke’s monologue by ‘She’ in Samuel Becket’s Krapp’s Last Tape where she is alive again to proclaim undying love. I got your point Handke, love is a monologue in the grave, after the lights are out and you wait for the sun to do another round. Even birth for you is death: “didn’t your own mother go around telling everyone that even the cry you gave when being born was not at all the cry of a newborn babe but echoed as if it came from inside a sepulcher?” We all have heard this cry Mr Handke but in our ears the cry fell like dewy flowers of hope, joy and possibilities. Why do you make even the beginning a gravestone?

 

The poet has nothing to offer the dying; he sings of the dead. His spring is in eternal winter. His nightingale is strangled by snakes curling around her dainty neck. Life has become a story of the night in which the gravedigger prepares his own burial. No ceremony for death, no threnody for life. The poet is without beginning or end: Just a middle, a headless legless piece writhing in agony. The womb is not the tomb, damn it!

 

Since the birth of the species, man has been complaining of everything. The aches of the belly, the itches of the body, the throbs of the heart and the nightmares, the horror show of his own imagination. He laments his youth and age and mocks at his childish pranks. He has never called another man a hero unless he has vicarious heroism consoling his own cowardice. No reputation in the world remains unscathed, untarnished. The Buddha statues are broken, the Gandhi head is chopped off, the Gita- Bible are burnt and fellow humans are killed. Man never likes wholesomeness in anything. He has no farewell song for the receding clouds for he never welcomed the rains. What he writes about the clouds is dark in splenetic humour. When children sing paeans for the rains on the open spaces mothers drag them in and when lovers sing sad songs others call them mad: See see!  How this fellow has wasted his life for a woman! A woman who eloped with her ex after…  All these things happen when one is alive. Man bribes for a job, a promotion; hires an assassin to kill his rival; steals another’s thesis for what you know. The kings hired poets, historians to write adulatory biographies for posterity to dote on. All this is true because man does not know how to live life; how to utilize the moments by creating happy memories.

 

I have often said life is not a monologue of pain, nor is a duologue of mutual recriminations. Life is a theatre of multitudes. If you think that you are a true human being you are wrong; you become a human being by your deeds and there are no constitutional provisions for living. The first thing to do is to distinguish yourself from your name given by your parents or priest. The christened name is for all registers – school, bank, civil list, service book etc. the identity which your name gives is for the world, for others including your family. You are a nameless being. What the named person ought to be according to all kinds of rule books. There if you defy rules, transgress norms the nameless being will suffer the consequences. Hence your first responsibility is to see that you don’t make your nameless being an outlaw. The name can also earn accolades if you achieve excellence in your areas of operation. You can discover, invent, create, build and practise all things without flouting the rules and you will earn fame and money. But the other self, the nameless being is meant for higher things.

The self is the essential human soul which needs first of all, love, peace: and then a direct encounter or communion with the world, seen and unseen. The priorities of the self are respected by the soul within the logical – legal frame of the society. The soul or the authentic self is governed by a moral - aesthetic unwritten code which the unnamed human pursues to love and be loved by another authentic self. Once this love enriches the person he can connect himself with everything. Death will cease to frighten; calamity will fail to deter you and you will face the world with confidence. If you feel the love and breathe it in your soul you will love all the blooms and bruises of life. Nothing will be beyond you. Life will enclose the tomb as a transit point…

 

The Beauty Is The Beast

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

The Tenth Muse is already atop Parnassus. The other nine muses have either merged in it or have remained content on lesser peaks. The Greeks never imagined (who could?) that a day would come when the world of men –animals – rivers –mountains and all other real and imaginary objects and even essences would be assimilated into one medium of make belief entertainment, driven by technology. This new medium is now 100+ and is the most potent in terms of impacting man everywhere in the world; it makes opinions, beguiles minds otherwise heavy with the tidbits of life. The celluloid world is so real, so engrossing and so powerful that it is almost a reality – substitute. All arts are in it – dance, music, painting and all other forms unimagined by our ancestral geniuses. The cinema absorbs all techniques, innovations. The words spoken by the actors often are potent gospels. It is recreating the visible and fantasized world to give us a sense of wonder and awe. It brings down gods from the elysium to our swimming pools. The preternatural, natural, supernatural are all captured to dance together for our entertainment. Often the best minds, voices and pens come together to create sustaining illusions. We willingly suspend our disbelief and stare at the silver screen wonderstruck. Yes this medium by consensus is the most powerful. It creates or rather popularizes new gods and goddesses. Santoshi Ma is perhaps the gift of cinema to newfangled devotees looking for something exotic. But we must admit that but for this medium preservation of the classics in all forms of arts would not have been possible.

