LiteraryVibes - 4th Edition - 22-Feb-2019
Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya is from Hertfordshire, England, a Retired Consultant Psychiatrist from the British National Health Service and Honorary Senior Lecturer in University College, London.
AMRAPALLY’S SIDDHARTH
Prabhanjan K. Mishra
She raises her smouldering eyes,
the famed blue buds of luminous lily;
they wither to pods of anticlimax.
From Buddha’s half-shut eyes
an icy avalanche drowns
her hot-house lissome profile.
His words nuanced
a different cadence and white comfort,
wash down her sucked-in gasps
back to her cloistered roots.
She puts her bejeweled head down,
kissing Buddha’s callused feet;
thousands of lanes, streams,
rocky walks unwind from his foot-cracks.
A palm of detachment
attaches to her head, clearing cobwebs,
scything weeds, and hacking a walk
back to her roots, wending along
rapids, river banks, and rolling clouds,
reaching her past’s crow-dawn hours.
In her bedazzled visage and dilated pupils
the renunciate of Kapilavastu
sees the rise and fall of empires,
the nova and ashes of desires,
and the secrets of a seamless loom
sliding the shuttle of life
weaving endlessly the web of creation.
It tempts the Buddha to dovetail
his nirvanic path and her confronting lovely journey
to draw a new cusp of salvation*.
(*Buddha is said to be at the root of Trantrayana, another vehicle to Nirvana through sacred sensuality.)
CAMEO
Prabhanjan K. Mishra
The Time is ripe
to hunger for God
rather than for each other, you say.
The thought lurks
in every nook, gathers
in every vibration
of this room. In shadows
around your eyes,
in your darkening lips.
In sleep’s ebb
your hands stay awake
in my hands, searching
and untangling knots,
pulling aside the blinds.
(CAMEO was published in Penguin Anthology “confronting LOVE” edited by Arundhathi Subramaniam and Jerry Pinto. Also was placed in Book One ‘The Name of a Flavour’ of the author’s second collection ‘LIPS of a CANYON’ by Allied Publishers Ltd. ISBN 81-7764-068-2)
Prabhanjan K. Mishra writes poems, stories, critiques and translates, works in two languages – English and Odia. Three of his collected poems in English have been published into books – VIGIL (1993), Lips of a Canyon (2000), and LITMUS (2005).His Odia poems have appeared in Odia literary journals. His English poems poems have been widely anthologized and published in literary journals. He has translated Bhakti poems (Odia) of Salabaga that have been anthologized into Eating God by Arundhathi Subramaniam and also translated Odia stories of the famous author Fakirmohan Senapati for the book FROM THE MASTER’s LOOM (VINTAGE STORIES OF FAKIRMOHAN SENAPATI). He has also edited the book. He has presided over the POETRY CIRCLE (Mumbai), a poets’ group, and was the editor (1986-96) of the group’s poetry magazine POIESIS. He has won Vineet Gupta Memorial Poetry Award and JIWE Poetry Award for his English poems.
T R A I N S
Geetha Nair
Each December we packed with gusto
Gaily waved to icy hills
And chugged down in the toy train
Winding gently to the pleasant plain.
And then, the other black creature
Belching smoke
Who rattled us through the night
As I lay, as I lay on the wide berth
Sleepless, waiting for Shoranur shunting.
Shouts, clanks, swung lanterns;
A scene from the Crucifixion, our Easter staple
Where I played Jesus always,
Chosen for my hair and martyred look.
Morning brought backwaters fronting,
Blue, blue gleaming in the eastern sun,
The scents of coal and food and toilets
Losing soon to stench of rotting husks -
I loved it all.
Time to alight in Coconut Land,
A sad wave to the departing friend
Leaving in last blessing of coal dust.
Heat and dust;
Sweating in sheets, splashing in streams.
Tapioca, papaya, sugarcane
And
Ice-cream, rosemilk,
Ambrosia and nectar
To the greedy hill-child:
All the pleasures of the plain
Unrolled, rolled again.
And then the climb back to daily life.
My little tears as they mocked:
“Engine driver ? You ? Hoo hoo!”
Mother alone, loving, mild,
Said, “Prayers are granted, pray, my child.”
Years of prayer to the God of ALL trains
Half-granted my wish.
Welded me for life
To a human engine,
Masterful, strong.
I, passive driver, ever -surging, ever tossed from hill to plain
From ice to steam of his protean brain,
Powerless sleeping partner,
Driver ever driven on the twisting railroad
Of this torrid-temperate journey,
My life.
