Talent

Prafula KumarMohanty

Which human being is a born idiot? We are wholesome and talented, each in his/ her way uses talent to leave behind some memories for posterity. But the most talented, the greatest in literature, William Shakespeare in Macbeth wrote that life is a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," : Perhaps his long nights and the English weather at times made him see nothing in the vast human drama endlessly being enacted everywhere. But Sir Shakespeare had no chance to read The Sound and The Fury of Faulkner where an Idiot's imagistic world envisions man's reality. Even idiocy is charming otherwise the twitterings  of so many would not have engaged our attention. We may therefore arrive at a tentative conclusion that any one born of a woman is  'talented' to carve out his life and eke out his living. Some wags however ask; Do you need talent to live a life? Once you are born, you will grow and do things - good, bad, indifferent - and die; so why do you complain that your talents are not recognised?

The OED  defines talent as 'natural ability or skill' and its  origin is Greek and also it flows from the gospel - Mathew etc. But it does not speak of its variety. Normally people associate talent with the art world. The world of science and technology too extols talent and skill. People do not give any importance to the talent of lying, cheating, browbeating and other soft skills which the corporate world expects in the  professionals as an academic proficiency. The go to man in any organization is always suave, tongue charmer, one who makes you forget the question you had in your mind. In politics talent is the most valued; the talent of strategizing diffusion of a crisis, short circuiting the rat race, to be the conscience keeper of the most powerful, and above all to hammer a sweet lie into the minds of your voters (in a democracy) or slavish people by rhetoric. All  dictators including the religious Gurus both the Originals and their duplicates like Asharam Bapu and Ram Rahim (and many mini, midi ones in all rural areas) play God, The most Talented. The talent which the ISIS leaders displayed is in no way expendable. Osama Bin Laden and his poor cousins like Masood Ajhar, Hafiz Sayed and others are as talented as army generals and police chiefs. The terrorists may fail several times but when they succeed they become the talk of the world and the victim country puts its talented men on a white hot pitch. Talent is not confined to any specific area of human activity. 

But at times the son or wife of a politician like the Queen or Prince of a kingdom after the king's death, stakes claim to the throne. In India the fourth generation of the Nehru - Gandhi family is still relevant as some people have accepted the family's hereditary talent as divinely ordained. Political talent and royalty come as a monopoly while many "talented" men and women waste away a lifetime  in wild goose chase. And such people always complain that their talents were not recognised. The irony is, the people who taste success in any which way always think that they deserve more accolades and wish History will give them their due place. The failures always launch clamorous campaigns against God, society and the men who succeed. So, is the quality of talent different in individuals or talent needs something else to succeed, a booster dose perhaps or luck! 

How about Adolf Hitler! A mere corporal in the First World War, blinded by mustard gas but cured by a quack, how could he rise to the citadel of political power by 1934 and shake human civilization to its very bones?  Hitler could have been a great  painter and architect had the Vienna Art school given him admission. But spurned by society and ill treated by the mindless connoisseurs  he was driven  to rise as an antagonist of human fate.  So was Ravana if you go by the facts  beyond the epical imagination of Valmiki (if the  facts are historically valid). But it definitely needs talent to be a Hitler or Ravana. Talent is not a package which comes to a person readymade as a cosmic deal. The resilience of a race to survive a devastating war (eg The Kalinga war) also needs talent in the individuals to say - what though the war is lost everything is not lost - but talent should not be exhausted in rhetoric. A race tries to rise on the heap of  bones to build Konark after about a millennium not by words but by a defiant energy nursed and nourished over centuries. Man does not fight  calamity physically. The fights in life are always mental. The mind utilizes the native talent with single mindedness to overcome adversity of all kinds. But those who fail often cry foul and blame others, they defend their heroism  by cowardly logic.

Often the failures blame the stars at their nativity as if some Saturn or Rahu blackened their sights and made them self indulgent fools. The gilted lovers hit the bottle in Devadas fashion and blame, deny everything from the blue sky to full moon. Similarly the men who could not get what they desired often turn to unreason and justify their action like terrorists. If courage fails cunning is used  to cause harm to the unsuspecting innocents. Such persons can never introspect for their entrails are juiceless.

All humans are born with some talent but that does not mean the 'talent' itself will place you at the top. To reach the top you have to persevere and perspire. If you fail, try again. One victory does not make you the Emperor of the cosmos  and no victory is final. The failure likewise is not the end of any life. If a man is talented he will certainly find out alternatives and pursue them with all his nerves.  Blaming fate or metaphysical judgement is unmanly. Man is born to carve out his own universe big or small and if he fails something is very wrong with his efforts.

