Literary Vibes Edition - LXXXII
(Title : Swing - Picture courtesy Latha Prem Sakhya)
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the eighty second edition of LiteraryVibes. A bouquet of lovely poems and a basket of entertaining stories await you in our pages. Do enjoy them.
Two new poets, both from Bhubaneswar, have come into the LV family with today's edition. Shri Pradip Rath is a retired civil servant who is a prolific poet and writer in Odia. His poems are rooted to the ground and evoke the flavour of the native soil. Shri P. Suresh Kumar, on the other hand deals with contemporary themes. An HR executive, he also writes motivational pieces which we hope to see in future. We heartily welcome them and wish them abundant success in their literary career.
Small is Beautiful - it's an adage we have heard umpteen number of times. Having read some brilliant short poems in the past week let me also add that Small can be Powerful. Within a few lines a poet can express a world of feelings and release a flurry of gigantic messages. As a tribute to the beauty of short and powerful poems, let me reproduce two of my favourite pieces that strike with a huge impact:
1. NO MAN IS AN ISLAND
John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
2. DO NOT STAND BY MY GRAVE AND WEEP
Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
Late last night I received a story in Odia forwarded in WhatsApp. It was so beautiful that it has remained with me for the last many hours and is stirring my mind in a way few stories have ever done. There is a soft glow that is reluctant to go away and a melancholy that refuses to fade. I am sure all of you must have experienced such feelings in your life. Unfortunately the forward didn't have the writer's name, otherwise I would have taken the necessary permission and translated the story for the readers of LV. As the evening of life steadily marches on, casting a lengthening shadow, one is seized with a regret that there is so much left to read, to write, and to share!
Hope you will like the offerings in the 82nd edition. Please share the link http://www.positivevibes.today/article/newsview/334 with all your friends and contacts with a reminder that all the 81 previous editions of LV, including four anthologies, are available at http://www.positivevibes.today/literaryvibes
Take care, stay healthy and happy.
We will return to you next week with more poems and short stories.
Wish you a happy Ganesh Pooja tomorrow. May the Lord protect all living beings on our beloved mother Earth.
With warm regards,
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Table of Contents:
01) Prabhanjan K. Mishra
FIRE
THE SKIN-DEEP FAME
02) Haraprasad Das
PHYSICAL BEING (DEHA)
03) Geetha Nair G.
TRYST WITH LIFE
04) Dilip Mohapatra
ONE NIGHT STAND (P)
ONE NIGHT STAND (S)
05) Sreekumar K
BORN SICK
06) Dr. Pradip K. Swain
WHEN IT'S TIME TO LET GO
07) Krupasagar Sahoo
THE SERPENT’S CURSE
08) Dr. Bichitra Kumar Behura
CANDID WITH CANCER
09) Thryaksha A Garla
SONDER
AESTHETIC
10) Lathaprem Sakhya
Kanaka's Musings 5 : MOTHER VAMPIRE
11) Sharanya Bee
WELCOMED BACK
12) Dr. Molly Joseph M
SOME, SOMETHINGS..
13) Kamar Sultana Sheik
TURNING BLUE
14) Radhika Nair
THE QUEST
15) Sheena Rath
SUN
16) Padmini Janardhanan
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
17) Setaluri Padmavathi
THE VOICE OF A VILLAGE
18) Neha Sarah
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
19) Sunil Kumar Biswal
I LIVE TO TELL THE TALE
20) Snigdha Kacham
FEAR
21) Sujatha Sairam
DREAMS
22) N. Meera Raghavendra Rao
BRAVING A WALK OVER CAPILANO SUSPENSION BRIDGE
23) Ravi Ranganathan
HURLING WORDS
24) Gita Bharath
MY SHADOW
25) Sanjit Singh
WORKING FROM HOME? THIS IS FOR YOU
26) Priya Bharati
MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH
27) Ashok Kumar Ray
KASHMIRA AND KASHMIR
28) ) Abani Udgata
YOUR STORY, MY STORY
29) Mihir Kumar Mishra
RAG PICKER’S MUSE
RAG PICKER’S MUSE II
30) Pradeep Rath
FORGET
TALENT
31) P Suresh Kumar
NATURE, CORONA AND ME...
32) Mrutyunjay Sarangi
THE PALL-BEARERS
MY TWO FAVOURITE POEMS
01 ) Hema Ravi
a) Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley
b) Leisure - W.H. Davies
02) Sujatha Sairam
a) Believe in yourself - Jillian. K. Hunt
b) Don't quit - John Greenleaf Whittier
03) Abani Udgata
a) Night of the Scorpion - Nissim Ezekiel
b) Hunger - Jayant Mahapatra
04) Sibu Kumar Das
a) The Noble Nature - Ben Jonson
b) Leisure - W.H.Davies
BOOK REVIEW
01 ) N Meera Raghavendra Rao
a) The Protagonist by JAISIMHA M.L.
Once, only once
had I a whiff, or sight
of the blinking spot of blood
buried in distance mountains,
in ultramarine dark!
The small crackle,
a crumpled page
swept away by the wind,
slitting the still night,
the imperceptible cut.
All saw it, smelt it,
the entire neighbourhood,
the vagrants, mendicants,
even the crank at the corner,
the blue smoke billowing.
All heard it;
disturbed, the first crow
flew away to a neighbouring tree;
why didn’t I? Also,
missed the crow’s silence.
I was surrounded
by a supernova-heat,
a deafening big bang,
a roaring inferno
staring me in the eyes;
yet busy in feathering my nest,
stealing water from
prohibited streams,
gems from others’ quarries.
An intuitive homemaker!
All saw it, heard it,
singeing, growing. Why
did I miss a holocaust forming?
Devouring my peace,
my repose. “My pleasure,
you are welcome.” I said
to my nemesis, my face charred,
twisted, “You have come,
it’s a pleasure, come, sit,
have drink, a bite perhaps…
(Inspiration – a homemaker. Fire stands for her/his trials and tribulations. The poem is open-ended, indicating hope, growth, possibilities, movement….)
Tired of clearing cobwebs -
Lies, falsehood rule the roost.
Sleight of hand hoodwinks goodness.
Compassion goes counterfeit.
We, the rich and poor,
from men of power to those
humbled by fate and birth,
all rush for immortality, vainglory.
Force and humility, diplomacy and charity
alternate as weapons to score goals;
two hoots to monstrous blunders
or irreparable loss to others!
