Hope For Poetry

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Long Years ago at the Allahabad University English Department in 1960 December (date is irretrievably buried in my fading memory) a Seminar was held on the subject; "Is there Any Hope for Poetry"? It was chaired by Professor Mehrotra, HOD and the revered guest was Professor Satish Chandra Deb, National Professor who was to quote Professor L.C. Knights in a Delhi International Seminar, "Professor's Professor". I was struck by the awe and admiration for Professor Deb shown by one and all present there. Only two papers were presented at the Seminar by two Oxonians, who had returned from England the same year. (Both were however, megabores and their originality, if any, was lost in their snobbish attitude and imitative stylized demeanor. I didn't mean any disrespect: Yet I have no respect for their names dropping scholarship.) Prof Deb in his address denigrated the entire range of modern poets, including T.S.Eliot. He had some praise for W.B.Yeats, His favourite was strangely, D.H. Lawrence. Prof Deb, I remember said, "The present day poetry or fiction is for the eyes only not for the mind or heart as literature has no moral impact on anyone." He blamed Eliot for making faith shaky, love unavailable, a 'torment', and society a clamorous whole denying human voice its authenticity.

 

During my long years of postgraduate programmes I like many others related poetry to the times; that is repeating the mirror idea. However I got over it very soon. One reads poetry not for an exam, one reads to make his life relevant to the world. I do not subscribe to the view of Kundera that "Man's world is a planet of inexperience." Inexperience is not a quality of human condition. This world is a book which man reads by his personal experience at three stages: Childhood, Youth, and Age. The series of experience leads to a few 'Truth constants' or may not show any truth value of anything. But this experience has a moral not in the ethical sense but in the aesthetic sense. Poetry leads the reader to truths of life, not the Truth, which I know does not exist. Since the birth of man generations have come to discover their truth. Often we do not know what truth is: the poet identifies truths for the truth- blind during his time. But this too is challengeable. What truth does the poet perceive? Homer, Valmiki, Vyasa, Shakespeare and Eliot have all turned to the classical truths of (1) Acceptance of a Superior Unknown (2) Submission to that unknown (3) Choice of one's own truths in the actual process of living. One has to choose to be brave, heroic or otherwise. One has to strike a balance between ethical transcendence of life and an earthly hedonistic life. Poetry has always done that. A classical surrender or a romantic agony was never accepted by a true reader. The changes come because the book remaining constant the readers change. The poets are the new readers of a generation, reinterpreting the phenomena as they change by the new knowledge. It is obvious that one taste and flavour, one truth, one centre or one path- physical and spiritual, can never remain unchanged.

 

The present day reader in the third decade of the 21st century has three major concerns: Political reality of the world vis a vis the 'insignificant' individual; Free human spirit and freedom of expression; right to question. The post Covid world will, however, face challenges to the right to dissent. China, Russia and most Muslim nations do not permit dissent of free speech and dissent are not tolerated. If a nationalist poet praises his country and culture the trolls have a field day. What democracy originally meant by freedom is now changed. The poet, filmmaker, story teller, painter and cartoonist claims unbridled freedom which is resisted by liberals, nonliberals and fanatics both political and religious.

 

'But the pity is' as E. M. Foster said on Sasthi Brata's first book 'like most young man Brata writes' - I may say, the pity is man still writes poetry. The social media poets are a dime a dozen. When I read the poems in the Facebook and Whats App and the thousands in Puja numbers of so called literary magazines I lose my taste for poetry. It seems lines of unequal length followed by exclamation marks and a few italics and capitals is poetry. The village lasses in the 18-19 century Odisha composed much more interesting songs than what the Facebook poets write. Poetry was always personal and intimate but it contained man and world in eternal conflict: the poet at times pointed a way out to avoid or accommodate the conflict. The 21st century poet makes the society his world. All his conflicts are artificial and Superfluous.  He has no larger reality, he is not bothered about the larger human reality, he is responsible for none which he includes himself. He shoots off a few lines without imagistic consistency, rhythmic beauty controlling his pen-wielding hand to a discipline of values. His anger, hate are rabid, rash; his love mostly skin deep is satisfied by popular moisturizers. If he gets a few thumbs up and comments of wow, wonderful, great, he starts lobbying for an award.

