Inner World Life itself is reminiscence, and poetry,...
Transcript of Inner World Life itself is reminiscence, and poetry,...
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Inner World
Life itself is reminiscence, and poetry, therefore, is reminiscence of
many painful events that one would not like to relive
- Mahapatra
Quite a few of Jayanta Mahapatra‟s poems have recorded his private
history where the poet makes an inward journey and establishes his link with
the past. He resembles in this aspect, three outstanding contemporary Indian
English poets namely, A.K.Ramanujan, R.Parthasarathy and Kamala Das. As
her grandmother was for Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra‟s grandfather
dominates as an important personality of the poet‟s childhood memories.
The man who is born into a particular socio cultural milieu inherits
quite unconsciously through and often without efforts, the accumulated
wisdom of earlier generations in the form of traditions, legends and myths.
Myths are the potent embodiments of man‟s dreams and aspirations which
provide him with ideals and help him set his goals in a hostile world that
constantly threatens man‟s existence. Man‟s life energies are spent in the
struggle for survival and the myths only provide him fresh impetus to face
and tackle new obstacles. For Mahapatra it is myths, rites and rituals that bind
people together into an identifiable whole, as a community. They form a vital
part of the socio historical background of Orissa. Human psyche acquires its
form out of the influence of the past experiences. The inner self of Jayanta
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Mahapatra has been woven with his childhood. When the roots in the past are
confirmed the poems naturally grow out them. His poems reveal the poet‟s
strong attachment with his childhood experiences as much as with the Oriya
fairy tales, myths and legends and the great Indian epics.
The sense of insecurity Mahapatra felt during his childhood was the
drive that resulted in the composition of poetry. His poems evoke melancholy
notes and childhood memories occupy a considerable space in his poetry. His
commitment to and identification with Orissa becomes a reiterated theme in
most of his poems. Jayanta Mahapatra recalls his childhood, his house and his
mother that instilled fear in him. His relationship with his mother during
childhood was not so happy. He says, in his autobiography
I have never been able to feel that affinity with my mother as I
have with my father. She was erratic in her ways, and as I grew
up my conflict with her increased… I slipped into dream. I kept
more and more to myself. Mother did not appear to have any
trust in me (139-140).
Though Mahapatra did not feel comfortable with his mother, his relationship
with his father was a lasting and friendly one.
The poet‟s recollection of the house where his family lived during his
childhood explains the unpredictable temper of his mother.
The house of my childhood turned into a strange intense
memory in later years. This was the one father built, into which
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we moved when I was nearly six. Father had left for the interior
province, and we lived by ourselves alone. The nights were
uncertain, and I recollect barring the front and back doors
without fail before the onset of darkness every evening. ... my
mother, physically ill with the passage of time, moving back
and forth in the restless darkness, my younger brother at his
heels. (139-140)
His mother heading the family, in her husband‟s absence was
overwhelmed with sense of responsibility. She often turned irritable due to
anxiety and sense of insecurity, ranting all the time. In spite of the rift
between the son and the mother the poet does not fail to project the softer
facet of his mother. The warmth of the poet‟s affection towards his mother
could be observed when we read the poet‟s recollection of his mother‟s
reaction when he cut his chin. His mother on seeing this became worried and
pressed sugar against the wound to check the bleeding as a domestic first aid
treatment. In the poem titled “Orissa Landscape” the poet recollects this
incident. The poet felt the ooze of love in his mother as soon as she saw the
ooze of blood from his chin.
The poet recollects the memory of the suffering of his mother due to
aging and sickness. This becomes a silent part of his life. He continues in
“Afternoon Ceremonies” (A Whiteness of Bone)
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In this room of mine,
last year‟s calendar hangs uselessly in the wall.
In my mother‟s eyes pain begin to stir again
like a venerable old gentleman
who has returned from afar (22-26)
In another poem Mahapatra records the picture of his old mother who
does not seem to have reaped any fruit out of life. The lines of the poem
“December” speaks, (A Whiteness of Bone)
The old woman
with grey hair and coarse wrinkled hands
Whom I call mother looks vacantly into her
tea cup, thinks she has been betrayed. (11-14)
This reflects the patriarchal set up in which a woman feels helpless
after her husband‟s demise. This particular incident stands for the universal
experience of women for these lines portray the plight of innumerable
mothers in our country, dependent and helpless during old age after a long
active period of labour and sacrifice for the sake of their respective families.
He recalls the appearance of his widowed mother in his poem “The
Dispossessed” (A Whiteness of Bone)
But what I realize is that
before, I reach the door
it would have all turned white
Mother stands by the door
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still wearing her clothes of mourning
I don‟t remember what father‟s
death was like. (20-25)
The poet remembers the flash of emotions of the whispers of loneliness
that surround him. His heart becomes heavy at the sight of his mother now,
changed in appearance. The poet feels the pain of his father‟s death in another
way. His contemporary poet, R.Parthasarathy, in his poem “Obituary”
presents a similar situation in his family and the changed appearance of his
mother after his father‟s death.
Mahapatra very often recollects his strong emotional attachment and
friendly relationship with his father. He imprints his high respect for his father
of his father as, he recollects in one of his poems the memories of his father
who is a teetotaler and vegetarian and took baths twice a day, one at dawn,
the other before his evening obeisance to Lord Shiva at the temple.
It is appropriate at this point to refer to what Mahapatra wrote in an
autobiographical and reflective essay:
My father worked as a Sub-Inspector of primary schools and his
earnings were comparatively meager. Father‟s work kept him
away from home. It would be right to say, however, that there
was a strong and warm bond between us that lasted right until
his death. That was a little more than two years ago. Perhaps as
emotional involvements usually are, something in the way a
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father reaches for his son‟s hand, with a vague longing that life
should last forever, I remember that web of force, the silence of
which we are a recognizable part. These times protected me
with courage. (138)
We understand that it is warmth and reassurance the children receive from
parents especially during childhood that strengthen their psyche and help the
emotional substance till the end of their lives.
The poet realizes that it is absolutely impossible to detach himself from
the memories of his father. He gains his identity from his family history
flowing through the time as the slow flow of the river across the Sal and
Deodar jungle of the ancestral past. As moving across the banks of the river
he understands that his existence would have gathered no meaning without
the blessings of his father and forefathers.
In another poem, the title of which is “The Hour Before Dawn” the
poet expresses and records his concern for his ailing father. The poet is filled
with apprehensions about his father‟s death. The poem expresses a sense of
pathos.
My father, sad-faced father (How very far you are)
from this empty room filled only with myself
without a sound the dark tree out there
struggles with its death in my life.