Even our ingratiating submission
masks exploitation, the hands
rising to bless conceal an agenda,
the flower-bedecked deity hides a stone.
Most of our portals lie half-built,
the sites strewn with rubbles,
the edifices cracking at hips,
reality leaving room to fairy tales -
Giant is our calendar-monkey,
Diminutive, the mountain it carries.
Our dead rise, miracles spawn,
in our game saviors are enemies.
Showcasing hollow promises,
not cleaning but dirtying Holy Ganga
with pyre-remains, reviving shibboleths,
the straw men try shaping man’s destiny.
The waist-belts support
weak spines. Headgears conceal
bald patches. Dentures dazzle.
God! When would we rise
from our deep stupor, the hunger
for the skin-deep patina of glory?
When would our souls crave
for the signals from hearts?
(Odia poem GOURAVARA PATALAA CHAMATALE appeared in SETU’s first issue of 1999. The poem is conceptualized in English by the poet.)
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
Translated by Prabhanjan K Mishra
Go ahead, touch it,
it’s tangible and sentient;
a pretty paradox
from the birth to ashes,
an enigma
enough to chew for a lifetime;
hack it to pieces
to your heart’s content;
burn it with lust’s tinder
all your prime;
to satiate the dead forefathers
offer it as Pinda,
like the ritual rice-ball
on a platter of banana leaf,
consign it to water
to float to the other world;
your body,
your slave;
a wishful star
caught in desire’s sooty cobwebs
sleepwalking with you
until the last curtain.
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)”
When I retired, I made a long-standing dream of mine a reality. I bought myself a cottage in the cool and lovely hills of Munnar. Having no wife or children and hardly any other family to speak of, I headed, a free bird, for the cottage that I wished to make my last home. In a couple of weeks, I had settled down fairly well. I had filled much of the front room with my beloved books. My laptop adorned the main table. My day began when the milkman rang the bell at 6 every morning. I had found a young man, Muthu, to help with the gardening and cleaning. He arrived at around twelve o’clock every day, bringing two packed lunches of white rice, sambar, mixed vegetable fry and mutton curry from the modest hotel near his home. This manna served as our main meal of the day. Bread, biscuits, eggs, instant noodles and rice gruel kept my hunger away at other times. In the evening, when Muthu had left after completing his work in the garden and in the house, I would fix myself a gin-lime or two and sit on the dark verandah, gazing at the lovely greys of the skyscape lit here and there by big, bright stars. If there is a paradise on earth, I would intone to myself, it is this, it is this, it is this cottage in Munnar, set on a hill, surrounded by tranquil Nature, made mellifluous with her soft music and lit by brilliant stars. I was far from the madding and maddening noise, the hustle and bustle that had been part of my life for decades. I was happy. Of course I was.
Muthu was a good and a cheerful worker and I took to him fast. He had made gardening his profession; he was adept at it. In two months, in the bright summer, my garden was ablaze with petunias, carnations, fox-gloves, marigolds, sweet peas and phlox. The slow-growers were putting out sturdy leaves. He used the outhouse at the back of the cottage as a sort of greenhouse and toolshed. I thanked all the gods for having sent me this valuable gift. Muthu was the only son and youngest child of a couple who worked on the huge tea estate that spread over that part of Munnar. He had taken me to his home one day. It was in one of the numerous long, low dwellings made for estate labourers. These shabby, kutcha buildings were called “layams.” His layam, set against a hillside, had once housed several families but now only two “compartments’ were inhabited; the others had become too dilapidated for staying in . Only goats, sheep and dogs slept there now. I was appalled at the condition of his dwelling and the pitiful facilities it offered. Yet, housing was free, I had heard, and the labourers were grateful for the layams. That afternoon, Muthu’s parents were still at work on the estate. He insisted I should have lime juice and chips. I sat outside, near the stream that crawled down the hillside. I ate, drank and and dutifully commented on the framed wedding photos of Muthu’s two sisters brought out for my viewing. “What about you?” I asked him. “When are you going to get married?’ “O! I shall stay unmarried, like you,” he replied, a frown dimming his bright face. He bent his head over the glass tumbler he was holding. I was a little taken aback by that reply. When I prodded him, he became evasive. I smelt a rat.
One July evening, at my home, as we were sipping the hot, sweet tea that Muthu had made, I decided to chase that rat. After some dodging, it came rushing out.
Amal. He loved her. He would love her and only her for ever. They had been neighbours for years. Their houses were next to each other in the layam. Amal’s family and his had been on cordial terms for many years. Muthu and Amal had been playmates as children. But an unfortunate misunderstanding at work had developed into a monstrous fight with weapons between the two men. The two families had turned bitter enemies. Though just a wall divided their twin houses, their minds and hearts were divided by hatred. But Muthu and Amal could not hate each other. How could they? Through their front yard, once common, now separated by a hedge studded with morning glory, they continued to communicate furtively. Time turned them into lovers.
Amal’s father had passed away the previous year. Her mother no longer had any objection to her daughter marrying Muthu. Muthu had hoped that the enmity in his parents’ heart would have lessened. He broached the matter with a beating heart. But his hopes were shattered when his father bellowed, ”I shall disown you!” and his mother screamed, ”Over my dead body!” A classic situation. Romeo and Juliet and all the other star-crossed star-pairs of literature paraded sorrowfully down my mind. There must be hundreds of Indian movies on this theme, I reflected. But that was of no help to Muthu. “What should I do?” he asked me as he took the empty cup from my hand. His eyes were pits of despair.
I spoke to him of the perennial problem of choice, the great difficulty involved when the choice is between two “rights”, about his duty to his parents clashing with his commitment to his beloved, about the importance of lying on the bed one had made. My words came out smoothly; I had had plenty of opportunities to utter them in the past when I had been a professor in a college in the south and the warden of the men’s hostel to boot. He listened to me and when I had ended, he asked me again,”What should I do?” “It has to be your decision, Muthu,” I told him. He gave me a look I could not decipher. Then, he took the tea cups into the kitchen. He left soon afterwards, the raincoat I had given him turning him into a red shape moving dimly through the drizzle.
That night, it rained even more heavily than usual. I moved from the verandah to the calm of the front room. The rain was dampening my spirits. AI couldn’t sleep well that night. Something was troubling me. It was an emptiness I couldn’t define. Next morning, I was woken, as usual, by the milkman’s ring at the door. When I opened it, I found him in great agitation. There had been a landslide an hour or so back and the half-ruined layam near the stream had borne the brunt of it. “Muthu!” I cried out in dread. “Buried. But his parents are safe.” replied the man.” In two minutes I was out of the house and driving down the winding road in the rain to the spot. People were hurrying in the same direction; news of the disaster had spread.
