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Response to Reality

There is something in me that refuses to die. It is there deep inside

me perhaps and this is poetry

- Mahapatra

Mahapatra‟s poetry moves from a highly subjective personal world

towards articulating problems that concern most people. Mahapatra depicts

the baneful social realities with a high degree of objectivity, never indulging

in sentimentalism. Mahapatra is influenced and moved by what is enduring in

the past and the relationship between the past and the present. He wonders

how men and women manage to endure this unkind world without love. The

source of sustenance for human life is getting drained out in the struggle for

survival in the present conditions. It is his firm belief that by rising from the

surrounding gloom and darkness one can identify the beauty and respond to

the voices of kindred souls.

The Indian poets writing in English have created new and fascinating

images of India. They have dealt a great deal with the theme of landscape and

national identity which provides scope for a rewarding study. They have

handled the images of India with a consummate skill and keenness of

intellect. They have presented poems dealing with various elements of Indian

landscape bearing the weight of a poetic reconciliation of the spirit and the

country. They incorporate the heat and dust, the sun and the flood, the crowd,

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the senses of poverty and deprivation into the texture of their moods.

Shiv.K.Kumar has written poems on themes which are specifically and

typically Indian, like “Indian women”, “An Indian Mango Vender”,

“Transcendental Meditation”, “A Hindu to His Cow”, “Rickshawallah”, “My

correspondent”, “Karma” and “Aftermath”.

Kamala Das, in her poems presents „fevered‟ lanes and dusty, leafless

trees. In “Summer in Calcutta” she portrays a world which is harsh, sun-

pierced tropical world full of smells of rotten garbage and death, where men

have limbs like carnivorous planes. Only the marigolds and bougainvillea

survive along with the courtesans with „tinsel and jasmine in their hair‟. The

poet very strongly wishes that something consumes all this squalor like the

forest fire that consumes with a hungry greed and purifies everything in the

end. Nissim Ezekiel projects the city of Bombay as a metaphor that defines

the alienation of the modern Indian intellectual brought up in the Judaeo-

Christian and Greco Roman traditions. Being forced to come to terms with a

culture his response to life is controlled by a totally different metaphysics.

The city of Bombay is an integral part of his poetics and is central to

Ezekiel‟s poetic thought.

Various themes of Jayanta Mahapatra‟s poems emit a subconscious

empathy with the topographical and human aspects of the Orissa‟s landscape.

They reveal a poetic reconciliation of the spirit of the self with the spirit of the

country. Professor K. Ayyappa Paniker rightly suggests that the Sun of the

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Eastern coast of India shines through his poems. The Eastern sea sends its

morning wind through them. The poems such as “The Exile”, “Indian

Summer Poem”, “This Stranger”, “My Daughter” and “The Beggar Takes it

as Solace” show him as a child of the sun and the sea. He delights in invoking

the god of fire and the god of water. Puri is a living character in several of

these poems. There the poet integrates the history and the myths of his land

with his vision in his poems. The Orissan Landscape is fully alive in his poem

Relationship. The religious and historic places like Puri, Konark, Chilika,

Chandipur and so on occupy the still centre of his poetry. Jayanta Mahapatra

makes a pointed, objective and thought-provoking observation of the reality

around him. He has succeeded in evolving a new kind of idiom of the post

1960 Indian English poetry.

Colonialism which involves two types of imperialism-political and

cultural is overcome by post-colonialism by resisting and subverting former

coloniser. Myth, history, landscape and language, self and the other become

the ingredients of post-colonialism. The emphasis on national identity,

landscape, rituals, tradition and national culture forms the core of post-

colonical Indian English poetry. The theme of landscape and national identity

offers a rewarding study when applied to the award winning poets- Jayanta

Mahapatra, Nissim Ezekiel, Keki N. Daruwalla, Kamala Das, Shiv K. Kumar

and Dom Moraes. In the works of these poets, there is found a certainty of

touch that appears to reflect a confidence in the direction and purpose of their

writing as well as integrity of images of Indian style and subject matter.

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Jayanta Mahapatra‟s Relationship was first published in 1980, by the

Greenfield Review Press and then published in India by Chandrabhaga

society Cuttack in 1982 and was chosen for the central Sahitya Akademy

award in 1981. This book, set in Orissa is not a mere collection of a place

here, a character there, an unstrenuous meditation or two, inevitable

landscapes but a determined integrated set of sections built into the theme. In

the first section of the book the poet manages to convey, through images, the

impossibility of unraveling the mystery of life. The poet recalls the heroic

past of the land of Orissa with regret in Relationship

Time

and the boat,

and the initiation into the mystery of peace,

the sailing ships of those maritime ancestors,

who have vanished in the black Bay without a trace,

that only live in the sound of the waves

fliging themselves into the dark fringes

of this land from chilika to chandipur. (32-39)

The poet introduces his land to the reader in the most poetic terms in

canto four of Relationship and he writes

you, my ancient love of a hundred names,

of rains and endless skies and morning mists,

of wind-beaten evenings of owl-calls and rice-harvests

in December,

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My love of gold nose - rings and laughing earrings,

of towering ruins of stone panting in the dark,

of loyal lions guarding the diamond navels of shines,

…………………………………………….

and of the old emptiness of my own destiny;

I know I can never come alive

If I refuse to consecrate my origins (25-36)

His origins are firmly rooted in India and Orissa and as he tries to

understand its myriad mysteries, he finds little to celebrate or rejoice about

and yet he celebrates his belonging to it. The poet exposes his land in the first

section. He makes references to the Mahanadi, the Prime river of the state, the

temple of Konark, the ancient harbours like Chilika and Chandipur. In the

course of the quest for roots the heroic past of Orissa is vividly remembered

and recalled with a sense of nostalgia. Mahapatra composes a socially

responsive poetry that he re-imagines the past and

re-presents the present from the place where he is located. He combines the

living past of Orissa and its inescapable present with his artistic vision to

render poetry that is powerful in its impact and sense of immediacy.

The poems lament the plight of the ancestors of yore and portray a

psychic reliving of the imagined origins. He has written a number of poems

which speak about the massacre episode in the history of Orissa when the

army of the Emperor Ashoka brutally killed the inhabitants of Kalinga in the

infamous war of 261 BC. In “Dhaulagiri” (Waiting, 24) the poet portrays

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imagined scenes of carnage in the aftermath of the battle and writes of them in

vivid and brutal terms. Mahapatra views this in a different angle that although

Ashoka repented later and adopted the path of nonviolence, for him the

measure of Ashoka‟s suffering does not appear enough to balance the pain of

the dead. History is a mere record of events but poetry makes a judgemental

probe and says the ratio of retribution is not sufficient.

Ashoka has found an indelible and an honourable place for the edicts

he carved on rocks and the message of peace he sent throughout the world.