 

Yes, Prof Deb my vote is for you after sixty years of reading, writing, analyzing, teaching poetry of the past centuries and maturing contemporaries I agree with you  when you are gone and your world is transformed into a radical eco system of intolerance, dissent, defiance, rejection, aggression and tyranny. Poetry comes easy to people like body urges. Wordsworth was right when he said poetry is  a spontaneous outburst of powerful feelings: but he would have withdrawn it after experiencing the powerful feelings of hate, bigotry, religious intolerance and other baser unpoetic feelings.

My Mother

We met in the time of Diwali-

the festival of lights,

my Mom always energetic

and full of life - but that day

the lights could not brighten her face

holding her volcano of hot lava

her moist eyes flashed a welcome

which was genuine, a smile despite

her silent grief and empty interiors,

a gift of my father’s parting

her lonely world crushed under

the weight of his love: she now lives

with memories of million spaces.

 

She is the support of our unbending strength

the beacon of hope in turbulence.

I looked back recounting my days

spent under her benign shadow and

care all women show but she did

what the angels seldom propose,

my yesterdays are my today’s strength.

She is the rock we rested upon

oblivious of the knives of future,

her thoughts guided to trust on.

With less of toys more of joys

life was away from stress

never can we get the days again

now life is give and take bargain.

 

Yes sadness  grief and pain

are her friends now,

she is in family yet lonely

today when lamps light  up faces

she sits by one lamp,

the light of memory  of long conjugal life

warming her cold zeal to live

and love her shaped dolls

to light all lamps to brighten her face.

 

Sabita Sahu

Crumbling Edifice

Washing hands day and night

my fate line is almost gone

my lips have lost the rose

behind my black mask.

 

The stink doesn’t enter my nose

his shaving lotion does not irritate

his hisses and their spits

don’t raise my nose in despair.

 

I swallow my breakfast tasteless

all hot sweet and salty things

taste the same at dinner

tongueless I work, eyeless I move.

 

Tomorrow who knows I may lose

my hands, legs and ears at noon

words will fly at my deaf ears

and I’ll laugh aloud all alone

as the theatre king cries

in the deserted crematorium

for his lost kingdom.

Sabita sahu

 

The Colour Of Darkness.

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

What is this colour, Colour of darkness? Is it a colour in spectrometric display? Where is this colour? At nightfall, noctus equi , the predawn syndrome of mysteries: where? Is it visible like Dante’s hell? Or is it Beatrice in reverse glow once your pain of separation darkens your heaven ways. The vision of beauty and spiritual transcendence is now dark. God created the world of biodiversity and named all creatures, trees, flowers and all. But god’s nouns are now multiplied; adjectives and pronouns have made the world more than a noun. The very language which expressed feelings, ideas and created new codes of human creativity, has now caused a dispersal, diffusion, deconstruction of meaning. Faith we knew, love we knew, these two words meant life and world. Today when someone says diabolical, radical faith or sinister love or adds Jihad to love their entire human world loses the light of life. Words are perverse instruments of torture, words hurt, gods of various kinds cause destruction. Religions divide humans to sparring and killing animals. But words are not sounds or figures of speech: words are objects, things, the world. Now this world is lost in darkness’, all flags of glory are gory with human blood. We have been raising baroque monuments, carving out Byzantine finesse only to demolish them with words which have lost meaning. The chaos of the interior of the human body defines the black narrative of darkness.   

 

I have seen, felt and breathed darkness, when my love chews vitamin C to get immunity and watches my outpourings of ancient wisdom, my protestation of solemn resolve to raise her above Venus, she just stares with lustreless eyes and pellucid innocence to my true voice of feelings. My truth is chewed and swallowed to a parched state of mental murk.  When I write a penetrating analysis of water on moon she laughs saying: why there should be water on the moon? And it’s cool there and if you need privacy jump into the craters… Then I realize that I am on the other side of Moon – all dark, endless suffocating darkness. It’s like the backside of the mind, the cortex, epicortex are sealed with inviolable darkness. One cannot see the hands to wave the darkness to a ripple.

 

Darkness is our fate. The womb is an encrypted cell. What the mother communicates is silent, privileged and inviolably confidential. The push through the dark birth canal is painful, bloody and infernal: then you are ejected to the world to the nurse or midwife’s hand, if you are lucky. Otherwise you fall bloody on the earth. What you call the earth is a dark tunnel sealed at both ends by fate. If you are a soulful being you will push manfully the seals and break them to make your destiny. At every step and bend and culvert there are deceit, lies, fear, suspicion and other such worldly trap to push you into the embalmed darkness.