Ms. Geetha Nair G is a retired Professor of English, settled in Trivandrum, Kerala. She has been a teacher and critic of English literature for more than 30 years. Poetry is her first love and continues to be her passion. A collection of her poems, "SHORED FRAGMENTS " came out last month .
Resilience
Dr Samrat Shah
Dusk dissipates in darkness
Stars, only source of brightness
Same stars gives way to the dawn
Now, glowing sun illuminating the lawn
Indicating that transformation is inevitable and inborn
Then why we get scared of change and feel withdrawn
It’s simple to understand
To make your life grand
You don’t need rules to bend
Neither you require any brilliance
Stay calm and believe in resilience
Seek happiness in adopting transilience
Learn to evolve with every transition
Act upon your hypocritical vision
Potentiate your mental energy for every situation
Dr Samrat Shah, MD internal medicine, consultant metabolic specialist and internist.... affiliated with Jaslok, reliance foundation hospital, saifee, bhatia, elizabeth hospital.
He is a consultant internist to the Governor of Maharashtra and writes poems on social aspects as a hobby. His whatsapp number is 9920843071 and email address - drsamratshah@gmail.com, if you are interested to share the feedback directly.
Another Day
Sreekumar K.
Words wet slid out from my tongue
Head bent he sat, blaming the system of time
He lifted his head up now and then
To eye a rare bird eyeing him
He was late, had to walk all the way uphill
I could not let him in, against school rules
He had missed two periods
In another hour the school ends
A short day.
I sat with him to take a look at his books
Maths was OK, English really weak
I read out a story to him, a fairly tale
He got up and acted it all out
I looked in his bag and found his lunch
I suggested we should exchange
He was so horrified he laughed
But finally we ate each other's tiffin
I still have no idea what it was
Do people really eat this?
"Sir, the food was really tasty,
Did you like mine just as much?"
How can I say no, i never do,
I nodded my head like a bud
He waited for the day to end and
went down the hill with with his friends
Sreekumar K, known to his students and friends more as SK, was born in Punalur, a small town in south India, and has been teaching and writing for three decades. He has tried his hand at various genres, from poems to novels, both in English and in Malayalam, his mother tongue. He also translates books into and from these two languages. At present he is a facilitator in English literature at L’ école Chempaka, an international school in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. He is married to Sreekala and has a daughter, Lekshmi S K. He is one of the partners of Fifth Element Films, a production house for art movies.
He writes regularly and considers writing mainly as a livelihood within the compass of social responsibility. Teaching apart, art has the highest potential to bring in social changes as well as to ennoble the individual, he argues. He says he is blessed with many students who eventually became writers. Asked to suggest his favourite quote, he quickly came up with one from Hamlet: What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba/That he should weep for her?
DREAM
Ananya Priyadarshini
For one more time
Dream
Like you had once dreamt
Before you call your spirits an off
Before you cage your wings in a cuff
After all this tears, sweats and bloods
After all the trysts with demons and gods
With eyes that have seen it all clear and real
To see a dream, send your minds a call
Dream of a happy noise
In those deafening silences
Dream of peace and poise
In those angry violences
Dream of a vivid rainbow
In your gloomy and cloudy skies
Dream of a butterfly all set to flow
Each time a caterpillar dies
Dream of one such Sun
That would shine after the storms are gone
Dream of smiles back your home
That your struggles shall merrily welcome
Do you remember them all?
One by one, let's recall
Before you give up, before you quit
Look at the canvas wherein your dreams sit.
Ananya Priyadarshini, Final year student, MBBS, SCB Medical College, Cuttack. Passionate about writing in English, Hindi and especially, Odia (her mother tongue).
Beginner, been recognised by Kadambini, reputed Odia magazibe. Awarded its 'Galpa Unmesha' prize for 2017.
Travelogue
Anwesha Mishra
The Gulmohurs sway to and fro
Like windchimes
And the setting sun plays hide an’ seek
In the dense, green woods
Wheels race with the road
Never ending road
Some path fluent in cosmos
And some with thorny disposition
New faces we meet at every bend
Devoid of any reluctance.
And when the time's come
The Vermillion dusk sheds its curtains
On our coffins.
Anwesha Mishra is a first year medical student at Pandit Raghunath Murmu Medical College, Baripada, Odisha, India. Hailing from Bhadrak, Odisha, Anwesha's interests include singing, dancing, sketching, poetry writing, learning French and Astronomy.
2 months before NEET-2018.