Nothing was left of the layam. There was just a huge mound of earth where it had once stood A few men were attempting to dig into the mound. My heart turned to ice. There was a group of people to one side. Someone beckoned to me. I went up to the group which parted to reveal a middle aged man and woman sitting on the ground. The man was dumb with shock and grief but the woman was beating her breast and wailing. “My son! My son!” Muthu’s parents. A man spoke to me. . “There was another house there. A mother and daughter… .” Only then did I remember Amal. “These two escaped because they had just come out of the house, earlier than usual. But the poor boy must have been still asleep. The two in the other house too… .”
I realised that I too was seated on the ground. The man was supporting me.
Muthu. Buried. Dying. Dead? The words kept beating like gongs in my head.
“JCB on the way!” the glad news went swirling round the scene, echoing through the brightening morning air.
Something like hope tugged at me. Then I saw an autorickshaw coming up. It stopped.
I got up slowly. Was I hallucinating?
Out of it tumbled a figure. It looked exactly like Muthu. Only, he was dressed in a fine cream shirt and dhoti. In seconds, he was embracing his parents and being embraced by them. There was another collective gasp from the crowd as another figure emerged from the vehicle. It was that of a pretty young girl dressed in a shimmering red sari. My head reeled as a third passenger got out of the autorickshaw. This time it was a timid, middle-aged woman with two fresh marigold garlands slung over her arm.The stunned crowd became voluble. When the girl too went up to Muthu’s parents and the two young people prostrated themselves at their feet, there was a moment of silence. Then, someone started clapping. Soon, everyone was clapping. This chorus of joy and relief continued until the clanking of the JCB drowned it.
All’s well that ends well, as someone else wrote before me. Muthu was forgiven. After all, his run-away wedding at the temple in Munnar town early that morning had saved his life.
Muthu and Amal moved into the outhouse behind my cottage that was quickly renovated for the purpose.
Several summers and monsoons have come and gone. Two little children patter through my house and garden.
Life is good.
I am no longer lonely.
Geetha Nair G is the author of two poetry collections. Her first book, SHORED FRAGMENTS, received good reviews, notably one in the Journal of The Poetry Society ( India). Her second collection, DRAWING FLAME, came out this year. A collection of her short stories , Wine, Woman and Wrong, is scheduled for release in September. All the thirty three stories in this book were written for and first appeared in LITERARY VIBES
Geetha Nair G. is a former Associate Professor of English, All Saints' College, Trivandrum.
As the ship
comes along side
its berth in a foreign harbour
and secures fore and aft
the liberty men fall in
to proceed ashore.
There she stands under
a low powered street lamp,
throwing at you
a much practised yet
a sparkling smile,
her gaze melancholically
distant and far away.
You hold her hand
and lead her
to a Karaoke joint in the corner ,
buy her couple of stiff drinks
and dance wildly
to the blaring music
lost in the lyrics
singing together
in unison with the words appearing
on the screen
In quick succession.
There is nothing that may
bind you together.
There is no chance to take,
no mistakes to make
and no promises to break.
The liberty would soon expire
and you got to part ways
sooner than you thought.
She knows
you would slip away
stealthily through the door.
She won't lament
or shed a drop of tear,
you would just be
a whiff of breeze
a tangent that touched her
for a brief moment
and then it was gone.
She won't need you
ever again
as much as you won't need her.
The contrail on the sky
would soon dissolve
and disappear.
' Hey Ranjit, are you online? This is Amar here.'
' Hello Amar, long time no see. What's up?'
' Was a little busy, sorting out a minor problem.'
' What problem? The usual?'
' Yes, one of those things. But it's fine now. Taken care of.'
' My friend Casanova, as they say you are surely like a dog's tail. Can never be straightened.'
' It's nothing but karma. And its consequences. Makes me more experienced too.'
' Let me guess, the last one perhaps was Sheela. Your twelfth affair. Right?'
' Thirteenth. But who the hell is keeping a count ?'
' Tell me, what happened?'
' The same old story. A bit of carelessness and the bull is hit! Ironic, isn't it? OK, to cut the long story short, she got knocked up.'
' Oh my God, how could you?'
' Blame it on my virility and her fertility. And perhaps on the safe period calculations.'
' Or may be she wanted to trap the slippery Sam.'
' May be. But you know me. There are always the escape routes. When convincing fails, there's intimidation. When these fail, the wallet comes to your rescue. Well, it took some efforts, but finally good riddance to bad rubbish. Hospitalisation costs and a fat compensation. That's it.'
' You bum, you will never improve. It's high time you find a life partner for yourself and settle down. At least before you burn out totally. Save yourself from avoidable stress.'
' No my friend, my palm has a strong life line, but no wife line. I am fine the way I am.'
' Alright then. You are not a kid. Perhaps you know better about yourself. Now tell me, how I may help you.'
' Do you still have your bungalow at Jalapahar?'
' Yeah, what about it?'
' See bro, I have a business meeting at Darjeeling, next Monday. I need a place to stay overnight. The hotels over there are full to the brim. They have been fully booked for the delegates of an International Cardiologists' Conference. I was wondering if your bungalow is unoccupied and if I may be accommodated there.'
' No issue. We hardly use it. I would have disposed it off long ago. But we still keep it for sentimental reasons. It was my father's favourite hideout. He wrote almost all his novels here. We have a caretaker called Thapa who lives in the outhouse. I will message you his number. You call him up a day before. He will keep a suite ready for you.'
' Thanks Ranjit. As they say, a real friend walks in when the rest of the world walk out. You are a life saver.'
' My pleasure. You take care of yourself. Don't get into any trouble. By the way are you travelling alone or you have already found your fourteenth victim who would be accompanying you?'
' Ha ha, I am travelling alone. Who knows I may find my next one at Darjeeling itself!'