Shadow Distancing

How far am I from my

close knit family

and the help - reluctant

to do things when asked -

Yes, all are away

more than six feet.

I am not the epicentre

nor the periphery of life ,

I am some where

I should not be

but I don't mind where I am.

Everything is distant

like the stars

everything is invisible

as I am myself.

What is visible

is beyond my sight

I want to call everything mine

to hold everything as my own

but today they  are different.

Am I a load on myself

too weak to rise

even when he calls me

does he really call me

or I imagine things

and hear sounds

because silence ruins

life's architecture.

If you are there somewhere

whispering just sounds

for my comfort 

ring my heart

strum my strings

let me be at least

music for your ears

to wake up and move again.

Sabita Sah

What I Fear

I fear

to lose your voice

the lilting musical notes

flowing in honey waves.

I fear

losing  my memory

of love's long silent years

without your participation

but which sustained me and

my meditating love all these years.

I fear

losing your shapely shadow

your well turned beauty

which goads me to work hard.

I fear

to do something which may

cause you sulk and dismay

or make you turn your face away.

I fear

to annoy you asking too much

of favours, graces and gifts

of ghost embrace in the void.

If I  fear you

I know I love you

I do not whisper

if it is not for you

nor do I write or laugh

if not for you.

Sabita Sahu 

"The End Of History !" What's That ?

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

The "End of History" champions like Francis Fukuyama have proved to be false prophets  before their personal history ended. Globalisation free market economy and liberal democracy with its capitalistic dreams ended when  the 2007 - 8 recession challenged the inbuilt hubris of their concept of history. It's true that between 1980 and 2008 there were no major wars except 9/11, 26/11 terror attacks and the ISIS violence; a large number of Below Poverty Line people were freed of their tag;  democracies thrived and new democracies sprang up:  But history is not subservient to certain Enlightenment thinkers' concept of human welfare.  The West is not the entire world nor can ever be. What America and Europe think is not the thought of the Asian countries or the Gulf countries. No ideology is acceptable to man for all time for the human mind is often sick of its own ideals  after a crisis  blows over and thinks of dream alternatives and contrarian architecture of life. The mind is often at war with itself for a prolonged state of peace, prosperity, happiness creates its  own stasis. The experience of the two Great Wars  provides enough material to disprove all our logic. The League of Nations, humans (in the west) thought would create a new human order which would embrace  every man and ultimately a global harmony will lead to peace and happiness.  Russell wrote of World Government and much before that the American President Wilson sang of World Governance in lyrical terms. After the Second War the League was beleaguered by self contradictory squabbles and the United Nations was born. The idea was virtually fathered by the visionary Franklin Delano Roosevelt a former President of USA although he did not live to see the UN take shape. His successor Harry Truman on June 26, 1945 addressing the signatories said, "You have created a great instrument for peace and security and human progress in the world..." My dear readers know what World Governance came out of this World Body!

History did not end with the Wars. The UN has not created any trust or faith in the minds of men and women in East or West, in the Ist, IInd, IIIrd Worlds - now no more unipolar or even multipolar if you take polarity as a benchmark or metaphor to explicate the equations ­­­­­­­­­­­­­- all countries are inward looking except China.  And this China now is  poised uneasily to retract her own history. America is on the decline, the entire European Union countries may follow the Brexit path to protect identities. History today is like an atom in a magnetic field uncertain where to stick.

India in the pristine past had the chance to end history in the Western sense during the Mauryan Empire. From Gandhar in the north to Magadh, later Kalinga  was freed from unethical domination, Alexander, Ambi and Dhananda were decimated  by Chandragupta Maurya with the mastermind of Chanakya leaving almost  the whole of India for Ashok to unite in peace and prosperity the entire country. After the Kalinga War and the transformation of Ashok from Himsa (violence) to Ahimsa, from brute muscularity to Buddhist nonviolence, peace and human togetherness, there was indeed a time for history to end, at least to take a breather. But that was not to be. Gandhi's India had raised some hope that the world may follow Gandhi's satya and ahimsa to make the world pause on the cusp of a new history of mankind, awakened to life  sustaining values in the inner being. But no, that was also not to be. Not to be because time and history are two different dimensions. Time, after Einstein is the fourth dimension of reality, but history is not bound by cause and effect dimensions of  Space.  Nature and human destiny are independent of each other, hence the directions of their movement or stasis are different.  The Indians have been attacked by the Western pundits that they have no sense of time and history. But the West does not understand that in India the philosophers always believed in the circularity of time in contradistinction to the rectilinear of the West. Oswald Spengler in his Decline of The West (1918) perceptively writes:

      We men of the Western Culture are, with our historical sense, an exception and not a rule. World history is our world picture and not all mankind's. Indian and Classical man formed no image of a world in progress, and perhaps when in due course the civilization of the West is extinguished, there will never again be a cultural and a human type in which "World History" is so potent a form of the waking consciousness.