Afnan Abdullah
Somewhere in a peaceful middle class locality of New Delhi, our view shifts towards an ordinary looking two storeyed house. On the second floor, there's a boy sitting with his face buried in his hands, while a subtle glimmer of light from a dusty windowpane embraced him like a mother consoling her child.
“What if I'm just not made for this?”
“What if I fail again? It's been three god damn years!”
The green-backed Microsoft lumia 435 placed nonchalantly on a huge MCQ book came to life with an Eminem ringtone and screen showing the message-
“Zabir calling.”
He waded through a disorganized pile of test papers, eventually finding the phone, and mindlessly received the call:
“Assalamualaikum Bhai. What's up.”
The familiar voice of a close friend comforted him and brought him back to life.
“Walaikumassalam.”
“Kitne bane tere?” (How much did you get?). The caller asked with apparent curiosity.
“472. Bio me 300 aate hi nhi kabhi.” (I'm never able to cross 300 in biology). The boy resisted the urge to swear.
“Koi nhi bhai. Mere 485 aaye. Han yaar. Mujhse bhi nhi horha 300 cross. Yaar at least mock test me to 550+ aane chahiye.” (It's okay. I got 485. Even I can't cross 300 in bio. Man! at least in mock tests we should be scoring 550+). The caller followed this with a short optimistic speech.
The boy was already feeling better. The darkened room felt no longer suffocating. That's how important friends are. Even the most obvious and cliched advices from a good friend can heal the deepest of your wounds in an instant!
“Chal phir Kal milte hain.” (Okay I'll see you tomorrow).
“Hmm.. okay. Allah Hafiz.”
“Khuda Hafiz.”
As soon as the call ended, the boy returned to the same state that he left thirteen minutes ago. The same old cycle of disappointment, selfloathing and mental stress. The curtains felt blue again, the room felt devilishly dark. The dreams of having anatomy as a subject, the thrill of dissecting a cadaver, the adventurous Viva exams, seemed like a distant far-fetched figment of imagination. Something that will never happen. Something that can never happen.
At that instant of time, his eyes fell on a motivational quote pasted just above the periodic table chart.
“A hand lifted to Allah is not let down.”
He never experienced how true is that. But his faith stopped him from taking it off the wall. He had always firmly believed that there is a way out for every problem. And Allah will guide you to it if you rely on Him and do honest hardwork.
He had a sudden urge to tear it off the wall. His hands proceeded to do so, but were interrupted by a voice from downstairs:
“Abdullah. Khaana khhaa lo.” (Abdullah, Come for lunch).
He folded the disorganized test papers into a folder and walked out of the room.
The end.
Afnan Abdullah is a first year medical student at Pandit Raghunath Murmu Medical College, Baripada, Odisha, India. He completed his schooling from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. A person of varied interests Afnan likes football, medicine and Urdu poetry and literature in general.
VIRTUOUS CONTRADICTIONS (Part II)
Bhikaiji Cama
Bhikaiji Rustam Cama (1861-1936) – popularly known as Madam Cama’s life is crept with contradictions; yet replete with virtues.
(1) We are given to understand that rich people display least compassion for the unprivileged. Madam Cama proved as an exception. Though she hailed from a rich family she was devoted for the aggrieved. She used to visit the plague affected people of Bombay in 1896 in spite of her husbands‘s reluctance. One day her husband issued her an ultimatum thus :”If at all you visit them (the plague affected people) don’t contemplate to return back home”. Cama obliged exactly. She sailed to England to pursue new course of life for the cause of India. Further, at the fag-end of her life, Cama bequeathed all property she possessed to Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls.
(2) Another contradiction to be noticed is that Cama abandoned her spouse, which is viewed otherwise; but without caring the stumbling block she moved in the way to accomplish her noble mission.
(3) Madam’s father was pro-British; but she emerged as a crusader against the British regime in India.
(4) Though the Madam was kind hearted she was equally stubborn hearted for her cause. She turned as the Mother of Blood-bath Revolution. She was the living and leading figure of the Indian House founded by Shyamji Krishna Verma in London in 1905.
(5) Though expected to be a modern westernised woman, as her back ground unfolded, Cama became a typical Bharatiya woman in term of her dress (saree) and preference of symbols and idioms – eg.- She attended the anti-colonial congregation at Stuttgart (Germany) in 1907 and displayed the flag which was inscribed with saffron and white colour, lotus, seven stars and Vande Mataram.
(6) What may be more paradoxical – though a rich lady, Cama suffered badly during the last days of her life in England and France; and was permitted to return back to India – the land she adored - only to die after four months.