Amar rented a car from Bagdogra for the duration of his stay and drove down to Jalapahar. He reached the ornate gates of a beautiful colonial style bungalow around noon time and honked. Thapa, the caretaker, a diminutive man in khaki shorts and a blue T shirt opened the gate. He drove in and stopped in the porch. Thapa closed the gate and came running to welcome him inside. Amar entered a tastefully done up hall spelling heritage, grandeur, luxury and opulence. He parked himself on a comfortable and plush sofa opposite the fire place and scanned around in awe. There was a huge bay window at one end of the hall overlooking a lush green lawn. In the corner, a marble bust of Venus was kept on a tall tripod. On the other end was the dining space and a compact bar. The dining space extended to a passage leading to the bed rooms. The flooring, wall panels and the furniture were mostly made of mahogany and teak wood. The upholstery had a suede finish. The entire ensemble was a combination of maroon and beige. A matching Belgian carpet in the centre complemented the cushions and curtains. A huge glittering chandelier hung at the centre. The walls were adorned with crossbows, daggers, swords, khukris and antique guns on one side and stuffed and mounted heads of two tigers and two bisons on the other. Amar was in admiration for the taxidermist who would have created his works of art so life like. It appeared as if the animals were peering down at him and he was under their scrutiny. There was only one painting over the fire place, which looked somewhat familiar. As he was trying to remember the painting, Thapa appeared with a mug of chilled beer and told him that lunch will be served in an hour. He also mentioned that he had put his baggage in the master suite next to the dining space and he might like to freshen up whenever he pleased.
Amar was racking his memory to identify the painting. The artist had used soft warm shades from golden yellow to brown to paint a voluptuous female form, reclining on a luxurious bed with a canopy. With her upper torso bare exposing her firm bosom, and a thin gauze like material covering her lower body, her hair fanned over the pillow, she was the perfect picture of beauty and sensuality. It appeared as if the woman had just woken up, awakened by the shining golden rays of the sun beaming through the window, her eyes half closed looking almost like slits. Suddenly the penny dropped. Amar remembered Rembrandt's famous nude Danae which he had seen in the Hermitage museum at St Petersburg last year when he had visited the city while on a pleasure cruise. This painting appeared to be a replica, painted by some local artist, who had perhaps forgotten to affix his signature. He googled for the masterpiece and compared the original with the one over the ingle. The texture and colour scheme were almost similar. But the face here was more oriental looking with higher cheek bones, slanted eyes and darker hair. Another glaring difference was manifested in a predominant ear top which did not exist in the original. The ear top with a huge turquoise circumscribed by glittering red rubies literally stood out. In fact it appeared to be grossly out of tune with the overall painting. While his mind was busy analysing the painting, he suddenly realised that Thapa stood there silently while watching him curiously.
' Saab, do you find the painting interesting?,' asked Thapa.
' Yeah. What do you know about it?,' countered Amar.
Thapa pulled a stool and sat down opposite Amar. Then he narrated the story of the bungalow from the day it was built and commissioned by a rich zamindar from Kolkata named Rai Bahadur Tanmoy Majumdar, way back in 1940. Ranjit Saab's father purchased it from the Majumdar family sometime in the early fifties. Tanmoy babu lived in Kolkata but always came here to spend the summer. One day he happened to see a school girl returning home after school hours. It was love at first sight for him, despite the age difference. He was besotted with the beauty of the local girl and befriended her. She was Manisha, the girl who had posed for the painting. After knowing Manisha, Tanmoy babu started spending more time here. He wooed her, showered gifts on her and declared his undying love for her. Manisha finally moved in with him. Tanmoy babu divided his time between Kolkata and Jalapahar. Though their union was not solemnised by the formalities of a marriage, they lived together as a couple, whenever Tanmoy babu paid a visit here. His lawfully wedded wife at Kolkata had no idea about her husband's indiscretion.
Tanmoy babu spent quite some time and a fortune for the interior decoration of the bungalow. He professed himself as a native Britisher and wanted to create a typical colonial ambience. He in fact wanted to procure Rembrandt's masterpiece Danae for the space above the ingle but couldn't manage it. Then he struck upon the idea to recreate it. He commissioned a local artist Faiz to paint an Indian version of Danae, with Manisha as the model. Faiz was a known name amongst the artists who had created many replicas of various masterpieces by great masters from far and near. Faiz was given a room in the bungalow and soon the work commenced. One bedroom was specially designated as the studio. Manisha turned out to be a very willing and obliging model and never complained about the prolonged sittings, which sometimes stretched into four to five hours a day. As the days passed the blank canvas came to life in instalments, bit by bit with the deft brush strokes from the magical fingers of the artist. Tanmoy babu was quite satisfied with the progress. Just before the painting was complete, he had to leave for Kolkata to meet some urgent business need. During the last sitting, just before Faiz put his signature on the right bottom corner, something happened that should not have happened.
A half clad Manisha was lying supine on the bed. Suddenly Faiz came charging like a tiger, lust and lechery writ large on his face, and pounced on her. Before she could realise what was happening, she found her hands pinned down and his lips firmly planted on hers. Manisha had no chance to protest and defend herself. Faiz was too strong and powerful for her. When the heat of the moment subsided, she gathered her wits to realise that Faiz had forced himself unto her. With a mixed feeling of rage and shame, she groped at the side table and picked up a brass wine jug that was kept for effect. As Faiz pulled himself off her, she hit him hard on his head. Blood gushed out of the crack on his head and he fell down on the floor whimpering. Manisha gathered herself and saw Faiz breathing his last. And then she picked up a hunting knife from the drawer and slit her wrists.
On return from Kolkata, Tanmoy babu was totally heart broken and devastated. He hung the unsigned painting above the fire place, the only one in the entire bungalow. He would sit in front of the painting with his drinks for hours together. He had stopped speaking to any one, even to his retinue staff. Then one day he packed his bags and left for Kolkata, never to return. After about a year of the incident he died of heart attack. The bungalow remained locked for a long time. One housekeeper was engaged to take care of the estate. After it changed hands, Ranjit Saab's family used it as a holiday home. Almost once or twice a year the family came here for vacationing. The view of Kanchenjunga from the patio was perhaps one of the best that one could have in this area. Sometimes the family let their close friends avail their hospitality here.
Having narrated the story, Thapa served Amar lunch. There after he retired to the master suite that was allotted to him and took a nap, while recalling the fascinating history of the bungalow. He got up from his slumber to a gentle knock on the door. Thapa was there with a tray carrying tea in a pot along with an assortment of biscuits.
' Hey Thapa, tell me about the social life here. Are there any Manisha's still around?' Amar asked with a wink.
' Saab, there is nothing here at Jalapahar. But you can have an evening out in Darjeeling. Who knows, if you are lucky you may find your Manisha here,' Thapa replied mischievously.