Nature does not interfere in the freedom of human destiny which however is mostly determined by human responses to the situational dynamics of moments. History is recorded by humans and their understanding of a nation or mankind's destiny is never a true statement. In any case history is never a changeless document and that too is coloured by the ideology and bias of the historian concerned. Arnold. J. Toynbee in a 1947 essay has clearly stated that - He is a middle aged Englishman belonging to the middle class and these conditions of his birth, class and nationality will definitely impact his perceptions. Hence we may safely conclude that history is one mind's interpretation of a people's activities in a time frame.

If the human spirit is predictable (or static) in behaving in a particular fashion, that spirit is not Free. But freedom is the self contained existence of the spirit. The emotions, actions, thought, response and reaction are man's material essence and the action-reaction are seen: But very often man's response is not free. What Nepal's Primeminister Oli did in may - June 2020 is not free action dictated by Spirit. It was opportunistic action under pressure. If this action is judged by historians as betrayal of India's  trust in Nepal's friendship, that will be as wrong as the other judgement, unarticulated or stated, "India's ill treatment and Big brotherly attitude had it coming". Therefore any judgement by historians is temporary, for all human decisions, actions are "true" of the given moment.

If we discard Nicolas Berdyaev's The Meaning of History (1923) as a typical Christian view, we may also reject W.B. Yeats'  A Vision(Book V) as an imaginative foray into symbolic logic. The sphere and the zyres, one representing eternity and the other (zyres) symbolising the world of change are poetic visualization of a great mind. But the Two Thousand year rotational repetition of civilization and the phases culminating in a cycle peeking at the "Great Year" the interpenetrating cones etc, have not been demonstrated by our recorded history. What I like to emphasize is that no culture or civilization comes to an end even if the imagined 'heaven' is experienced on earth. All humans can never be free. All humans can never be equal. All humans cannot be democrats: Unless robots of the same artificial intelligence in degree,  order, emotion and feelings replace human beings. All our science and technology can accomplish is a forward movement towards an ideal state of well being. Keynes, Lincoln, Mao Tse  Dong, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Hitler, Churchill, Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar,  Xi Jinping and also Modi -  these and many others, not listed, have tried pursuing their ideals or negatively,  'Political Vulturism', to give a form and shape to people in their own countries or area of influence: But none have given us an Elysium or Hades beyond a few years. History has its own dynamics. It has its own Darwinism.

Those who try to make the Present, the Future of mankind must remember, we have a Past too and that Past was once the Present which the historians wanted to make the Future to make themselves ridiculed by posterity. To end this piece, I may quote from Martin Rees's On The Future (2018): "Suppose they( Scientists) could simulate a universe as complex as the one we perceive ourselves to be in. A disconcerting thought ( albeit a wild speculation) then arises: Perhaps that's what we really are!"

Time is the context not the content of the human mind.

Sunny

Rising up on time order bound,

from scarlet to golden orange you set

drowning my world in sticky darkness

yet you are  there again when I open eyes.

You laugh, nay smile when you

turn red hot in anger at midday

when you recount youth in archly turn

your indrawn energy pale before death

robs my afternoon hope in pale yellow.

Are you not tired of this silly routine

I am tired, hoping for suave light

this repeating futility dies momently

but you laugh again-

You achieve what you know best

I have achieved the cracked crown

after my long wait and endeavour

to rise from Princess to Queen.

Sabita Sahu

Atmanirbharta (Self Reliance)

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

During the Covid 19 pandemic Primeminister  Narendra  Modi in his exhortation to the nation asked the people to be self reliant to ward off the threats from the outside world. He did not refer to the belligerent posture of China but the Indians understood the context of Modi's self reliance emphasis. While no debate or discussion is warranted by this age old idea, we may examine its feasibility in our present Global situation.