Amrita Pritam (1919-2005)
(1) How it looks – if a lady divorces her husband and lives with a younger man, and the lady is cigarette smoking ! But it happened in case of Amrita Pritam, an icon of modern Punjabi and Hindi poetry and novel, recipient of Padmashree (1966) and Padma Bibhushan (2004) and much coveted Gyanapith Award (1982).
(2) Another contradiction is that Amrita Pritam was born at Lohare and was esteemed all across Punjab (of Pakistan as well), but had to migrate to Indian mainland as refugee during the holocaust of 1947.
In fact, Amrita Pritam was an iconoclast. She never bothered to popular reaction and terse comments hurled by the conservative social establishment. Yet she is the greatest in the firmament of romantic literature and the world of intellects drawing applause from all across.
Dr. Sonal Mansingh (1944- )
(1) Odia newspapers swelled phenomenally in August 2018 when Sonal was nominated by the President to Rajya Sabha. In Lokmanthan (an intellectual cpnclave at Ranchi, September 20118) I reported her on this that Odia papers have highlighted as the daughter-in-law of Odisha. She immediately corrected ,“No....daughter of Odisha". It is for the reason that she got divorced from her IFS husband Lalatendu Mansingh. Yet she recalled how her Dr.Mayadhar Mansingh (father of Lalatendu and eminent Odia poet) introduced her to Kelu Charan Mohapatra to learn Odishi. She speaks chaste Odia and is an embodiment of Odia culture.
(2) Though Sonal passed Matriculation in Gujarati medium in Mumbai, she offered German literature for her Hons. study.
(3) Though Sonal availed best of higher education, she became paranoid for dancing where she earned international reputation – perhaps next to Sanjukta Panigrahi in the realm of Odishi – her another track being Bharat Natyam. For these achievements that she was awarded Padmashree in 1992 and Padma Bibhushan in 2004 besides being adorning the august office of Kendriya Natak Academy.
(4) Though Sonal severed her marital relation from the Odia family she is a dignified lady, an embodiment of refined cultural ethos, learning and practising age-old Bharatiya metaphysics and what not. Contradictions or what is meant adverse circumstance never stopped her to over-ride.
Dr. D. D. Pattanaik, M.A.(Utkal) Ph.D.,D.Litt.(Sambalpur).
Member, Governing Council, Indian Council of Social Science Research
Former Senior Fellow, ICSSR
Former Associate Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study
Author, Guide, Columnist on Cultural Nationalism
Retd. Associate Professor, Political Science cum Principal, Govt. Aided College
A PEACE SONG
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Deep in the forests
There are clusters of trees,
A kingdom of plenty among them.
Everything belongs to everyone
All animals have free access,
So do the birds and the bees.
As darkness falls
The trees talk among themselves,
They have their own antennas
To catch what happens in India or Iran,
Iraq or Afghanistan.
They remember the Oklahoma bombings
And the Twin Tower inferno
They grieve over the Pulwama carnage.
They often Wonder why the human beings are so frantic
To acquire, to achieve and to attain,
To kill, to maim, to win
And to carry the war trophies home.
Don't they know
There is peace in being rooted to the earth?
There is a pride in collectivity,
When alone it is a tree, together they are a forest.
Alone it is a stream, together they are a river.
If the sky breaks into a million pieces
And ceases to be a canopy, who will protect the earth?
The trees wonder when will the humans learn
That peace, not war, wins and binds
Hearts, souls and smiles together.
Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi is a retired civil servant and a former Judge in a Tribunal. Currently his time is divided between writing short stories and managing the website PositiveVibes.Today. He has published eight books of short stories in Odiya and has won a couple of awards, notably the Fakir Mohan Senapati Award for Short Stories from the Utkal Sahitya Samaj. The ninth collection of his short stories in Odiya will come out soon.
Reminiscences Series
Childhood in a Near-White Land
Geetha Nair
I bite into a juicy plum and I am lost. The sweet juice floods me and carries me instantly to my past. The air is crisp and cool. The blue hills with a misty veil undulate in the distance.
I am a child again, standing on a green lawn.
My childhood was spent in the Nilgiris, the lovely blue-tinged hills with their temperate climate, a section of the Western Ghats that the heat-maddened British made their tiny slice of little Britain centuries ago.
I was an Army child: my home was a house on a hill in the Cantonment area. Predictably, it was called Hill View. From the lawn, I could see and hear the recruits at their strange drill .Behind the house was a mini-orchard with trees planted long ago by some home-sick British officer.There were four plum trees, a greengage tree, a peach tree.There was also a spreading seethaphal tree-later I was struck by the symbolic significance of these trees. I shared the trees and their fruit with the birds.The six trees were my perch, my retreat, my play area -my second home.
