Niranjan Mohanty as a Contemporary Indian English Poet · And thus, negotiating a satiation, I...

Niranjan Mohanty as a Contemporary Indian English Poet

Binod Mishra Department of HSS, IIT Roorkee.

Indian English poetry has acclaimed newer heights not only because of the myriad themes that it delineates but also because of the inimitable style of many contemporary poets whose writings represent the common man’s calamities against the sweeping wings of globalization. The advances in various fields most often push the common populace to the margins where they most often feel sandwiched between the challenges of the impending technical revolution and the inherited cultural legacy, which they are unable to forsake. Niranjan Mohanty is such a contemporary Indian English poet, who voices the varied concerns of ordinary mortals whose splits often go unheard and unnoticed. The poet in Mohanty is of the view that despite the waves of globalization, cultural memory of individuals as well as of nations cannot be compromised with. Culture comprises the various everyday diurnals and represents our customs, rituals, food, fashion and emotions, which become the forte of Mohanty’s poetic corpus.

Niranjan Mohanty’s poetry represents various concerns. Past and present often play hide and seek in his poetic oeuvre where rich tropes and figures help him in conveying the conflicts and anguishes faced by us every day. While Mohanty as a creative writer touches upon a variety of themes, the present paper concentrates on his last collection entitled Tiger and Other Poems (2008), published only a few months before his death. The collection has tiger in the background as a metaphor and other symbols too validate their magnificence in it. Tiger in Mohanty’s creative world is an image under which lie various threads of meaning camouflaged. Tiger becomes a life force and a quintessence of worldly innocence and experience. The paper also unveils the poet’s compassion with common flesh and blood’s oscillation between fate and faith, between human limitations and divine grace --- all resulting into bare humdrums of contemporary world.

Niranjan Mohanty, who started teaching in Aska Science College,Orissa in 1975, had in him a poetic fire which reminds us of John Keats, the famous romantic poet. What motivates me to bring Mohanty close to Keats is the initial turbulence and elegiac atmosphere that both these poets faced in the prime of their lives. Mohanty, like Keats, had a very disturbing home atmosphere because of some deaths in the shape of his brother Tipa, sister Jaba and then of his nephew. These deaths affected him much and his first poem resulted soon after the demise of his nephew. While children his age often played with toys and were unaware of the phantoms of the ugly realities, Mohanty had to realise the futility of life. The childhood joys and pleasures of innocence distanced him only in the prime of his life. That poetry could come out of suffering appears to be well –tested in Mohanty’s life. The seeds of poetry and poetic sensibility germinated in Mohanty at an early age and it became a passion for him till the last breath of his life. While his early life ran parallel with the happenings like Keats’, the former’s poetic numbers comprise different hues at different times though one can always hear the melancholy and some songs of dirge in his poetic corpus.

Mohanty was born in 1953 in Calcutta and he did his honours and post-graduation in English. After joining lectureship, he completed his doctorate in English and continued to work in Aska Science College till 1988. He later taught in Behrampur University till 1999

www.the-criterion.comThe Criterion

An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165

Vol. IV. Issue III June 2013

1 Editor-In-Chief Dr. Vishwanath Bite

when he got a chance to work in the famous Vishwa Bharati where he died in harness in 2008. Poetry was Mohanty’s first love and that is manifested through his works namely, Silencing the Words (1977), Oh! This Bloody Game (1988), Prayers to Lord Jagannatha (1994), On Touching You and Other Poems(1999), Life Lines(1999), Krishna(2003), A House of Rains(2007) and his last collection Tiger And Other Poems( 2008).

A proper evaluation of Mohanty’s verses reflects that poetry for him was a passion and which was above all charms. His poetic volumes did not appear in quick succession the way many contemporary poets are blessed with. It also demonstrates the fact that poetry was a sort of prayer, a sadhana through which he wanted to suggest alternatives and answer various challenges. While his early poems appear trite and obscure for readers, one can find his later collections full of maturity and suggestiveness. As a poet, Mohanty keeps his eyes open not only for various ills that plague society but also allows his readers to peep within to discover the cause of all sufferings. While many of his readers may not agree with the poet’s line of thinking in terms of devotion, the poet asserts that true devotion is reflected only when the devotee and the lord are in communion and feel that the oneness has been achieved by attaining the harmonious co-existence of the perceiver and perceived.