Biologically  man is not an auto fulfilling creature. Man for his sustenance is bound to depend on nature, society and process. Indians in their early civilizations were mostly  nature dependant yet they marvelled at the mysteries of life, nature and the Beyond. They never believed in attacking other countries for wealth or natural resources.  And this explains why their defence preparedness was very weak. Whoever attacked India, conquered. The attitude not to go for adventure into other territories was reflective of a self - reliant mindset searching  for plenitude in the available resources. They definitely  produced what they needed and more for export. How else does  one understand India referred to   by others from,  Europe to China and Persia as Sone Ki Chidiya -the Golden Bird? But 800 years of Muslim rule  and 150+ years of British rule almost decimated the urge to self conscious assertiveness. India lost not only her freedom but also the desire to be self reliant and prosperous. Today, after 73 years of self rule Modi's  Self - Reliance call comes as a new thrust of adrenalin: But is the Indian heart strong enough to accommodate and function with renewed vigour?

The world today is almost in an ideological stasis. The post Enlightenment thinkers who took liberal humanism, freedom, market economy and globalization almost for granted, are being opposed by nations tending towards nationalism and insulated economies. Most democracies of the world  are beset by self- isolating  patriotism. America, India have prioritised their countries and  implore the populist "First" slogan to sway minds. Modi in India has already started almost  a movement: Make in India,(and now) Be vocal about the local. While all this is quite exciting the question still arises whether in the modern world it is possible to live  in self - sufficient isolation without craving for more  enticing luxuries that stare at us from the outside world?

The first thing to remember is that the context of life and living is no more nature alone. We now live in a world of networks. The world of science and technology , the vast expanding cyber space  and luxuries of a kind the world never tasted before the twentieth century, are the new context. Man is no more a food dependant body; he is not satisfied with bread alone; he needs more for his fancy and imagination. He needs more than sustenance and as the new technotronic gadgets roll out to give him ego trips to his personalized space, he demands more to invade all space. Roti - kapada-Makan or roads, electricity and water are now removed from his demand list. He needs security , personalised entertainment unlimited freedom and no interference of any kind by the society or state. With such a demand list can any Indian be self- reliant?

Of course Modi's call is timely. Our neighbours, especially China, followed by Pakistan and even Nepal, try to checkmate India. Chinese and Pakistani divisions are at our North- east and North- west borders. Nepal too claims three of our areas. Trade has come to a standstill with Pakistan, China and Nepal. The people of India have long since been habituated to Chinese goods as they are cheap comparatively and India has no substitute. Modi's call of Self Reliance is an attack on the Indian mindset of blank ideologies. The common Indian does not understand universal freedom, market economy or globalization. His sense of his country is weak. He has no national pride. He does not think of India as a great civilization with a Ten thousand year old history of cultural and moral excellence. He is not proud of India's architecture, music, moral reason and spirituality. In short an average Indian leads a superficial life unguided by an ideological frame where India figures. Modi's call is therefore an attack on the mindset.

If this mindset  should actually respond to Modi's call, the Indian must first of all be proud of being an Indian. He must sing paeans of India's natural grace, her rivers, mountains, songs and cultural matrices. He must assess his own worth and produce, create, innovate things which the body needs and the mind appreciates. He must buy what his fellow Indians produce and praise them before the world community. But he should not make compromises on quality. If China's medical components are blocked, Indian companies should produce indigenous substitutes. Excellence should be the credo. Particularly India's defence needs are  foreign dependent. A country which boasts of the  epical Brahmastra should show to the world her innate potential and produce something more lethal than what the U.S China and Russia have stockpiled. Atmanirbharta is not a new thing in India, not an alien concept : it is  an Indian value right from the beginning of human history. The now Indian should excel in all kinds of manufacturing- existential needs, spiritual needs, material needs, fanciful needs. The Indian mind should redefine human freedom and redesign human civilization .In a world of competitive supremacist ideologies India must demonstrate its own maturity which will attract mankind. Self Reliance is or should be the ideal of human spirit. Modi's message is: Be a Self and make it  a Soul which will embrace humanity.

Quarantine Fury

Time is incorporeal like God

but I have a body birth - death

dated entity in city streets

I share the sun, moon , stars

the rains, summer heat, winter chill,

why should I not share the bodyless God.

My hopes never come in shape and form

my love is masked quarantine of fear

my mind is a restless piece of nerves

why I ask when no one answers

maybe -

none hears, except the wind which

breathes for its own mood in anxiety.

I am neither a ball of fire nor a slab of ice

I am normal - human

But where is my share of love,

my little touches of joy and peace?

I know, no one hears my whys

For I do not perhaps know

how to ask the whys in prayer

I have no claims admitted in the  Bench.

Sabita Sahu