Reclaiming The Past

When I look backwards

I do not see how I was born

how the midwives techniques

trying to relief  mother’s pain.

 

How can I stretch my eyes back

to the prehistoric times

how man: the homosapiens

struggling to survive

the holistic environs!

 

Today I watch on  TV

the reclaiming of India’s culture

history, architecture

faith and artistic excellence:

Can I call those my own?

Is history personal

of a nation’s culture?

 

Can we decloud our inheritance

from the setteled layers of history,

but if the past is not mine

how can the future be.

 

May be I am not impersonal

an abstract entity

I have my history

I have my inheritance

which makes me not an individual

but a part of the human race.

everything revealed by time is mine.

 

I am man, woman, mankind

all temples, churches, mosques

war ravaged citadels

all graves, statues and

war torn memories are in me.

I am Human and proud to be so.

Sabita Sahu.

 

 

DRAUPADI - 84

  

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty's 

DRAUPADI - 84

Draupadi Laments Abhimanyu’s Death

 

Did she know when she put

the tika on Abhimanyu's forehead

it was a farewell to the boy!

Draupadi lay sobbing on the floor

Arjuna was far away fighting Trigarta

none except him knew how to breach

Drona's Wheel array, Abhimanyu

knew how to enter not how to return

he had heard Arjuna's  narration

in his sleepy mother Subhadra's womb.

Draupadi beat her chest, o blighted fate

why did I agree for his jump to the spate?

 

Rage shaking her body

she rose eyes bleeding her angst   -

How could seven warriors together

surround my brave angel like vultures?

How could Drona break the rules?

Duryodhana, Karna, I can understand

but the great Guru Drona himself!

How could Kurukshetra watch this

unequal, illegal, immoral scene

seven to one in a Dharmayudha!

The earth ought to have gaped in

to swallow the criminals, the murderers

who flouted the basic norms of humanity.

What  dharma is there in blase indifference ?

O! O! Now I know Kurukshetra is just

a name like Hastina, dharma a word

like love often confused with desire.

Dharma is not law or morality

not a code of life for purity: It is

a person's need driven life

defying all values only to succeed.

 

What shall I speak to Subhadra

her inconsolable heart will repel

all explanations, all sympathy will

reopen the flood gates of world weary

sorrow to drown all citadels of patience.

Arjuna will blast the earth in fury

Jayadrath and other villains would be killed

but the blank in Uttara's heart

Subhadra's lap and my own breast

and in the Pandava dynastic pride

will remain an open wound.

Krishna whose love had raised the boy

would be buried in shame;

but nature will leave a blank in her

desired balance of good and evil.

 

Anxiety, mourning, trepidations of heart

the congested mind's nightmarish aches

are now life's existential symptoms.

Draupadi was slowly getting self immersed

waiting for no moonlit celebration

to come with any joyous bonanza.

 

Jayadrath was killed in a double sunset

one lighting Arjuna's pyre,  the other

blasting Jayadrath's head in his

Father's lap calming Arjuna's revenge

Subhadra's blisters of pain, Uttara's heartbreak

were avenged but Abhimanyu

will not return, he is purged of life's

irrational and apathetic horrors.

 

What is this revenge, Draupadi asked

musing the question in a half murmur,

if you kill the killer it's another death

Abhimanyu is not restored to life

rather another life is reduced on earth,

why then revenge is a heroic urge.

A peripatetic perpetuation of passion

to kill destroy and debase generations

as we do now killing family friends

men of worth who are not our enemies

or even guilty of anything except

the ruinous urge for heroic showmanship:

A sardonic smile mocked her thoughts

a cynical loathing for the ways of men

made her feel guilty - she too is guilty -

In a world where living is so painful

why the waste of life at Kurukshetra?

 

Guru Drona died today, nay killed

by my own brother Dhristadyumna

when the great teacher sat in deep

sorrow hearing Yudhistira's ambiguous

truth about the death of his son Asawsthama,

Krishna prompted the lies, Yudhistira

repeated tainting his Truth forever,

My Sakha so wise, so erudite, so good,

so divine yet he stooped to lies and deceit

to win to kill to destroy all greatness.

