What Is That?

 

Before falling on the bed I leave

My world and my specks with which I see it

On the bedside table and lo

The waves invite me the twinkling stars wink at me

My receding world bids goodbye

And I move between the starry waves

And twinkle which my own eyes rise up to.

 

The fantasy is so calm

The words I hear are so soft

My senses strain in expectant joy

The lies are so sweet

The visions are so beautiful

I fail to decide how to respond

Yet in the company of fairies

I float and swim

In the fantabulous symmetry.

In the morning when I wake up

And put on my specks

My world lost in fantasy

Returns with roaring distractions

My senses alerted

I rush to this and that

All the time asking

What is that, what is that?

Sabita Sahu

One Cheer for Democracy

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

In the last century E. M. Foster wrote Two Cheers for Democracy disapproving yet appreciating and accepting Democracy as the most viable form of government capable of keeping all men and women happy to a great extent. When Churchill heard a longish argument against the anti-individual, anti-liberal aspects of democracy, he replied: Yes I agree, Democracy is the damnedest form of government but what is your alternative? Certainly autocratic governments are not! The fall of Soviet Union had given the clarion call for democracy.   If communism has failed, it does not send us to Islamic theocracy where tongues would be cut if voices of individual belief are ever raised even in lonely rooms. The state capitalistic system of China has no takers. But a choice must be made between Anarchy and Tyranny. Is Democracy the choice?

 

Since the Wars the major democracies of the world have demonstrated their excellence in three sectors. Freedom, economic well being and equal treatment of all citizens: However it must be noted that in all these successful democracies there is one dominant religious faith and about 95+% of the citizens speak one language. The case of India, however, is very complex.  India does not have a national language for state stake claim for her own language to be the national language. Tamils do not recognize Hindi, Kerala and Karnataka too have little love for Hindi. In the Parliament elected members take oath in the language of their choice which is naturally the language the majority speaks in their respective states. This oath taking ceremony provokes laughter and provides some kind of relief. But the idea of one India, one people goes awry. A multi tongued cacophony emerges drowning all saner voices. If liberal democracy is the panacea for all human ills what about the saner voices which are always in the minority? The genius is always in the minority. If democracy is a number game the genius is the odd man out. This is definitely a tragic anomaly. India is the most noisy if not the most chaotic democracy in the world today. The Indian constitution is definitely an attractive document and its Preamble sums up all human aspirations in the world in five words: Equality, Liberty, fraternity, Justice and the lately added Secularism. But the legion castes, faith systems languages, cultural diversities, unequal histories of states cannot and have not been brought under one viable system of governance. Hence we have naxalism, terrorism, appeasement politics, protected groups, IsIs elements, free thinkers, lobbies. Left-wingers, rightists and what not? The private ideological groups, Shivsena, Karnisena, Bajrang dal, Popular front of India, Campus Front of India, Viswa Hindu Parishad, Student wings of different ideologies, khap Panchayats and hundreds of other group identities make the scene chaotic.

 

One may ask who represents India? The answer perhaps is every Indian. Unity in diversity has been our motto right from Independence, but every Indian has his own image of India. These images are half perceived through the prism of class politics. In India we have about 18% muslims and the rest are Hindus, Christians, Jains etc.  But the Dalits comprise a large part of the population and they do not claim to be Hindus. We now have Valmiki temples coming up everywhere. Gandhi is not the father of the entire nation after his death. His murderer Nathuram Godse is also worshipped now in some temples. No leader in India has an untarnished image. A south Indian leader is seldom accepted by the cow belt. All these self contradictory and mutually militating ideologies are in perpetual conflict. Democracy in India is a mere number game. Only elections matter and they are highly visible and naturally violent.

 

But what really pains is the willful devaluation of all institutions. If you love your country you are not a true Indian, for a true Indian believes in universal brotherhood. Those who preach liberal values oppose patriotism, nationalism, so much so that the Indian Army is targeted.  Certain political groups question the Army’s valour. In the present Covid ridden India when the Chinese PLA is at Ladakh, the people do not speak in one voice. Every institution is defamed by irrational challenges, vituperative criticism. Be it the Ayodhya, Babri Masjid demolition decision or Afzal Guru and Memon death sentence the Supreme Court is attacked for ‘judicial murder’. If the judgment on any case – Judge Loya, Ayodhya Ram Janam Bhoomi or any such sensitive case goes in favour of a party or person the aggrieved party criticizes, the Supreme Court and also the Judges become their targets. The freedom of speech which the constitution guarantees is abused by biased perceptions and irrationality. Even the Parliament which is the highest symbol of democracy is not spared. The irony is, a law passed in the Parliament by both Houses is criticized and protest marches by groups disturb the peace of the society.

 

To cap it all we have an all licensed media which acts as Parliament and Supreme  Court. Media is a law unto itself. The Chief Minister of West Bengal always talks of Cooperative Federalism, but always defies most central laws. The social media is another too free cyber empire to know its limitations. Reputations are slained by unthinking people who post their venom in bad language, that is, words and sentences defy grammar, logic, decency and culture. In this state of a physical and psychological tremulous atmosphere most sane people think of Indian democracy as illiberal and undemocratic. If you listen to some voices while the enemy poses a real threat on the north- western border you will feel cheerless. Even one cheer is too much.

 

 

“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.