' Tell me, what are the nice places in Darjeeling where I can enjoy,' asked Amar.
' Saab, there are nice pubs and clubs. You may try Joey's Pub or the Buzz. Nice food, plenty of drinks and good music. But don't expect late nights at Darjeeling. They entertain you at best till 10,' offered Thapa.
' That sounds good. Let me go and explore.'
' Saab, please keep a set of keys with you. I will wind up early since you will not have your dinner here.'
Around seven in the evening Amar got ready for his adventure. There was a very light drizzle. He checked about the route from Jalapahar to Darjeeling and set off in the rented car. It was just about 15 minutes drive time. As he turned the bend to get on St Mother Teresa road, he spotted her holding a colourful umbrella standing alone under the shed of a bus stop. He slowed down the car and pulled over near her and rolled down the glass. The girl was in her late teens it seemed, with a bob cut hairstyle, smartly dressed in a black evening gown. Amar found her very attractive and his heart beating loudly in anticipation, he asked her if she needed a lift. She agreed and entered the car.
' Hey, how do you do? I am Amar. Amar Chauhan.'
' Hi I am Anita. I live close by. I was going down to Darjeeling for an evening out.'
' Oh, that's fantastic. I am actually from Kolkata. I own a small IT company. I have come here for a business meeting scheduled tomorrow. I am staying at ' 7th Heaven', the red brick bungalow round the bend.'
' I know the place. It's a nice British type bungalow.'
' Tell me which place in Darjeeling are you heading for? Do you have a date with someone?'
' No, I am on my own. Just going out for some good music. May be drinks and dinner if I get the right company.'
' What a coincidence! I am also looking for a nice evening out. Why don't you suggest a place where we can go together? Of course only if you feel that I am the right company!'
' You seem to be alright. Let's raid Joey's Pub.'
Amar patted himself on the back mentally thinking that his charms surely were irresistible. After a while they reached Joey's Pub, which was considered the nucleus of Darjeeling's nightlife. The quaint building with a small front porch having a triangular roof had the authentic looks of an English country home. It appeared as if Anita was a regular at this club. She led Amar to a cozy corner with comfortable cushioned chairs in a cluster around a low centre table. They ordered their drinks and settled down. Anita asked for a vodka with orange juice and Amar asked for scotch on the rocks. Dimly lit by candles in soda bottles, the lounge gave a magical feeling. The DJ was playing the choicest music as requested by the guests. It was a cocktail of music ranging from old school jazz of Nat King Cole to the latest rock music of Coldplay. The Pub didn't serve any formal dinner but the snacks were more than enough. Anita was rather reticent while Amar garrulously talked about his childhood, his education and entrepreneurship. Around ten the Pub took the last orders for the day. Amar was a little high and as they exited the Pub he whispered, ' Hey sweetheart! Your place or mine?'
Anita gave him an enigmatic smile and said,'whatever you say.'
They drove all the way to Jalapahar in silence. The drizzle had not stopped. Amar parked the car in the porch of 7th Heaven and opened the door with the key Thapa had given him and proceeded to his room. Anita demurely followed him.
' Hey baby, I got to take a shower. Don't feel nervous. Take it easy. Just relax in the bed. I will join you shortly.'
' Sure. I feel at home.'
Amar was humming a romantic tune under his breath as he entered the washroom. Few minutes later he emerged from the washroom and stopped short at the foot of the bed. The room was bathed in an ambient golden hue. Anita was lying supine on the bed in the buff and looking at him invitingly. He stood frozen there and discovered that her hair had fanned over the pillow, one of her ears exposed showing a conspicuous turquoise ear top circumscribed by glittering red rubies. He could almost hear his heart that was beating hard against his rib cage.
Before he could say anything or do anything, Anita raised her arms in an embracing gesture and tried to reach out to him. The arms slowly telescoped out to cross the length of the bed and then her fingers wrapped around his neck.
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 doctor says there is hope
I told him not to hope for anything
He said only voodooism comes free
There is a dearth of medicines
Of compassion too
Is death too dear, I ask
White corpuscles are absent.
Come on, there is no such thing
Blood is red and so are corps
May be in milk, I should ask mom
Grafting is the in thing
White and red flowers on the same plant
An unlit signboard spells: GRAFTS
Awesome corridors
No matter which way you turn
You come right back at the gate
I had left my slippers there
I had thrown my diaper there
I had dropped my nudity there
Where are those who brought me?
They might be looking for me.
Or, might have been operated on
Being dead, might be planning a come back
Poor things! Killed themselves to live
Oh! My chappals are here, thank you
(Adjudged as the best at a competition in an FB group)
Sreekumar K, known more as SK, writes in English and Malayalam. He also translates into both languages and works as a facilitator at L' ecole Chempaka International, a school in Trivandrum, Kerala.
WHEN IT'S TIME TO LET GO
Dr. Pradip Kumar Swain
It was 9 am on a Saturday. The emergency room was quiet. There was a febrile child still to be seen, a splinted leg fracture ready to leave on crutches and an elderly lady with a cough and fever just back from x-ray awaiting laboratory results.
An ambulance call breaks the silence. “We are en route to your facility with an 80 year old woman with difficulty in breathing and with a very weak pulse. She has terminal lung cancer and previous multiple strokes.”
I knew the lady from her previous visits to our emergency room. She was battered by the strokes that nibbled at her faculties, destroying a muscle here, a nerve center there, slurring her speech; the cruel little strokes that sliced her sight, leaving each eye half-seeing. She had become trapped by her infirmities.
She led me to hesitate -- terminal cancer, expected to die, in shock and gasping for breath. “Ambulance 12,” I replied. “Assist ventilation with oxygen, suction the airway, evaluate constantly and transport.”
The stricken woman arrived a few minutes later, clearly dying, glassy eyes, feeble pulse, lips drawn over, bared teeth.
“Mrs. Smith,” I asked, “can you hear me?” She blinked painfully in reply. The daughter said that the past few weeks she has been in terrible pain, gradual inability to swallow and gasping for breath for two days. “She wanted to die at home, but we just could not take it anymore --watching her suffering,” she went on. “Doc, no CPR please, and no tubes. Mother wanted to go peacefully.”
I led the daughter, husband and grandchildren outside the room. I said, “Mrs. Smith will die in a few minutes. I can do various things that may support her for a day or two, but this will require tubes in her throat, IVs, and many tests, and it won’t help her. I think we could all go and sit with her and just be near her for her last few minutes.” The daughter said, “That’s what we were praying for, Doc. She has suffered a lot and has been sick so long."