The British had left two decades ago.Yet they had not really left. Everywhere there were visible or palpable signs of their presence. The Clubs, the racecourse, the golf course, the ware in the shops; above all the blood they mingled with ours to leave behind a lasting legacy.
Take the the school I studied in. Wood,Robinson Gass, Barker, Stevens, White and Brown were the surnames my friends bore. We had great times together in class and on the playground. Names and skin did not matter a whit. Yet, disturbing memories, sharpened and clarified by time, surface like sharks in placid waters.For instance,the exam day when a good friend and I, sitting rows apart, exchanged expressive grimaces over the toughness of the question paper. Our teacher-in-charge saw this exchange-I was awarded a stinging slap; my white friend, nothing. Why? The little child I was asked herself over and over again. How was I more guilty? It took years for the answer to emerge.
Shashi Tharoor recently ripped the veil off the era of British rule in India. No holds barred.All truths bared. But, just as the humble periwinkle growing hidden in a garden of exotic,white lilies shares of the nourishment the lilies receive, we too gained. Much. To quote just one instance, how else would I be able to write now to you in this beautiful tongue I have made my own?
What else did I and countless others learn from our conquerors? Fair play (on paper, at least) which as a child I absorbed through my reading of British books written by British writers in the near-British library I trotted off to, every Saturday, like a thirsty colt. The Christian virtue of Loving Kindness. The championing of the Underdog;(provided it wasn’t a brown one) These three that I imbibed in childhood have been the driving forces of my later life. Thank you, Britannia, for what you unwittingly or unwillingly threw at us.
I was fiercely patriotic as a child. What else could I be, as the daughter of an army officer, living within sight of recruits training,bugles trilling, soldiers marching to unknown, dangerous locations? My childhood was an unhampered one. I roamed the hills and meadows as freely as a lamb. I was fortunate- I grew in the midst of beauty and freedom. Wild nature bestowed another gift as well - wildness. It lingers still.
My childhood is a brilliant colour photograph.The lawn and the undulating green meadows against the backdrop of the blue hills. Flowers - masses of them, both cultivated and wild,pink, red, yellow,and everywhere the deep bluish-purple of the morning glory. My heart remains embalmed in their distilled fragrance.
IN TRANSIT FROM GRANDMA TO MAA: My ten early years
Prabhanjan K. Mishra
Until my 5th birthday I grew up nestling in my liberal granny’s lap and I entered my unlucky sixth year, to lose my beloved granny, and step into the portal of my disciplinarian mother’s tutelage. I recall today being a precocious child, yet I don’t clearly recall the great loss or how I felt at my granny’s death, or if I didn’t feel her loss as deeply as I should have, and why it was so. It has still been a mystery to me, why the hell I enjoyed the funeral feast as an insensitive little brat, the feast that was arranged by our family for outsiders on the eleventh day of her death as a part of the ritual to usher in peace to her departed soul in heaven. I partook of the feast with other children that accompanied the guests who came to offer their formal condolences to my bereaved family. Why it did not bother me to see my family members moving around with mournful faces and empty-stomachs with bare minimum ghostly whispers to welcome the guests and expressing gratitude for having come to sympathize. I also don’t understand today why the tragedy dawned on me with its full impact so late, as late as my sophomore days. I would then live in a heartbroken private space of mine, living the bygone tragedy for long intermittent periods into my late teens, sulking, and missing my sweet grandma when my fellow college friends were busy in skirt-chasing.
