Literary Vibes - Edition XV
Friends,
The cyclone Fani visited the East coast of India last week and left. It has wrought havoc on the lives of millions of people in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Our heart goes out to all those who suffered during Fani's unwelcome visit. Let us pray for them and extend our helping hand in whatever way we can.
All efforts are on to restore normalcy, although it will be many years before trees come up again and greenery returns in the affected areas. The scars will remain, just as the indelible wounds of the super cyclone of 1999 which had devastated the coastal districts of Odisha. May God strengthen the hands of all those who are trying to help the distressed people.
We are happy to introduce Prof. Latha Prem Sakhya, a widely published poet to the Literary Community of PositiveVibes. Her thought-provoking poem Wild Furies speaks volumes about her extra-ordinary literary talent. We at LiteraryVibes are privileged to have an excellent poem Ockhi by another famous and accomplished poet Ms. Meera Nair, whose poems have transcended into the realm of Drama and Music.
We also welcome Dr. Preethi Ragasudha, a budding poet of exceptional promise. We have her wonderful maiden poem Fireflies to adorn the pages of LiteraryVibes this week. We wish her a great beginning of poetic journey and many laurels to fill her life.
Please send the link of LV XV to all your friends and contacts. Let the literary flowers bloom and Foni be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Warm Regards,
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
OMEN
Prabhanjan K. Mishra
It rankles
when they call me ‘patriot’,
buzzes a bugle of ridicule
that stings in my inner ears;
another beloved word ‘nationalist’
gone to cesspool.
Their spirit goes remote like Tricolour
unfurled at unreachable heights,
churns and eddies as unbroken flatulence
in stomach of the tallest statue,
shines at points of knives and bayonets,
is draping the coffins of martyrs;
cooks an insidious cuisine
(free taste gone for a toss)
with cow urine that is foisted
as panacea, served
mixed with
fascinating day dreams and fear.
We are serenaded
by an immaculate pied piper,
singing falsehood,
division, and hate as melody
to reap a harvest of power and pelf;
inducing pipedreams like Walter Mitty’s.
As children, father took us
to watch a patriotic screen jamboree;
Bharat in Upkar, suave and rustic,
son of the soil to his finger-tips,
honest, humane, and truthful,
mesmerized our child-thoughts.
We went into the theatre
as bullies, and emerged
sober, India grew in our love
dearer, more than a mother.
Followed his ‘Purab Aur Paschim’,
made us proud to be Indians.
Though put down as Masala Movies
they spurred free thought,
opened our doors and windows
to love diversity, feel proud as Indians
across castes, across cultures,
even not to hate liquor or cigars.
Later I learn the secrets of Ganga
and holy deeps, Mahatma’s experiments
with truth, the colour of non-violence,
filling me with a white wonder;
the meek magician’s rabbits
driving the ‘Empire’ to a sunset;
visit Banaras, see its musty lanes
not rejuvenated, its little temples
not renovated, and gods
not venerated as sacred icons;
but bulldozed, crushed,
and re-pulped into pulp fictions.
Corporate peddlers
market the gods for a profit;
devotees have to wow the fanciful -
venerating the designer God
enshrined in designer temples,
handing out designer moksh!
I leaf through
the Free Press Journal,
no more free, no more a journal.
The erudite editor has been caught
in the web; sings hosanna to the piper,
leading clueless people over the cliff.
Is it the Second Coming,
that is usurped by the Antichrist?
Is the end of the world
lurking around the corner?
Does the benign beard mask
Damien, the Devil?
Grandmother, the Matriarch
Prabhanjan K. Mishra
In her fair-weather sailing
she pushes ninety knots;
saw Madhu Barrister*
and Gandhi in flesh,
heard live the echo
of the mighty Dandi March;
but shunned Bapu’s call
exhorting female education,
and Harijan-welfare.
She shoveled inroads
into peoples’ hearts
with food, repartee, and love;
ruled them
like a possessed sovereign;
as family dowager,
believed: literate females
and Harijans poisoned the culture,
especially its greenhorns.
But her young granddaughters
defied gravity, made chinks
in her old armour
attended schools and colleges.
Her grandsons widened the cracks,
using loopholes
smuggled in
to our joint family fold
educated wives.
Granny feigned nonchalance
until a granddaughter
eloped with a college-mate,
an outcaste
from a family of wine-brewers.
She roared, “I told you”.
Everyone’s wet pants pleased her
until my father,
the youngest of her brood,
her fondest of the serial harvest,
she had reaped
in the best of her flowering prime,
rolled laughing on the floor.
She stood still
and all held breath
for the ticking bomb to detonate.
But she smiled as if hearing a joke,
and walked away
leaving behind a crack
for a shrewd daybreak.
The next day, the outcaste suitor
from untouchable wine-makers
was welcomed with pomp
along with our own eloping girl
like the Biblical prodigal son.
And the granny boasted
of our family’s climbing
quite a few notches
up the social ladder.
She roared at her peers,
the other grumbling matriarchs,
“Imbecile hags, unless your girls study
and breed far and wide,
you harvest a poor crop.
“Haven’t you, crones, read
Darwin? Neither Russell
nor our own home-spun Gandhi?”
The tongue in both
conciliatory cheeks simultaneously
in an impossible trick
of dialectic complicity,
her right eye pressed in half wink,
she smiled their mutual coded secret.
She hissed in my ears,
“When we, the old bitches, sin,
we sin like professional sinners.”
(Late Madhu Barrister* was a renowned lawyer, philanthrope, reformer, and patriotic son of Odisha; a senior contemporary of the Mahatma.)
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.He welcomes readers' feedback at his email - prabhanjan.db@gmail.com
OCHRE (GAIRIKA,1994)
Haraprasad Das
Translated by Prabhanjan K. Mishra
See, I am in the first row,
of the fancy-dreamers,
ready to takeoff
into the puffs of clouds.
Good, that you came finally,
later you would have missed me.
The resplendent afternoon
looms low to anoint me
with ochre for my coronation.
I pick up the lotus bud
lying in dust,
and tuck it into my collar,
as did Napoleon
with the French crown.
Had you come later,
I would be gone
with my flatterers, as always,
to wrench morsels
from crow-beaks,
offering the free birds
their freedom in exchange
like distributing cloth-hangers
in a colony of nudes;
act my benchmark melodrama
before saying adieu.
Good that you came, sit down,
let me have an eyeful of you,
feel your abject penury
before the opiate of power
over-powers me for playing
a perverse game of dice,
staking our Himalayan glory
for an illusory ocean of milk.
Trust me,
I was waiting for you;
I wanted smearing my face
with the sunset saffron
before setting out
to play peekaboo a while more
with the hapless fallen leaves.
Mr. Hara Prasad Das is one of the greatest poets in Odiya literature. He is also an essayist and columnist. Mr. Das, has twelve works of poetry, four of prose, three translations and one piece of fiction to his credit. He is a retired civil servant and has served various UN bodies as an expert.
He is a recipient of numerous awards and recognitions including Kalinga Literary Award (2017), Moortidevi Award(2013), Gangadhar Meher Award (2008), Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award (1999) and Sarala Award (2008)”
A LETTER WITHOUT AN ADDRESS
Gourahari Das
(Translated by Dr Manoranjan Mishra)
All letters don’t reach their destinations. Some letters abscond midway whereas some others are imprisoned in their careless moments. What about the letters without addresses written on them? They are the ones whose fate hangs in the balance.
Such was the condition of a letter found without address. The letter bore no information about who had written it or where it was meant to go. The sender and writer of the letter might exist among you. Entertaining such a hope, an exact copy of the letter is being reproduced here.
Dear Tukubabu,
Now the month of Magha is in progress. The village cold is crueller than cold in the city. The sun had disappeared for the last two days. Turning my back at the morning sun, I am writing this letter to you.
You were asking my father about “Rupa sagada re suna kania,” weren’t you? Do you not remember the excitement of children sitting on the bullock carts laden with bundles of hay? Blue are the hills that are far away from us. If you had a closer look, you would realize how the lands of our village had been devastated in the rain that lasted a whole year and the storm that blew during Kartik Purnima. Where is the paddy that can be carried in bullock carts? Hiring a labourer was not even required; my father and brother carried the bundles home on their heads. How long will the paddy last? Maybe, we will manage till the end of Chaitra. After that, we will be left at the mercy of the heaven overhead and the earth down below.
You have asked about the person who prepared ‘muan’—sweets balls of fried paddy and jaggery. What a sharp memory you have! You have not forgotten the experience of catching fish with your fishing tackle near the screwpine groves. You must be reading the newspapers. The fish were affected by diseases. It’s no less than a dream, these days, to find a flower; not to speak of talk of oil and sugar? After the government changed, did the control dealers change? The government got comparatively fewer votes from our village. Only for that, less amount of rice and sugar are being supplied to our village. Does it ever happen in an independent nation? The village people are unaware of the developments taking place in the world; why don’t you talk about our village to the minister?