We returned to Mrs. Smith. Slowly her eyes opened and met with those of her husband, who was holding her hand. Her daughter and grandchildren complete the circle around the bed. I remained at her head to suction her airway lest she choke on thick secretion.
After a moment of silence, the husband said that Mrs. Smith always loved to sing and hear “Amazing Grace,” the song she’d sung throughout her long life, the years of her girlhood and the 60 years of her marriage. “Could you sing it to her, Mr. Smith?” I asked. He trembled, but quietly and softly began to sing and the whole family joined him in a chorus.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”
As they sang, the air she sucked in and breathed out changed pitch, rising and falling with the notes. Mrs. Smith visibly relaxed.
“That saved a wretch like me…”
The husband, gripping her hand, said, “Go on, honey. Go be with Jesus.” The pulse slowed and the breathing became easier.
“I once was lost but now I’m found…”
Mrs. Smith stared, dazed, upward the pulse occasionally flickered and only a gasp of air moved into her lungs. “Go on honey. Go be with Jesus,” her husband said again.
“Was blind but now I see…”
All was still. At first, I was not sure, but when the hymn stopped, so did she. Her pulse became slow and thready beneath my fingers, then was gone. Once again her respiration faltered, soon there were gasps, then only the slow futile heave of her chest, and the heart stilled. She slipped away before my eyes, and I did not like it.
I wanted to act to support her systems when they failed, to institute life-saving measures and to make her well. At the same time, I knew that there is a peace and elegance in letting go. I placed my hand over her husband’s hand, saying, “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
Closing the door after me, I headed for the little doctor’s lounge where I go to cry privately when I need to. Sometimes I think as I weep into my scrubs that this job takes more out of me than I can stand.
In emergency medicine, I am a “Specialist” at resuscitation. I do it more often, with more facility and with more success than other physicians. In many ways it is the focus of my specialty. I also believe that there are times when compassion should prompt us to forgo prolonged and costly treatment. If you are prolonging life, you should go for it, but prolonging death is another thing. The tough business of dealing with terribly sick human beings is why God created doctors.
Hence, we move day by day both into better patient care and into a better understanding of when the best care might be no care, and when the most supportive act of all is letting go. As we grow more powerful to wrestle our patients from the grip of death, may we be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves, both applying our knowledge well and knowing well when not to apply it at all.
Dr. Pradip K. Swain, a medical graduate from SCB Medical College, Cuttack in 1965, moved to the U.S. In the seventies after a six years stint in the University of Glasgow, Scotland. He was Director and Chairman of Mercy Regional Health System, Altoona, Pennsylvania, USA, from 1981-1998. An Emergency Care Specialist he also worked as a Professor, Instructor and Perceptor at the Saint Francis College, Pennsylvania (1980-1998). Among many distinguished positions held by him, his stint as a Director in the Board of Directors of American Heart Association (1980-1984) and Instructor, Basic Life Support, American Heart Association (1979-1998), Regional Medical Director, Southern Alleghenies Emergency Care (1980-1998) are noteworthy. Recipient of numerous awards for exemplary service in the field of medicine and emergency care, he was a familiar face in American television in the eighties and nineties of the last century, talking about Trauma, Lifeline, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, Toxicology, Heat Emergencies, Frostbite, Hypothermia etc. He has also published dozens of articles on these topics in newspapers and journals. After his retirement from active medical services he lives in Falls Church, Virginia, USA, along with his wife, Dr. Asha L. Swain, who is also a Physician with a distinguished service record. They can be reached at alswainmd@aol.com
Translated from Odia by Priya Bharati
Early in the morning, it rained heavily. The Baniyan, Seesam, Champa trees in the Railway colony looked completely washed just like the girls looking fresh after taking early morning bath for Khudurukuni Puja. The birds shook their wings to release the rain drops accumulated and flew away in search of food. The red velvet lady birds seemed busy gossiping in the wet lawn of Station BadaBabu. Only the crow was cawing loudly in a rough frightened tone. The reason for this was not because of having a bad throat. It was witnessing a strange scene in Braja Bandhu, the Station Master’s veranda. Two entangled hooded cobras were dancing in a rhythm and flicking their forked tongue in and out intermittently. They seemed like a male and female dancer mesmerized in salsa dance.
This crow is like an alarm clock for Brajabandhu. He got up and opened the door. The moment he saw the twin entangled serpents, his eyes popped out of fear and surprise. He shouted and called his wife Lalita to come immediately.
Her wife’s face brightened seeing the pair of snakes. She exclaimed “Ai…Maa” clutching her hands on her mouth. She had read somewhere that seeing serpent in the morning is considered auspicious.
Brajabandhu recovering himself called out at the top of his voice “Aare Madana, Aare Pabana come here fast, snake, snake”.
Lalita requested her husband to bring a dhoti and spread it where the entangled snakes were dancing so that they would play on the spread out dhoti.
Her husband enquired “What would happen if the snakes play on the dhoti?
She replied, “Don’t you know”, anyone wearing that piece of cloth will win in any endeavor he takes up”.
‘”Keep your women’s talk to yourself” said Brajabandhu. He again called out for the two staff.
Madana and Pabana were busy displaying the green flag from the two cabins at either end of the station for a goods train. They immediately rushed in the direction from where they heard the loud call from Badababu. They had two six feet lathis in their hand.
Lalita cried out, “Don’t harm the conjugating snakes I warn you”.
By then they had swung their lathis on the two snakes. The snakes in fright disengaged from each other and moved away in opposite direction. One of them was not so lucky. Its spinal cord broke when Madana thrashed it with his lathi. The other one slithered away and hid somewhere behind the back yard garden of the house. Madana dangled the dead cobra on his lathi and walked in the station platform with such euphoria as if he had won a tournament and this was his trophy. After this he kept it on a railway track and soon it was shredded to pieces by a passing goods train. This gave him the ultimate satisfaction. Meanwhile Brajabandhu along with Pabana and few other enthusiastic persons started searching for the other serpent.