 

Where you shall plot rebellion against the creator's  Bhul Bhuleian, his handicap race. If you have no such resources to draw upon, you will escape into poetry, music and other freaks to earn a living all the time thinking that life is a spring ghost at the mouth of a trapdoor uncertain to go in or out. You will see thick billowing smoke at midday- gypsies playing dice on your bed when you go to fall on the bed after 18 hours of harakiri. Often you will be tempted to smear darkness all over your mind to manipulate all bright things, glowing attributes innate and acquired for a turbulent belly dance for money and pleasure. At times you will steal away from your bridal bed to meditate on the futility of all pejorative glamour enjoyed fraudulently by inheritance.

 

Darkness has immense possibilities if you know how to darken your soul. Yes, that too is an art as manipulation of brightness is what you call daylight robbery may earn a new connotation and terminology- say murky delights. Darkness gives the human a safe secure environs to contemplate love’s discursive multitudes. Death wish too is a possibility. But very often and in the present day world we are compulsive listeners to the sound of darkness.  As the poet imagines ‘loud colour’ the terrorists, bigots and faith ridden vengeance seeking demented people listen gleefully to the agonizing cries of death. The dark defying sleep of not so innocent simpletons gets shattered in the darkness of night by year splitting staccato of AK 47s accompanied by choric wailing of deathstruck families. The piercing whistles of guards, royal or democratic boots in all directions, sirens and the late opened TV’ adds to this imposed sadism.

 

The colour of darkness shows puddles of blood, almost of the same colour making darkness grim and blood cuddling. But darkness also has a smell, not the aroma of the breeze, but the smell of love, hate, indifference and helplessness. All these inorganic scents make human minds digress to almost nonsensical thoughts, dreams and actions. But it also has a soft touch when you are in a lonely prison cell chewing the cud, ruminating over your blues. It sharpens your memory, the past parades itself without, however, any order or rhythm. You know you have no future in the cell yet you dream of playing hide and seek around trees as the 1960-70 lovers did in Bollywood romances. Darkness is the heart of light. Its silence, noise, embrace, provocation and forced insights often excite you to action. Darkness shows you what you are. It’s the mirror reflecting, not your form- face-gait, your heart and soul, your conscience and moves you to resolve conflicts, respond to your inner calls and to confess and apologize for your thoughts- actions of self- shaming character. It purges your soul to sharpen the inner glow of human goodness. And if you are a Man you will brighten the darkness with your­­ – you know what!

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Earth Mother's Resolve

Corona has wiped  off my smile

snatched away my children  raw and ripe

my motherhood is ashamed and abused

my vast seven sea girted state is now

a skeletal frame, all my children are in distress.

Whose curse has brought you Corona

Who has sought you like Aswathama's arrow?

But I'll save my Uttara and her child'

come on - I dare you fight with me.

My rivers, mountains, green valleys

will suck you, my fertile fields

my waters of sacred Ganga, Jamuna

will melt your body and you'll fall

in the sacred purgatorial flames

of my inner soul for final release.

I admit my children are stubborn, proud,

lustfully they invade my inner space

all my warning they defy and ignore

but bear their sins - I am the Mother.

I stretch the limits of forbearance

I too punish them, the arrogant fools

but you have no right to take them

my best and worst are all mine, my own.

Now return to the hole whence you came

my children are in a brown study

they regret, their heads are down

I have put them in solitary confinement

a loud shame has alienated them all.

I know the beginning and the end

You are an intruder, an enemy of  my creation

I'll reform my children with Love and Pardon

you get lost else I'll burn you

and wipe off your unseen hostility

without a trace on my bosom.

Sabita Sahu.

Where Is Bharat Akhand!

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

My heart gets a chill when I hear the term ‘Akhand Bharat’ from political and cultural platforms. Celebrating the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, many admirers, political – apolitical, praised him and rightly so, for his unifying effort to make India whole and undented. While I join all admirers of Sardar Patel in lauding him as the unifier of India post- partition; I bleed internally for the historic dismemberment of a great subcontinent by the shamheaded Britishers to prioritize religion over human togetherness, thereby ruining the future of a great country which they looted to their treasury’s content. The communal violence and hate that followed partition continues to ring ghostlore in the generations which are not allowed to move ahead with a guilt free conscience: hate, violence, and fear crack their dreams. No country ever was divided into two in the history of the world yet we celebrate Akhand Bharat! Is it a self-patting palliative to our sagged ego or an acceptance of our dismembered ‘whole’ as the new normal.  I know this question disturbs the equilibrium of India’s chequered history but it is time we asked to find out the answer for our complacency.