The old woman who sold ‘muan’ died a few days ago. Her son was going to Chandabali in a truck to attend a meeting. You must have heard about the death of twelve people there; the poor old lady’s son was among the dead. The lady died bemoaning her loss. When she was well, she would ask about you. The city conveniently forgets the village; but the village keeps the city neatly arranged in the heart, just like a wall calendar.
Why have you enquired about the village school? The school building was demolished some seven or eight years ago. People carried away the chairs and benches to use them as firewood. The teacher was coming at his convenience but the students refrained from going there. The children of our village won’t be able to read anymore. So many things happen in this world; only a primary school could not be repaired. The Behera family and Dash family have employed private teachers for the education of their children; who would listen to wretched, poor people like us?
Leave it; I won’t burden you with my worries. You were talking about the feast during the Saraswati puja. Really, you remember a lot. The tomato khata prepared by Chagalanana was really tasty. The price of tomato has gone up to rupees ten this year. The price of a piece pf cauliflower is eight rupees. Hence, there will be no feast, will any play be staged. Chagalanana felt very bad. He is not getting an opportunity to showcase his talent. Why are prices going up like this? Villagers talk about some war to be fought. Can you ever understand how we are managing ourselves? Perhaps not.
You have mentioned electrification of our village. You can’t imagine the difficulties we have hurled ourselves into by depending on the mechanized rice crusher in place of the wooden husking paddle. The lights at the market burn like kerosene lamps, that too, only seven days a month. During the rest of the period, darkness pervades everywhere.
Maguni Mohanty says he will contest the elections for the post of Sarapanch. He is talking about some temple; perhaps the locals in the market understand him. He is making people take the oath of allegiance by making them touch the picture of Lord Akhandalamani. I refused to accede to his demands. Is this how votes should be cast? Have I done the right thing? Since that day, he is angry with me.
You must have read about Runa in the newspapers. Her in-laws didn’t care to send even message about her. She was three months pregnant; they killed her by pouring kerosene over her. Let their wealth go to hell. We hear that they did all this for the sake of a T.V. set. You must have heard about Runa. She was very innocent. Didn’t you make her cry for the sake of a dried mango, once? Did she tell you anything then? I can never erase her memory from my mind. Even Yamaraj would not have wished to burn such a beautiful girl.
What would I write about our village? Almost every day, something terrible takes place. The shutters of houses had to be downed on account of this on the first day of Raja. A lot of fighting went on, on account of Bada Pokhari. Jagudadi’s skull was fractured. Police from the police outpost came and arrested the people of the other village. The month of Asadha has given way to Magha but people of both the villages still harbour ill-feelings towards each other.
We all have been spending our time, leaving everything to fate. Why do you need to come to the village? Who are us, for you? But, you must be reminiscing about the game of bagudi that we played on the bank of river Mantei, and how we caught fish from Arjun Babaji’s pond.
The Magha purnami, when we make a bonfire, is only a few days’ away. If you visit us, we will have much fun. It’s true that those days can’t be brought back but we can live the fun we had those days. On the dew-drenched ridges if distant fields we will light a fire, roast brinjals and nuts in it.
Yes, I have not passed the most important information till now. Why don’t you inform some important persons about the Ghateswar hospital. The health minister lives in your city. We have only voted for him but we have never seen his face. Every month, one or two people die due to lack of treatment. Besides the red tincture and the white tincture, there is hardly any medicine worth mentioning. We live here relying on fate. The youth of the area organized a strike; they met the minister in the city. You have know many great and noble people. Should not they raise voices of concern for these destitutes?
What shall I tell about myself? I feel like committing suicide whenever someone comes to ‘see’ me. How many times shall I appear, with tea or sherbet tray in hand and a bent head, before them? My father is thinking of sending me to my maternal uncle’s house at Chandabali. He experiences great shame and pain when so many candidates return, rejecting me. Don’t you know about our villagers? It’s better to be visited by a prospective candidate in a temple or market. The truth is that everybody needs a lot of dowry. Does my father have the capacity to accede to the demands? I have already crossed thirty two winters; how long will I survive?
Father reported that your son had started going to school. Why don’t you bring him to the village once? Through him, you could visualize the Mantei of your childhood. The village might be having a school whose roof has been blown away, ever bickering villagers, and unproductive rice fields, but it still has enough love and affection for all. Won’t you take your son around the village?
I’m not writing this hoping to get a reply. I have already told you that the city never remembers the address of the village. What else, other than hope is left for us to bank on?
Lovingly,
Mina
The letters were illegible at many places; even at places they were wet with water or dew or may be tears; no one knew. However, it can be understood that it was written to a close childhood friend by another who lived in the village. Through her, the helpless village expressed itself. It is not possible to decipher, from the letter, which village the lady belongs to but in the letter one would find the geography of many villages.
Dr. Gourahari Das is a celebrated doyen of Odiya literature and has as many as seventy books to his credit, which include novels, short story collections, vignettes, travelogues, plays and essays. Many of his stories have been translated into English and have been published under the titles The Little Monk and Other Stories, The Nail and Other Stories, Koraput and Other Stories and The Shades Of Life.
Dr. Das is the Features Editor of the Odia Daily THE SAMBADA, and Editor of the Fiction Monthly KATHA. He also works as the Principal of the Sambada School of Media and Culture. He is a recipient of numerous awards for his Literary achievements. Notable among them are the Kendriya Sahitya Akademi Award, Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award, Utkal Sahitya Samaj Award and Sangeet Natak Akademi Prize.
Manoranjan Mishra (PhD) works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Government Autonomous College, Angul, Odisha. He has more than eighteen years of teaching experience. His hobbies include translating short stories from Odia to English and vice-versa. Best Stories of Chandrasekhar Dasburma is his first published translated text. Some of his translated stories and research articles have been published in Galaxy, The Creative Launcher, The Criterion, Langlit, Ashvmegh, Muse India and Sahayogi.
A SCHOOLBOY SPEAKS
Geetha Nair
(In memory of the floods of August, 2018, that devastated Kerala. This poem has been inspired by K. Sreekumar's story "Boys")
That white thing out there,sunk in our brand-new lake…
That’s Desert Star, the bus we go to school by;
Abu ‘s father bought it when he returned for good
From the Gulf.
Abu is fine, thank God ! Abu, my best friend
Whose pockets bulged with strange sweets
When his father still slaved over there;
Abu is safe: his house didn’t break the way mine did.
Leena too, God be praised;her family moved
Just before the deluge-will I ever touch that Krishna ring
On her creamy finger or carry her Angela schoolbag?
Oh! Our books are pulp; dissolved in tears, my mother said.
How will Tiger Sir twist ears
When there are no books to mug from ?
My football is safe.The outhouse was spared
When our house caved in.
I was outdoors, running after Bruno as he dashed out barking
At the strange roar above.
He escaped, though.
They haven’t found my body as yet.
HE SPEAKS
Geetha Nair
(India News-Times of India It is now official. Lord Krishna was born on 21-07-3227 and died on 18-02-3012 BC) !!!!
I died in 3012 BC ?
Maybe they are right; I wouldn’t know;
Counting backwards is a skill
You acquired after I left.
All I know is I got hit in the sole
A long time back and left your world.
But I am still alive.
Kaliya was in hiding all this while;
I had bruised him too black and blue.
Now he is back, with a hundred hoods
And spits on Odisha.
A fearsome child, he hurls building blocks,
Breaks,spits, stamps, screams.
I watched his lashing, impotently, you say?
With my limbless brother and sister,
I did nothing, you say?
Think again.
Have you forgotten Govardhana?
It was I who steered those mighty five,
Those satellites you think you command,
I held them so you could break his might
And flee to far-off havens.
I am in the minds of those who act;
I am the Mover,
I am the Saviour,
I am yours-
Then, now, forever.
ALL GOD’S CHILDREN
Geetha Nair
He had moved into the house next to mine just two few days back. I had viewed his arrival with interest and speculation. He was a fairly young man clad in saffron and much ash. His muscular body looked well-fed. A flier tucked into the next day's newspaper confirmed my suspicions. Yes. The materialistic variety. Swami Athurananda offered his services in astrology, vaasthu, poojas for all occasions and reasons- all at not very modest rates. A con man, like me. Like most of us, I suspected. Didn't I make a living in a thriving company that sold medicine guaranteed to cure asthma, make hair grow and nourish ageing skin? And my wife worked for a medical insurance company. Hadn't she encountered hundreds of people who had found out too late that their medical insurance hadn't insured them against being half-conned?
That morning a knock at my door turned out to be Swami ji himself. He introduced himself; he was a member of a pan-Indian mission devoted to service. In his hand was a vessel. It contained, he said, prasad from his first pooja at his new abode. My wife hung back when he offered the vessel to her. I warned him of her "untouchability"; she faced west when she prayed. But he dismissed it with one of those noble shrugs of his hefty shoulders that I was to encounter again and again and an observation: "All are God's children, Jagdeesh." He had read my name on the name plate at the gate.
I warmed to him a little.
Though my wife was a militant non-vegetarian, she enjoyed cooking my docile Hindu fare .I think to her I was a son as well; we had no children. Swami ji loved the veg dishes she made for me and which I often gave him a share of, after he had declared he had no qualms about accepting food cooked by her.