But according to Mahapatra the memory of the brutality that preceded this

transformation is overwhelming and he cannot erase that from the images of

his land. In the first section of the Relationship he says that he had tried

forgetting the cruelties

of ruthless emperors who carved peaceful edicts

on blood-red rock,

forgetting our groans and cries,

the smells of gunsmoke and smoldering flesh,

forgetting the tactics and the strategy

that led to the founding of the infinite distance

inside our watery skulls (26-32)

Mahapatra is so overwhelmed with the racial memory that he continues

the emotional outpour into the third section of the same book-length poem

and writes

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what can ever wash the air of its gashed voices?

It is hard to tell now

what opened the anxious skies,

how the age-old proud stones

lost their strength and fell,

and how the waters of the Daya

stank with the bodies of my ancestors (4-10)

Another poem on the Kalinga war is “Shape by the Daya” (Burden of

Waves and Fruit, 21) in which the poet is back in the present and can still

hear the groans and cries of his victimised ancestors. He is overpowered by

the feeling that the „scarred land‟ is full of hatred for the atrocities committed

there. For Mahapatra the Asoka‟s edicts appear to be a constant reminder of

the suffering that preceded their construction. They may now be the

monuments of the nation‟s heritage. The poet expresses how he sees it in

“Song of the Asokan Edicts 261 BC” (Random Descent)

The letters of morals look unreal,

as if they‟ve not had their revenge

for a hundred thousand dead (2-4)

………………………………

Memory has drained us,

and an ancient stone wall

inscribed with rules

is not what it appears.

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Someone‟s rotten blood has gotten into the stone. (12-16)

The suffering of the land continues through generations as though it

has inherited it. The people are always victimised while the set of oppressors

have changed. As the poet walks through his town, this is the primary feeling

and he writes in the poem “Stand by, Memory” in Burden of Waves and Fruit

I move with the delirium of the past,

applaud with the bean, withered dawns of my hands,

to set my lips on shy white jasmines

that harden into the stone breasts of Konarka dancers.

And slowly I return, embarrassed

to meet the one in me, feeling the same colours

play upon my consciousness, as the spectrum break down

as though in anticipation

of the brutality of the oppressor

unable to escape the trances

of my place, my endurance

simply creating gestures of magnificence. (49-60)

The poet records his emotions in the poetic form as he visited the forts

of the historic heroes Shivaji and Tipu Sultan. He feels heavy at heart that like

all other places, these also have been reduced to rack and ruin. But we

observe valorised portraits of Shivaji and Tipu Sultan. In his poem “At

Shivaji‟s Fort at Panhalla: Looking Across the Western Ghats” (Burden of

Waves and Fruit, 18) we see that the poet wonders what tale he should carry

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back to his „homeland‟. We can imagine the poet standing on top of the hill

and looking at the fort now in ruins thinking of the “endless postures of a

royal warrior”. Nothing much is left behind now to show of those times or the

courage of Shivaji who fought “in the cause of justice” against the cruel

invader.

The poet expresses the same kind of emotion in “At the Summer

Palace of Tipu Sultan, Serigapatam” (A Whiteness of Bone). This palace of

Tipu Sultan which once shined with „flashed steel‟ now appears barren. He

sees,

the medals and ribbons of old

slumber behind the dead quiet of honour (…)

the Tiger

sleeps the sleep of the vanquished (…)

History closes

behind us its tale of disinherited princes,

the clear music of freedom, a magic circle

of wild stripes that once flashed steel

in the bright sun of Serigapatam (9-18)

The poet points out that there is a natural nobility in the cause of the battles

fought by Shivaji and Tipu Sultan whereas Ashoka is portrayed as an

aggressor and an oppressor of innocence. There is a lot of difference between

the achievements of the former and the latter.

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The poet is moved by the history of the state of Orissa and the nation

which has recorded bloodshed and massacre on all its pages. But Mahapatra

proceeds to say more about the immediate past and the present. He has given

us three poems that recall on the British presence in India. The first of these

“Of Independence Day” (A Whiteness of Bone) affirms the poet‟s standpoint

that the horror we witness in the present is worse than any episode in our

colonial and medieval history. He writes

we have lost those first days

that had crowned themselves with thorns (1-2)

……………………………………

we have lost all those stories

about the rustle of the blood

that caught its breath when the British

seized our laughter (5-8)

……………………………….

This talk about India‟s freedom struggle

is nurtured because of our weakness,

the black and white eyes of children say (26-28)

……………………………….

the computer‟s increasing sound

cannot be drowned by the mere noises of the dead (35-36)

……………………………….

and we have hung out

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the carcass of the past in the cross roads:

Our children keep seeing

our fingers pulling shreds of meat from it (58-61)

Another poem that talks of the colonial past of India is “The Cannon”

(Life Signs, 9). The poet points out the visible presence of the past in the form

of old and rusty cannon which is “graceless in the throes of history‟s

nightmare”. Mahapatra speaks about the colonial past in “The Abandoned

British Cemetery at Balarore”

(The False Start) He writes

This is history (1)

……………………………….

the comma of alienated decay (3)

……………………………….

Will it matter if I know who the victims are, who survived? (50)

The poet sees as he walks around the cemetery, thirty-nine graves of

beloved wives and daughters of the British officers who died young of

cholera, and says

Of what concern to me is a vanished Empire?

Or the conquest of my ancestor‟s timeless ennui?

It is the dying young who have the power to show

What the heart will hide, the grass shows no more (21-24)

………………………………

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It is cholera still, death‟s sickly trickle,

that plagues the sleepy shacks beyond hump of earth

moving easily, swiftly, with quick power

through both past and present (27-30)

……………………………….

This is the iron

rusting in the vanquished country, the blood‟s unease (32-33)

……………………………….

for the elaborate ceremonial of a coming generation

to keep history awake, stifle the survior‟s issuing cry (39-40)

The poet expresses in all these poems that the past cannot be blamed for all

the ills of the present.

Mahapatra portrays three kinds of past in his poetry - the distant past of

prehistoric times, the remote past and the recent past. He tries to show that the

quality of life of the people has not changed as history relentlessly repeats

itself. Both in the past as well as present, there is oppression and bloodshed

for one reason or the other. The enemy of the past came from outside to

exploit the people of India in the name of rulers, now the extortioners come

from within the country in the form of the empowered fellowmen who engage

themselves in atrocities and exploitation.

Some poems in Dispossessed Nests show how the people suffer even

in the present. In the sixteenth section of Dispossessed Nests he writes

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The calendar hatches India‟s history

a lifeless story

chewed on by the country‟s leaders (8-10)

The poet describes one of such leaders in the poem “Possessions”

(Shadow Space, 24) who turns the country with his power and keeps his face

under control, even after he was driven to resign after the failure of all the

promises he made and is capable of remaining insensitive even when many a

thousand children go hungry. The poet exposes another leader of the same

kind in the eleventh section of Dispossessed Nest who takes no notice and

remains heedless to the cries of a widow

Standing in the queue for the sustenance allowance

(her husband shot dead by terrorists last month)

a voice which the roar

of the minister‟s jet cuts short (7-10)

We see in the poet‟s description of the present a collage of misery, suffering,

corruption and hopelessness and therefore is not different from the past that

he has described.