 

Cinema today is an industry commercialized by its own success. Corporatization is a natural sequence in the process of its evolution. This industry employs millions all over the world. From Hollywood- Bollywood- Sandalwood to Scandalwood all woods have fairies, Dryads, gnomes, witches and kubers. The actors are not mortal beings: They are stars as long as their films are hits at the box office. The day a few films bomb at the box office panic strikes the industry and the stars fall into gutters like abandoned toys. The stars are mobbed wherever they go. They move with bodyguards. They set the fashion of the day. Their postures, figures, are imitated by millions. If they fall ill people fast, rush to the temples and pray for hours. If they die many fans put an end to their lives. A world without Marilyn Monroe is not worth living. In south India, many killed themselves when Anna, MGR,, Jayalilita died. Fans want their ideals, their gods to rule over them. The tinsel hero becomes the political hero. Even in America, Ronald Regan could become the President. Arnold Schwisznagger could become the Governor of California. And our MGR, NTR, Jayalalita, Raj Kumar and many others were the darlings at the hustings.

 

I have no hesitation in accepting their divinity. At least they relieve the tension of the mind for a few hours. The actor becomes the protagonist of life. Audiences identify themselves with the cause of the hero. There are many who worship their pictures bow to them and aspire to wear grease paint. If this is our reality, why defame them? Why grudge their millions, their milelong cars, Seville Row suits and I don’t know what shoes and watches? If they flash their wealth, they have earned it by entertaining you. They pay their taxes, they contribute to charity, they are as much nationalistic as you are. They have their political ideals as you have. Why then do you accuse them of nepotism, drug abuse, murder, abetment to suicide and other vices you are equally guilty of?

 

We accuse them of ordinary failings because we have kept them on pedestals. We have deified them unreasonably. They are no gods. They are pursuing their calling. They think and you concur in that acting is a great Art. We often forget that the actor is the script writer or author’s creation. The conception of the character or hero- Protagonist is the author’s: And the Director etches it on celluloid. The photographer creates the illusion. The actor merely mouths the words trained by the dialogue writer- trainer. His gift is a body and a face. Their ‘knowledge‘ is not even average ignorance. And if such persons perform to your excitement, be happy.  But if you make them gods and think that they are beyond and above mortal ills it is your wrong perception of the simulated reality. They are ordinary people with jealousy, greed, anger, hatred and all other natural human instincts. They have their own problems: mainly to retain their deityhood before their fans. And they drink, do drugs, and other things to stimulate their own illusions to absorb their fear of nightfall. Ignore them after the show is over. If you worship them you have your illusions to blame if the gods turn out to be devils.

Abandon All Hate Ye Who Wish To Enter

The world I create  is all mine

it has no gates, no walls

it is open and clear

for the astral fairies,

for men and demons even

to walk and play

in life’s fury.

 

My markets are international

no country has any

brand monopoly

truth is my profession

duty is my fashion

fears and lies cannot

trade on my velvet carpet.

 

Love is my scepter

Truth is my law,

all  pay annuities

of submission  in their

free togetherness.

 

O’ messengers of hate and lies

burn your banners

if you wish to enter.

Sabita Sahu

Free Will And Responsibility

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Between the surd and the absurd man wavers perplexed to discover some logical certainty. Between dawn and twilight too he staggers as he has to finally move into the Methuselah night. So, one may ask: Is life an event, a happening, a revelation of nuances of reality or a commission to perform following a pre-written script? If man is a free agent to move and create a structure of values without sacrificing the central thrust of his  freedom, why does so often he recant like Galileo, Martin Luther and Savarkar what he stood for all his life? If a man holds his logic dear to his heart why does he fear counterbalancing negativity of other free agents of lesser sense of moral logic? Daylight is swallowed by the dark evening notwithstanding the twinkling stars braving the darkness – man too does it. But man dies while the stars continue their fight to burn darkness; whether they would win one day is immaterial. These questions have been asked by many in the past and many such questions would be asked in the future; I am just a gap filling speck of ignorance.