Summer was at its searing best. I would see him on the terrace in the mornings doing yoga with great agility. After the yoga,, he would clean and fill up with water a large stone bowl. This was kept in the open. It was for birds and squirrels - and snakes. Sure enough, the first two came, regularly, to slake their thirst. Swami ji claimed that slitherer friends too drank on the sly; anyway, there were plenty of them around. ”All God’s children, Jagdeesh,” he shrugged, seeing my expression. Soon, his front yard became a little aviary. I spent much time watching the many-coloured birds drinking and splashing in the stone vessel.
People too dropped in… . Probably with insoluble problems that he dissolved in the holy water or burnt in his holy fire. He soon gained a reputation for performing special poojas to cure those who were ill or close to financial death. He was certainly well-named.
Often, he was spirited away in cars to different places in order to work his magic.
When he was away from home on such business, I would fill the stone bowl every morning. He had requested me to do so and I had agreed readily. On the day of his return, I invariably took across a meal to him. He welcomed this because he did his own cooking and cleaning. But after a few months, he hired a middle-aged lungi-clad man as his domestic help. Probably, he had so many house-calls that he was tired out when he got back and had no time for housework.
It was election time. Assembly seats seemed precariously balanced this time in our land that boasted a regular, five-yearly pendulum swing between left and right.
Swami ji had a steady stream of visitors. I recognised several of them from T V newscasts. Like the birds, they came in many colours- red, white, saffron; even green.
A week before the elections, Swamiji bought a car; he showed it to me proudly. The brand-new, white Swift seemed to have come with a brand-new, brown driver as well. Now, he travelled by it in style to those unknown destinations.
The elections came and went. Two days after the results came out, a distant relative of mine came visiting. He was a chota neta of the party that had lost the elections by a narrow margin. I entertained him because he was useful to me. Otherwise, I would have shut the door in his face long back; he was obnoxious. He ranted about rigged voting machines, ghost voters and those who had promised but not kept their promise.
“But the ***** who takes the cake is a swami. Swami Athurananda or Swami *****.” he uttered an unprintable obscenity. ”You know what he did? He promised our party about 1100 votes from three ashrams and surrounding areas. He pocketed ten lakhs from us. And yesterday, we heard from an informer that he had sold the same votes to our rival party for the same amount! The scoundrel!”
My wife, hearing this tirade, came out and exclaimed, ”O but that is our neighbour!”
“Really? He will have visitors soon.” replied my irate relative. He left almost at once.
That night, my wife and I mused on the murky undercurrents, the audacious double crossing. Or was it triple crossing? Democracy, freedom to vote, strangled and wrapped twice in sheaths of deceit. What a superb conman my neighbour was! My wife had an “I told you” look on her face. She had never taken to him. And then, suddenly, the funny side of it hit me. I started to laugh. What a clever rascal!l More unscrupulous than his buyers! Fleecing both unsuspecting parties! They deserved that or worse. “Not letting the left know what the right hand was doing!’ I guffawed, pleased with my own witticism. My wife gave me a blank look and turned on her side to sleep.
In the morning I leaned over the wall as usual to view the birds. What I saw was the new Swift with its tyres slashed and windshield shattered. There was no sign of Swamiji. I rushed across. The front door was open. Swamiji was lying on his side on the cot. There were bruises and wounds all over his body. He was conscious but obviously in great pain. He whispered a phone number. I called and gave the man at the other side the update. Then I got him a glass of water to drink. He looked up at me. “Swamiji,” I told him, “go away before the other party sends you their share.” He looked surprised, then grateful. His hold on my hand tightened. ”You are a kind man.” he murmured. I wanted to say “All God’s children” but he would have shrugged his shoulders and that would have hurt him terribly.
In two hours he was spirited away by some of his people who came by car. I never did see him again. I took away the stone bowl and placed it in the middle of my little garden. Every morning, I fill it with water and watch God’s children drink and dip in joy.
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 " was published in January' 2019. She welcomes readers' feedback at her email - geenagster@gmail.com
Lessons in Geography: Chapter III
Sreekumar K
Six books had been copied. That was the seventh one. Three more and I was done.
Seventh standard social science.
Schools have changed quite a lot in these three decades. There were no such things like social science those days. There was science, maths and history. May be there was geography too but I don’t remember much of that anyway.
My mind was going around a few lines in the pdf sent to me by the president of the club which had initiated the mission of copying notes for those children who had lost their books in the recent floods.
It wasn’t the notes that caught my attention. It was a parody of a poem I too had learned in my school days. Beyond its mellifluous rhythm, I too had found it quite a bore. But this little genius had parodied it to talk about his squirrel, a great escape artist.
Arshad
Standard VII
So, just twelve and already a poet.
Actually that was a good thing to take up. Though I had voted for photocopying the notes and not writing them down in new note books, I now saw the point in it.
It would create a kind of obligation, a social obligation. When the children saw these books they would surely think that even unknown people cared for them and that there was nothing to fear.
Nothing to fear till the next flood. Or the drought.
Life is so uncertain. No wonder someone once said life is certainly uncertain.
At 55, that was not an easy task, listening to my daughter reading out from notebooks and taking it down onto fresh notebooks.
And what a stupid lingo!
I could’t spell some of these geography terms. English or Latin or Sanskrit? How were the children supposed to make heads and tails out of this?
“Dad, are you going to write or should I go? I have a lot of homework to finish.”
Ramya had already read out a line three times and she was getting impatient.
On the Sands of Time. A lesson about landslides, quakes and erosions.
Hundreds of people were doing the same, sitting in different places in and around Kerala. In a week, they would finish ten thousand notebooks. It was by dividing it with thousand that I fixed my target as ten.
From the kitchen, Malu announced that the Onam feast was ready. We had decided to limit Onam, the week-long feast festival, to a single day this year. Most of Kerala had decided not to have any celebration because of the deluge.
I told her we would come in a while. I wanted to finish that lesson.
But the lines of the parody kept going round and round in my mind. Then I heard Ramya too singing it.
I closed my book.
“Come dear, let’s go eat.”
My phone rang and Malu brought it to me. It was those youngsters who were waiting for me to start distributing lunch packets at the medical college.
I told them to go ahead and not to wait for me. They thanked me for letting them have some useful connections and sponsorships.
There were almost five hundred messages on my WhatsApp. In FLOOD 2018, a messenger group, many more, in the last two hours or so.
And there was a team of many youngsters, tracking them from different places and acting on them too.
The incredible young blood.
An old friend called to ask if I would accompany him to Chengannur to deliver some grocery in a badly hit area called Pandanadu.
I told him I was too tied up here.
Suddenly I thought of my elder uncle from Pathanamthitta. He hadn’t called yet.
Even when I sat for the Onam feast, my mind was still in the pdf. A lot of information there, though not well written.
And it was mostly about natural calamities.
What a strange co-incidence that it was such a lesson which I had to copy.
Remya came to the dining table, her nose in the pdf.
“Can’t read a thing. Really bad handwriting.”
I leaned over and glanced at it while pouring dal onto my heap of rice served on a banana leaf.
“I don’t think it is the handwriting. Looks more like drenched in water. Let me see.”
I took it from her and stared at it. Obviously, it was soaked in water.
Everything around was either wet, soaked, drenched or dripping.
That was not actually a pdf. It was a jpg to be precise. They had sent photos of a notebook’s pages. In their hurry to get it done they had not even checked whether the pages were legible.
“There is nothing wrong with his handwriting. His handwriting is OK. The book had got drenched before they took the pics. And the little guy is a prospective Ravi Varma, look!” I showed the drawings on the pages to my wife and my daughter.
“Not a little Ravi Varma, a little M F Hussein. Arshad, his name is. Muslim, for sure.”
I too recalled. I had seen his name and his address scribbled on the first page.
Arshad B K
‘Nilaavu’
Valiyapara P O
Idukki
I looked at the drawings on a few pages and then handed it over to them. Ramya flipped the pages and again stared at a certain page.
“O, you are again right. There is a pattern. It was heavily drenched. Thank god the guy had used gel pen. Otherwise, nothing would have remained. He is a prospective poet too. Little Kadammanitta or Ayyappan.”
“You mean little Rafeek Ahammed! Those ones are hindus, I guess.”
Yes, I gave it right back. But she didn’t seem to notice. She was still frowning at the page.
Images of a leaking hut and a boy all drenched on his way back from school came up in my mind.
“Notes on the other pages can’t be read. Let’s see if they can send us the copy of another book.” I sent a message to the WhatsApp group.
Replies tinkled in. Several people offered more legible copies.
I left the pdf on the table and turned on the TV.
A rerun of the chief minister’s press conference. He was unusually slow and deliberate. Careful about his words, gestures and face expressions. He might be the only one who learned lessons from this flood.
Ramya indicated to a page of the pdf. It was the same page she had been staring at for long.
“I tried to make heads and tails out of it. Too obscure and subjective. Images are all kind of Gothic. Objective co-relatives aplenty.”