In front of the Dhenkanal Station, there was a small hillock. Locally it is called ‘ragada‘. On this was a row of asbestos roof houses built from B.N.R ( Bengal Nagpur Railway ) times. The biggest house with the largest campus belonged to Brajabandhu. His campus had many types of plants and trees. Under a Champa tree was an ant hill. Brajabandhu thought, surely the serpent might have disappeared into it. So he called a few Majhi tribes men going on the road nearby to destroy the ant hill with their crow bar. Next they put pieces of ignited coal into the holes beneath the mound and poked deep inside these holes, but alas there was no sign of the escaped cobra. Instead, scores of white ant started pouring out from it.
After vanquishing the abode of the snake, Brajabandhu returned very relaxed. His wife was in no mood to relent. She accused him saying, “Whatever you did was wrong. You should have never killed the conjugating cobra. The Nagin will nurture grudge”.
“Hoo; keep grudge, how do you know whether it was Nag or Nangin?” Saying this satirically, Brajabandhu tried to brush aside his wife’s words.
His wife retorted “Be it Nag or Nagin, I have heard and also read in newspaper that amongst all animals, the elephant and the cobra never forget the face of an enemy. They wait for opportune moment to take revenge”.
“Don’t get tensed up. Besides, I have not killed it in my own hand. Madana killed the serpent with his lathi” Brajabandhu retorted.
“Madana killed the snake on your order. Besides the one who gives order to kill and the one who kills, both are equally responsible for the act. I am feeling very frightened. The snake is hiding in this campus. Anytime any misfortune can happen”.
“Are you afraid that you will soon become a widow?” asked Brajabandhu jocularly and then with a robust laugh said “Go bring tea for me”.
Sitting on the sofa, he started slurping the tea and laughed aloud like a king doing a role in a dance drama. He too was a king of this station. He had immense power in his hand. Assuring his wife he said” Don’t be afraid”. I will take all steps to ensure that the cobra does not appear again.
Lalita was not convinced. After her husband left for office, she went to the Shiva temple with sweets and flowers as offerings. She prayed to the cobra coiled around the Shiva Linga to forgive her husband.
Brajabandhu with the help of Gangmen, cleaned the jungle around his house. That same day afternoon, some snake charmers were travelling with their snake baskets in Puri – Talcher passengers train. They travel ticketless to places to show their snake shows. That day Brajabandhu went to the train with his squad and asked for their tickets.
Their mukhia replied “We are poor people; we hardly get any income from snake show. From where will we get the money to buy ticket?
“Take out money for your ticket or else I will throw you in the jail” threatened Brajabandhu.
“Except money, ask us for anything else Sir, we can show snake shows in every Railbabu’s house for free”.
Brajabandhu replied “the Mother of all snakes is hiding in my garden, if you can catch it, I will allow you to travel in train free of cost’.
They agreed to the arrangement.
‘OK, then keep your snake baskets in the parcel go down and come with me”.
The snake charmers went to BadaBabu’s house. Their mukhia kneeled under the Champa tree and started beating his Damburu. Other members went to different spots in the campus and tried various methods to capture the cobra. One started playing Nageswari in his Mahuri ( clarinet) while another sang the song“Pheri Ana Naguni, Pheri Analo….”. Another started reciting Snake catching mantra.
The sun began to set. It was evening. By then the mukhia had developed sore hands beating the Damburu. The second charmer’s voice became hoarse continuously singing throughout the day. The one blowing the bin had his cheeks swollen. After their futile attempt, taking advantage of dusk these snake charmers escaped to the other side of the town.
The snake does not have ears to hear the song and music. Besides the snake which was waiting to take revenge will never make the mistake to be caught by such a group of snake charmers. Brajabandhu became frustrated as all his attempts failed and sat down pensively. Lalita became more and more anxious. The snake baskets left behind in the parcel go down was another cause of headache for Brajabandhu. He was sitting helpless when the Parcel Babu came to him and asked, “Sir, what to do with the snake baskets left behind by the snake charmers?”Brajabandhu was so irritated that he replied, “Keep them on my head”.
Parcel Babu replied “Don’t get angry Sir. This problem has become a life and death situation for me”.
“Go and ask the Assistant Station Master. I cannot think of any solution right now, my head is reeling,” said Brajabandhu.
The Hamaalas accompanying Parcel Babu started muttering amongst them, “BadaBabu has gone mad. Let’s go”.
The Assistant Station Master had an idea. “Why not load and dispatch them in Talcher - Puri passengers train”?
“While throwing them into the train if the baskets get opened then there will be complete pandemonium’, replied the Parcel Babu. “What absurd idea areyou giving us”.
What a rotten idea; The Operating people have no mercy for passengers train thought Parcel Babu.
The Assistant Station Master then gave another idea. “The Commercial Inspector and Accounts Inspector have shown debit in your accounts and have become a pain in your neck. Put the snake baskets in Lost Property Office and when the two Babus come here for auction, how they are going to howl “Bapa lo, Maa lo”. Such an idea was followed by loud laughter from both sides.
Now let’s find out what was happening in Braja Babu’s house. One evening Lalita was going to perform the evening arti near the Tulsi Chaura. The cobra was coiled on the Tulsi tree and had spread its hood. It looked very much like the brass snake near the Shiva Linga because of its yellow color and its forked tongue constantly flickered in and out. Lalita gave a loud howl and ran towards her home. The palu of her saree slid down from her head and the puja thali along with its contents slipped from her hand. She bolted the door of her house and even when Brajabandhu returned from office she was murmuring“snake, snake” still shaking in fright.
She regained her composure after she was offered water to drink. She again said,” I had warned you, Nagin will keep her grudge, come let’s leave this house, do some puja, please do something”. Then she started crying. That night in her dreams, she saw the Nagin saying” just like me, you too will become a widow”.
Next day she refused to budge and announced, “We will not stay here anymore. None of my children and relatives stay nearby, if something happens what will I do? Ask for your transfer from here or I will leave for my mother’s place”.
Brajabandhu felt helpless. He was the station master of Dhenkanal station. He was all in all here. This was not a small station. It has a parcel office, a goods shed. He had made special request to get this lucrative posting just six months ago. Now again he has to concede defeat and move from here and that too for a snake.
Curbing his ego he pacified his wife saying, “Go and stay at Cuttack if you are feeling frightened to stay here. I will do something to get out of this problem”. Saying this he kissed her in front of his staff and fellow passengers while seeing her off to her mother’s place, Cuttack. He soon realized that he had not displayed such type of affection since a long time.