In his early poems Mahapatra questions the status of Mahatma Gandhi

as the father of the nation. He expresses his concern for the suffering

multitudes and the bitterness of the fact that millions of Indians waiting to be

born after independence will inherit a flawed freedom. He explains the

reasons explicitly for his animosity in a later poem in the twentieth section of

Dispossessed Nests:

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The weariness of the ages festers

into hard knots of meanness here and there

The taste that comes of our leaders

shirking the questions of people‟s existence (…) (1-4)

Ah love, we had read so much

about you, about freedom. Was everything you did,

Gandhiji, only an act you put on for posterity?

With India, our India, barely worth raping? (19-22)

In another poem, called “Strike your Secret Earth” (Waiting) the poet urges

the people of India to get out of the stranglehold of the past and writes

forget the experiments with truth

……………………………….

Ignore the pious quotation

of an Hindu morning, the callused hand

of ahimsa running through your hair (60-62)

The images of Gandhi, found now on coins, currency notes, courts of

law and government offices is one of the things of the past, which has been

reduced to a travesty. The poet looks at the picture of Ghandhi which is now

forty years old and says in the poem “The Fifteenth of August” (A Whiteness

of Bone)

I stare into the distance of my country (1)

……………………………….

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Everytime I look into the old man‟s eyes,

he calmly hands my promise back to me (9-10)

The poet speaks about Gandhi in three other poems about public

reactions to his birth anniversary and the anniversary of his assassination. In

the poem “Red Roses for Gandhi” (A Whiteness of Bone) he writes,

I ask myself;

will life ever be the same again,

would this day ever make us brood

on a monument of sleep? (23-26)

In the poem “Another Film on Gandhi Perhaps” he writes

The bright future you speak of

is already stiffened in blood,

and the darkness of governments

startles the night jasmines growing wild

along the Yamuna‟s banks (16)

All the twentieth century poets do make a reference to Gandhi in their

poems. Mahapatra also does it, but he is critical in his outlook which he

expresses in a weak melancholic tone. The poem “30th

January 1982: A story”

(Burden of waves and Fruit, 26) speaks of the occasion of Gandhi‟s death

anniversary and the poet is skeptical about the legacy of the father of the

nation. Only the Department of Public Relations celebrates it as a mere ritual

by playing his favourite hymns. For people of various towns and villages it is

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as normal as any other day. No one speaks or thinks about Ghandhi. The poet

again speaks about Gandhi in the twenty first section of Dispossessed Nests

I know I have been in love with the world

a little too much, taken my own place

for granted and become the secret landscape

like the redeeming monument of a Gandhi

in the India of my illusive glass (9-13)

In some of the later poems, Mahapatra looks at Gandhi with renewed

interest and seems to have revised his views about Gandhi and places him in a

historical perspective. A poet is one who grows as his writing gets shaped

during his writing; that is why Mahapatra revises his earlier views and

understands Gandhi in a better perspective. Mahapatra acquires maturity of

vision as he grows. Such an evolution of artistic skill has been observed in

Shakespeare also. The early plays of Shakespeare show an effort on the part

of the dramatist to present a well-knit plot, a consistent story in which no

loose end has been left untied. As he progressed in his dramatic career the

dramatist showed effective charactrisation, intensity of emotions and richness

of poetry.

In the long poem called “Requiem” one, in his collection Bare Face,

the poet pays a rich tribute to the brave and monumental tragic figure Gandhi

and his contribution to the country. The whole poem is dedicated to Gandhi.

The poet speaks about his role in the freedom struggle and focuses on the

person whose devotion to the country and dedication to the task undertaken

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has restored the lost dignity of country. The poet introduces the reader in the

prologue of the poem to a young blind girl who was innocent and pure and

her face carried both wisdom and hope. This young girl is a symbol of India

that Gandhi leads into revolt and then freedom. In the first section of the

poem the poet speaks about the annual observance of Gandhi‟s death

anniversary.

The ministers and politicians place floral wreaths at Rajkat and garland

Gandhi‟s statues all over the country in order to display themselves in public

and win people‟s votes ultimately. But the true remembrance will be to

imbibe Gandhi‟s spirit of his message and observe his principles of truth,

peace and non violence. The poet says that it is high time everyone defended

the memory of Gandhi whose worth the poet himself realised only recently.

Sections four to six of the poem speak about the freedom struggle and those

incidents in which Gandhi was at the helm of affairs. In sections four and five

Mahapatra talks about the salt Satyagraha and the sacrifices of the country‟s

heroes and says:

The history books say:

when he quietly stooped and picked up

a handful of salt,

the gentle English country side far away

was lit up by a silent old firefly (1-5)

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Gandhi inspired many Indians and transformed them into Satyagrahis

and stood with them determined and straight and caused an avalanche to

sweep across the sands. While the poet tries to recreate those times, one thing

which pains the poet is that today there is no sign whatsoever of the existence

of such a glorious past and says “it is as if the events were never real” (60).

Einstein had said in his obituary about Gandhi that “fifty years hence the

world may not believe that such a man walked on the surface of the earth”.

The sixth and seventh sections of Dispossessed Nests talk about the Round

Table Conference in London which Gandhi attended in 1931, when the

thought of justice pounded … in the dark veins inside him. He went there to

emphasize the Indians‟ demand for freedom strongly. But the British were

stubborn in possessing India but they never took notice of the hunger,

nakedness and suffering of the people of India. The little girl personifying

India reappears in the eighth section and Gandhi promises that he will restore

her home to her. Inevitably the poet contemplates in the poem that he is

painfully puzzled over the tragic irony of the violent death of a man who

dedicated his life to the cause of non-violence.

The poet feels that Godse killed Gandhi only once but Gandhi is

murdered everyday by the people of his country that his teachings are

relentlessly thrown away. We have become heirs to our own selfishness

having no concern for the fellow human beings. A number of statues and

monuments are being erected to worship the leaders who passed away. The

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politicians hope that they would find a place in the memory of the people by

such acts. In “The Twenty fifth Anniversary of a Republic”, Mahapatra says

There are new statues on the crossroads, newer dead,

that are visible from far and wide. (18-19)

………………………………………..

The twenty five - year - old - republic celebrations entertain:

I paint my front gate in shiny aluminium

and walk past it, to wait for the ceremonial parade.

The bright winter light plays upon the silent statues of the dead.

The destitute everywhere are still my sense of guilt (27-31)

The people make public demonstrations of their feigned respect for the

great who served the poor and downtrodden. But the plight of these people

remains unchanged even after decades of independence. Mahapatra expresses

his genuine concern for the welfare of the people. These years have failed to

bring about freedom from castiesm, superstition and communalism. In the

tenth section of the poem, “Requiem” in BareFace, the poet wonders if

Gandhi had lived whether he would have had the strength to witness the

abusive happenings that take place in the Post-Independent India.

If he had wanted to die,

had he died in a way that would never be forgotten?