The silent world floats besides me;
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tomorrow may be I‟ll hear my father is dead
but he might bear the face of my son.
The poem bears in itself a great significance that it embodies the Hindu
faith that parents are born to their children as their children, which Mahapatra
shares with other Indians. In several of his poems the poet expresses the
memories of his dying father. There is no escape from the past, pain or from
death.
The poem reveals the strongly established bond between himself and
his father. There is a sense of despair over his inability to prevent the ailment
and resulting death. Ultimately what remains is a passing sense of shadow
that is kindled by memory every now and then. It appears that his father, even
on the verge of death, wants to share the burden of sufferings of his son and
relieve him from all difficulties of life.
In his youth Jayanta Mahapatra experienced the pull of two religions
about which he says:
As children we grew up between two worlds. The first was
home where we were subjected to a rigid Christian upbringing,
with rules my mother sternly imposed, the other was the vast
and dominant Hindu amphitheatre outside, with preponderance
of rites and festivals which represented the way of life of our
own people. Two worlds then; and I thinking I was at the centre
of it all trying to communicate with both, and probably
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becoming myself incommunicable as a result through the years.
(142)
Mahapatra himself has stated the reason of this change of religion by
his grandfather and its impact on him. When his grandfather was on the verge
of death, he finally staggered into the mercy camp run by the white
missionaries in Cuttack. They gave him food and shelter in return for which
he embraced Christianity. The poet was forcibly made a Christian and he had
a Christian upbringing but he has been a Hindu through and through. He
admits that there are tensions. Part of him wants to merge into the ancient
Hindu culture. Such tensions urge him to write poetry. He cannot do anything
else.
The sense of agony and disgust provoke the poet that he directs a
volley of questions towards his grandfather, only to regret it in the end. He
understands that the past comes alive to remind him of the misfortune that
befell on our people to choose the path they did. When Mahapatra grew and
acquired maturity he understood the compelling situation of his grandfather
and also the advantages he enjoyed, his education at a missionary school and
so on. The poet appears to have changed in his attitude to religion. But the
agony abides in him that the poet asks in “Grandfather” (Life Signs)
What did faith matter?
What Hindu World so ancient and true for you to hold? (24-25)
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The grandfather was not financially well off and the whole family was
forced to experience an inexplicable financial crunch which was solely
responsible for the members to sell their religious faith to another religion
which promised them food, security and education. Mahapatra‟s poems make
us aware of the prevalence of proselytism which is against the spirit of Indian
constitution. India is a secular nation but either in the name of religious
fervour or poverty, people and their individual faith get trapped. Mahapatra‟s
grandfather is an example. However, the son, Jayantha Mapahatra comes to
terms with social reality which says that one cannot talk about religion to a
hungry man.
The poet analyses the consequences of that great famine and feels the
pricks of the conscience. The poet understands that it is no use to hold our
ancestors responsible for the change of faith and regrets. Poverty and
starvation drove his grandfather to accept a new religion. He says that
We wish to know you more,
We wish we know what it is to be, against dying,
to know the dignity ... (38-40)
The poet rediscovers his grandfather and realises the misery his
grandfather had experienced when the terrible famine struck the society. The
yellowed pages of diary reveal to him the truth about his grandfather‟s
conversion to a different religion. The poet reveals this in his poem
“Grandfather” (Life Signs) This is at once an experience of joy and sorrow,
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joy because the poet could hold it clearly because the grandfather is no more
and absent for ever.
The yellowed diary‟s notes whisper in vernacular.
The sound the forgotten posture,
the cramped cry that forces me to hear that voice.
Now I stumble in your block-paged wake (1-4)
The poet regrets in the absence of his grandfather, that he should have
known him more closely and intimately. He expresses his deep sentiments
thus:
A conscience of years is between us. He is young
The whirls of glory are breaking down for him before me
Does he think of the past, as a loss we had lived, out own?
Out of silence we look back now at what we do not know.
There is a dawn waiting beside us, whose signs
are hundred odd years away from you, Grandfather. (29-34)
The above lines echo the thought content of Shelley in his poem “To a
Skylark” where the poet expresses that,
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not.
Our sincerest laughter
with some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts
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Similarly to Shelley who describes the predicament of human life
which is filled with anxiety and fear, Mahapatra states that in his childhood
days he was caught up between two major religions, Christianity (the religion
at home) and Hinduism (everywhere outside home). His mother‟s compulsion
to follow and practise the rigid regulations of Christianity and the secondary
treatment he experienced being a Christian in his college among many Hindu
fellow students made him frustrated and as a result he avoided employing
Christian themes and images in his poetry. The Hindu ancestry and Hindu
racial sensibility seems to be dominant in the poet‟s personality. The
influence of two religions makes him grow up in two worlds.
From the poems of Mahapatra we find that the poet is very firmly
rooted in the soil of Orissa. There is a quadrangle landscape formed by Puri,
Konark, Cuttack and Bubaneswar. We learn a great deal about the legends,
history and myth associated with these places. Puri in Orissa is considered to
be a sacred place for the Hindus. They worship fervently Lord Jagannath, the
presiding deity of Orissa. Dawn at Puri and Main Temple Street, Puri are the
poems that underline the importance of Puri and what it means to the Hindus.
Widows long to spend their last days at Puri based on the faith that, it would
fetch them their salvation. The poet expresses this sentiment that the last wish
of a widow is to be cremated here.
The collection of poems in A Rain of Rites takes its form from the
cultural heritage of Orissa in particular and that of India in general. A Arun
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Kolatkar in “Jejuri”, Mahapatra is disappointed with the meaninglessness of
traditional practices and customs. Mahapatra‟s “Dawn at Puri” depicts the
famous holy city Puri which is a most revered pilgrimage centre for the
Hindus. The poet‟s inner self is full of Indian sensibility which is shaped by
Oriyan landscape.
White-clad widowed women
past the centers of their lives
are waiting to enter the great Temple
Their austere eyes
stare like those caught in net
hanging by the dawn‟s shining strands of faith (4-9)
………………………………………………………..
………………………………………………………..
and suddenly breaks out of my hide
into the smoky blaze of my sullen solitary pyre
that fills my aging mother:
The last wish to be cremated here
twisting uncertainly like light
on the shifting sands (13-18)
The prayers offered at the shrine of Lord Jagannath would lead widows
into an unending rhythm which would ultimately enable them to attain
Mukthi. The Temple Road, Puri, is another poem where Mahapatra describes
the stream of common men on the road to the temple to perform their prayer.