No one in our long past centuries and the progressing time has given us an answer to anything: be it life, be it man’s destiny or goal. Many have devised many ways of countering death, fighting sickness, old age and the other things built into them. What the Buddha said was a withdrawal from life. Buddha escaped his responsibilities and tried to overcome the pain by his eightfold (ten fold) path. But all paths lead to Death which perhaps can never be transcended or conquered. Is it nature’s determinism which our lives are patterned into? A compatibilist, Danial Dennet says, nature has no control over us, it is the other persons who try to control us. The Truth of this is felt by all human beings almost everywhere in the human sphere. The philosopher – religionist, the politician, the law giver impose their “moral” authority on us. Writers like Vyasa – Valmiki also to a great extent impact our moral sense, thereby, diminishing our freedom. But those who say that freedom and responsibility (as man, citizen, husband, father etc) are compatible with this external determinism often tread on our corns. Because they drive us towards a fatalism which militates with our freedom. The freedom to choose political ideology or faith leads all of us to struggle. The Balochs, Hongkongers want democracy but they face the challenge of power groups which never yield. Constitutional democracy also becomes a jail term for a freethinking man. In Bellow’s Dangling Man Regimentation at times is preferable to freedom. The tentative slogan is Freedom cancelled – Long Live Regimentation. But who or what really wins? Both die in the hospital or by the roadside.

 

In the new world, we experience a strange reality which man’s free will has created. China thinks communism is the best ideology, at least superior to democracy. Xi Jinping is now playing God; maybe he has the right to. China claims victory over Covid 19. The One China Policy now apparently means China is the world. Almost all smaller countries are indebted to china. Pakistan is a vassal; Nepal is valet, Africa is a colony… All land and water in God’s creation or the Big Bang blunder are China’s. Jinping exudes divinely ordained confidence in the Red Flag, for communist China is now the safest almost the richest and (untested) the most powerful. Jinping could say without a wink Arunachal is a part of Tibet; Ladakh is her territory. The Himalayas are no more the Indian Nagadhraj; in fact the South China, East China seas are fully chinese. Xi can create artificial islands and use them as nature subservient and manipulable. IS THIS HUMAN FREE WILL?

 

If money, military power are symbolic of human free will supported or unsupported by determinism, is it also an enabling factor in ignoring and suppressing all other Free Will(s) of the world? Or, is it possible that nature supports lies, deceitful diplomacy, Salami technique and machiavellism in China’s (Xi’s) free will? If this be so all free will could be subordinated by ruthless self glorificatory power push to make the world One China or one anything. An argument may be, so what? Why can’t China be accepted as the ideal, the model of governance and life management? A vast population of 1.4 billion is happy. The average Chinese is well fed, well clad, well employed. The system of education is ‘good’, its science is efficient, health care is great ( as has been demonstrated by covid- control), and China has put her money in almost all countries America, India, including. Moreover, on September 4,2020, China has successfully sent to the outer space a Space Plane which has unthinkable military perversities. Although undeclared, this classified military secret or astounding aerospace achievement has been caught by satellite imaging. Why not yield the pride of place to China, its political system and its free will to control all human affairs.

 

All these questions are merely rhetorical. Nature allows the Peepal tree and the willow equal opportunity. The bulkiest vegetarian, the Elephant, and the squirrel move with equal freedom. The virus too is free to kill following its own nature. But what is important and vital is responsibility; freedom without responsibility is anti-nature. We should now delete Cain’s words “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” from all books including the Bible. Otherwise, this Jinping may be a true anti-god, anti-nature and anti mankind. Man is free to help another’s freedom to flourish. This is Man’s sense of responsibility and for that, he is called human. Free will without responsibility is meaningless and this now must be understood by the democratic and the civilized world.