 

India was Akhand culturally since the Harappan civilization although language, dialects, idiolects were always in a flux because of internecine wars and demographic diversities. But the Epics Mahabharat and Ramayan give us a fair idea of the wholeness of a civilization despite local variations in cultural practices. But the whole(ness) of India was never under any stable political dispensation. Only during the reign of the Mauryas from Chandragupta to Ashoka there was political stability in North India. Alexander was gone (later he died) India despite Ambi’s mischievous ambitions came under a single political administration thanks to Chanakya’s wily strategies. But Chanakya was not necessarily a champion of freedom or patriotism. His primary goal was to decimate the Nandas for reasons purely personal.  He trained Chandragupta as a revenge hero and drew vicarious joy utilizing his energies. Alexander was not invincible, he was made invincible by the lack of awareness of freedom and love of one’s own country. The epics never teach freedom or patriotism although Valmiki had written in no uncertain terms, “Janani Janmabhumischa Swargadapi Gariyasi”: The kingdom –king centric values included freedom limited to the kingdom and throne. India was always culturally one but politically many as small chieftains ruled over territories by force and to retain it they fought wars with neighbours or invaders. The freedom of these small kingdoms never stretched beyond their unmarked boundaries. The idea of a hero too was of narrow connotations. Our “ Veerbhogya Vasundhara’ is a very silly vision of a hero who enjoys the earth by military prowess. This phrase is often wrongly quoted to celebrate a man of physical and mental energy. The implications however are primitive and mostly barbaric. If the Vasundhara, the earth is enjoyed by military victory of a hero, the earth has no sanctity. The Geeta too suggests, the same idea. When Krishna says: if you win you enjoy the earth (Jitwa ba vokhsase mahim), that is the earth is all yours. Love and reverence for the earth came much later. Mother earth was not for worship but for enjoyment. And the hero who enjoys Hastinapur, Ayodhya or Chittore thinks of protecting the territorial integrity of his kingdom only. The people knew nothing of freedom or love of the earth. The mother was king’s mother and the paid soldiers fought to protect the king’s (hero) freedom and patriotism. In Brindabanlal Burma’s Hindi novel Mriganayani, this has been illustrated lucidly. India was under the Muslim rule since Delhi Sultanate (712) and after about 800 years of Muslim rule the British could conquer our wholeness through commercial deceit.

 

I would like to ask how did every foreigner who came to India to loot and conquer succeed? When the marauders came where was our love for mother India? Where was our sense of freedom? Was patriotism asleep after a Soma orgy? I know I am deeply hurt when such questions come to mind. But when I see and hear the very Indians plotting like villains and asking questions of the present elected Government why is Indian territory allowed to be forcibly occupied by China I cannot supress my cold rage. I would like to answer my way: what’s wrong with that? The hero conquers by physical powers. Other heroes protect the Indian territory by the same heroic energy. If China wins will Veerabhogya Vasundhara be falsified? I hope my readers do empathize with my agony.

 

Pakistan is still in occupation of Gilgit- Baltistan: Siachin is being defended. Twitter has the cheek to show Ladakh as Chinese territory. Yet we use Akhand Bharat for ego massaging on birth anniversaries of great sons of India. Now Akhand Bharat should mean the post-partition Bharat. But what about the emotional, cultural wholeness? We have been speaking in forked tongues all these 73 years. Religion, caste, so called ideology and poor understanding of the values have kept us ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. We have no real education for everyone; no jobs for the qualified. Freedom for most Indians simply means freedom to abuse the patriots, the good and the rich and wise.  We are holes apart in our whole. Let us first of all teach ourselves what is freedom and how to protect it, and how to establish our wholeness by our rich tapestry of institutions. And behave as true sons of India that is Bharat.