The saga of my childhood in my grandma’s village was redolent of everything a child would love to regale himself with. But my memories of this enchanted period do not come floating today as a continuum along the timeline; the events rather trickle into memory as disjointed snippets. In our village milieu those days, boys were barred from womanly socio-religious festivals and rituals, but being an inseparable part of granny, I would take part in all the womanly and girly ceremonies. Boys among my little cousins would tease me for my feminine involvements expressing doubts if I was in fact a girl wearing a boy’s attire. In the process, a female cousin older by a few years became my closest companion. We would play husband and wife in our secret playhouse behind our big thatch houses, where we would raise children, manage our household, celebrate our children’s birth, and marriages, and rejoice to have grandchildren. Generally, my older cousin playing my wife would know all the nitty-gritty of a family life, and that illusory family life would be my first exposure to how adults lived and behaved. In those days as a little kid I took seriously the folklore of a bogeyman (kakabaya for we the brats of the then Orissa) that visited deserted lanes late in nights or in desolate afternoons to prey on little kids. So, I would never feel safe in bed or could go to sleep unless I put one of my granny’s shriveled tits in my mouth, my ultimate pacifier. But at times my naughty granny along with her friends would play pranks with me. She would pretend to be dead and her friends, mostly toothless hags of the neighbourhood, would tease me that mother was on her way to take me away. Granny would upturn a part of each of her upper eyelids looking strange and scary besides putting out the tip of her tongue and lying still. Something would tell me that it was exactly how people looked when dead. I would feel strangely insecure and lapse to heartbroken howling every time forgetting that it had been a joke. My howls would please the play-acting granny and her rowdy gang, and they all would come around with laughs and placating words, hugging and kissing me with extra doses of pampering. I loved the end scene of these old dames. Once, granny visited her parental’ house and took me along. It was a hot season, and that village being a coastal one, a gusty hot and dry westerly wind, called loo, blew through the village most afternoons and early evenings. It was a new experience and used to disturb and unhinge me for no specific reason. I recall staying close to granny every minute of our stay there, sort of tied to her apron strings. The other thing I remember is the fear of the dark and still water of a big pond in that village. The placid, gaunt, and grim pond would even visit my dreams with nightmarish fear well into my early adulthood. I also remember my uncles, granny’s sons carrying me around on their affectionate shoulders. My grandpa visited Cuttack almost every month on court related work and brought me delicious dates and city-made sweets. He would keep them under lock and key and give me when none was around. I was the apple of their eyes, especially of my grandma’s and grandpa’s, a pampered child, a spoiled brat in the eyes of my prim and proper mother. I never came to know why I lived my early years with maternal grandparents and not with my parents. But I was a happy child who enjoyed his games in the mud and dust of the rustic freedom.
My mother, a very strong willed wife of an extremely generous and liberal man, my father, visited her parental abode to attend her mother’s funeral and took me away at the end of the death rituals of my beloved granny. In my new home with parents, I remember living in a beautiful big village with looming lovely straw-thatch houses, smelling of cowsheds and sweet smoke from kitchens, built cheek by jowl across thin serpentine lanes and harbouring love and care almost in every home. I sensed that affection in the neighbourhood seeping to my tender little heart but at home I was tamed (as if I was a wild mule), disciplined, and imposed upon to work hard on my lessons, never to utter anything except the truth, be rigidly serious everywhere, and not to waste time in games with boys or girls around. My disciplinarian mother seemed in a hurry to bring me up in her own prim and proper image.
The jolly village with happy vibes was surrounded by adivasi (tribal) hamlets, and deep jungles and purple-green hills infested with wild animals, mostly big bears, pythons, hyenas and rarely, Cheetahs or elephants. In spite of mother’s discipline and her caning for each disobedience, I often slipped away with friends to roam the outskirts of jungles touching the village borders. We would climb trees, collect and eat berries and ripe kendu fruits (of Tendu trees, whose supple dry leaves being used to roll beedi). Luckily we children never met any bears or hyena. After a brief and rigorous tuition by a local teacher, I was directly put into the third standard of the local primary school. The pastoral village prided with its primary school up to Std. Five and minor school (consisting of the standards fifth and sixth). Almost half of my fellow students were from different tribal stocks. I had many tribal friends. I studied there up to 6th std. before my father got transferred to another dispensary in another village. My primary teachers were excellent persons, persuasive, helpful, affectionate, and caring; especially our fatherly headmaster, Harekrishna sir. But my teachers in my 6th standard of the minor school were young monsters in human shape. For no specific reasons, they would cane us black and blue. I would be especially punished for my thin voice, over which I had no control. Unfortunately all other male fellow students had thicker voices by then. I protested but that brought me more punishment from the teachers and disapproval from my mother.
My father served the govt. of Orissa as a pharmacist in village dispensaries or hospitals in towns and had a transferable job. Those were the days when patented or branded medicines were few and far, and pharmacists would prepare powdery or liquid concoctions of medication by adding measured doses of ingredients for various ailments following the pharmacopeia. Father was very popular among the people for his effective medicines and behavior. They used to say, “His kind words and smiles cure half our pain”. I used to be impressed no end. He was my hero and ideal. I tried to walk, talk, eat, smile like him, and followed his beliefs and mannerisms. He was extremely liberal with an open mind, a democrat to his hilt, and a secular in true sense. He was honest to a fault. He would take me to adivasi fairs in remote villages where hundreds of young tribal men and women danced in complete abandon after drinking heady homemade liquors. They mixed freely and shook a leg to the haunting musical beats of an instrument called Maadal that looked like a giant mridang carried by four people, it had a single face that was drummed rhythmically with a bid wooden hammer by two other men, the musicians. Its sound boomed majestically and in silent nights travelled miles and miles creating a dreamy haunting reverberation across distant villages nestling in jungles and hill-slopes.