War makes all energies value free

all values dissipate in chaos

the desire to win kills the soul

the will to survive negates wisdom.

 

Bhima came running one sunset

I have kept my word Panchali

here is the depraved blood of Dussasana

whose arms soiled your sacred womanhood,

I uprooted those arms

and brought the blood for you

to wash your hair - Draupadi stood

still and silent, she thanked Bhima.

O my valiant husband, you have

always saved my honour and respected

my feminine dignity, I will remember

your love till my last breath, but

should I infect my body and soul

with this unholy blood of a villain?

Pour it into a snake hole, let the

stain make the poison look ugly

for the snakes to vomit it out:

My hero I bow to you as Woman

and hope no woman ever suffers

the craven depths of imbecile horror.

 

 

What Chaos - What Order

If order be the cause of unhappiness

of nothing happening except routine

hunger for the body, inanity:

give me chaos sublime

to breathe poison, sleep on worries

eat leftovers of your creative tools.

 

What life is this? This base

childish chase of beggary

of health wealth sex.

Give me speeches of peace for war

more roads of light to walk,

and run to spread  the fragrance

from earth to heaven to

charm god from his hectic boredom.

 

Order I hate for its dead calm

disorder I hate for its noise

of individual  aspirations to

outbid all needs and deeds.

 

Let me sit on lonely shores,

counting shells recounting

petty foams taking away sand

from my feet and melting into

the dark sea in silent pride.

DRAUPADI - 83

  

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty's 

DRAUPADI - 83

Draupadi’s Admiration and tribute To Bhisma

 

News came Bhisma has fallen

the brave wise invincible celibate

booned with wishful death had a death wish

laid his arms when he saw Shikhandi

in Arjuna's chariot, as per his promise

to give up when he encounters a eunuch,

Shikhandi was Amba reborn to avenge

her contumely in her last birth as a Princess:

Bhisma's armoured body was torn by Arjuna

with tearful arrows in eyeless self abuse,

The tallest Prince of Men fell streaming

blood from million arrows pierced into his

divine frame on a bed of arrows.

The earth sank in respect, Arjuna

awakened Ganga, his celestial Mother

with a saluting arrow and Ganga poured

her melted heart into her great son's

thirsting throat in motherly jets of love.

The armies stood in awe, the sky

folded the sun in hasty retreat to mourn

Bharat's great son's horizontal withdrawal

from a life of sacrificial grandeur.

Kaurava Pandava women in camps

folded their numb hands in mournful prayer.

Draupadi went to Kurukshetra with aarati,

washed Bhisma's feet bowed, placed

incense at the feet of Ganga son

who would leave the world when the sun

entered Makar solstice inaugurating

the brighter phase for the world. Bhisma

blessed her all happiness with a pained sigh.

 

Draupadi walked alone and stood

her heart was blank, mind dazed.

How graceful Bhisma looks!

In arrow stuck body,

lying on Arjuna's arrow bed

purging blood glistens in heroic tribute

to a body uncontaminated by the world!

But is this dark land the place

for his dying rest? The fetid smell

of rotting bodies, burning flesh

the air surcharged with hate and violence

smelling like infernal filth

nauseates the soul in humid rage,

his heroic diadem still befits him

his royal blood although he was never

a king, by sacrificial choice, glistens

in this putrid murk of man's lunacy

warning the living to give up insane

arrogance to enjoy God's green earth.

 

Draupadi saw a tall dark shadow

standing arms akimbo to block her way

Draupadi paused looked, it melted

the entire earth was under the Shade:

Draupadi asked, who are you, real

or I am hallucinating - I am real

I am Death   -  Draupadi laughed O you

insubstantial dark nothing move over

you eclipse our destiny forever,

I know you are here to enjoy the scene

the bone heaps on the soaked earth

go, go, go now the  sun has seen it all,

Moon too will see and shed drops

the earth will go on,

war peace prosperity poverty will alternate,

you cannot overshadow

life's irrational compromises on earth.