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The devotees hear the message of the Lord and begin to understand it.
Such a devotion makes them humble. Their hearts get purified as a sense of
brotherhood overwhelms them. Through poetry Mahapatra tries to explore
these places, where he belongs to. The sense of belonging to the places in the
land of his birth and its landscape urges the poet to relate them to his poetic
craft. The man is part of his land, the place of birth in “Somewhere My Man”
Mahapatra says
A man does not mean anything
But the place
Sitting on the river bank throwing pebbles
into the muddy current,
a man becomes the place.
When the poet pays respect to the place he belongs to in a language
which is familiar and beneficial to him we understand the inseparability of the
land and the resident. The landscape gains significance and importance
because of the people living there and their religious faith. The temples at
these places and the people‟s worship are the embodiments of their strong
religious faith. The poems of Mahapatra related to these places show that the
poet is a part of these places. Like Puri, Konark, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack
are also important places for Mahapatra since they embody the tradition of
ancient Orissa and her heroic past. The poets‟ typical Indian sensibility is
revealed in the poems like, Indian Summer Poem, Evening in an Orissa
Village, The Orissa Poems, The Indian Poems and The Indian way. B.K. Das
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quotes Mahapatr‟s words which express his sentiments towards his land while
receiving the National Academy of Letters Award
To Orissa, to this land in which my roots lie and lies my past
and in which lies my beginning and my end, where the wind
knees over the grief of the River Daya and where the waves of
Bay of Bengal fail to reach out today to the twilights soul of
Konark, I acknowledge my debt and my relationship. (9)
We observe a tendency to search for the self, in the modern Indian
English poets like A.K. Ramanujan and R. Parthasarathy. Mahapatra also has
shown such a search in his Relationship which fetched him the Central
Sahitya Akademi Award.
This poem is not a collection of mere observation, a place here,
a character there, an unstrenuous meditation or two, inevitable
landscapes, but a determined, integrated set of selections built
into the theme. For the poet, the Orissan landscape is the
objective setting of his mental evolution, the phases of which
get mixed up with the lyrical vocabulary of a humanist creed.
The poem being set in Orissa embodies the myth and history of
the land. As the conflicting principles of man and nature, history
and autobiography and faith and suffering interact against the
vast panorama of Orissan landscape, the poem shows a
dialectical progression where every synthesis in further analysis
turns into a thesis (Das, 40)
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The basic thrust to write Relationship arises out of the poet‟s
confrontation with the existential anguish of a conscious and prodigious self.
A poet‟s immediate and spontaneous response to the landscape of his country,
his sense of tradition and culture of the land of his birth and many other
factors go together to assume an identity of his own. A poet or a novelist
ought to have observed and absorbed his own country before he makes it the
background against which his imagination moves. Only then his imagination
can move unhindered. Mahapatra expresses a sense of rootedness in the
Oriyan soil. Search for roots, - the trend in modern Indian English poetry - is
clearly expressed in Relationship. Mahapatra‟s deep seated allegiance to his
birth place is the outcome of his quest for identity and roots. Out of the sense
of belonging to his birth place, Mahapatra revitalizes the sprit and mettle of
his identity.
The twelve part epic poem Relationship is a record of the poet‟s
experience of the past and the sense of rootedness, alienation, loneliness and
guilt accompanied with it. The poet‟s consciousness of the sense of the past
arouses in him the question who he was. The involvement with the self and
the society runs through Mahapatra‟s Relationship. Like Walt Whitman in his
Song of Myself Mahapatra may not openly claim that he is „large‟ and that he
„contains multitudes‟. But the underlying current of this claim and the poet‟s
profound concern is with the community, the society to which he belongs.
The search for the roots and the relationship with the past is the core of
Relationship.
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The consciousness of time and past are fused neatly in Relationship.
About Relationship, CCL Jayaprada views:
Relationship is not a poem about the relationship of a man to
men in friendship, love, family or community. It is about
relationship of man to time, man to land and man to generations
of men who have passed before him and who will come after
him. Finally it is the relationship of man to his self and man to
his soul (166)
In the early poetry of Mahapatra, he presents the past as a dream - a
world full of love, sympathy, delight and hope. In the later poetry, Mahapatra
appears to be poet of consciousness. He observes the external realities keenly
and feels the effect of them on his consciousness. Thus Mahapatra is
essentially an inward looking poet. The experiences of the outer world yield
to the pressures of the consciousness and are sieved through it. The logic that
operates in his mind is not that of the objective world but that of the mind. He
is always engaged in some quest that explores human relationship for a
rationale that would render it whole in his poetry. Mahapatra never tries to
pursue any ideal or religion in his poetry but his search through poetry always
helps him realise his whole self.
A whiteness of Bone is both a continuity and departure from the poems
in the earlier volumes. It is continuity because most of the poems display the
same fertile inwardness, the same melancholic tone of voice emanating from
the same deprivation and loss, suggesting the same willingness, “to polish the
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light in his heart”. It is a deviation because Mahapatra falls back on the sense
of loss, deprivation and melancholy but only to recreate his strength and to
confront the essential facts of life. The poem creates a bleak atmosphere
carrying the burdens of hunger, poverty, loss of innocence, fleeting nature of
time, fear of death, and uncertainty about future. It appears that the poet
discovers and points out the whiteness of bones beneath the sheen and gloss
of a dream - oriented skin. The poet also seems to be determined to show us
the heritage of growth in his poetry as well as in his own self.
Though engulfed with infinite rustle of pain, hunger, poverty and grief,
Mahapatra does not try to defend himself for what he is or where he is. He
accepts the destiny of being here and nowhere :
Love : let me not try to defend myself.
If this love of mine is light, a grace,
Let it be unimportant and uninteresting
To inspire me through the long way
Into nowhere, to tell them I am here (16-20)
Mahapatra lays bare in A Whiteness of Bone, having taken a
challenging leap into the pool of existence which has already been filled with
shapes of solitude, infinite affliction and grief. He comes to terms with his
own self in relation to his own place and country, in order to grapple with the
burden of mortality and vulnerability at the hands of time that posts this
inescapable whiteness. The poet is very sensitive and conscientious that he
confronts the essential self with such humility and his poetry becomes
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painfully and absorbingly human. The poems sound with a melancholic tone.
In the poem “Silent in the Valleys” (A Whiteness of Bone) the poet says that
he does not want to probe into the reason for the pervading sense of gloom
and melancholy.
Do I detect a note of melancholy in my voice?