“That reminds me of something. What was it? OK, your uncle had called. He is safe,” said Malu and both of us promptly ignored her. I have got a lot of objectionable relatives, my uncle being one of them.
Ramya, pedantic by nature, would have probably picked all this up yesterday in her literature class and I was pretty sure she had no idea what she was saying. She was growing up.
“Let me see.” I looked at the page.
There was great variety. Subjects and styles varied quite a lot.
“There are a couple of love poems too.” Ramya spoke in a low tone. I noticed that her face had a little bit of red on it when she said that. To hide it all, she laughed out loud.
“An artist and a poet. Probably cricketer and footballer too. Possibly a cheesecake for the girls around.” She sighed, with an intention to irritate her mom.
I finished my feast and got up with the pdf.
After washing my hands, I settled down in the drawing room, on a sofa and went over the poems.
Not bad. In fact, some poems were really too mature for his age.
Just twelve.
Suddenly I had an idea. It might be a good thing to send a few of those to magazines. Whatever they pay would be a surprise for him. I had his address.
The possibilities are endless.
I heard my daughter singing those lines again, the same lines ringing in my mind too.
“What is the slang for those sticky songs that go on ringing in your mind? Ring worm? Brain worm?”
“Dad, it is ear worm. And it ain’t a slang. There is even a wiki entry on it. It is also called a brain worm. But there is a real worm that attacks deer.”
“Ok, so has the ear worm attacked you, dear!”
Ramaya moaned.
Another message tinkled in. And a call soon after.
“Sir, I have sent the pdf. Please check and respond.”
“Thank you, wait, just a second. You know the first pdf you had sent me. Where did you find the book, the notebook, the one which you took the pdf from? Can you trace the boy?...Yes, Arshad. His complete address is on the first page of that copy. Can you find his details, please? Don’t bother much though, I know you are too busy. Only if it comes up.... Will tell you soon. Not now, it is a pleasant surprise. OK, thank you.”
I again looked at the pictures. Not bad. Lack of training was obvious but he was a keen observer. He was a better poet than an artist.
His house name was interesting.
Nilaavu. In Malayalam it means moonlight.
Probably smart parents too. It reflected their religious sentiments, but then it was neutral enough. No wonder the son was sensitive in his choice of words.
My God, even such children were being clobbered by the academic lingo within a few bare walls the whole day.
By the time the club president rang me up I had finished copying two more books.
He sounded too busy.
“Well, we got that book by sheer coincidence. We had posted on WhatsApp that we needed copies of notebooks. And Vishal, my son-in-law, was at Idukki with a relief group. He send me photos of a notebook he came by. I rang him up just now. Yes, the name is right. Arshad… The body has not yet been recovered….”
I cut the phone, leaned back and looked around.
My daughter and her mom were still looking at the pdf as if it was a family album. My daughter was explaining the lines to my wife who looked intrigued and amused.
I didn’t want to break the news to them.
The pdf they were holding seemed to be dripping still.
I wiped my eyes.
The Importance of Being a Story Teller in Today's World
Sreekumar K
We always lived in groups. That is our anthropological story. In nature, everything follows a distribution pattern which is technically called the normal distribution and is represented on graphs as a bell curve. That is nature where, to use Portia's words, "it is no mean thing to be seated in the mean' mostly because the mean or average is more common that the extremes. Mathematically, the mean is more often than not, the mode and median too.
But when nurture interferes, this story has a different plot, an inclined one, so to speak. For example with regard to education, in good schools with remedial facilities, this bell curve goes under a hammer, and is skewed to the right. In badly run societies, the economic bell curve goes under the unfair mallet and skews to the left. Mostly, this is accentuated because of newly lengthened 'x' axis. The 'x' axis shows the extent of wealth.
We have unnatural societies today. When we had naturally built societies, they spread on land. Even in city, you still see a bell curve within its limits. When we went to cyber space, we went more unnatural and now we have groups which are ironically called the social media. There is no society there. They are just groups built across space to connect economically similar people or peoples. These groups are homogeneous groups. There was a time when one half of the world didn't know how the other half lived. Today, this could be said about groups in societies. Even with so much of information deluge, and binding communication facilities, one is surprised at one group's ignorance of the other group's life, dynamics, relationships, life style and even wealth.
In WhatsApp, people go on making personal groups which are mostly for a certain purpose. Information is passed only among the few. In Facebook, there is an option to be in exclusive groups. And the socializing within the groups take so much time that there is no time left to get a sneak peek at another group. With the advent of the Real Estate Revolution, the residential association too is a homogeneous group. The natural geographically marked group has gone dysfunctional. This has desensitized us to such an extent that we are not much bothered about casteism coming back for a rerun.
When things were different, we could tell stories, entertain and enrich one another. But it is a different world today, a world, as Mathew Arnold lamented, where "ignorant armies clash by night'.
So, this is the time for us to quit our old style of story telling and become group hopping journalists. We can still tell stories but let it be in such a way that we demolish "the narrow domestic walls'. Let the nuggets of life that we see around us be celebrated and the souvenirs from them mounted on our pages. The dew drop hanging at the tip of a grass, reflects the world 360 degree. By reflecting what is all around, it creates a tiny world in itself. Go for them, 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?
Sreekumar K welcomes readers' feedback on his poems at sreekumarteacher@gmail.com
DAK BUNGALOW (DAAKBANGALAA, 2003)
Hrushikesh Mallick
(Translated by : Prabhanjan K. Mishra)
Chicken feathers and eggshells
from the kitchen, dead flowers from vases,
soiled bras of abused nights
thrown over a seedling that cranes out
to the sun reflected from empty liquor bottles.
The big room hides skeletons in closets.
The old gardener passes away,
the man in his shoes changes nothing;
the time does not tick unless
seasonal flowerings break the monotony;
the power that be washes hands
of the smell of blood, and the muffled pain.
Flowerless Tagara trees explode
with a white brilliance, so does a girl
in the big room: changes into
a new sari from her soiled frock.
By daybreak the lantern’s flame sputters,
tired of the nightlong deflowering of buds.
Woodworms go rampant even in daylight,
devouring bamboo rafters, the façade
of protection; the lukewarm promises
do not withstand even the white ant onslaught.
As always, the timid most deer falls prey
to the hunter, the big room his jungle.
A sahib preens before a mirror
with dentures and wig to hoodwink
poor young girls, and pamper
own shrunken manhood. But no one dares
to call off his bluff: “Oh, caricature of Adonis!”
The guard turns on his side and snores.
Ascetics and beggars alike
return from its door, empty bowled;
who in this darkened house
would oblige the meek seekers,
who bothers for their destitute fate
except the walls, crumbling from guilt.
The little girl’s dreams of a Diwali
dissolve like lukewarm juvenile gossips,
the dying sloganeering
after an election, and a merchant
pretences at poetry, the little angel
she returns home dejected and defiled.
Her blood soaked petticoat
howls in pain, “O’ my momma, momma!”
Numb witnesses stand by like the Dhatura
in the weedy patch, the gutter, the sacred Basil;
they won’t bat an eye. Only the dak bungalow
stands by as the time’s ultimate reckoner.
Poet Hrushikesh Mallick is solidly entrenched in Odia literature as a language teacher in various colleges and universities, and as a prolific poet and writer with ten books of poems, two books of child-literature, two collections of short stories, five volumes of collected works of his literary essays and critical expositions to his credit; besides he has edited an anthology of poems written by Odia poets during the post-eighties of the last century, translated the iconic Gitanjali of Rabindranath Tagore into Odia; and often keeps writing literary columns in various reputed Odia dailies. He has been honoured with a bevy of literary awards including Odisha Sahitya Akademi, 1988; Biraja Samman, 2002; and Sharala Puraskar, 2016. He writes in a commanding rustic voice, mildly critical, sharply ironic that suits his reflections on the underdogs of the soil. The poet’s writings are potent with a single powerful message: “My heart cries for you, the dispossessed, and goes out to you, the underdogs”. He exposes the Odia underbelly with a reformer’s soft undertone, more audible than the messages spread by loud Inca Drums. Overall he is a humanist and a poet of the soil. (Email - mallickhk1955@gmail.com)
MARRIAGE
Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya
People say,
marriages are
made in heaven.
But, when I look up,
can’t find the
door to their bureau.
They also tell,
You should have it
witnessed
and signed.
But if their
memory can falter,
could the ink of the
signature
fade too?
And, a ceremony
to sanctify the union?
But the Lord,
Steeped in
the language of love,
who never misses
the faintest flutter,
hardly needs
a spectacle.
Marriage,
known as
two incomplete
halves
making a
whole.
Sounds simple.
But not for souls,
who don’t care for
laws of logic.
For, they say
there should be
spaces in
their
togetherness.
After searching
far and wide,
I find the door,
closer than
I imagined.
Not only it
feels familiar,
it’s lock looks
open too.
So, is this is the key
to happiness?
Perhaps,
only if
it is not
bolted from
inside!