Draupadi moved on, her pace slackened

by the grand light of Bhisma

raised over the earth by the arrow bed.

 

Life Tourists

Are we uncaused unwished for

intruders on earth unwelcomed

as visitors left to their own devices

dying and fighting every moment

in search of tokens

of glory fame and pride

which are used when we lie

in the hospital bed to be

carried away lest we infect the living?

 

If it is so, let it be so

if we are visitors on a tour of life

on this beautiful earth

let us enjoy what the world

show cases completing with nature

in momentary pride

we come here to write our own stories

to attract attention

of historians biased

and infected by private imagination.

 

But why think about records

footprints and memories

the album will lie here

dusted and yellow

let us simply live, enjoy

whatever comes fiesta, funeral

creative urges leading to

our tourist immortality.

 

We know we will return,

from where we came

we don’t know the address

but let us create new addresses

for the future tourists

in this monument of earthly eternity.

 

 

DRAUPADI - 82

  

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty's 

DRAUPADI - 82

The Eighteen Day War

 

The first day's sun hanging half mast

in the winter sky turned pale seeing

the two armies poised for annihilation

of Bharat's present and future - but

the sun watched and perhaps heard

Arjuna's melancholy Blues and Krishna's

philosophic wisdom but was woken up

to shocked attention when the Panchajanya*

sounded the knell of all reputations.

 

Restless Draupadi took care of the stores

supervised the food and other needs

of the chariot warriors and womenfolk

all the time keeping her eyes and ears

for views and news from the battle front.

 

At the sunset hour Draupadi

all dressed up in greeting smiles

waits for her husbands' return

bruised, blood sticking in patches

purple spotted warriors in tired pride

and welcomes them with her glowing eyes.

She greets Krishna saying - Sakha!

What have you brought for your Sakhi   -

Sweaty darkness and aching limbs  -

Come I will wash you with lily dew,

she cleans the wounds of her husbands

feeds them together, Krishna at the centre,

listens to their losses in silent respect

makes them sleep a few hours and is ready

when they leave for the battle grounds

in graceful military gear to tempt their

fate for combative glory and safe return.

 

Evenings come with horror goblins

moving around figures lying like

dummy fairies dismembered stiff

some armless voices cry for water

in the void of life in heaps of flesh.

Draupadi listens to stories of bravery

disenchanted by death on either side.

Bhisma's commandership frightens all

the earth fears extinction, counters

weaken, the will suffers pangs of gloom

nights pass in sleepless clash of swords

endless swish of arrows flaming death

to glorious crowns on tall chariots.

Mornings come to mock at,

survivors to strain their luck again

balloons burst like swollen pride

of the rain of arrows and thunder

of maces for uncompromising fall.

The Kurukshetra trembles in quaking fear.

Draupadi waits in restless agitation

for the endgame of all verbosities.

Waits for a green silence beyond

victory defeat, truth lies foe and friend.

 

*panchajanya: The name of Krishna's conch.

 

 

 

A Teary Vow

With the maiden drops of rain

I washed my tears

the dead grass was reborn with joy

the cracked earth drank the rain

in open mouthed thirst in large swings

another season of possibilities

for regeneration of life.

 

But my tears

never create or generate anything

impotent sad streams flow down

spreading the message of my pain

never waits to hear its own blues

I cry in stealth lest

my emptiness will be caught

if anyone hears the flow of

my lonely anthem:

But the rain hides nothing

it flows down from the sulking sky

to fill life in all waste and void.

 

Why should I cry then

if my tears are imbecile?

Tears of mournful heart

serves stories of a failed mind

alone in the wild growth of the heart.

 

I will now laugh full of life

grow the harvest of laughs

on the cracked feelings

beating fast my own cloud drums..