No use explaining that my life
Has involved me in delicate situations
For which solutions could not be found (2-5)
Perhaps the poet feels that seeking reasons and finding solutions would
push him into more misery. The burden of loss which Mahapatra experiences
and explicates in his poetry is generated partly from the past and partly from
the present. It stems from the past because it happened and existed once and it
cannot be brought back or rectified except recalling in memory. It stems from
the present because the poet realises that degeneration has crept into his place
and country - degeneration in terms of a system of values which govern our
existence. In the outer world the poet encounters loneliness, betrayal and
faithlessness everywhere. The poet tries hard to seek redemption from such a
disease-ridden present. He tries to fall back on his past. But the memories of
the past as well as the encounters with the present ultimately leave him a
wounded person. Suffering existed in the past, it exists in the present also. His
acute sufferings emanate from loss of childhood, of his father, mother and
above all his innocence. In “Father” (A Whiteness of Bone) Mahapatra depicts
the change between his time and his father‟s, between himself and his father:
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My old father believes, even in his last days;
That‟s why he isn‟t a lover or a poet.
He cannot drown himself in water or in awe. (1-3)
Though his father had not stayed with him always, it was the father‟s
love shown during his infrequent visits that nourished the sap of his life
infusing courage, being the source of mental strength and support. The demise
of his father leaves the poet in deep anguish. The bondage once established
would last till the end of his life though in memory. The poet is able to sense
that, even in death his father shares the son‟s sufferings and sympathises. He
expresses this sentiment in “Unreal Country” (A Whiteness of Bone)
And through the dull suburbs
of his death, my old father
gropes his way back.
yes, he seems to whisper
overwhelmed by the defeat
in my eyes, hunger and earth
made the bones one‟s breath. (15-21)
The world appears for the poet to be filled with pain and suffering and
the passage of time weighs heavily on his back. The poet wants to escape
from them all. The memory of his father relapses and also reminds him of the
past, pain or death.
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I remember my father, dying
under the slackening kindness of librium
making pained noises, reaching out
his life to fill my tongue and mouth
with the bitter taste of despair.
The other dead are so quiet.
And one feels no more
than a passing shadow of shame
when one remembers them.
(A Whiteness of Bone, 4)
Mahapatra‟s father, grandfather and mother form a galaxy and twinkle
like stars comforting him in the distress of the present experience. The poet
tries to escape from such stings of pain by recalling the memories of his
younger brother and mother in “God‟s Night” (A Whiteness of Bone)
the shadow of my brother follows me,
becoming blood on his hooves,
my loving mother turns pale and cross (13-16)
The poet is reminded of the pain that the mother expressed in her eyes.
The previous year‟s calendar takes him back to the mother who has become a
silent part of life of which he speaks in “Afternoon Ceremonies” (A Whiteness
of Bone)
In this room of mine
last year‟s calendar hangs uselessly on the wall.
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In my mother‟s eyes pain begins to stir again
Like a venerable old gentle man
who has returned from afar (22-26)
The poet wants to detach himself away from the past which for him is
a storehouse of infinite pains and anguishes. He fondly recalls his house that
sheltered him in boyhood in the poem “The Dispossessed” (A Whiteness of
Bone). The photograph on the wall takes him back to the memories when the
photograph was taken.
There is a photograph still hanging
on the wall in my father‟s house. It‟s quite old,
and against an elaborate
back drop the photographer used
are my parents, my younger brother and I.
I want to shut it from my mind
because it reminds one of a useless monument (1-6)
Mahapatra on a rainy day in the month of July feels lonely that he
remembers the old house where he lived when he was a small boy in “With
Broken Wings” (A Whiteness of Bone)
The old brick walls of my house
go down into shadow
I remember tales prattled,
my grandfather‟s ghost standing in the rain
watching the secrets between us burn away
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and smoke past past his grey eyes;
Mother‟s voice a cricket‟s scream
and my remorse, like the brief red glow
of fireflies, gashing the air of trees. (7-16)
The sense of the past, for the poet, lies everywhere like water.
Mahapatra presents a very clear family album through his poems. The
mention of people, occasions and incidents points out the changing patterns of
time. Mahapatra‟s account of his house enables the readers to understand his
deep sense of allegiance to it. He speaks about this in his autobiography
The house where I grew up in Cuttack was located at one end of
a cluster of houses-mostly with clay walls and straw thatched
roofs-belonging to poorer people, who eked out their livings by
doing stray, odd jobs on daily wages. (138)
Mahapatra seems to feel emotionally secure when he whirls back to the
place of his birth and childhood. It keeps him away from the fear of being
faceless in this over populated universe. He expresses this in “December”
(A Whiteness of Bone)
To live one must do those things one loves,
but always in secret so to keep going
back to the place one has come from. (24-26)
The recollected lost moments for the poet revitalise his present and
creates an atmosphere of awe and wonder. The present blends with the past
when it intrudes into the present. “It appears that these dead things always /
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loom larger with every hour that goes”. With the memories of the past, the
poet comes to terms with the present. The collection of poems, fifty nine in
number with the title A Whiteness of Bone are not new but they have the
elegiac tone and mood. The poet associates himself with places of his land of
birth, contemporary events, rain, father, the Mahanadhi and many other
aspects of life that affect the poet‟s sensibility.
In the early days of his poetic career we come across Mahapatra as a
poet of love. Mahapatra‟s early poems speak about his frustration in love.
When his son was ten years old, he fell in love with a woman. The love
poems were published in his two of the earliest volumes, Close the Sky, Ten
by Ten and Swayamwara and other Poems, (1971). Mahapatra‟s intimate
passion for conjugal love is expressed in the poems of these two volumes.
Mahapatra himself says in an article in Youth Times,
My poems were born of love, of love‟s selfishness and of a huge
self-pity, like the poems of many whom I admire. And it was
only of myself I thought as words took possession of my sense,
measured me and linked me with the fable kingdom of love (10)
The fear of separation always lingers in the mind of the poet which is
expressed in “Intimacy”. His love poetry reveals his childlike innocence and
possessiveness which is revealed in “Love Poem”.
There is no pornographic taint in Mahapatra‟s love poetry that we find
in the poems of Kamala Das. His love poetry is based on the Indian tradition
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of wedding, which allows the union of the body only after the wedding. His
poems of love exhibit the sanctity and purity attached to the relationship
between the lover and the beloved, which is expected to build a strong family
relationship Mahapatra expresses such a cultural sensibility in the poem “The
Indian Way” which says that the lover will not touch the lady love until the
wedding is over.
At a later stage love as a theme dwindles in the hands of Mahapatra.