Silence is (Not) Golden

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

Those who taught us this maxim, perhaps, imagined life and world as moral order, where human rationality directed all human doables. Silence is for contemplation. The yogis, philosophers and thinkers thought of silence as the endpoint of all irrational volubility that makes man a nervy, distracted person who loses the fulcrum of his authentic self. Silence restores the balance to weigh events, actions, words to get the proper measure of reality. But silence does not mean the universe would be still, motionless and almost soporific. Nature is never silent. The rivers, oceans continue their roar,liquid, limpid flow in varying rhythms. The moon and the stars speak in soundless lean whispers the romance of life. Even dreams speak a language to make man laugh or cry or to get up with a start at the dead of night. Man at times, however rare cries eureka as though he has found out the absolute truth of all mysteries. The sensor of the mind never sleeps. A guilty mind as Lady Macbeth in her somnambulistic awakening speaks of blood in her hands which the multitudinous seas cannot wash off. All creative minds whisper to no one in particular words and ideas while in total abstraction from time and space. The grass blades murmur when the spring breeze soft - fans them to playfulness. The man who feels lonely in a noisy crowd mutters disbelief at the range of vocabulary of the gushing multitudes. Waiting for a phone call too is not a silent surrender to the whims of the expected caller: he groans in disgust, sighs his impatience and often breaks the phone if the wait is longer. Man, nature, society are not meant to be silent. Silence belongs to the realm of death.

 

But what is purported by this ‘wisdom’ is noninterference in complex, complicated things or affairs. If elders are discussing a problem better not to speak something silly. In the present border situation of India at Ladakh if someone says “… I would have chased away the Chinese soldiers in 15 minutes” that would illustrate the maxim’s efficacy. The speaker here is a mindless person. It smacks of puerility. Silence in such situations is golden if you have any psychic problems against the people responsible for the peace and security of the country. When you hear wrong facts from people who matter automatically you keep quite. And if the audience is silent when the speaker thought they would burst out in laughter, he would rewind the tape in his mind and know where he was wrong. He would rectify. A true scholar listens to the wrong suggestions of peers in silence. Often the women in the family listen to the irrational tirades of the parents out of respect. But silence should never mean acquiescence or acceptance of imposed lies and false accusations.  Silence is golden as long as your inner being is not hurt; your rights are not infringed upon, and your character is not compromised. Silence can also be defiance. It is the most subtle kind of protest provided the authority or people against whom protest is made are not dumb nincompoops. Gandhi’s fast against the British administration and his silence as a response to torture were the most potent weapons: and the perpetrators understood Gandhi’s strength. Silence in certain situations is “trumpet tongued” to borrow a phrase from Macbeth’s soliloquy. Silence however, should not be allowed to be misconstrued as admission of guilt. If you listen to false accusations in silence you are more guilty than the accuser, however respectable and powerful he might be. One should remember that the Accuser is not always Caesar’s wife. Mindless silence before Royalty, Nobility or Justice and the Tyrant is suicidal – if one is not guilty of anything. A secret agent may keep silent to protect his country and that is honourable silence. If by opening your lips you jeopardize peace, security well being or integrity of a country or a great man, one should be silent. Sealing your lips to protect someone from the wrong side of justice you may save a reputation. But if your silence makes a guilty man escape your silence is homicidal.

 

Today in India and some other countries we see a new trend of so called civilization: and that is synecdochic of the new values of prudence. If you see a crime committed on the road you  go blind. If you are called to testify you will be silent on truth and vocal on irrelevance. If your friend or a neighbor harbours terrorists you should keep quiet for dear life. A modern, educated person is a self-whole, he is the total life system. Nothing exists beyond his own safety, security and well being. He is not responsible for anything. His charmed circle of life has a radius of half a centimeter, and that too is large enough to maintain.  The justice system in the world is awry because testimony is truth- blind. If you saw a rape you will try to prove you were not in the country; you were abroad holidaying with nymphs from another galaxy. Of course, truth in the modern society is hard to digest.  A whistle blower is done and dusted if he breaks his silence on personal or institutional corruption. Yes in such cases one has to choose between heroism and self centered cowardice. But if you remember your lessons of childhood and say Silence is Golden, you are unworthy of living a life.

 

In love and faith silence is never golden. If you love someone confess everything and if your sweetie is guilty of anything make a sacrifice of her: for your silence ruins someone else and also your love. Couples who are silent in love live not like saints but like animals. Sex too is animalish if there is no poetry and music in your union. Faith too deserves the respect of your being. Hypocrisy of silence is not a culpable crime, it is a moral failing which reduces man to the quintessence of dust. A man should be open, free and use silence either as a weapon to save people or as a shield to protect innocence. Silence is unnatural and evil if it is a fig leaf to cover your unmanliness.