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. Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya welcomes readers' feedback on his article at ajayaup@aol.com
PHOENIX IN THE DREAM LAND
Dr.Bichitra Kumar Behura
Few birds from the Arabian desert
Flew away on a journey to the east
In search of a beautiful land
With a sea and the golden beach.
They all got attracted to the green forest
And the wavy mountain ranges
Extending the length and breadth
Of the land of gods,
Where peace ruled in harmony
With perennial rivers singing
all through the day, in glory.
They camped to settle at the place
Among the gods,
Without any inconvenience.
There was no need to jump into the pyre
For rejuvenating
And rising from the fire;
This is the heaven of heavens
Where life’s journey is without any desires.
The birds adopted to the new country
And started building a rich dynasty
Where love rules fearlessly
Unperturbed by any calamities.
Everything continued excellently
Till it became the cynosure of all eyes.
The devils got active to ruin the land
Being ruled by the sacred hands.
Calamities created havoc,
It tried to break the spirit of the folks.
With bruised hearts,
The birds decided to jump
Again into the altar of fire,
Which they have not yet forgotten,
In order to rise again
As they did in the past
Like the true phoenixes
Of the Arabian desert.
"Dr. Bichitra Kumar Behura passed out from BITS, Pilani as a Mechanical Engineer and is serving in a PSU, Oil Marketing Company for last 3 decades. He has done his MBA in Marketing from IGNOU and subsequently the PhD from Sagaur Central University in Marketing. In spite of his official engagements, he writes both in Odia and English and follows his passion in singing and music. He has already published two books on collections of poems in Odia i.e. “Ananta Sparsa” & “Lagna Deha” , and a collection of English poems titled “The Mystic in the Land of Love”. His poems have been published in many national/ international magazines and in on-line publications. He has also published a non-fiction titled “Walking with Baba, the Mystic”. His books are available both in Amazon & Flipkart.". Dr Behura welcomes readers' feedback on his email - bkbehura@gmail.com.
CATCH US IF YOU CAN
Dilip Mohapatra
You were born far off in the high seas
your serpentine coil becoming
larger and larger
as you advance towards us
with all the impunity
and evil designs
to constrict us in your
cataclysmic embrace
and leave behind in your wake
an indelible trail of
destruction and
devastation.
But don’t you ever
underestimate us
our resilience
our courage
and our determination
for every time you struck us
you only made us stronger
and we would be readier for you
when you invade us once again
but we know you are a curse
a malediction
like a raging insane bull
attacking whatever comes in its way
and you would leave your footprints
amongst the uprooted trees
twisted billboards
and the residual rubbles
but we would have given you the slip.
Be sure we will be back
sooner than you think
and with renewed hopes
renewed resolve
and indefatigable energy
we shall rebuild
we shall replant
we shall reconstruct
and we shall resurrect
all that you have destroyed
so mindlessly
and would defy your despicable designs
and rise from the rubbles
once again
challenging you
catch us if you can...
... in the wake of Fani
PICKING UP PIECES
Dilip Mohapatra
Even before the tectonic tremors
have made a full retreat
leaving deaths and devastations
in their wake
a broken and bloodied
forearm sticking
out of the rubbles here
the decapitated head
of a marble Buddha rolling out there
a little boy crying for help
deep down the crevice
that runs like a black serpent
along the caved in tarred road
torn and mangled corrugated sheets
strewn around amidst
the debris of twisted rods
broken bricks and splintered
wooden boards
the old monk in his
tattered ochre robe
looks around for the lost
brass bell that has been
ripped off the temple tower
so that he may
reinstall it once again
for it to ring once again
ushering in new hopes
new aspirations
and a new beginning.
Note: In the aftermath of the Himalayan Tragedy
Dilip Mohapatra (b.1950), a decorated Navy Veteran is a well acclaimed poet in contemporary English and his poems appear in many literary journals of repute and multiple anthologies worldwide. He has six poetry collections to his credit so far published by Authorspress, India. He has also authored a Career Navigation Manual for students seeking a corporate career. This book C2C nee Campus to Corporate had been a best seller in the category of Management Education. He lives with his wife in Pune, India.
THE LIQUID MIRROR
Ananya Priyadarshini
I remember a scene from a theatre that was based upon one of the most controversial historical dramas wherein the extraordinarily beautiful queen let the invader watch a glimpse of hers. The invader had threatened the King to attack and conquer his territory if his queen doesn't comply with his demand of showing him her face. The Queen, very cunningly let him watch but her reflection in a container of water because taking her veil off before a man who's not her husband would have rendered her 'impure'.
I belong to a state that has just been hit by the most dreadful cyclone of the era. Before you begin assuming that the cyclone has blown my mind off given my sudden monkey jump from romantic drama to cyclone, let me clarify that the only cue I want to give away is the ornamental use of water as 'mirror'. I'm going to tell you four stories and all of them are far from Romanticism. But in all of them, water plays the mirror. Somewhere it reflects characters, somewhere intentions. Overall, it shows the truth. Let's see what water has to show us.
---------------1--------------
The cyclone hit my city somewhere at dawn waking all of us with the alarms played by breaking trees and banging doors/windows with the wind that blew with a speed over 200 km/hr. All the inmates of my hostel hopped out of their beds and began struggling to shut their windows fighting the fierce winds. Amidst all this, Sweetie came to Richa's room and slept hugging her because she was too afraid. They're known for their togetherness. They kept clinging to each other till the cyclone waned off. They even went to bathroom together and ate from one plate.
The next day, sky was clear and the ground didn't take long to dry off completely. The sun was burning bright enough to burn all of us down with its heat and with lakhs of trees broken with wind that now fell on electricity wires, there had been no hope of regaining power supply in upcoming five days. So was the situation with water supply! The generation that hadn't seen electricity for the initial twenty years of its life was pissed. Hence, with mobile batteries dying, you can guess how mad all of us must have gone!
When all were roaming around with dead phones in hands, a 'special' friend of Sweetie brought her a fully charged power bank that could keep her cell phone charged for a week even after ample use. Sweetie really wanted to run to Richa, tell her how special she was to her special friend and watch her hide her annoyance with a fake smile but chose otherwise. She simply went to her room and locked it from within to hide the power bank from vultures with dead cell phones. Richa asked Sweetie to lend her her phone for a while to make a call to her home but Sweetie stated poor Network. Sweetie's Sim was one of the Telecom brands blessed with good connectivity, though.
Soon, Sweetie ran out of drinking water and knocked Richa's door. Richa declined having drinking water and told she was too sick to let Sweetie in. The same evening, we got a tanker that had drinking water for all of us. Our power supply has also been restored but not the bonding of Sweetie and Richa. Sweetie saw the empty barrel of drinking water at Richa's room that her uncle had provided her and Richa saw her power bank!
------------2-------------
I decided to visit a friend of mine staying in a flat on rental basis so as to confirm she's fine after cyclone. Network didn't allow me to call or text and also, she was in my city only. When I reached her place, she wasn't present at home. I began gossiping with her neighbor who told me that they'd rented a diesel driven generator to pump water for them. The machine charged an amount summing up to half my monthly canteen fee per hour.
"Gosh! They can afford that!", I thought to myself.
My friend soon arrived in her scooty that had a hip of wet clothes on the foot rest and an inconsolably crying roommate on the back seat.
Like many middle class people, the both had been to the nearest river to bath and wash clothes, given the acute water scarcity. (I'd challenged myself for a 'five-days-no-bath' challenge and have won it at the cost of one and half bottles of deodrants! However, not all people are wild.)
When they were in waist deep water someone touched her roommate inappropriately at her private parts. The moron was completely under water and had swam away till the girl dipped her head in the steam. The pervert escaped but left behind a scar on the mind of an innocent girl that she'll never get rid of.
------------3------------
Just the day after cyclone, I went on an expedition to find out if any shop is selling tea. Due to disconnected electricity I couldn't brew it in room given I only had an induction heater. And, how long can an addict stay without the drug? Finally, only Sumi apa had the gut to keep her shop open.
Sumi apa isn't rude contrary to what people generally build a notion of her. She's more of straight forward, to a limit not all can deal with. People have to be a lot more careful around her.
Place a glass on the counter instead of the water-filled tub after sipping tea and a loud 'Sir, don't contaminate my shop!" is waiting to humiliate you. Argue why she sells a cup for RS 6 instead of five like all other shops and she'll also slap you back with "why don't you drink at other shops then?" immediately. I've seen tea sellers gaining customers just because of their lucrative behavior and then there's Sumi apa who hasn't lost any customer despite her sharp tongue just because of the excellent taste of her tea!
The day after cyclone, Sumi apa was all praises for the security guard who was recruited at the Government bungalow right across the street. "Oh, why?", I asked for the gossip monger I'm.
"I'd gone to ask for a bucket of water and the big sahab who stays there drove me away like I'm some street dog. 'Go away, you filthy woman! How did you enter the premises, didn't the guard stop you?'- his fat wife said. They also scolded the guard. But the guard is an angel. He came to call me at five in the evening because that's when water was supplied to pipelines and I brought four buckets from the tap at the outhouse he lives in. I boiled it and am now supplying to all those who are in need", she told as I saw her filling the bottles of a rickshaw puller.