When he examines love from various angles, he finds that it remains
unfulfilled. Some of his important love poems are “Another Evening”,
“Women in Love”, “The Whore house of a Calcutta Street”, “Armour”, “Love
Fragment”, “Of That Love”, “Lost” and few others. In “Another Evening”,
we see the protagonist, longing for his beloved whom he has lost and there is
a lamentation. The poet expresses a passion for love in “Woman in love”. The
desire for love abides even when the body decays. Mahapatra‟s poems reveal
the zest for life and longing for love. The disappointment in love overwhelms
the lover, when he remembers the young woman in “Love Fragment”. In his
later poetry, Mahapatra expresses his desire to blend with the affairs of
society and become part and parcel of the living. The poet realises that the
good and evil in man‟s destiny are inevitable and one has to cope with them.
Mahapatra has written many poems on rain. Rain is the poet‟s
favourite metaphor. His famous rain poems are “In a night of rain”, “A Day of
Rain”, “The Rain Falling”, “After the Rain”, “A Rain”, “Four Rain Poems”,
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“This is the Season of Old Rain and Again the Rain Falls”; Besides these, a
number of poems deal indirectly with this theme, the rain accelerates the
desire in man and woman for a physical union. This is commonly found in
traditional Indian Literature. Thus rain kindles the desire for sexual union. It
is also a source of hope for a better future. Mahapatra contemplates and
reflects how rain has brought upon him a self-realisation and cautioned him
against the days wasted and has created in him an awareness of reality.
In the volume of poems called A Rain of Rites, rain, which is usually
depicted as a life sustaining element of Nature, recurs often. The rain is
connected with the poet‟s mind arousing futile thoughts of regeneration:
“breaking away into light / before it reaches its objective”. The people take
the rain for granted as they conduct the religious celebrations, without
knowing significance and without caring to know its hidden meaning.
„Stone‟ is another important motif in Mahapatra‟s poetry. Stone is the
embodiment of the metaphysical and eternal as well as personal conflict. It
symbolises his and his people‟s beliefs embedded in the age-old traditions.
Mahapatra says in the opening line of “Bhubaneswar” (Waiting 8) says
“Stone is the theme”. His historical and mythic consciousness is revealed
through the image of stone. It seems to evoke the forbidden memories.
Stones-in the forms of common slabs, ruins of temples, phallus of Shiva and
so on are sacred to the fetish of our people steeped in pagan faith. Women
waiting in groups outside the shrine ruminating over their sad plights are
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stony. The devotees touching the linga with forehead are stony in the same
way. All of us, every man and every beast who is trapped, deaf and mute in
one‟s own sleep are equivalent to a stone. The priests in the temple appear for
the poet like ghosts of the old stone.
All the dreams, hopes and new thoughts of man seem to have been
petrified and buried in the stones from his very childhood. His conduct is
regulated and life pattern is set by the dogmatic minds of the ancestors who
impress upon us through our parents. About such a powerful influence the
poet says,
Tonight I know that the life I have lived
is my life softened in my father‟s life
I am the water in my father‟s eyes,
I am the slow flow that takes me gently down
Has its darker depths taught me already
the art of disguise, its strange necessity? (Waiting, 11)
The poems in Waiting record the fears and frights of the poet‟s
childhood and youthful days. They are caused by the familiar superstitious
childhood stories of evening stars relating to some one‟s death, the visual
effect of Lord Jagannath‟s image evoking “fear”, “fetishes”, forebodings of
the astrologer and many other experiences of the early part of his life. They
all seem to have restrained the growth and freedom of the poet, stealing away
his courage to take to flight. The poet is caught in a helpless condition of
decay, vaguely dreaming about the “axis of the past”. The enormous size of
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the hills of Annapoorna, Dhaulagiri and the temple of Konarka fill him with
awe. They were the vague grieving years which were fearful:
I dare not go
into the dark, dark sanctum
where the myth shifts
swiftly from hand to hand, eye to eye.
(A Rain of Rites, 22)
Gradually the poet gives up this fear and tries to identify himself with
the stones he comes across. He understands that nothing can be revealed
about the past until it comes alive. So he invokes the stones: “there I stand,
close to the stone / trying to smear it with blood / to give it life” (Waiting, 23).
The poet at once remembers the sacrifices made by the people through ages
which he learned through the legends and myths of the past. The evocation of
the legends is a tribute to the people of this land who look back to their past
with awe. It is really surprising that the people spend a lot of time reveling in
the past and never hardly realize that they must rise to action today. The lives
of the people of the entire land seem to have become “immobile / like the
River in its used infirm bed” (Waiting, 23).
People go about gazing at the temples, having inherited the faith in
gods from the past and worship them blindly without any surprises, doubts
or questions. The silence of the land increases and becomes stone at present
while the past revives itself again and again in the carved stone walls of the
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temples of Konarka, Bhuvanewar and Puri. These walls speak greatly about
the glory of ancient art and architecture.
Such an association of the people with what are revealed through the
stones and walls is equivalent to death. No doubt the people of this land have
inherited a glorious historic, legendary, artistic and architectural past. But
they are trapped in a condition of decay and death. The tendency to imitate
others blindly, believing in dogmas and reveling in sloth threatens to ruin us.
The land simply allows people lead such a life that reduces them to mere
stones which isolate them and would never allow them to realize their dreams
of future. These people live a callous, apathetic life
Does the brood of white - clad
luckless widows shuffling up and down
the fractured temple steps distress you?
Everyday I see them debase themselves
and am afraid, understanding nothing
(Waiting, 25)
The poet is sensitive to the debasement that he observes. But many
people are insensitive and they die ignorant and weak. It never strikes them
that they must question the cruel authority of priests. They never become
inquisitive about the meaning of their chants. They never question whether
the frail white flower that they offer to God would expiate them from sins.
They utter meaningless words like a parrot, in the name of prayer. They allow
their fears to be swallowed up by the voices of their priests. The poems
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“A Summer Night” and “A Country Festival” tell how he with others
celebrates the joyous festivals in the town of Cuttack. They celebrate festivals
amidst the whining of the cripples and lepers. The cry of the naked diseased
children looms large and the entire place is thus infested with the swarm of
crows. The chants of the “tireless tongues” of the priests go along with these.
The priests are highly haughty and are hateful towards the beggars that they
shrink back at the very sight of the priests. The very same priests never
hesitate to run behind the rich, begging for charity. They bury their doubts
and questions raised by the conscience, flatter the rich and hope to get
atonement.