Since my attempt through his paper is to show the mature self of the poet, I have taken Mohanty’s Tiger and Other Poems, his last collection for our discussion. The volume under discussion has 90 poems where majority of them have tiger in the background yet the collection as a whole voices various concerns. Tiger makes it presence apparent in 19 poems while in the remaining poems too, their echoes are felt. The collection makes enormous use of tiger as a metaphor and other symbols too validate their magnificence in it. Tiger in Mohanty’s muse is a facade under which lie the poet’s murmurs of ordinary mortals who oscillate between fate and faith, between human limitations and divine grace --- all resulting into bare humdrums at a particular stage of life.

The volume opens with the poem named ‘This Mind’ where the poet observes that human mind is always dynamic despite the fact that a sudden stillness will close everything. Imagination may drive our minds to new horizons ‘where words assume the shape /of a blue sky, their silence’ yet the reality cannot escape its turn. Poems, too, are the embodiments of imaginative sweeps yet they cannot find their authenticity unless the clayey soil and green grass lend their fragrance to their being. Poetry is a process of purification, a cleansing of the breaths. He says:

While trudging on

The green grass, I inhale the scent of the earth

To cleanse my breath, my unassailable breath.

This is what keeps me busy and moving. (This Mind)

Poetry takes its birth in suffering and it finds mention in Mohanty’s verses too. While one can find Buddhist echoes in many of his poems, the poem entitled ‘Dukkha’ becomes representative. The poet doesn’t find in Buddha’s philosophy a sort of escapism and negation rather he looks at the positive aspects. The poet is of the opinion that body is the root cause of all sufferings since body is an embodiment of all desires which cannot be fulfilled. As one desire leads to another, it keeps on multiplying and humans often get lost and are deviated from the right paths. Human beings blindly traverse the forbidden paths and invite unnecessary complexities. They hanker after transitory satisfaction and fail to see the reality.





The uncontrollable desire for power and materialistic satisfaction prompts them to ignore the ashtangik marga shown by Buddha. And as a result, the chaos and commotion continue in the world. The wild urge of man for reaching mountainous heights blinds him to see the heavenly light. Mohanty’s poetic taxonomy admonishes his readers for an unmindful odyssey of physical pursuit but invites the inhabitants of the contemporary world to transcend it in order to move into the metaphysical firmament of transcendental realities and therefore the poet chastises mankind and says:

When you show me that seed,

I go crazy for the tree.

This, then is the difference, and there shall always be

Between your shut eyes

That can only see the light

And mine, ever open , that seeing

Sees not what really makes things bright.

We cannot deny the fact that all that we see is not worth believing. (Dukkha)

Mohanty as a contemporary Indian English poet records cultural memory in his poetic corpus. What he states in one of his critical essays finds its vestige in his muse most often. The waves of globalization, according to him, cannot eliminate a creative writer’s cultural memory, which influences ‘our comprehension processes. He says with assertion; ‘despite globalization, the representations of culture and co-ordinates of our culture in our literatures will experience a galvanizing momentum in order to legitimize, authenticate and most persuasively advocate the view the view our creative writers—whether writing in regional languages or in Indian languages or in Indian English- write from the centre.’ (Mohanty 16)

Mohanty is a poet who doesn’t repeat the same theme time and again and therefore after the ineluctable poesis in which he warns mankind against blind imitation and materialistic attitude, he surreptitiously moves into the world of philia and agape where he appreciates the permanence and truth of love. Love is a guiding force in human life and it shows its presence even in its absence. He upholds the view that true love lies in continuity. It has a tremendous power and is above all considerations. It is not just a whiff of air but a placid flow that moves unabated. Love can mitigate all sorts of suffering provided one has a true longing for it. The thirst of love requires sincere efforts of lovers to unify them and enable them to submerge in each other. The poet exhorts the lovers to make their love enviable by sculpting presence even on the rough rocks of absence. True and exemplar love can assume the state of immortality and inspire the tired travellers by becoming their song. Finally, the poet in his poetic organon further articulates and echoes the Platonic philosophy of Love:

I collect pebbles of my dreams

To drop them one by one

Into the earthen pitcher of your being

So that the margin of your love would rise to quench my thirst





And thus, negotiating a satiation,

I escape into you, flow into you

Until you and become a song

In some tired traveller’s tongue. (Escaping into You)