"Add a strip each to the bucket and save the rest for tomorrow. The water will be safer", I handed her four strips of chlorine and charcoal tablets each as I left with a lot of her blessings.
------------4--------------
A 2 YO infant had been admitted to the children's diarrhoea ward who passed away today morning. His mother, a daily wage labourer says that she had no source of clean water to feed her baby. She had tried to buy a bottle of packaged drinking water with RS 50/- because that's all she had in the name of saving but the shops had no bottles left to sell. I could suddenly remember having bought a bottle of mineral water the same day for RS 70/- that costs just RS 10/- in real.
Well, the infant's life was cheaper than RS 20/- .
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. Ananya Priyadarshini, welcomes readers' feedback on her article at apriyadarshini315@gmail.com.
WILD FURIES
Latha Prem Sakhya
Rosy fingered dawn
Dancing on the placid sea,
Enticed the early morning walkers
To the beach,
Children spilled on the shore,
Engaged in enchanting games.
Unsuspecting fisher folk hastened,
Gearing up for the days’ fishing.
The half-awake village, groggy-eyed
Embarked on her daily chores.
Far away, in the dark, inky depth
Of the fathomless ocean,
Tethered in stables cavernous,
The wild furies-restive and impatient
Thrashed and lashed the ocean bed. (
Mother earth rocked and quaked.
The harness broke.
Unleashing the furies to surface-
To race thousand miles per hour,
To wreak vengeance
For their unjust captivity,
On that fatal morn.
The foaming, frothing, ocean-
Million, wild, stampeding horses,
Attacked ferociously, the benign, calm shore.
Gigantic dragon waves
Swallowed land and people;
Satiated, spat out the residue.
Debris of ruined buildings
Uprooted trees,
Mangled vehicles and humans-
Injured, maimed, half alive,
Lifeless bodies
To be ululated.
By the witnesses-
Survivors of natures’ holocaust!
To count the onslaught
Of the unbridled Tsunamis
That ravaged their lands,
And snatched away
Their loved ones,
To the under world of dark waters.
The golden glow
Of the unperturbed dusky sun,
Fingered and stroked
Caressingly the protean waves,
Calming and soothing
To lead them away
To be tethered
In the cavernous stables
In the oceans depth.
(Written in 2004 after the Tsunami)
Prof. Latha Prem Sakhya, a poet, painter and a retired Professor of English, has published three books of poetry. MEMORY RAIN (2008), NATURE AT MY DOOR STEP (2011) - an experimental blend, of poems, reflections and paintings ,VERNAL STROKE (2015 ) a collection of? all her poems.
Her poems were published in journals like IJPCL, Quest, and in e magazines like Indian Rumination, Spark, Muse India, Enchanting Verses international, Spill words etc. She has been anthologized in Roots and Wings (2011), Ripples of Peace ( 2018), Complexion Based Discrimination ( 2018), Tranquil Muse (2018) and The Current (2019). She is member of various poetic groups like Poetry Chain, India poetry Circle and Aksharasthree - The Literary woman, World Peace and Harmony
OCKHI
Meera Nair
The shore is an ocean of tears
The howling wind
Drowns the cries of women
The sea flaunts its might
Waves somersault
A catamaran flips
Marinated with spices
A sprinkling of black pepper
A drop of vinegar
And a pinch of salt
On my plate
Lies untouched
A piece of fried fish
Meera Nair dons many hats including those of poet, dancer, actor, writer and media person. Her short stories and poems have been published in various journals and have brought her acclaim. Her first book of poems won her the second place at the Muse India Young Writers Award 2015. Her poem ‘Boxes’ was shortlisted for the Sthree Shakthi Poetry Prize. Her poems have been adapted to stage. She has worked on an Indo –French poetic collaboration where her writings have been staged in prestigious venues across the country. Her poems are widely appreciated for their beauty, irony, intensity and spirit of combat. Her most recent book is ‘Poetry Vending Machine’
FIREFLIES
Dr. Preethi Ragasudha
I wake up to an illuminated illusion of glowing dreams!
They pulsated around me.
Throbbing lust for mates.
Outshining each other to catch the other's eye.
Succeeding as they dance together.
Glittering specks of love glowing towards life.
For a moment, I freeze this vision.
I want to cherish their ethereal dance forever.
They pause for a moment, reading my mind.
Posing for a picture.
And then unassumingly continue to crawl around me.
I fade away to oblivion.
Dr. Preethi Ragasudha is an Assistant Professor of Nutrition at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, Kerala. She is passionate about art, literature and poetry.
INKED
Sruthy S Menon
"There is so much pain
in your heart
Express it
You will feel much better”.
Those earnest words
spoken by her
floated into the paper ,
And inked her name
forever in my heart.
Weighing down all the pain
Renewing ;
Abundantly & Profusely,
With tender
and affectionate love.
Sruthy S. Menon is a postgraduate student in MA English Literature from St.Teresas College ,Kochi, Kerala. A few of her poems have been published in Deccan Chronicle, also in anthologies such as “Amaranthine: My Poetic Abode”, a collection of English poems and quotes compiled and edited by Divya Rawat. An Anthology by Khushi Verma titled “Nostalgia: Story of Past”, a collection of English poems, stories, quotes.
She is a winner of several literary and non- literary competitions including art and painting as inspired by her mother, the recipient of Kerala Lalitha Kala Akademy Awrard. Her poetry reveals the strikingly realistic and fictional nature of writing on the themes of love, rejuvenation of life in contrast with death, portraying human emotions as a juxtaposition of lightness and darkness, the use of alliteration on natural elements of nature, etc.
She is a blogger at Mirakee Writers community and Fuzia ,a platform for women writers, receiving International Certificates for contests on Poetry and Art. She welcomes reader’s feedback in Instagram (username ) @alluring_poetess .
FONI
Kabyatara Kar (Nobela)
Wow! such a funny name FONI
It came and snapped our lives
Teaching numerous lessons of life
It came devastated and disrupted our lives.
It banged on us with high intensity of wind
It shook our hearts when the howling of wind filled the air
The smashing of the glass window panes
Bending of the electric poles
Brought with it complete darkness
Uprooting the trees and destroying beauty
Game of Nature versus Man was on
Yet,
It taught us so much.
We stood for each other concerned as if we are tied by blood
We sacrificed a lot to enlighten others' houses
We shared our efforts to comfort one and all
We were taken care of by the concerns of all from such distant places
It turned foes to friend..
So immense was the effect of ' FONI'
Kabyatara Kar (Nobela)
M.B.A and P.G in Nutrition and Dietetic, Member of All India Human Rights Activists
Passion: Writing poems, social work
Strength: Determination and her family
Vision: Endeavour of life is to fill happiness in life of others
THE LORD SEES ALL
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
- If you believe in Him, no proof is required, if you do not believe, no proof is enough. But make no mistake, Chakaadolaa sabu dekhuchi. (The round-eyed deity, Lord Jagannath, sees all) Pitambar Mausa was an expert in putting forth such priceless nuggets. And it is precisely for this reason that I was drawn to him like a fly to a ripe mango. So many of my evenings were spent at his two-roomed tiled house in Haragauraa Sahi of Puri town listening to his views on Bhakti and Bhagaban.
For as long as I know, Pitambara Mausa breathed the name of Lord Jagannath every living moment. He would get up at four in the morning, each day of the year, summer, rains, winter, nothing makes a difference. After his bath and Puja he would walk down to the temple, have a darshan of the Lord and return home to have his first cup of tea. The day would be spent on reading Puranas, Bhagabata and numerous other scriptures carefully preserved in his house. He would never lend any of them to anyone.
He had no one living with him. His only son Madhu was at Bhubnaeswar in a small government quarter. He and his family came to Puri a couple of times a year. But they mostly avoided Pitambara Mausa's company for fear of being lectured endlessly on the pious way of life and the benefits of Yoga, Pranayama and the lot.
I was Madhu's class mate and used to visit him at his home and his father had taken a liking to me. A few years back he spotted me near the temple, caught hold of my hand, looked into my eyes,
- Bishu, just because Madhu has left for a job in Bhubaneswar you have also abandoned me? When your Mausi was alive she used to cook so many delicious dishes for you and Madhu, but I can at least give you a cup of tea. Come whenever you can spare some time. We will talk.
Talking to Pitambar Mausa basically meant listening to his long lectures, but somehow I never got tired of it.
I am a religious person in my own way. I visit the temple of Lord Jagannath at least once a week, bow before him, report all my grievances and beg for half a dozen things which money cannot buy. I believe except those who visit temples exclusively for architectural curiosity, all others go there because they believe in the existence of God as a superior being.
Unlike Madhu I didn't join the government, preferring to stay back in Puri, working in a private college as a lecturer. Like Pitamabara Mausa I have some land in my ancestral village, a few kilometres from Puri. It supplements my income. For him his entire source of livelihood comes from his land. He has no complaints, happy to cook his meal and a spartan life ensures he never falls sick.