One bad memory is etched in my mind until today. A fire broke out and licked hundreds of those beautiful houses. It was doused before it reached our rented thatch-house. I was so scared like my friends. The big fire rendered many of my friends homeless during that hot humid summer. But I recall my first encounter with human resilience - my broken heart would quickly mend when my friends’ houses in a short time rose from their ruins and ashes. It would be improper to use the clichéd metaphor of phoenix, as in those tender years I knew nothing of the magical bird that rose from death by fire. Even the burnt and blackened trees blossomed back as rains followed that summer. Another sad thing always returns to me. I was over-imaginative and spoke to village folks and my young friends highly exaggerated stories about my granny’s village or magical things that I had seen in fairs I had visited with grandpa. My mother got tired of telling people that those were not true but figments of white lies, and got exasperated of reprimanding me and calling my bluff. Now I know, had I been in my mother’s shoes I would encourage my ward to spin more of those innocent stories condemned as lies and bluffs, and would rather take them as the first blooms of a creative mind. But that was another time and another school of thought. When applying cane failed, my mother thought of an ingenious plan. She instructed my friends and village folks to call me ‘Michhubabu’ (a liar-boy) and I was too shamed to go out until her order was ignored and things returned to normal. I don’t know today, how much damage that punishment made to my impressionable subconscious of the day, to my sense of cause and effect, or how much it traumatized me, but again I say that it was another time another school of thought, mostly rigid, illiberal, and closed. But surprisingly my father took over my charge in a few years. He was a Gandhian and free thinker. He gladly encouraged most things I was denied earlier. We would walk and talk together, discuss myths and legends of the time, joke and laugh a lot. He had a great sense of humour. Being a Brahmin and a devout Hindu, he loved all religion and cast like his own. I specifically remember his fellow Brahmins’ being critical of him for not wearing the cast marks and the sacred thread Janeu.
“My God Died Young”, saying in the youthful angst of 1960’s writer Sasthi Brata, my life took a somersault when I was in my 6th standard, might be my tenth year. My father took to bed, was diagnosed with severe heart condition, high blood pressure and what not. We lapsed into penury having no saving, no piggy bank, no helping hands of relatives. Even my little scholarship money was looked forward to as the next lifesaving shot. But my brave and resilient mother never accepted defeat. She fought her lonely battle with her back to the wall, pulling out all her resources and managing her household like a trapeze artist till the bad patch passed over. Though I and my two little siblings never had a sparkler in Deewali or colours in Holi, but because of our ingenious mother we never went to school or bed in empty stomachs. I grew up in a poor home goaded by lack of enough food and clothes, or any luxury until father was up and about in quite a few years. I would always fondly recall my mother producing delicious dishes from her empty larder on select festive occasions like a magician pulling out rabbits out of his hat. We however could never recover from our penury that goaded me to take family responsibility by my parents’ side from an early age, say by my sixteenth birthday.
My creative side, that was misconstrued as bluffs and lies, went up to shelves when father took to bed and I was around ten, and I took it out only when I had completed all my family responsibilities. By then I was far away from my tender days, turning into a hard nut, an atheist, and almost a non-conformist, and was on the threshold of my thirty-fifth year. I started with a bang by writing seven little poems on Mumbai, the then Bombay, on my thirty-sixth birthday that Bombay poets like Nissim Ezekiel, Derek Antao, Raj Rao, Charmaien De souza etc. loved much. A poem on Gandhi Bapu was published by the famed poet editor Jayanta Mahapatra in 1986 in his highly esteemed literary magazine Chandrabhaga, my first published work.
Recently I visited my dream village Barhampur with my wife, the village that had sat ensconced in deep jungle’s lap, surrounded by resonant tribal hamlets. I searched for my childhood in its charmed air and hear the hunting distant booms of Madal late nights. I was disappointed. It has gone to be a modern garbage bin, a little township with crammed and cramped denture of shanty-looking houses, a dream gone sour and nightmarish.
My shoes
Prasanna Kumar Dash
Egyptian short film (just over 4 minutes) won an award at the Luxor Film Festival. The film maker Sara Rozit is only 20 years old. What a brilliant film maker at this age! Just over 4 minutes film and it teaches us many things about life.