Perhaps he had seen death

as the most honourable way to ask the forgiveness of the world,

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perhaps the frozen life of the freedom he wished for

was beyond his own conception of mortality (170-175)

The poet feels sad for Gandhi and feels that Gandhi would have been

miserably disappointed to witness the division of the country and his message

of ahimsa consumed by the flames of hatred after partition. Any amount of

Gandhi‟s remorse, fasting and prayers did not help and our country had to

face the division. The black stone memorial at RajGhat shows

the eyes of a man

to whom no man was too small

or too unimportant (229-231)

…………………………..

eyes to love

the terrible legend of your great strength

and your greater weakness

this child

resting so trustfully

on either arm

wearing the face of one vast land (237-240)

The poet feels a painful disappointment and he expresses a sense of

betrayal that he writes

I will never carve you

in stone

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For there is this dying

and its nakedness you chose

so we can carve

some darkness

into the icy forehead of India

and some imperfection

into her perfect creation (243-251)

All the poems are a record of the poet‟s rumination about the plight of

the common man not only in the present but also at different periods in the

past. The only time the poet points out, when people lived in real peace is

sixth century BC when Buddha lived and preached his message of peace and

equality. The poet writes about it in the fifteenth section of “Requiem”

There were no walls then

This was a time

one could go anywhere, see anything

one could feel

flowers of thought open out in the dark (254-259)

Gandhi came twenty five centuries later. He tried hard to free his

countrymen flowing against the current. Gandhi tried to win not only political

freedom but freedom in all aspects, in the true sense of the term. But Gandhi

now is dead and so are his dreams of freedom. Buddhism too disappeared as

did peace and non-violence from the land of Gandhiji‟s birth. The poet speaks

about the morbid and depressing reality of the present state of the country in

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the three concluding sections of the poem. The poem speaks of the “haunted

land”, “the hysterics of history” and the “beast of suffering”. The poem which

was begun as a tribute has now turned into a cry of anguish for the nation and

its people. The cry is expressed in a poetic form,

Today the voice that points a finger at you

floats over the breath of discarded ideals (405-406)

…………………………………..

it becomes the breath

that the children of Kalahandi breathe in their dreams

in their interminable starvation sleep (408-410)

…………………………………..

the breath of meadows where no grass grows,

the breath of lost women looking for tears,

the breath of the blind child singing (418-420)

The poet in an ironic tone points out that after all the struggle and

sacrifice, the legacies of Gandhi include faded pictures on bare office walls, a

national holiday and growing, seething leper colonies which turn the very idea

of freedom into a cruel illusion. The poet laments over the shattered hopes of

freedom. The poet sounds as though he is expressing Gandhi‟s own

frustrations if he had lived to see all this.

Though Mahapatra respects the zeal and sincerity of Gandhi in

“Requiem”, he is skeptical about the benefits of freedom for the people.

During the course of the poem the poet expresses his concern for the starving

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millions of the people of the country that freedom from the British rule has

not fetched them freedom from want, hunger and oppression. Still there are so

many hungers as pointed out by Bhattacharya in his novel So Many Hungers

The poet speaks about the present state of the country, half a century after

Independence in the poem” “Heroism”. (Shadow Space)

As in a film, this talk of freedom,

freedom from want, social injustice and greed,

poised above the bleeding heartland,

fields stretching orange, white and green.

For afterwards,

There will be no sacred relic of democracy

…………………………………

All our thousands of hands

that reached out to the sky

sulk in small strips of black cloth of futile protest on our chests

…………………………………

The sky is not my freedom of speech (16-17)

The rich and the powerful of the land exploit the country and its

people. Hence freedom has become a mere puppet that sways to the pull of

unseen masters. The common man has become a puppet who is manipulated

by his own need and the oppression of those who control resources and

salvation in the land. The common people are subjected to a kind of this

suffering that they are caught in the stranglehold of violence and oppression.

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Though the poet is dejected over the poverty, dirt, corruption and violence, he

tries to find the appropriate posture and perspective to show the nuances of

the story of the nation to the reader.

The images and incidents he comes across appear only to intensify his

anguish that the never ending chain of need and misery will continue

unabated. In „The quest‟ (shadow space, 32) he writes that it has become a

ritual to search for the lost inhabitants of his country and for a history “in

which dignity neither comes nor goes”. In the poem “Freedom” in (Random

Descent) Mahapatra shows the people, tossed between hope and despair,

Here old widows and dying men

cherish their freedom,

bowing time after time in obstinate prayers.

While children scream

with this desire for freedom

to transform the world

without even laying hands on it (8-14)

The poet has a strong kinship with the urban and rural landscape of

India and its people. His heart is full of empathy for the topography and the

people of Orissa. He said “To Orissa … I acknowledge my debt and

relationship” (110). A few lines in “The Lost Children of America” (Life

Signs) describe the city where the poet lives.

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Here

in the dusty malarial lanes

of Cuttack (1-3)

…………………………

in these lanes nicked by intrigue and main

and the unseen hands of gods

in front of garish temple of simian Hanuman

along river banks splattered with excreta and dung (5-8)

The picture is filled with images of excreta, dung, rotting tomatoes,

fish scales and the odour of bananas and piss. In another poem “A Summer

Night” (Waiting) the poet says

This is the town where I was born; here, with others,

Year after year I celebrated the joyous festivals,

in the whine of the cripple and the mangled leper

………………………………………..

the open drains flouting the dread of disease,

the naked children crying of their swollen flash.

It‟s hard here

to keep the crows away, from the split guts

of the decapitated (27-28)

The poet observes that the entire city of Cuttack is full of sights and

smells hat are incorrigible. Such is the state of not only Cuttack, but the whole

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state and the whole country is infested with it. In “A Country” (Life Signs) the

poet writes

It‟s the dust everywhere,

the burden on my eyes: for they belong to Asia (1-2)

…………………………………

where a hunger keeps growing from Turkey to Cambodia

and the years keep trying to smile

in the stubborn starvation light (5-7))

It reminds us of the words of Derek Walcott in “Omeros” where he

says

“For those to whom history is the presence

of ruins, there is green nothing

…………………………………

We think of the past

As better forgotten than fixed with a stony regret (192)

The problem of hunger is universal. Hunger and starvation witnessed

in his own region reminds the poet of the people who starve in whichever

country they may exist. Amidst the poet‟s outcry against his inability to find

answers to all the misery that surrounds him, somewhere in his heart, gleams

a faint hope that there will be redemption. The poet expresses such a hope in

“The time of what is” (Shadow Space)

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“I must move ahead,

……………………………………

in my eagerness to catch hope against hope,

toward the hiding place

under the roots of a fallen country (18-22)

The predicament of the country stifles the poet in its “morbid, ravenous

grasp” (“March”, Shadow Space, 82). The country is his home and is a part of

the poet that it is impossible to separate him from it. The nation appears to

him, to have been carved out of the wrath of God, man and nature, it doesnot

seem to be a subject for glorious celebration. Many poets sing the glories of

this ancient land, but to Mahapatra the ancient tells the tale of degradation and

ruin.