There is absolutely no regard for humanitarian concerns and old
values, while the festivals are observed. There are unexpected eruptions of
violence. “There is light talk of rioting and murder on the festive day of
Durga‟s immersion” (Life Signs, 11). Festivals, one after the other are
celebrated inspite of the sordid condition of the people. People hope to purge
themselves of all ills and inaction by idle indulgence in meaningless rites.
They enjoy a temporary excitement out of these festive celebrations. But after
this they have to come back to the reality of life with its diseases and
dishonest practices.
The greedy grocer exploits the ignorant customers but plans to donate
marble stones to the temple of Jagannath. People suffer from hunger and
poverty. Women‟s dissatisfaction keeps increasing. Sorrow deepens. People
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look like ruined stones. It appears that everybody is coldly waiting for death,
living in a mouldering country surrounded by a savage storm. Life goes on in
the same way. There is no change and no development. The situation is
symptomatic of Eliot‟s “Waste Land” where people experience death in life.
Mahapatra says:
even if the copses of thirty five thousand
are piled up in the carthouse of my will,
even if the patriotic drums beat on
and the wind brushes past with the curses
of the undying dead,
even if we grieve for the door that shuts
into place behind us,
as the dead keep roaring over us,
drawing the secret laughter
out of our nothingness
(Waiting, 56)
The poet, in a cynical tone speaks about the insubstantial, callous
living that keeps driving all of us to our fatal end. We lead a life blindly
adhering to superstition, imitation, nervous uncertainty, vague grieving,
suffocation, melancholy and so on. We must cleanse ourselves of all these
evils and take up a life of total freedom, originality and fresh understanding of
nature, one‟s place in it and the type of response one should have.
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There are many things around and within us which should purge and
refresh us. We must go to the river to flush the darkness from the crumbling
eyes. We should play with the earth and learn to love it so that it does not turn
vile in taste. We should share the ooze of earth‟s pain. The people of the
country should get firmly rooted in the soil by strengthening their
sensibilities, as its sons. They should have faith in the power and excellence
of mind. They should proclaim their rights from there.
The poet expresses his environmental concerns which are based on a
feeling of a strong relationship with the land in Waiting. The poems like
“Orissa”, “Dhaulagiri”, “Konarka”, “Strong of the Start of 1978” and “Strike
your secret Earth” unravel the land, its history, myth, legend and the people.
The poem “Thought of the future” reveals the poet‟s relationship with his
family. We find a tone of exploration in the poems like “Performance” and
“The Twenty Fifth Anniversary of a Republic” in A Father‟s Hours and in
poems like “Somewhere, My Man”, “Hunger”, “Ceremony”, “Appearances”
and “Five Indian Songs” of A Rain of Rites. The poet attempts to identify
himself with everything that strikes his notice, stirs his memory and kindles
his sensibility.
He discovers within himself the conflict that always troubles him due
to his innocent faith being blurred by his mother‟s fetishes and himself one
among the many who celebrate festivals in Cuttack town. The more the poet
tries to understand the people and their place, the more sorrowful he becomes.
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The poet is shocked by the living death in their lives. The poet says that the
people are uprooted from the true tradition and are leading a “wooden life”
being insensitive to “the burnt whispers of the wind at Konarka / like the lost
faces of a lost language at Dhauli” (Waiting 57). The people hardly show any
sign of life, rotting in fear, suspicion, sloth and inaction. Their lives resemble
the familiar old ruins hardly showing any sign of life.
The awareness of the log-like, stone-like lives of the people drives the
poet to seek regeneration in the secret terrain of his heart by proclaiming its
rights and enjoying its virility. A new kind of society could be raised out of
the ruins of hate by loving the earth deeply and nourishing its water and
empathising with the pain and suffering of its creatures. Each one has to give
up the fetishes of vain burden of the past memories and wait for a new
consciousness about the nature of future life.
The poems in ‘The False Start‟ reveal the conflict between the poet‟s
attempts to venture with the possibilities of awareness and the confrontation
with failures in relationship and the ever present time and death. The poems in
this volume are characterised by mental restlessness, dominant darkness and
an indistinct awareness of the imagined. The self is preparing itself for
enlightenment but very soon it encounters pain. The old inherited beliefs drag
it backward while it is lost in the dreams of eternity. The new birth appears to
be a remote possibility.
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The poet finds it difficult to escape from the abiding presence of time.
It appears that time only will bring solutions to give answers to his enquiries
about life, the purpose of life and thoughts of deprivation. But time seems to
have confiscated all the potentials for change and deprived us of all insight
into the real. It blurs the sight by raising a mist. The poem “Today” (The
False Start) speaks thus
Time faces me; and there
like the lurking madness in a tyrant‟s eye
is the whim of another day
dark wings shut and unmoving in the blue.
This day is an instant which possesses me,
from which I cannot escape: who knows
what part of this day lies in the coming life (11-17)
It appears to the poet that time holds him in a clutch. He feels restless
and helpless trying to escape from it that he comes to realize much later that it
is no use trying to put off the instant when it comes, or even taking it by force,
because this again leads one backward to become helpless victim of
memories. Memories flow into the mind like the wind,
Memories come like the wind and today
peers from the years: over unbridled waves
and tenacious skys, and I know
that you can never be lost
because their secret nets of pain
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would always be there to bring you in …
Today
leads me, round the corners of your memory (5-12)
The letters and mementoes lying packed in a trunk distresses the poets
like a dead man. They remind him of his friends of the past days. Such
memories burden the poet so much that his power of reasoning lies
suspended. Present happiness gets ruined. So the poet feels the necessity of
exposing everything to the will of time. But the poet is also dubious about the
faithfulness of time which keeps hidden all the potentialities of man. Time
does not answer questions regarding the mysteries that cover life and death.
Thus memory brings to the surface painful experiences but the passage of
time appears to heal them. But time holds people with uncertainties and
anxieties of future, and provokes gloomy thoughts of death. The poet is
overcome by sadness that he questions, “can grief let me do what I wish /
littering every corner of this dark / with awakenings of death?” (The False
Start, 15)
Mahapatra points out the paradox about time that time makes him
aware of all pain, and suffering is conquered by the “time of imagination”.