I throw all my questions at him in the evening sessions. I often carry some little snacks for him, such as hot samosas or pakodas. And his ginger tea tastes wonderful when taken with the snacks. He is happy to have the snacks because that relieves him from the burden of cooking his frugal meal in the night. In a way we regularly feed each other, I wth my hot snacks and he with his intellectual outpourings.
- Mausa, how is it I have many friends who don't believe in God, never visit temples and yet no harm comes to them?
- How do you know they are happy? They have their inner sorrows. Don't forget Chakaadolaa sees everything and decides what to give and what to withhold.
- But then why pilgrims travelling to visit temples die when their bus overturns? It happens all the time on the way to Badrinath, Kedarnath or the temples in Himachal Pradesh.
- Don't you know a man is born with the date of death written on his forehead? Whether he is on his way to temple or church, he cannot escape death.
Then he would tell me story after story of how everyone, whether an atheist or a believer is given by Chakaadolaa what he deserves, how someone destined to die is picked up from the unlikeliest place, when he least expects it.
Pitamabara Mausa is a great critic of the atrocities perpetrated by the Pandas, the way they harass the pilgrims, exploit them, extort money from them and humiliate them. He curses them left and right.
- They will suffer, here and in hell. Chakaadolaa doesn't miss anything. He will pay them in their own coin.
- But Mausa, most of the sinners live in luxury and the pious ones live in penury.
- Money is not everything.. Didn't you see how so-and-so had a peaceful death, just going away in his sleep and so-and-so suffered for many years with sores all over the body? Each one gets what he deserves. Chakadola sees everything!
Over the years Pitambara Mausa has been grieving about the way his beloved God is being treated by the Sevaks. His curses have become more vitriolic. At the time of Nabakalebara when someone took a picture of the Lord, Mausa went wild with rage.
- How are these sinners going to face the wrath of God? No one should look at the Lord till he gets into his new form. This is a tradition going on for centuries. How can they violate this? Aren't they afraid of Chakaadolaa? And this devil! He goes and takes a picture? He will face the consequences! You will see Bishu. The Lord Jagannath will not spare anyone!
In the past one year somehow the atrocities on the pilgrims have spread to the Lord Himself. There has been delay in performing the morning rituals, sometimes the Lord has been kept famished for hours together. The day the Lord was kept hungry till afternoon Mausa was livid with anger. When I met him in the evening I found he had not eaten anything during the day and was cursing the sinners with tremendous vengeance.
- They will all go to hell! Even the people of Puri, they will suffer. The Lord is neglected and there is not even a single voice of protest? And the authorities in Bhubaneswar? What are they doing? Why are they not taking some solid steps to stop this atrocity on Chakaadolaa? Have they forgotten Chakaadolaa sees everything and forgets nothing?
And then the unthinkable happened one day. The Sevaks kept the Lord hungry for more than twenty four hours. There was some dispute between the Sevaks and the temple administration and they refused to carry out the rituals in the morning, carrying their protest to well past midnight. I had gone to my village that day and returned late in the night.
Next evening I went to meet Mausa at his home. I had expected that he would be hopping mad. But he was strangely silent. He was looking dejected. It was apparent he had not eaten for two days. He started weeping bitterly,
- Bishu, mark my words! We will pay heavily for this. We are harassing the Lord! Our atrocity has crossed all limits. You think Chakaadolaa forgets?
- But Mausa, how is it nothing has happened to the sinners? Why is the Lord waiting? For what?
Mausa looked at me with painful eyes,
- Who are we to question the Lord's judgment? Have we become so big? To doubt His action? His motives? Remember, He and He alone decides who to punish and when. Just mark my words, we are going to face a disaster of gigantic proportions. You will suffer, so will I. Everyone will suffer. I won't be surprised if the universe collapses and the human race is wiped out. No one plays with Chakaadolaa and escapes the consequences. And look at the public! There is hardly any protest! You will see Bishu, they will pay for it, everyone will pay for it.
Pitambara Mausa was so crestfallen that evening that I hardly had the stomach to sit and prolong the conversation. That was about three months back. Last week when we started getting the cyclone warnings, all of us got worried. Even before the Meterology department predicted the landfall near Puri, Pitambara Mausa told me,
- Wait and see Bishu, the cyclone will hit us like never before. This is the punishment Chakaadolaa has kept for us. You can't play with him and not pay the price. The atrocities on our Lord, the Deity of all Odiyas are unpardonable. He has tolerated a lot, but His tolerance has a limit. We will have to face it. How I wish I would be wrong, but it will happen. This destiny was ordained by Chakaadolaa on the day we kept him starved for more than twenty four hours. Go and pray that nothing happens to you and your family.
Before taking leave I pleaded with him to come and stay with us in our relatively secure house. At least we had a concrete roof, he had a tiled roof which may not be able to withstand the onslaught of severe cyclonic winds. He refused to leave his Puranas and scriptures. He looked towards the temple and with folded hands touched his forehead - Chakaadolaa will take care of me if He wishes to. I am just a toy in His hand.
The cyclone raged like a crazy demon for one full day. For two days before that there was continuous rain. All roads had got inundated. It was almost impossible to walk. I could not visit Mausa on the day of the cyclone. There was no electricity in the town and there was a scary darkness everywhere. Next morning I rushed to Mausa's house. The roof had collapsed. I found Mausa in a corner, buried under a huge rafter and broken tiles. His body was lying still in ghastly death, but I thought I saw a small smile hovering on his face. It's as if he knew I would come to see him and watch the smile of victory on his face - see, Bishu, I had told you Chakaadolaa is unforgiving, He sees everything. You have to pay the price when you play with him.
I wished Mausa had gone wrong. It's not like all sins have to be visited by such great consequences, wreaking havoc on thousands of people. I somehow felt that if Mausa had gone wrong he would be alive today, along with many others who lost their life to nature's fury. I looked towards the temple and asked Chakaadolaa, O Lord, why should so many people suffer for the sins of a few? Where is the justice in this?
I don't know I will get an answer to this riddle during my life time.
A SMALL LIE
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
- Maa, you have to tell me why you named me Baatyaa. My class mates make fun of me in the school. When I enter the class some of them shout - Run away, Cyclone is coming. There is even one boy who makes a sound like a storm blowing!
Mandakini would smile and say,
- Achha! Show me how?
Baatyaa would make a face at her mother, but just to humour her she would bring her lips together, pucker them and let out a loud Shoo...shoo......sound.
Mother and daughter would roll in laughter.
But Batya would return to her question again,
- Tell me naa, why you named me Baatyaa?
- Why do you bother about these small things? You are the best in your class in studies, you are the teachers' pet, all your friends adore you because you help them in studies. Why do you bother if some naughty boys are making fun of your name? Don't you realise they do it because they are jealous of you?
- Maa, you have already told me all this so many times, I am good in studies, I am kind hearted like my father, other students are bound to be jealous of me and all that. But, but tell me why you named me Baatyaa?
Mandakini smiled at her daughter. She looked at Baatyaa's eyes, the deep expressive eyes, the thick eyebrows, the small forehead - a carbon copy of her father! How can she tell this innocent ten year old what the name means to her mother?
She was soon lost in her wistful memories. The mind often plays these tricks - here in one moment and jumps back to the past the next moment. How can she forget that dreadful night, the night when her life crested so many waves, taking her to the pinnacle of ecstasy and then crashing her down with a cruel sleight of hand!
The year went down in Odisha's history as the year of super cyclone. No one in living memory had seen anything like that in their lives.
The day had dawned with heavy rains lashing their small house. Two years back Arjun had put a concrete roof on their two-roomed house, secured the doors and windows with good latches. Theirs was one of the five pucca houses in the village, three kilometres from Kujanga. Arjun had done it in preparation for his marriage. After all, he was the most eligible bachelor in the village, having secured the job of a laboratory attendant in a Government College at Cuttack, the big town, seventy kilometres away.
A year after building a pucca house he got married to Mandakini and found her to be his perfect soul mate. She agreed to stay back in the village to look after his widowed mother and he visited home every Saturday evening, returning to Cuttack on Monday morning.
The day the cyclone hit the state, Arjun was not supposed to come home. He had not visited for more than a month. Something or the other kept him back, marriage of a friend from the mess he used to share with three others, extra class for the students who needed the use of the lab for two continuous weeks and a minor mishap in the lab where there was a gas explosion leading to duty at the hospital kept him away from home and his beloved Mandakini.
The news of the impending cyclone gave him the perfect excuse to ask his boss Bichitrnanda Sir for three days off. When Sir agreed Arjun was mad with joy. He reached home in the evening, giving a huge surprise to his sweet wife and loving mother. The wind had reached deafening noise, rain was pounding the village like never before.
After an early meal Arjun was eager to spend time with his demure wife. When Mandakini finally came after cleaning the vessels and pressing her mother-in-law's legs. Arjun was running out of patience. The moment she entered the room, he got up, locked the door from inside and scooped her up in a tight embrace. She was trying to tell him, wait, wait, Maa is awake, she is sitting on the bed and chanting mantras. At least wait till she goes to sleep. Arjun simply said, a mother knows when her son is hungry, she will understand.