As the poet zeroes in on individual figures of suffering he begins by

painting vivid pictures of archetypal Orissa villages and the people who

inhabit them. The poet describes the holy city of Puri, where there are beggars

with “slumped, sorrowing eyes” “The Blind Beggar”, (Close the Sky Ten by

Ten, 26) and lepers who line the street. In the poem “Dawn at Puri” (A Rain of

Rites) he writes

Endless crow noises

A skull on the holy sands

tilts its empty country towards hunger (1-3)

………………………………

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The frail early light catches

ruined leperous shells leaning against one another (10-11)

According to Mahapatra, women and children are the weaklings who

get victimized at the hands of poverty and patriarchy. The Indian women

cannot do anything according to her will. She has to dance to the whimsical

and capricious tunes of the society. She is “piled up to her silences, waiting

for what the world only let her do” (“Dawn”, A Rain of Rites, 1). In “These

Women” (A Rain of Rites) the poet says

“Where are things called homes

sticky with toil; need after need

tempts the fates to touch them,

trap the homely, embarrassed hurt.

Year after year

like onions and herbs hung out to dry

their hearts heavy

the quiet too long.

What they do live for (…)

They seed, though.

They close their eyes everywhere

to that end

airing the poise of a flower” (6)

These women are caught in a never ending cycle of suffering, yet they

are devout and patient. In the “village” (A Rain of Rites) there is

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a freezing of inutility sits

on the dark brown throat of a woman

………………………………

a suffering, subtle spirit (2)

The poet speaks about such women in “A Missing Person” (A Rain of

Rites,7). In this poem “A Missing Person” Mahapatra speaks of the role the

women play in the family and in the society: They hardly have any identity of

their own. Thus the poem speaks the plight of women. Mahapatra‟s mother

never allowed him feel the warmth of her love and affection. She was always

a missing person. The poem which has such a title is rooted in the poet‟s

childhood experience. The Indian women are basically missing persons. They

donot have the time to stand and stare at their own reflection in the mirror.

The poem says that in order to have a look at themselves with the help of the

oil lamp with a drunken yellow flame in the darkened room, they have to wait

till the edge of sleep. The woman is able to see only her physical personality

in the semi-darkened room. She cannot see her inner personality which is

invisible. There is no scope for the women to see, judge or fathom one‟s inner

personality and character. That is why the poem has been given the title

“A Missing Person”.

In the social setting of the rural Indian life, which moves at a snail‟s

space, there is no scope for the fulfillment of womanhood beyond the

conventional role of a wife and a mother. Such a life remains unchanged

through decades, through centuries. There is tolerance and endurance and one

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waits with a smile for the next life. In “Strong at the start of 1978” (Waiting),

the poet draws a parallel between the state of the nation and its women. He

says,

This story limps painfully across the paper.

all over the dunged and wrinkled peninsula

…………………………………..

Every wind slices the heart‟s secret terrain.

Weariness and jagged water

watch from the skin of this mouldering country:

the rotting water

rising up from groaning runs,

from the diseased pelvises of time. (56-58)

The poet studies the state of women in various situations. Everywhere

the women are suffering. In “In the Fields of Desolate Rice” (Life Signs) the

poet writes

in the fields of desolate rice

…………………………………….

An old woman‟s voice trembles

…………………………………….

Crows in the trees, knots around the eyes.

Dead furrows mark the captive earth.

Lives of the people that seem doomed forever (48)

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Such a predicament of women remains the same over the centuries that

the women down the centuries suffer endlessly. Mahapatra writes in “In a

Time of Winter Rain” (Bare Face)

In the writings or ancient rock, young women

bound and gagged, etch the grey walls

with their dead brown bellies, their joyless eyes.

On the pages of palm leaves they dance, lonelier than ever,

stone-bodied courtesans swaying to the dark water (17-21)

Even young women are subjected to misery. Dowry is a canker of the society

which eats the lives of young girls making their lives dark and hopeless. In

“The Uncertainity of Color” (Random Descent)

The Silent sob from the dying girl

set on fire simply for the color television

she did not bring as part of her dowry. (6-8)

The children also share the suffering due to hunger, want and other

types of misery along with the women. Such a sad and dismal plight of

children weighs them down and their childhood becomes short lived.

According to the poet the very air is heavy with the smell of sick and ailing

children. The intense anguish of the poet over the fate of the children could be

felt in “Five India Songs”, (A Rain of Rites, 9). In the poem “Somewhere, My

Man” (A Rain of Rites), he writes about the condition of everyman of India,

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Here sits my man

in the doorway of a dunged street

beside his ailing mother,

her pinched aged face proudly bearing

the irrelevance of movement (32-36)

These lines echo the lines of John Keats‟ Ode to the Nightingale.

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

where palsy shakes a few, sad last grey hairs,

where youth grows pale, ad spectre - thin and dies;

where but to think is full of sorrow

And leaden - eyed despairs; (24-28)

Another section of the people whose sad condition moves the poet is

the fishermen. They labour hard to survive in the world. The poet describes in

the poem “Hunger” (A Rain of Rites, 44) the desperate fisherman whose

condition of poverty and hunger drives him to offer his fifteen year old

daughter to a passerby. Poverty extinguishes the light from the lives of

mothers in the poem “Nightfall” (Waiting, 3) and the scene remains

unchanged in “A Country Festival” (Waiting, 4)

Mahapatra is candid and outspoken when he describes the country and

the world around him. He speaks in straight forward and realistic terms. He

always sees life steadily and sees it whole. The poet is disturbed by the

violence and lawlessness that prevail in the contemporary society. The

anguish of the poet is clearly perceptible in a number of poems. Every day the

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newspaper reports about how young women are victimised by lustful brutes.

He expresses his anguish and disgust in the poem titled “Afternoon”

The harsh afternoon skin of the summer sky

lies in flakes on the dry river bed.

There, the raped and dismembered body

of another thirteen-year old girl, stilled,

beyond the trembling of the sands.

………………………………

Late afternoon I saw a young widow

strip herself naked by the water.

Just dark bruises all over her fair body

made a world‟s lust - filled eyes

kept turning helplessly toward the river.

(Afternoon)

Mahapatra is a humanistic poet that he writes about what happens

around the world. Poems like “Defeat”, “The Quest”, “Bazaar Scene”,

“Heroism”, “The Unease of Quiet Sleep” and “About My Favourite Things”

(Shadow Space) deserve appreciation and they could be analysed as cultural

studies. In “About my Favourite Things”, Mahapatra writes about the

draught-stricken Kalahandi, a place that finds a prominent space in

Mahapatra‟s poetry after Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri and its people

suffering in thousands. Kalahandi is an underdeveloped district of Orissa. The

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report of the suffering and misery which has befallen that area is terrifying.

After seeing this with his own eyes the poet writes:

Last December, around Christmas

I felt I should go down the drought stricken

Kalahandi country side and watch my eyes fill with flight

A tiny straw hut in the fallow fields looked sadly at me.

It was to keep out the cold, they said,

the four-by-four frail pyramid of straw

could easily hold ten men warm through

the near zero winter nights.