The poet is relieved of the fear about time by the growing conviction about
the possibility of a psychological apprehension of eternity. He says
My secret is more than songs or air,
more than time‟s unpleasant corner
in which the smells of rotted meat
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and decayed fruits take refuge, … (26-29)
(The False Start)
All failures, betrayals, absences, consciousness of timelessness are engulfed
by time. Critic P.C.David compares Eliot‟s and Mahapatra‟s notions of time
and draws a parallel,
Eliot finds all time „unredeemable‟ and for Mahapatra it is
something in-escapable. He is detached from his perspective of
time; but for Mahapatra, time carries a sense of urgency, a
feeling of helplessness at the thought of not being able to escape
from the instant which possesses him and perhaps becomes an
instant of reckoning, bearing with it a consciousness of the final
test of life. (252)
Time promises with a possible end to all uncertainities and seems to
provide a solution to the enigma of death. Hence the poet learns to accept
time and understand the mystery of death. Acceptance of death must awaken
us to an awareness of better living. According to the poet one must die a death
other than “The death that comes swings back and forth / like a bewitched
barge upon a weaker race” (Waiting, 25)
The poet is against the attitude of death which keeps us waiting for it
until it strikes down and brings a fatalistic end to everything in life. In the
poem “Measuring Death”, the poet questions this kind of death-in-life
attitude. He strongly pleads for a death which brings “you your meaning of
life” (Waiting, 75). There is no meaning in life if it is just lived with little
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longings, trifle perusals and purposeless activities. This state of life is
vehemently criticised by the poet in his poem “Something Spreading Itself “
And this life still stands,
propped up by our thousand little longings.
But when we cannot go on living
simply for the smoke
that struggles to get us outside,
for the sake of an empty word
(Waiting, 37)
Life continues in the face of apparent oppositions posed by time and
death reveals its tremendous potentiality to overcome all these like the waves
in a sea fighting to merge into silence to get free of earth and death. Life is a
boat tossed by storm which sails through tempests of confusions and
contradictions to ultimately attain its equipoise. The concluding lines of
“A Sailboat of Occasions” (The False Start, 25)
Inside may be, the noise spin, like gull cries
like the love of other men. And the bare sails
dance, sudden canvas and whole exile of your day (18-20)
Mahapatra‟s seventeenth book of poems Random Descent (2005) deals
with the reminiscence of the variety of themes and images chosen by the poet
in his career. The first section of the book consists of the poet‟s rumination on
the same old themes as he has been doing over thirty years of his career. The
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poet is on a quest for meaning of living, he is still arrested by the indecision,
myth and stillness but is hopeful of overcoming it.
His poetry presents his obsessions, concerns, his mother‟s soul,
palmistry and a girl‟s desires, Orissa‟s starvation, twilight, stone, silence,
Oriyan landscape and so on. After many years of experience in his poetic
career Mahapatra speaks in a mystic‟s tone on finding meaning of life. In the
poem “The Shore”
If I seek an answer to our life
It is because I see myself everywhere,
all the time.
But there is the hard old boat man
Watching over the utter desert
of his waters.
The river flows without from intangible
And when island on the shore that is not. (28-33)
Mahapatra in his poetry of recent times turns a mystic against the tradition of
Indian mysticism and several trend of mysticism of the land of his birth where
flows a river of the mixed collection of various religious mysticisms.
Many poems of Mahapatra in Random Descent glorify nature through
a mystic mode and mediate between human and non human worlds pitched
against an ethical measure. The poet feels that nature has become a medium
for settling a balance between mystery and contemporanity, related to the
immanent grace perceived through nature. Random Descent marks a mature
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phase in the evolution of his poetry. In the dedication page the poet states that
the wait‟s begun again for the angel to descend upon the earth to transform
the word, for which we have been waiting long. It is going to be a rare
random descent. The descent points at the waiting of the earth for some
angelic arrival, a transformation. The title of the collection suggests this
descent as a random one.
It is observed that events happen at random in the human and non
human domains is natural and beyond any rational explanation. The poet says
that the complexity of life around us which reveals itself in the form of
mechanical device, electrical circuit, wild life migration, rioting crowd,
atmospheric storm, national economy are governed by a multitude of
independent factors and are subject to random influences.
The earth has been rendered ecologically degraded by the
technological intervention, which is not a triumph of man over nature but a
warning of chaos resulting in danger. All delusion of victory is going to be
defeated and demolished if it continues in this state. Mahapatra points out that
the answer to all his questions is hidden in the natural phenomena and we
have to search for and arrive at it. In “Things that Happen” he writes:
(Random Descent)
But these things that happen
have always beginnings that cannot be seen.
It is the body I think I‟ve carried along
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forcing me to wander from the secret
to secret, mirage to mirage,
pumping up half truths into a reality I never lived. (26-31)
In a lyrical essay entitled Freedom as Poetry: The Door Mahapatra states
clearly “… a poet‟s business is to see-which he should do, listening to the
voice of his inner self. Let the poet not bother about conscience of the world -
simply be the water that flows, finding its own level, even if it is soaked by
the earth, with no trace left behind” (6). In the same essay he says: “…
surrounded by my own words which crowd me down, I try to escape, thinking
of another kind of freedom”. He asks: “who will whisper the whisper of
summer breeze? The politician or the poet?” (5). It implies that a poet is
necessitated to present his observations of the world to others so that others
would make a decision of their own to live meaning fully.
For Mahapatra, the key to understanding of the world lies in nature.
The dichotomy of human and non-human dissipates. The power and working
of nature is all pervasive. He says:
No more do men go out on to the earth
to be close enough to the mountain‟s quiet
and wait for an answer. (8-10)
The silence and vastness of the mountains and seas and the natural objects
become metaphors for human situations in most of his poems. Mahapatra says
in an interview on 31st May 2011,
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I was looking around the world, and into myself. May be when I
started out writing poetry, I thought I was the center of the
universe, which was absolutely wrong. My early poems were
exercises in a way, written mainly to please myself. These
poems were fused in themselves, and they tended to be abstract.