Mohanty’s poetry is a rich mix of innocence and experience. While we grow in years, most of us at some point of time try to look back. Every adult has in him a child who always lives hidden in different forms. The poet, while remembering his own childhood, also recollects the toys that he played with. The freedom and wantonness that a child enjoys during certain age often are left behind and become a part of memory. But the heavy weight of hours which curtails the heavenly joys most often pesters the hidden child spirit, which, once again wants to take a backward journey. The poet ruefully says:

All these years, those toys from the cave

Of their sleep and silence, have watched me

Running, jostling, stumbling, resting and running

Again, wobbling and wriggling, once again, (Toys)

It is man who moves and neither the toys nor the empty match-boxes. The worldly responsibilities and manly duties make him so helpless that during hours of deep grief and pain, one can only long for retreat. During such hours when one finds no support and solace from anywhere, he often longs for some divine blessing sometimes in the form of one’s elder’s bright –eyed coat or God’s grace. The poet offers some hope in an age of hopelessness and says:

They inspire me to hang like cobwebs

Around my grandfather’s bright –eyed coat,

Renewing my breath to endear them.

Surely oh, surely , I need those toys now. (Toys)

This poem reminds us of Henry Vaughan’s line in ‘The Retreat’ where the poet wants to take a backward journey:

Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move And when this dust falls to the urn,

In that state I came, return. Mohanty claims a niche among major contemporary poets as his poetry gives voices to several concerns of mankind in an ever-shrinking world because of various fears. He also registers a great panorama of futility and anarchy, which become the contemporary history, in his poetic world. The poet uses tiger to show various personalities of mankind and at times, he also hints at man’s cruelty through the images of tiger. Tiger assumes unlimited possibilities and also symbolizes various inadequacies. All nineteen poems show the poet’s obsession with the tiger. He makes tiger a medium to connect the present and the past and also to rationalize the future.





The poem ‘This is How The Tiger Comes and Goes’ shows both fear and strength that the animal generates. The stark stare of the tiger may appear to be frightening yet at the same time the stare may also reflect the howling hunger of one’s childhood. Fear may be a negative force yet it generates in us a sort of patience and may also propels strength and silence. The tiger’s stare appears frightening because of the silence which adds fire to the wild animal’s ferocity. The poet says:

Its stark stare turns me

Into a fence around a mansion

Inhabited by none, except

a darkness that unwinds silence.

(This is How the Tiger comes and Goes)

The poem ‘Yet This Tiger’ shows how the sudden movement of the tiger terrifies everyone. The tiger’s stare not only intimidates children and adults, it rather makes the road tar also melt like wax. The tiger may be an outward agent of fear but the real tiger lives within us. The poet tries all ways to know how to tame the tiger but fails to get any satisfactory answer.

The poem ‘Tiger, Once Again’ reveals the ostentatious beliefs of people about tiger. Tigers appear in different forms and shapes, either in the form of toy-tigers and paper tigers just to show false pride and strength. The poet considers it a sort of insecurity that people are besieged with. While these paper tigers roar in offices and workplaces, the population of real tigers is receding. Tiger, which could bring a balance, seems to decrease its numbers because of man’s cruelty towards animals. Man’s fashion for keeping tiger as a symbol to assert their powerful self has resulted in attenuating the fright of tiger. Man uses tiger skin to hang it on their walls to show their heroism yet it reveals their utmost fear. The poet takes a dig at man’s hollow pride and says:

No longer I fear tigers now;

There are so many within and without

Like our million hungers. (Tiger, Once Again)

The tiger imagery becomes the dialectics of desire and depravity and goes on to suggest that tiger is born of the gaps and while it tries to bridge or destroy gaps, it also gets injured and intimidated from time to time. All of us are responsible for inviting the tiger in us because of the man-made discriminations. Moreover, the appearance of tigers in human worlds may also be attributed to the chaos created by mankind in the animal kingdom. The poet mentions the maltreatment of mad Keya by hooligans in the grove behind Shiva’s temple. The cruelty of man and his despicable behaviour adds fury to the fire of tiger.