I went in, lay down

caught the odor of sweat and coarse straw.

Did all earth smell like that? (1-11)

The undernourished, half-starved children of Kalahandhi make the poet

sad and depressed. In the poem titled “Seeing Things in the Dark” (Shadow

Space), the poet describes the gloomy atmosphere in a matter of fact tone,

Everywhere one looks

One is stirred by skies

that protect a bourgeois order,

and faces good byes that suddenly look tried

before they have been said

Or sees the child - skeleton from Kalahandi

whose neck cannot support

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the weight of its head.

On the death by bullets

that any government calls a natural death. (10-19)

The poet is moved by the human suffering not only in Kalahandi but

wherever it may exist. About hunger in Somlalia he speaks in “The Stories in

Poetry”

It‟s the world again

that must not take one unawares

a world where hundreds die

of hunger in Somalia and elsewhere

where poetry is no mystery;

even the most tender embrace says

there is no heroism for us to live on. (46-52)

The harsh reality, the poet depicts in his poems engulfs us. He

mentions how in another part of the world, a family was “burnt to death,

simply because / they had another faith” and in “The Stories in Poetry” the

poet speaks,

And children

who are sold and bought everyday

in the streets of Bombay and Calcutta.

Through words

I try to recover my balance

not let life get too far ahead of me: (32-37)

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Mahapatra‟s attention is always drawn towards the suffering humanity.

We are reminded of T.S Eliot and Nissim Ezekiel who also speak about those

who are suffering, but their later poems show that they wish mankind well.

But as Mahapatra advances in age, his agony grows more. The suffering of

the people increases and the number of people who suffer also increases day

after day.

Children are engaged as bonded labourers in strenuous and are

exposed to danger and risks. In the poem titled “Defeat” the poet describes the

plight of a boy who worked in a blacksmith‟s shop; he writes:

As a child, on my way to school,

I watched the fire crackle in the blacksmith‟s shop

A boy sat smiling, fanning his flames,

I did not notice his eyes then, misty with pain

or his hands as he worked with the bellows,

a finger broken, sores on his thin wrists. (1-6)

Now the situation has become worse that the blacksmith‟s shops exist

no more that they have lost that opportunity and are pushed into deprivation,

poverty and hunger. The poet records such a disheartening situation

The blacksmith‟s shop is gone now

and the childhood sets in shadow

like an eye in a face that is dead

so the door was opened to hunger and suffering,

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outside, the thick and strange movement

of human life. (12-17)

Most of the children and their mothers starve due to poverty-stricken

state. The poem with the title “Bazar Scene” expresses the agony of the poet

where he portrays a scene, a three year old girl steals a mango from the fruit

vendor‟s basket and gives it to her “crippled brother / slumped on the road

side”.

Mahapatra‟s poems written in the early eighties and before are peopled

with the street cobbler, hungry street children, and women in pain and

everything that goes to make up the network of everyday life of real people

caught up in whirlpool of human emotions. The poet is battered by his sense

and sensibility to the misery around him. The poet perceives himself as a

participant in the scenes of tragic brutality and widens his canvas beyond the

state boundary of Orissa to look at the violence and oppression that blights the

whole nation.

Transnationalism is observed to be an important ingredient of Jayanta

Mahapatra‟s poetry. History repeats itself in the perpetuation of violence and

cruelty in the present time. The present is not different from the past nor is

Delhi in anyway different from Jerusalem and Nicaragua. The poet sees that

the postcolonial era has not seen any improvement of the colonial era rather it

appears to be a continuation of it. The poet writes

Why wait to be free of history

when you are now in it?

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Secrets will begin to speak

ashes soak in the rivers.

And the streets

go on enjoying their dead -

either in Jerusalem

Or in Delhi or distant Nicaragua.

(„The Waiting‟ 1997 : 66)

The independence of the country has not rendered relief from the

problems or given peace to the people of the country. The same thought is

reinforced in another poem called “March”. Eliot expresses this concern in

different words, “people change and smile but the agony abides”. The poet

gets disturbed at the harsh realities of the contemporary scene. He writes in

“March” (The Waiting)

Men here build cities,

cities work their way

into a maze of stories

from where man‟s mind

fails to see ahead.

The lessons are the same

A story of the future

is not much different

from this game of the past

when Nero heard himself laughing. (81)

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The strong political consciousness of the poet is displayed as much as

Mahapatra‟s intense love for Orissa. He comments in many poems on the

various events that shook the entire country. He refers to the Khalistan

Movement and the hijacking of Flight 405 to Lahore. The poet observes: in

Dispossessed Nests

Shakuni - skies;

under a merciless sun

(where) angry masks barter faith

with the golden litany of the Punjab (6-9)

The violent protests after this led to an uproar amongst Sikhs

worldwide and the increased tension following the action led to assaults on

members of the Sikh community within India. The poet continues in

Dispossessed Nests four

Darkness stalks

the streets somewhere (…) (1-2)

Only shadows

pick up the reigns of reality in Amritsir

shadows

of long and supreme Anives (11-14)

His personal concerns merge with public issues, as family history

underlines universal angst through images that are sudden and stunning in

their impact. His poetry seethes, churns and brings the reader face to face with

his / her own reality. The memory of the real incidents that record the loss of

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hundreds of lives haunts the poet incessantly that he imaginatively

reconstructs them in a poem that takes the events out of the temporal and

becomes a universal litany for the loss and waste that follows violence. We

find this in Dispossessed Nests (15)

When the memory appears again over a land

with that air of a mother which makes us simply clutch our

hearts in grief, (18-19)

……………………………….

which will only inherit

our mother‟s spirit of sacrifice bunging freedom in death

(28-29)

The same scenes and images continue to haunt the poet. He writes

about it in the twenty second section also.

A black bile of mad unrest (1)

………………………………..

They wave their moist hands of red blood

For this hour is the hour when the evening once more

demonstrates its passionless mediocrity (26-28)

This kind of intercommunal hatred leads to more disastrous violence

leading to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards and the

killing of and brutal violence unleashed on the innocent Sikhs. About the

background and outcome of this event, the poet speaks in the thirty-first

section of Dispossessed Nests.

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A man stands there, afraid of what she is

the blossoms of revenge ablaze on his face.

Bringing up the past is part of the game,

his Omnibus dark patina of poetic justice (10-14)

……………………………………..

who knows what kind of myth this is

going to make in a hundred years? (20-21)

Another great disaster that shook the poet‟s whole being is the terrible

Bhopal Gas tragedy that happened in December 1984, when thousands of

people inhaled the poisonous gas and lost their lives. The criminal negligence

of a few people in bringing out the colossal waste victimised the innocent and

helpless. One among them whose life was claimed by the gas leak was the

five year old Leela. The poet expresses his anguish, in “The Hill” (A

Whiteness of Bone)

with hundred - year faces

the orphans of Bhopal

stare at the lost hill

of an inchoate world (13-16)

The poet feels that his bounden duty to the society should not stop with

his criticism against the abuse of human relationship and other social

influences he should also draw the attention of the public to the ecological

degradation that man indulges in the name of science of technology and

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especially how the gas tragedy has taken away the lives of young children

who have not lived life yet, forms the theme of the poem.