My mind was more to me than my heart, which is not right
when it comes to poetry (227)
In the same interview, to the question as to why and how he came to
choose to write and publish poetry, in English, he says “As to why I chose to
write I have no answer, who knows why one does these things? Or why one
does anything, for instance? I can‟t say. Anxiety, inadequacies, unhappiness,
these could lead one to writing. Perhaps I am talking to myself when I write
… then there is this subject of English, and the answer is simple: I wrote in
English because it was the most natural thing for me to do. My studies in a
missionary school where English was mandatory; we had to speak English
and no other language; and the urging of my Principal, who liked me much,
and instilled in me a love for the English language - these were the factors
which led me to use English for my poetry … As you are perhaps aware, I
started writing poetry when I was approaching forty at an age when most
poets would have finished their strongest work. But some things happen in
life and reasons are not always easy to find”. (226)
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Thus many of the poems of Mahapatra are a search for the self. The
search for the self gives a sign of continuity to his poetry. Memory helps the
poet delve into the depths of the past that enables his search into the self. With
the aid of memory he tries to discover his own roots, and find solace from the
burdens of the present. The past redeems him from the fear of being faceless;
from the fear of aging and death; from the fear of the changing scenario in the
present. The poetic world of Mahapatra reiterates the concept that one should
journey into one‟s own self in order to cope up with the outer world without
exploiting others and their resources. To understand the natural surroundings
one must understand oneself. In order to understand oneself one must travel
inside oneself. Mahapatra‟s poetry, according to Bhat “makes the reader look
inwards, question himself about life, its significance uncertainity and so on
leading him into process of personal discovery”. (274)
Mahapatra strongly believes that personal discovery will supply a
person with sufficient courage to face the society and will strengthen man and
equip him encounter social evils. It will pull him out of his trapped situation
and motivate him to relate himself with the external world. Close relationship
with himself and nature will turn him inward and make him learn the root
cause of his inner conflicts and teach him the ways to overcome them. Such
an emotional exercise will heal the wounds of today and will enable to
explore the possibilities of creating a promising future.
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Mahapatra‟s commitment to the locale is similar to that of Whitman‟s
nineteenth century New York, Robert Frost‟s New England, WB Yeat‟s Sligo
and Nissim Ezekiel‟s Bombay. Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri form the
background of Mahapatra poems. A poet writes about the surrounding in
which he lives. His poetry serves as a link of his experiences. A broader look
at his poetry enables us to understand that poet‟s task is not only to paint the
picture, but also to remind people of their past, their roots and the benign
nature that moulded and shielded them.
The poems included in Shadow Space (1997) and Bare Face (2000)
illustrate the modes of pain and grief. The poet assimilates his role as a human
being and as a poet in the outer world. In these volumes Mahapatra brings to
the surface, the bare face and the shadow space of individual‟s living in the
contemporary world. Mahapatra‟s concern from the beginning has been to
capture the nuances involved in creative writing. The pressure of forces
outside himself are heavy that the poet feels disappointed and doubtful of his
own poems because he starts realising that the forces outside create fissures in
the ideals which he held high. The compelling demand of the outside world
on the poet and poetry drives him to paint the blackest face of woe and find a
new direction both for the poet and his poetry. An inner need compels the
poet to articulate about the forces of disorientation in the real life situations,
sharpening his protest against those forces, which dehumanise, individuals
leading them to an utter sense of helplessness. The poems in these volumes
articulate much of this. We observe that the creative expression of the poet
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has undergone a lot of changes that it has become less metaphoric, less
circuitous, and less oblique than it was in his earlier volumes. Similes
employed in these poems are original and striking. The language has assumed
an intimate informality and an unalloyed simplicity. The tone of voice is more
frank and open.
The spontaneous fertility of his metaphors and their profuse flow form
the chief strength of Mahapatra‟s poetry. The individual line, image or group
of lines as well as their unified totality of poetic experience are memorable in
a Mahapatra poem. These poems seem to describe how Mahapatra has lived
the reality with the sensibility of the historical and mythical past. They
engagingly and eminently define the relationship between the poet and his
place.
The poet makes a euphoric celebration of the relationship between the
poet and his place after securing and establishing his identity. He begins to
search for meaning in a place that has turned meaningless. He starts looking
critically at his own place, people, at his own self, his own idiom and
medium. There is an undertone of pain and suffering that springs from the
poet‟s perception of society that makes the poems weak causing bleakness
and dampness which leads to helplessness and misery. It appears that the real
world cannot be redeemed or saved from its present decadence.
The poet was highly excited about his relationship with his own place
when he received the award for his poetic accomplishments. But he is also
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painfully aware of a sense of defeat that occupies the shadow-space of his
heart. The poet admits this sense of defeat in the poem “Living in Orissa”
(Shadow Space).
Something here, perhaps fatal spirit
Something that recalls the centuries of defeat
To live here,
antlered in sickness and disease
in the past of uncomprehended to terms
and the split blood of ancestors
one would wear like an amulet
Today the darkness of our own shadows
Slips over the uncared for cemeteries by the river
Someone keeps walking still
across the ravenous dust
between the graves.
Waiting like an ancient debt.
Someone goes on dancing
at the door of indifferent temples
Carrying pain in an eyeless face.
Only shadows shift now.
They have the eyes of defeated sprits.
The old old eyes (1-19)
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The spirit of the poet gets drained when he feels the burden of history
of defeat and the burden of sickness and disease. The poet expresses his
dejection in this poem. Inspite of the sense of despair and grief, the poet is
attached to the region in which he lives. It is the love of the land that gives
him sustenance to withstand whatever is dismal or unsavory about his place.
The poet‟s concern has been to relate the individual self to its history, to the
burden of history and to the fleeting nature of time. The world would not open
up its relationship with the individual self. The individual has to negotiate it
and generate interest in knowing the dead and the living, the past and the
present about the world.
As Mahapatra moves from early to later poetry, a change in the
treatment of themes is noticed that the poet adheres to an unassuming style
devoid of any experimentation. His thoughts are anchored in many other
modes of living. The poet studies at large the intricacies of life which makes it
whole. He identifies himself with his roots and his childhood experience. He
upholds the complexities of a sensitive and time bound man: his alienation,
his suffering his growing sense of frustration while aging fast, his perpetual
fear of death and the inevitable triumph of time over him.
The poet seems to gain and acquire an awareness of the contemporary
situations that social, religious and political issues find expression in his latter
poetry. The poet appears to be realising that he is large and contains
multitudes. The whole range of human experience matters, not a fraction of it.
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The self-bound tone and vision of the poet makes way for a more profoundly
felt home-bound and world-bound attitude and vision.
The poetic inspiration of Mahapatra‟s springs from his individual
world and the poet is unrepentant, as he feels that his poems are for himself
more rather than for the reader. He wanted to make sense of the life which
was lying in fragments before him. He was urged to seek answers for himself,
testing his feelings by striking them against the fabrics of the poem he knew
he must write. His poems do not exhause themselves as verbal images
translating into multiple layers of meaning. Mahapatra presents a constantly
changing skyline in his poems. He creates a poetic universe which is totally
Indian.
The poet looks at the world and is pained by the despair around and he
finds it hard to keep silent about it. He becomes a poet by virtue of what he
sees or hears and that itself begins the mystifying process of the poem.
Passion for writing poetry is activated when the poet is compelled by the urge
to understand the world he lives in and understand his own self. The subjects
are often parts of the topography of his own psyche; he explores his own
feelings with painstaking and often painful honesty but never loses sight of
their universal participation.