Thoughts for the week

1)  If  you believe, no proof is necessary; if you don't no proof is enough.

2)  Politicians of all hues have denied a future to the people of Kashmir.

3)  Love purifies the soul.

Emancipation

Am I real, a legitimate human

In this strife–ridden indifferent world

Where every moment spurs anew

To shed copious tears like morning dew.

Nine months of cosy confinement

Without the Father’s lingering shadow

I was safe in the darkness of the womb,

But I came out to seek and explore

Pursue study and discover,

Defying the mortal challenge of birth

To create and play new notes of symphony.

But unmerited suffering snuffed the fire

To question and probe, seek and drive

Landed me in mire, my creative throb

To blow the efficacious trumpets

Started slowing halfway through the journey.

Is this the clime I dreamt?

Is this the space all aspire?

To burn out their native desire

To be, to flow, to pulsate with grace

No, I’ll have none of it,

Let me choose a small shelter

Where a heart of love's dream altar

Shall hold my being like Gibraltar.


sabita sahu

Lullaby

                                                                                             Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Years ago there was no electricity; kerosene or castor oil was at a premium for the poor village folk , life was slow and the rhythms of reality were tuneless. Those days rearing children was also a challenge for the rural poor. When night came like a wave of murk enveloping the contours of visible reality the mothers wanted the little ones to sleep away the night. Feeding them early and taking them to bed was otherwise necessitated to give the womenfolk especially the young mothers some rest and respite to attend to other chores in the family. To lull the young ones to sleep the mothers usually sang lullabies using the backs of the children for caressing rhythms. Music has a soporific effect not only on children but also on men and women of all ages. Music soothes the frayed nerves. For the children the lyric was not important as they were too young to understand but the rhythms,the tune and particularly the mother’s reassuring love sent them to sleep. Poets in the villages and towns wrote lyrics for lori or lullabies. In Odia lullaby is called ‘Nanabaya Gita’. Baya is not suggestive of madness, baya was used by the poets and mothers to mean innocence. The small child was taken through the lyric and the tune to a fairyland of celestial joy. In my childhood, I remember my mother sing a sister of mine to sleep. The lyric was ‘Dho re baya dho, jeyun kiari re gahala mandia sei kiare re so.’Although this is a lullaby it has a deeper interior of human truth. Surface realism and mysticism have been intertwined to create melodic charm and a hallowed kind of mystic joy for the child. Often the moon is invoked by mothers to fall in the hand of a child –O uncle moon of heaven/descend on the palm of my kanhu- as if Yasodha is singing Krishna to sleep. The mother’s elevation to an epical height and the child’s identification with Krishna make the lyric exotic.

In the Bollywood films lori continued almost to the eighties. In poetry it was seldom used even during the last quarter of the last century .The Lullaby, grandma tales and story telling to induce sleep in  a child have vanished from the urban scene altogether. In the villages too the joys of electricity have brought in their train ,the Radio, TV and after the mobile phone came,the video games and other electronic games. The modern society in the name of cultural evolution and sophisticated living has left behind the relics of the past. Life is so fast paced today that little boys and girls sleep alone, without their parents,whiling away the lonely hours with gadgets which bring glaciated mountains and Stone Age horrors to their gleeful imagination. Human beings at every stage of history are born into social groups behaving in a particular manner in response to the challenges of their times.When living eases the imitable patterns of cultural inheritance change. Fear, fatalism and existential crisis have now been overcome to a large extent. Naturally the mystic rhythms of the lullaby have now been given a go by. Parents compel their sleepy children, at times even forcefully, to study, learn so as to compete for survival.

The lullaby is now needed more by adults than children to snatch a few hours of sleep for the call of the morn. And the lullaby is replaced by sleeping pills or Patiala pegs.

Thoughts for the week

  1)  The mind is a switch board but only one switch should  be on at a time.


  2)  Perfection limits the possibilities of growth.


  3)  People rise in love they never fall.

A New Big Bang

What cloud blanket did you spread

the sky has become exotic and red ,.

what did you whisper in the ears of space

that emitted fresh energy in grace

forcing the travellers to orbit around

each other's emerald round ,

and collide for a new Big Bang

to usher in another Three Minutes

of  new frescos of life designs

in time's heart soul and mind !

Is it a curse or  divine blessing

which like a coat of dreams

brightened unfaded in silent smiles

for a quarter century of glowing love

in a life span of warm resolve !

You've taught love's fortitude

in a world fraught with  duds and dudes

to hold love and pain in the palms

and feel a life time of bliss

with a heart's passion and nobility .

sabita sahu

Freedom Indeed

                 

                                

                                                                 Prafulla Kumar Mohanty


Man is free and sacred: This is the basic truth in both the Western and Eastern Intellectual Traditions. By freedom is not meant political freedom although that too is built into the spirit of Freedom which leads to self-fulfillment. Freedom and sanctity lead man to create value systems which govern, moderate and move civilizations in a dynamic harmony. This harmony was the central focus of globalization. It was visualized by some persons like Martin Luther King (Jr.) that mankind will move in a circle, children of all hues and ideologies holding each other's hand and singing of universal brotherhood will march like God's soldiers to carve out a new paradise. But those dreams are now effette. Globalization has been checkmated by nations too self-immersed to think of others. Globalization was purely a business proposition of late capitalism. It has failed to make the globe a human hub where mutual respect and tolerance were to be the bonding factors. The latest scene in a dramatic freeze is seen at North Korea, much to the chagrin of the tolerance brigade.


The human being in the present day world is either keenly observed by the state or totally ignored. Those ignored are unworthy specimens of humanity not worth a camera eye. But those who have some value to project, some ideas to promote, some words to propagate or money and power  to flaunt- are always watched .Along with them the normal passionless, middle path man is also watched as he could be a potential follower of the endowed men and women. It's the fear of dispossession which prompts the powers that be to keep a close watch on people. When one  walks on the road the CCTV camera catches his movements. When one buys provisions in a market or saunters into a Mall the hidden camera follows him/her into all corners. Airport, Hotel, School, College, Railway station, Bus-stand, a dining place or even in a friend's house we are followed, photographed and recorded as though we are spies, thieves, murderers, rapists or enemies of the state.In short man has no privacy, not a moment for himself to check on his own identity. Is this the civilization we aspired for?

`No man is an island', true, but no man is a thoroughfare either.The sanctity and freedom of an individual must be protected by the state, not spied into or usurped:For only in the moments of privacy the world of a sensitive being expands into love, poetry and other creative genres which sustain civilization. Man today is naked, all his hairy details are maneuvered and manipulated, all his numbers on chips, cards and plastic are operated upon to reduce him to a zero. Obey, bend, kneel in unprotesting silence or be a guest in Tihar.

Is this what we struggled for over the centuries? 

Thoughts for the week

1)  The darling of the masses may become the target  of their hatred in no time.

2)   Peace of the living is always turbulent.

3)   Love is the celebration of the joy of living.