The poems that comprise Random Descent mark the mature phase of

Mahapatra‟s poetic evolution and strike the eco consciousness of the eco

critics. Nature-worship and cosmic literary imagination run through the veins

of Indian sensibility and remains its base till today withstanding the shaking

threats of colonical forces and influence of technology over society.

Progress and advancement in technology leaves the earth ecologically

degraded. This cannot be claimed as the triumph of man over nature. The

human delusion of victory is challenged and there is a warning of chaos and

apocalypse. Mahapatra points out that the answers to all the questions are

hidden in natural phenomena. Nature holds the key to the understanding of

the world. The power and working of nature is all pervasive. The poet laments

in the poem “Things that Happen” in Random Decent

No more do men go out onto 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 such natural

objects become metaphors for human situations in most of his poems. They

interpret the social human world being used as a touchstone. The poet uses the

image of stone in many poems of Random Descent. In “A mask” he writes:

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The faces of rice are stony

its fists seen clenched all the time (3-4)

People who live with hunger acquire this stony quality. The stone wall

that bears the letters of the Asoka‟s Edicts of 261 BC becomes a witness and

reminder of the bust for power and violence in man who goes on repeating the

brutal killing of a hundred thousand people such as that happened in the

Kalinga war:

These things can happen all the time.

Memory has drained us,

and an ancient stone wall

inscribed with rules

is not what it appears

some one‟s rotten blood has gone into the stone (11-16)

(Random Descent, 51)

The poet says that men attribute many meanings to the stone due to

evolution of culture but nothing has mitigated the suffering of the people.

Beneath the bloodied walls of history

nothing can happen more dreadful

than stones turned to gods through prayers

Stones, whose eyes have had no expression in them

Stones, like governments who have no honour at all

Stones, whose longarms easily batter and kill

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a young woman accused of adultery. (20-26)

(Random Descent, 47)

The poet wants the stones to be looked at as stones and not gods. Nature is

subjected to so much of cultural distortions that the stones acquire many

meanings. Stone is central to the cosmogony of Mahapatra‟s vision, and is the

symbol of self here. Stone is a mute witness to the suffering of the multitudes

of generations and it silently participates in the creative and destructive cycles

of time.

All human beings unconsciously become aware of and become

sensitive to nature around us. We are drawn into the domain of interaction of

birds, beasts, mountains, trees, air and water which can only be felt and

cannot be captured by human language. Mahapatra‟s poems, express an

ecocentric concern in a holistic way. Mahapatra does not reduce nature to a

concept but accepts as a real existence. He speaks about the conflict between

nature and cultural practices, and he always celebrates nature in resonance

with that unity of being. Mahapatra nurtures green vision in the context of

nature-culture controversy. The stubborn life - force of nature prevail in spite

of the distorting influence of culture and history. The continuous coexistence

of nature and culture is history which is continuity. The predatory impulse of

man as a species manages to survive and live through different phases of time

only because of this continuity. The poem “The Uncertainty of Colour” in

Random Descent reveals this concept.

The grass whispers in its rooted being

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That its green has come

From the world where nothing matters there

but men marching on ahead (12-15)

Though Mahapatra says that a poet has to have an objective self while

writing about what is happening around him, he does not appear to stick to his

statement. Whenever things are gruesome and unbearable Mahapatra seems to

be profoundly affected by social reality. It only means that a poet is entitled to

change his stance or view because only when he starts composing ideas and

words he feels that he could no longer keep mum over the inhuman tragedies

of life. It is true that what is done cannot be undone. But at the most, the

reader may be awakened to react to social changes, good or bad. That is what

Mahapatra does in this collection.

Mahapatra is sensitive to the socio cultural reality of the recent times.

He grieves over the issues of poverty, violence, social injustice and

victimisation of women wherever such social evils prevail. Random Descent

is plentiful in these issues which take the form of images of nature presented

in a metaphoric grid. In “Winter in the City” the poet describes the poor boy

against the biting cold, fluttering leaves and migratory birds of the season. In

“The Portrait” he refers to a raped sixteen year old girl who gropes for justice

in the darkness. He says “a large owl burrows deep into its steamy air (61).

Suffering, injustice, death and aging which cannot be prevented are presented

through the metaphors of myths, rituals, temples, priests corporate offices,

cityscapes and soon. Looking beyond misery for the poet is like looking “at a

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jasmine‟s sad, sweet smile”. (21) The poet writes at the end of the poem

„Sign‟, „The strange grief of the blue of the sky peers down at me” (25).

The weight of the grief, the weight of the unknown and the weight of

the impenetrable nature buries him. John Barrie thus observes Mahapatra.

“The differences between the two poets (Wordsworth and Mahapatra) are

profound, yet in one sense atleast the comparison is just, for few poets in our

century have evoked “the still sad music of humanity so movingly as

Mahapatra”. (Barrie John 1984) Mahapatra senses the silence that shrouds all

objects. The silence of the process of birth, death and decay is a different

language of nature. For Mahapatra, silence is a path to freedom. He writes in

“The Land That is Not”

I only want to renew myself

like this old river‟s quiet

that has emerged victorious

over a hundred layers of religions

in the airlessness of the dead. (30-34)

The hunger and poverty of millions of our country causes stinging pain

to the sensitive poet Mahapatra. But the hunger of the flesh is equally violent

because poverty of some is exploited by others. The poet depicts this in a mild

ironic tone in “When You Need to Play” (A Whiteness of Bone)

And the passerby to throng the diseased girl

who sits still and unmoving in the market - place

one full breast peering through

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her ragged blouse, while her kind - hearted parents

on whom she had turned her back

found it easier for them to meet their death? (20-25)

The most agonising face of gloom and grief is depicted in “Bopal

Dawn” (A Whiteness of Bone). The people of Bopal were blinded by the gas -

leak tragedy. The whole town is desolate and is filled with uncertain fears.

The earth beneath is cold. A lost ray

starts slipping toward the east,

weaving sunrise. A work becomes a plot.

The page of life sprouts scaring, unseeing eyes (18-21)

The death of a nameless girl distresses the poet very much. This is the

rueful account of the poet,

There has always been starvation here, man;

Yes, we are used to it, This pain was new, one

of the loose ends. And obviously

sanity seems necessary (21-24)

August fifteenth is a memorable day for on this historic day Indians

became free from the fetters of Britain. It became possible because of the

sacrifice and selfless leadership of Gandhiji, and his path of truth and non-

violence. But people of today take violence in their hands forgetting the

sacrifices of Gandhiji, in order to attain Rama-Rajya. A sense of loss and

helplessness overwhelm the poet that he articulates in “The Fifteenth of

August”

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The photograph of Gandhi in the new airport lounge

is more than forty years old.

Everytime I look into the old man‟s eyes,

he calmly hands my promise back to me.