The howling winds, the raging storm, the wildly swinging trees and the trembling windows were witness to a crescendo of steaming passion in the room. Both knew that there will never be a night like this in their life again, there might be many more nights of consuming love, but there would not be a storm like this to go with it and there might be many more storms, but no passion to match tonight's.
Afterwards, Mandakini told him in mock anger,
- Why were you making so much noise, what will Maa think? Such a shameless son?
Arjun had no words left, he simply stroked her cheek and looked at the ceiling.
She wanted to talk.
- I was waiting for you with so much longing in my heart. What if I get pregnant?
Arjun caressed her face in the darkness,
- We will name the baby Baatyaa.
She giggled,
- Baatyaa? What kind of name is that? Does anyone name a child Baatyaa? And if it is a boy? Arjun whispered in her ear,
- The wind outside is no ordinary storm, it's a cyclone, a Baatyaa. Boy or girl, we will name the baby Baatyaa.
She suddenly sat up,
- Someone is knocking at the door. No, no, not one, I hear many voices. Let me see who is there, you go off to sleep, you are so tired!
Arjun held her back
- How can I let you open the door to unknown people on this dreadful night? You wait, let me see.
Maa had also come out of her room. The moment Arjun unlatched the door it flew open. In the darkness outside he could see six people, all young men from the village. Madan and Suresh were his class mates in the local middle school a few years back.
One of them said,
- Arjun, please come with us. The water in the big tank is rising. The embankment guarding the village may not hold for long. Already villagers are working on strengthening it. You have bags of sand and stones left from your construction. Please allow us to take them and come with us. We want all able bodied young men to come and help.
Arjun immediately agreed,
- Yes, take the four bags of cement also. There are ten bags of sand. Let's us carry all of these. Just give me two minutes, I will put on a half-pant and a shirt and come.
Mandakini was standing by her mother-in-law's side, all tiredness gone, the ecstasy of the past hour forgotten. She knew it would be futile to try to stop Arjun. He was a proud son of the village. Nothing can stop him from trying to save his village. With a silent prayer to the Gods, she touched his arm and asked him to return early.
The rains grew, to keep pace with the rising winds. Later they would learn the wind reached a speed of more than two hundred kilometres. Water started seeping into the rooms. Mandakini, her mother-in-law and about fifty other villagers who had come to Arjun's pucca house to escape the fury of the storm and climbed onto the roof, never knew whether it was hundred kilometres or two hundred. All that they knew was almost all the thatched houses had lost their roof and water had entered into them upto the waist. They had no choice but to rush to the five pucca houses in the village hoping that at least these houses can withstand the fury of the cyclone.
Meanwhile the men working at the tank embankment were fighting a losing battle. The river, a kilometres away, had probably breached and water was rushing into the tank at astonishing speed. They had put all the sand bags, stones, cement bags they could muster from the village. The embankment appeared to have got stronger. But at four in the morning there was a deafening noise. The tank breached, water rushed out with a mighty force and before the men on the embankment could gather their wits, they were all swept away. Only five of the thirty men survived, they swam into the village and broke the news.
Mandakini and her mother-in-law fainted on the roof, as did six others whose husbands had lost their life to the ravage of a hitherto unknown enemy - a super cyclone which took more than ten thousand lives and wrought unprecedented havoc on the hapless people of coastal Odisha.
Mandakini survived and gave birth to Baatyaa nine months later. Life was a struggle, but a look at her daughter's face brought back the memory of the most unforgettable night of her life - a night of intense passion and immense tragedy.
And today when Baatyaa again insisted to know why she was given an unusual name, Mandakini finally told her about the super cyclone, and her brave father who gave his life trying to save the village. She told Baatyaa that she was born in the year of the cyclone and it was her father's wish that she should be given this name. But she could not bring herself to tell her ten year old innocent daughter that she got her name a full nine months before her birth, on a night when the storm outside their room was no match for the storm of passion raging between her loving parents.
Mandakini knew when Baatyaa grows up, she will find out that the year of her birth was nine months after the super cyclone. But she will understand and forgive her mother for a small lie.
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.
Critic's Corner
What Men Live By
Geetha Nair
Sreekumar K., the astute and eloquent critic, is also a writer of short stories, as all readers of Literary Vibes know.
There is no sparkle, no laughter, no romance, no surprise ending in his stories, complains a friend of mine who reads every issue of Literary Vibes with keen interest. Here is my reply.
SK’s stories are an acquired taste. At the first reading, they seem to have been dashed off in a hurry. They need proofing, fine-tuning, editing. Again, they may strike the casual reader as a trifle sluggish.
No; you may not find the tricks of our trade in his writing. But he
has something far more valuable to offer.That is what I wish to highlight here.
Several of his stories operate at two levels. Like giant trees, they are rooted firmly in the earth; yet their branches reach up high to touch the sky.
At the first level, they are tales of everyday men( and a few women) and of their daily battles. His characters are earthy. They breathe; they are real. His stories are filled with the sights, sounds and smells of his land, that verdant land of bountiful jackfruit trees, kind tapioca, not-so-kind snakes and forty four rivers.
At another level his stories are often allegories. In TRANSFER he narrates a humanist tale of Ravichandran who is transferred from one place to another and leaves behind his old, meaningless way of life to adopt a new fulfilling one. But there is more to it.The title becomes doubly significant. The journey and changes represent the journey from meaningless existence to meaningful life. Or it could be an allegory for man’s journey from life to the after-life.. The mysterious Snake Catcher then turns into a divine fellow-traveller or guide and the snakes he catches may be our human frailties and fears. Munnar may be earth and Retnagudi as the name suggests, precious heaven or at least the portals of heaven.
Names of people are a clue to the allegorical layer of FEE, another powerful story.Thulsidas (servant of God), high up in the ‘goonda’ set-up is the capable servant of God; the gang is God in action. Murder,among other things, is God’s business.Everything happens because He wills it. Sathyanesan(man of truth) who wanted his errant son back at home to tend him in his old age meets with an acccident and learns fully that everything in life has its price. Sathyanesan evolves into a real man of truth.The story has a couple of flaws. The son’s transformation strikes the reader as too sudden, even implausible. Again, the narrative voice, that of Sathyaneshan, is a sedate, formal one. When at one point,the term ’Man” falls from his lips,it jars.
THE PROPHET OF BOMMANAPPALLE is a superbly-crafted tale with a tragic-ironic ending. It tells of a man who goes searching for his guru and for the truth of his dream but realises in bitterness that he himself is the mover in the tragedy that he feared. Leela is one of Sreekumar’s rare woman characters; she stays back with the reader. The story brings to mind this observation on the art of storytelling: “See, this is what a story does to you. It is nothing but pure magic. It is the craft of the storyteller or rather, his witchcraft.”
Stories like these are reminiscent of Tolstoi’s enduring tales like “What Men Live By.” “He who has love is God,and God is in him, for God is love”
THE GANGES is a sad tale of loneliness and love; of the blindness or callousness of the younger generation to the emotional needs of the older. It is a lesson to the young, ,most of whom will paradoxically not learn it until they are old themselves and it is far too late.
“LESSON” “PASSION FRUIT” and ‘SCHOOL” are parables for our times. They awaken us and make us think. How effectively it is brought home to us, for instance, that the child is the father of the man or that the lowest of the low can rise higher than us! These three pieces leave us richer with the messages they offer which we need to put into practice to make our lives more meaningful. Yet the reader does not feel the pulpit effect which is so distasteful in certain writers.
My personal favourites are The DOCTOR AND GOD and THE INVERTED CROSS. The latter would not be out of place in a collection of Oscar Wilde’s short stories. It tells of a destitute family that is fed bread and joy by an unamed stranger. How easily it could have deteriorated into sentimentality! But Sreekumar’simple narration steers clear of that. This poignant tale of hunger and solace at Christmas time tugs at the heart of the reader.The last line”Did you call me?” echoes the Biblical “Knock and the door shall be opened.”. Sreekumar’s stories, however, transcend all religions to take us to the fountainhead. We meet God in THE DOCTOR AND GOD. The speaker is hospitalized and the Surgeon is attending to him. It seems an ordinary situation until the Surgeon’s hands glow,.The reader realizes “with zero at the spine” that the Surgeon is God himself. With stories such as these, Sreekumar succeeds in restoring to contemporary short fiction, the spiritual dimension that it seems to have lost. This is what I regard as the chief strength of Sreekumar’s writing; no doubt, he speaks to others differently. May his hand continue to glow to give us many more beautiful and enriching stories!
Yes, my friend, his stories may not sparkle. Sparkles are seen only on the surface. His writings are luminous with an otherworldly light.
To Sreekumar, the spiritual world is as tangible as the material one.To journey with him to that world one needs to plunge into his stories and flow with them. This, to me , is what is most valuable about his writing.
Literature, as Matthew Arnold said, answers in part that fundamental question -how to live.
Sreekumar’s stories are delicate epiphanies. They show us what men live by. They show us how to live.
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