I had similar incident in my life relating to shoes. I didn't have a shoe when I was in class V. One of my senior in school from my village had got a new full shoe from his grand father who was working in Kolkata. I will write the story later.
My friend was not good in math. I entered into an agreement with him that for whole year I will do his math problems and he will share his shoe for two days in a week. The agreement was duly accepted by my friend and as per this, he handed me over his shoes on the agreed days. I took his shoes to my home and I was very excited to wear the full shoe which was the first shoe in my life. I was cleaning it with my shirt and oil and took due care. I wore it several times on that day and saw in mirror how it looks on my feet. But my excitement was shortlived as in the evening the shoes drew the attention of my father who is a strict school teacher. He asked me about the source of the shoe and honestly I narrated the story of my agreement with my friend. He flew into fury and twisted my ears. He directed me to carry the shoe forthwith and submit with my friend. Very reluctantly I obeyed his command and willynilly returned the shoes to my friend in the same evening.
The shoes, with which I was in love, went away from my life and I was under pain for many years, till I had my full shoe for the second time, after getting admission into my college. Though I got the shoe, I missed the excitement which I had in my childhood over my first shoe, which I had earned as an exchange for solving mathematics sums.
Prasanna Kumar Dash is Member CBDT, Ministry of Finance Government of India. He writes poems and does paintings.
Honey, Where are the Kids?
Sreekumar K
One of the contributions of modern medicine is that, thanks to extended life span and by keeping alive the incapacitated, the pyramid has been turned upside down with the result that a small section of the society, the youth, will have to take care of a large number of the aged and the invalid. Any group thus burdened will try to strengthen itself through individual enrichment and an attempt at enlarging itself. In the case to enlarge itself, the group called the youth has gobbled up the children with the effect that childhood has practically become non existent. No new definition or age reassignment can bring it back now.
Childhood, in England was earlier a period of illiteracy rather than an age group. A child was kept away from knowing on his own. He knew what he was told. This gave the term a secondary meaning, innocent. In a post renaissance world, it was convenient not to be questioned because the answers were often blasphemous. So, the adults adored such innocent, unquestioning, convenient and harmless citizens. But this didn't prevent them from being horrified at what we always call childlike and hence the term childish, not a compliment at all. It took Dickens and many social reformers to save children from such an abusive society. On the other hand, Dr Arnold, the poet and critic Arnold's father, earned a great reputation by establishing a public school system based on corporal punishment. Spare the rod and spoil the child has no parallel in any other language or culture. Ancient Indian texts talk about worshipping the children and any god is more popular as a child than as an adult, especially Krishna. Childhood was considered a blessed period all over the east. In the Neethisara, an ancient sanskrit text, it is said that children should be treated like kings. In the west, a mayor was considered paid in full when a pied piper buried some children alive. The piper was vindicated. It is re venge, nit a tragedy. Even Jesus Christ's childhood was not worth his biographer's time.
In the post colonial world, along with dumping the excess and the useless in the colonies, along with the cultural waste, as a part of the white man's burden of laundering the not so whites, the outmoded models of education as well as an antihuman perspective on children were brought in. The east threw away its respect for children and it was an act of convenience in an upstart economy.
Today, we have practically eradicated childhood. In our workhouses, wrongly called schools, our children are going through a probationary training period. They are already employed, part of the workforce. After the completion of a long training period, about 15 years, they are sent to their workplaces based on the excellence they show. Even the drop outs are caught and fed back into the machine. Ironically and automatically the children are encouraged to join whichever segment of the workforce grows thinner, to maintain the level of unemployment which in turn keeps the labour cost low.
With a child prodigy running a billion dollar company here or there, or child artistes making millions on TV channels, a kid's version of the great American dream is refurbished and sold while child labour laws look the other way. Child prostitution and child abuse are on the high. Video games and new age children's literature are teaching the children what we don't want to know. A child does not own his world anymore since he dwells in shopping malls.
The children who are not so privileged are uckier. In suburbs and rural areas they are goaded into a system which has no accountability. Religions and the entertainment industry have taken up their education. Not so bad, since they live in a real world and eventually become street smart. They are the ones who master one skill or another along with a host of life skills. They eventually become independent thinkers and responsible citizens since in the streets where they live, a bluff never go unnoticed. It is in this segment of the children that any country can rely on for a better future. It is their voting power that will give the politicians bad dreams. Childhood, a period to observe, think and learn, is still part of their lives. Other children are observed, thought about and branded.
It is high time we felt nostalgic not just about our own childhood but about childhood as such. If we get a chance to revisit the world after fifty years, we may ask, "Honey, where are the kids?"
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