Land, our land,

there is so much of land between us. (7-12)

The pain and ordeal our country men experienced in the past are

thrown into oblivion. The people are indifferent to the wounds in the history

of the nation. The agonised poet painfully laments in “Of Independence Day”

We have lost those first days

that had crowned themselves with thorns,

the damp tender grass growing to sanctuary

on faiths we could not manage to understand,

we have lost all those stories

about the rustle of blood

that caught its breath when the British

seized out laughter

tossing timelessly for ages,

beneath the time of the sun.(1-10)

This reminds the poet of the merciless assassination of the Prime

Minister India Gandhi. The minds of our country men have become

degenerated that they resort to violence. Mahapatra speaks thus in “A Sullen

Balance”

122

Pale light slashes the streets.

For a second I see Indira Gandhi

looking wistfully at her garden

As near the edge of flowers,

I realise she‟s dead too,

and that my young friend

sprawled across the day

is so full of heroism (17-24)

The poet is agonised on hearing reports of young girls being raped here

and there by human savages and at the sight of meek cows being slaughtered.

Such happening in a country which has a record of glorious past appears

paradoxical for the poet and he questions about his own role as a citizen of the

country. The poem “Red Rose for Gandhi”

Today I think I know where I am going

I think I know the way.

And yet I know too that I have no history

no memory of the past, only what is there

out in the sun, the time when a thing starts

a grief-giving ominous presence, and such time

when the monstrous hand of fate

wears its tragic sign of a uncertain misled glory (15-22)

The poet curses his own helplessness to rectify anything in spite of

being a poet. He moans in “Death in Orissa”

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Oh : I am a poet who barks like a dog (16)

and in “The Hollow Mouth”

A morning when a poet doesn‟t know

what his words mean. A light of treachery

begins to glisten on the leaves,

as it changes from instant to instant. (7-10)

………………………………………….

My pain grows empty like the rainbow

it dances in the skeleton of the rain limp with light.

I taste the air.

I realise more than half my life is over. (16-19)

Mahapatra responds like the mouthpiece of the country and its people

whenever and wherever the world around us appears out of tune. There arise

pertinent questions, how poetry can save the world? What is the use of the

poem once the writing is over and what are the words looking for in the dark

soul? Everything gets over like the sound of the matchstick striking. But after

all that have been experienced the poem‟s words are perhaps justified.

We notice an uninterrupted flow of agony throughout all the twelve

sections of „Relationship‟, a long and difficult poem. The poet gets into the

shoes of the „artisans of stone‟ who constructed the Sun Temple of Konark.

The poet identifies himself with them. The poet also identifies himself with

his other ancestors,

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those maritime ancestors

who have vanished in the Black Bay without a trace

that only live in the sound of waves

flinging themselves on to the dark fringes

of the land of from Chilika to Chandipur

(Relationship 10)

Mahapatra recreates through his poems the Orissa as a land of great

culture, Art, Religion and History. This land acquirers such a tradition by the

sufferings and great sacrifices of the men of the soil. The poet remained

secure in the satisfaction, with the illusion that the glorious cultural Heritage

of Orissa belonged to him as much as it belonged to any other person born in

Orissa. The question of the saffron-robed bearded Hindu Priest, “Are you a

Hindoo” shook him as a death blow. From that moment he keeps asking his

motherland-Orissa, a pertinent question, who he is.

The poet thus places his own personal grief and agony on par with

those of the unknown brown ancestors of his, the soldiers killed in the

Kalinga war, the twelve hundred artisans in stone, the creators of the beautiful

Sun Temple at Konark, whose labour had gone unacknowledged and the

maritime ancestors who guarded the Eastern coast of Orissa and lost their

lives in the Black Bay during the reign of the kings of Ganga Dynasty.

At this point it is quite appropriate to remember the creative

experiment of Walt Whitman‟s lines in his “Song of Myself”: “I do not ask

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the wounded person how he feels-I myself become the wounded person”.

History and the autobiography of the poet mix and mingle in Relationship as

do the grief and agony of the imagined voices sound similar to those of the

Canterbury women in T.S.Eliot‟s play-The Murder in the Cathedral. Jayanta

Mahapatra‟s sharpened sensibility and powerful imagination project before

our mind‟s eye, the agony of his ancestors through a dreamlike world created

by him. The glorious past of Orissa, its land, its people and its culture throb

with life in his dream world.

Mahapatra is not ready to forgive the Emperor, Asoka the great, though

he turned remorseful after the Kalinga war and suffered a change of heart.

The great edicts of the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka only remind him of the

bloodshed, mutilation and loss of lives of the innumerable, nameless brown

ancestors who suffered because of the ruthless vaulting ambition of the great

emperor and therefore he is never in the least invokes any respect. He says in

the third section of Relationship

It is hard to tell now

what opened the skies

how the age old brown stones

lost their strength and fell

and how the waters of Daya

stank with the bodies of my ancestors,

my eyes close now

because the fear that moves my skin;

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the invaders walk along the only road the know

that leads to their bloody victories (5-14)

The poem begins with the personal agony of the poet and it gradually

becomes a tragedy of mankind signifying a universal problem. The following

lines present a spiritual crisis experienced by the poet which he expresses in

fourth section of Relationship

Burden of your peace father

Theme-song of my life that burns my tongue (22-23)

………………………………………..

I want to finish my prayer that began

like a thin rustling in mango tree

a prayer to draw my body out of a thousand years

and reflect the earth‟s lost amplitudes (50-54)

The seventh section of Relationship presents an allegory. The images

of the soldiers and their fates remind the poet of the state of the common man

of today. The agony is capsulated in the following lines of Relationship

the wooden soldiers marching, not knowing where,

in my thick insomnia

to beat the dreams

heralding the periodic invasions of the enemy

into the vanquished city (32-36)

The poet is always haunted by visions of soldiers mechanically

marching not knowing towards where. Likewise the common men of today,

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are the puppets in the hands of their rulers heading towards a blind alley.

These lines express a Marxist attitude to history. The poet sympathises with

the proletariat, the common men and reveals his wrathful feeling against the

establishment (like the ruthless emperor Asoka). Emperor Asoka is the

symbol of ruthless power crushing the weak and meek human beings

represented in the wooden soldiers. Such is the state that prevails all over the

world.

There are certain things that a poet feels indebted to himself. They are

emotional truthfulness, attention towards selfhood. But a poet expected to

owe other people something in general. And that amounts to saying that he

has to cater to the needs of the questioning community by presenting the

social reality. He is supposed to be answerable in his own poetic way to

project men and matters as he observes with fidelity and earnestness. And that

is what is done by Jayanta Mahapatra. Of the dual allegiance of poetry that a

poet uses poetry as a vehicle to express either his joy or sorrow pertaining to

his personal experiences is fulfilled in the core chapter on “Individual

Reality” and the objective self or the social self or the universal self in terms

of general happenings which are almost chocking one‟s breath with an

understanding that things have not changed for better is carried out in this

chapter on social reality.