The tiger also appears to the poet as a symbol of vengeance and power. While the tiger is a creative force which men of all ilks want to situate in their works, the same becomes disastrous at times. Tiger takes the form of revenge and restlessness when men are denied their access to their desired goals. The deprivation roars tiger-like and gathers all the powers of the earth and sky to claim its right. The poet gives a personal touch to exemplify arousal of the tiger in humans in the following way:





While lowering my lips on my mistress,

She withdraws and the little distance

That slept between us became a tiger.

Its restless movements turned me

Into a sky, red with breath

Of a fuming and brewing monsoon gale. (Tiger, Once Again)

While tiger is understood as an agent of power and ferocity, the poet metaphorically uses it for balance and control as well. Obsessed deeply with the connotations of the tiger, the poet, at times, feels his dreams and desires diminishing under the threat of tiger. He says:

The scent of its body

Dupes me, dampens my dreams,

Drowning me in the waters

Of another darkness. (Tiger, Once Again)

Humans and animals are to live in accompaniment and this can be possible only when each other’s kingdom is not disturbed. The tiger’s demands and fears result out of their spatial rights and unnecessary intimidations. Humans’ urge for establishing victory over other creatures often gives rise to imbalance which creeps in other world by compulsion. The rise of brutal forces lends enormous possibilities to animal acts revengefully and most often the results are disastrous. The threats of animal world can be managed without any qualms provided we become rational and do not interfere with the peace and solidarity of the jungle. The poet is of the view that both tiger and men are aware of the fact that they cannot change the order of things. The poet rather says:

Neither can cancel out

The other, even if both assume

many forms, many identities,

each entering the other

Until a song is heard,

And this song only matters

For it is heard in the whispers of grass blades,

in the beatings of human heart. (The Tiger and I)

The poet finds tigers all around him. While the tiger has been branded as a destructive force by all and sundry, people get divided because of the power politics that enters them stealthily. The innumerable cases of destruction in the form of public property and loss and damages all around have resulted out of man’s craze for superiority over their fellow beings.





People are seen misusing the force of tiger to settle scores and divide mankind merely for narrow political gains. These tigers are not found in any zoo or jungle rather they are found even in temples, mosques and even on the doors of parliament. Through this new tiger the poet derides the divisive forces and endeavours to aim at solidarity. The poet warns mankind from such tigers and says: ‘When it moves, the bones catch fire, rocks and groan.’ (A New Tiger) One can find the poet’s concern about the merciless attack by marauders on religious places and on official buildings which preserve the faith and fraternity of our nation.

The poet asserts that neither humans nor tigers can change each other’s nature. Moreover, the tiger cannot become the theme rather it is the context that makes a tiger. The tiger appears sometimes in the form of silence, sometimes in the form of loneliness and sometimes in the form of innocence and grief, and yet at other times in the form of darkness. The earthly stay of the poet has been so painful and full of bemoaning that he feels imprisoned. He doesn’t have the freedom of choice and hence he longs for becoming a tiger. We can find some sort of existential anguish when the poet says:

Ah, I wish I were a tiger!

Would I had waited on the Yamuna’s bank

For one arrival, that would have made

All other arrivals look like departures! (The Other Tiger)

One can find the poet making a peregrination wherein his burdened soul cries for release and spiritual bliss. But as he is engrossed with human limitations, he finds his wish only as a wishful thinking. Later, he also takes a dig at the presence of tiger even in Heaven. While the world may be full of tigers, sacred places like temple where religious lessons are given and people gather to offer their prayers are also not devoid of tigers in the shape of lecherous priests making the helpless widow the victim of carnal desires behind the temple’s guava grove. The poet laments at the depravity of so-called heavenly figures having villainous designs. Thus, the ubiquitous presence of the tiger impels him to ruminate upon the hapless condition of the world of the contemporary reality, which finally reconfigures a dismaying picture of the world before him.

The poet is deeply drenched in despair at the ghastly acts of mankind fallen abysmally low if compared to the tiger. While the tiger stands as an embodiment of power, it also reflects control. The tiger should inspire mankind and awaken them to find their infirmities. In addition, it should act as life force since all of us have only a limited time to stay on this earth. The poet rightly suggests:

The tiger wakes us to the infirmities

of our bones, the marrow within bones. (Tiger is the Theme)

The poet has chosen tiger as the theme not only to portray the various pictures of contemporary life but also to ward off certain misgivings about the ferocity and fear implanted in human hearts. The tiger, by its very mention creates fear in our minds but we often make a lop-sided view about it. Tigers represent not only fear but also fearlessness. It is also a symbol of envy and admiration as well. There has been a tendency among us to look at only the negatives of the tiger. We often let loose the ferocity and concoct several intimating





tales about tiger. The tiger, if viewed in the right perspective, can uplift our dreams and desires, in addition to empowering us with the weapons of silence, patience and perseverance. A symbol of courage, the tiger can inspire us in our critical moments as the poet says:

Every time I lose ground

Of my victory. I never knew

There could be so many tigers around,

Each one catching me, holding me

Tight-lipped.

(A Tiger Always Lifts Me to a Garden)

The poet wants his readers to realize that the power of tiger is not above the ravages of time. It also diminishes in course of time. In the poem entitled ‘The Dream Tiger’, he mentions how most often the disappearance or drowning of a child or calf is often attributed to the act of deity who often takes them to her embrace out of her love. But this is the act of a tiger who has gone old and decrepit. The tiger in its old age now like all of us in our ‘inflated helplessness’ mellows down its stare. But since the animal cannot compromise with hunger, it often moves to find them in safer places like village ponds. While the frightened soul most often surrenders to the impending danger, the tiger’s helplessness gains strength to find its prey. What makes the poet wonder at is the nature of wild animals who cannot shed their habit. This is perhaps the reason that the poet does not want to be a tiger.

Thus, a reading of Niranjan Mohanty’s Tiger and Other Poems provides a comprehensive and critical view of the world through the image of a wild animal. The tiger becomes a metaphor of beauty and ugliness, violence and virtue, in addition to power and penury at times. In fact, Mohanty’s tiger represents a world of dialectics which contains almost all contraries and differences. Further, tiger is also a symbol of power, dominance and fake authority that humans take after on earth in various forms. The political heroes give rise to the split and breaches in human heart and raise contagious issues that divide people. The poet warns mankind against the blind imitation for power, which will sabotage all that is good on earth. It will also pollute the sanctity of our holy ideals and places of worship. ‘Tiger knows no mercy and religious and spiritual considerations matter less to him. Its ferocity is the result of hunger which not only blinds it but also empowers to devastate everything that comes its way. Hence we ought to guard ourselves from allowing such tigers to enter our head and heart.’ (Mishra)

Mohanty’s poetry is not only rich in images and metaphor but it also excels in terms of precision and accuracy of words. We do find post-colonial concerns in his verses yet the familiarity of themes and stories, superstitious beliefs and various day-to-day issues, references to Indian names and places lend a native tinge to his poetic craft. He lends additional charms to his lines when he plays with words and creates music too. Alliterations abound in his verses and images and metaphors work wonders to convey the stirrings of his soul. What the famous Indian poet and critic Charusheel Singh says about Mohanty appears a rich tribute to the departed poet:

Whether it is Life Lines or his last collection Tiger and Other Poems, Mohanty remains a poet of the common people. His germinative powers border on a poetic mythology which just falls short of an Aurobindo or Tagore. Mohanty





thought enough but when he thought, he discovered that he was still a native of the soil tilling his land furrowing through the maps of his sensibility which still smacks of the reek of the human. Mohanty has no pretensions with language; his simplicity is his strength, and, may be, his weakness, too. (Foreword)

Works Cited:

Mohanty, Niranjan. Tiger & Other Poems. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2008 Mohanty, Niranjan. “Cultural Memory and Globalisation: Indian Poetry in English Today”. Dialogue. 2.2: December, 2006, 6-18 Mishra, Binod. “Niranjan Mohanty’s Muse: An Evaluation”. Festivals of Fire: A Study of the Poetry of Niranjan Mohanty. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers & Distributors. 2010, 1-10 Singh, Charusheel. Foreword to Festivals of Fire: A Study of the Poetry of Niranjan Mohanty. (ed.) Binod Mishra & Sudheer K. Arora. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers & Distributors. 2010 Vaughan, Henry. ‘The Retreat’.





Niranjan Mohanty as a Contemporary Indian English Poet · And thus, negotiating a satiation, I...

Documents

Transcript of Niranjan Mohanty as a Contemporary Indian English Poet · And thus, negotiating a satiation, I...