The house felt empty after her departure. His boldness started to show signs of ebbing. The rustling sound of breeze, the sound of nocturnal insects and reptiles on dried leaves at night made him feel frightened. Sleep eluded him for a long time. Early in the morning when finally he fell asleep, he dreamt that the same yellow cobra was teasing him moving its forked tongue in and out and saying, “You wanted to kill me, I am smarter than you. Now get prepared to die”.
Brajabandhu woke up in panic. He went to the saloon and shaved his head. In office he wore his cap so that no one could know that he had shaved his head but when he came home, he moved around displaying his shaved head.
That afternoon after lunch he was going to office. The parrots in the corn field in his campus started screeching. The crow started to caw loudly from the banyan tree. Brajabandhunstopped in his track. He realized that just like animals show signs of panic with their frightened sound and swift movement to signal the approaching tiger, the parrots and crow too were warning him about something.
He looked around intently. The cobra was hanging from the asbestos roof. Moving its tongue it seemed to say, “I can very well recognize you even in your changed appearance. You cannot hide from me”.
Brajabandhu did not go to office that day and bolted his door and stayed at home. He said to himself, “I cannot handle this anymore. Lalita was right. He remembered the sloka that he had learnt at school. Though he had forgotten the exact wordings, he remembered its meaning. “If one has a snake in his house, death is inevitable”.
Next day Brajabandhu went to the Division Office at Jatni with his application for transfer. He waited in front of Divisional Operating Superintendent’s office room. Finally he was able to meet his senior officer at around four PM. His boss saw his application regarding request for transfer and then with a serious demeanor asked him the reason for such a request.
Brajabandhu did not know what to say and remained silent. Then again when his boss was persistent, he replied “Sahib, You may think I am foolish and laugh at me if I tell you the reason”.
Again his boss insisted to know the reason why he wanted a transfer within just six months of his posting.
Brajabandhu feebly replied “A cobra is residing in the campus of my house. It is constantly trying to attack me. It is appearing in my dream and I cannot sleep. The snake is after my life, Sahib. This is the reason why my wife has left me and moved to her mother’s place”.
The Divisional Operating Superintendent was listening to him with his eyes closed but one could know that he was enjoying what he was hearing. But still maintaining his grave demeanor replied, “Are you out of your mind. Just six months ago you had tried and got this posting. As per rule you cannot be transferred before four years. Don’t be ruled by a women’s brain. Are you the Station Master or Station Porter? Useless. Get out from here”. Saying this he pressed the calling bell and dismissed him. Brajabandhu returned home disheartened. He spent a few days in great distress and finally found an idea which could help him solve the problem. He brought a mongoose from the weekly bazaar. In order to tame it so that it does not go away, he fed him with opium every day. Gradually it became tamed and did not leave his premises even when his cage door was open. He became a butt of joke when he held the mongoose while going to sleep. But Brajabandhu had no other option. Mongoose is an arch enemy of snake. Probably this was the reason why the snake was not visible near his house. By then summer had come to an end and rains had come. His kitchen garden had ladies finger, ridge gourd, and other vegetables. The flowers of ridge gourd plant had blossomed throughout the fence. Brajabandhu was enjoying the sun and flowers and remembered a poem from his childhood at his village. He again missed his wife. She was not here to enjoy the beauty of nature but languishing in Cuttack. Suddenly he saw something dazzling like a cloth on the fence. He suddenly realized that it was the cobra. Immediately he rushed into the house, brought the mongoose and threw it near the fence saying, “Son, go and catch the snake’.
The mongoose gnawing its teeth and what he brought back was not the snake but its skin. The snake was shedding its skin and probably the mongoose helped him to de - skin. From a distance, the cobra was seen raising its hood, flicking its tongue and seemed to say, ‘This time none can save you”. After that it slithered swiftly into the nearby jungle.
The mongoose rushed to its master with the snake skin thinking it would be rewarded. Brajabandhu gave him a sound thrashing in anger. The mongoose raised its fore paws and with red eyes angrily seemed to be saying, “I am not your bonded laborer, if you kick me I will not stay here”. Then in one jump ran towards the jungle.
Brajabandhu went inside his house and sat down under the fan as he was sweating profusely. That night he was thinking, “Why do I fail in whatever I do? I did not get a Class 1 or Class 2 job as I had wished. My wife is short and fat like a baby elephant. I had wanted my son to be obedient towards us like Shravan Kumar, but after his marriage, he never bothered to think of us even.
He remembered his childhood love. He liked a girl living in his neighborhood called Urmila. He used to pluck and give her guava, berries etc. But people’s habits die hard. One day she came to steal the cucumber from his garden. That day he was waiting to catch her. Urmila crept in quietly and when he tried to catch her she had jumped over the fence. He caught her saree instead. He ran back home feeling quite embarrassed. He had felt ashamed of this incident and had kept it as his secret very close to heart. Today too he felt a similar sensation in his chest and felt like crying.
He again tried for his transfer by putting pressure through union leaders. The Divisional Operating Superintendent became furious when he came to know about it and rebuked him saying” You are putting pressure through union, I will suspend you”.
After this incident, nobody saw him at Denkanal Station. Not only was his house locked, his boundary gate too was locked. They could neither find him in his native village or in his in- laws place. Hearing this, his wife, son, daughter, son-in-law, brother and sister all came and searched for him. People were sent to different places to find him; his photo was published in newspaper. It seemed Brajabandhu was hiding himself like king Parikshit was hiding from Takshak snake in the Puranas.
Meanwhile Brajabandhu wandering aimlessly sat down tired and dozed off under a Banyan tree. In his light sleep he could hear two parrots chirping on the tree branch. It seemed these birds were telling him “the cobra has sent message that, it has forgiven you. It is now the mother of twenty baby snakes. It has stopped grieving its dead husband. It felt bad seeing your family members in grief not finding you anywhere. Please go back to your home and family”.
He got up from his sleep with a start and thought, “Was it another tactics of the cobra to lure me back and kill me?” He remembered the Sanskrit verse from Panchatantra,which he had read in high school. “No ,Gangadatta will never return to the well”.
Form far he could hear the sound of khanjani and faint recital of some Bhajans which he had heard in his childhood.He saw groups of people moving briskly in that direction. He too mingled with the crowd and moved along with them.
After a long time, some staff from Brajabandhu’s office found him at Jaronda Mela and informed his family. His family and some old colleagues boarded a matador and reached the site of the mela.
They saw him. His moustache and beard had grown and his hair was matted, disheveled and hanging down. He was pouring ghee and chanting with fifteen to twenty other devotees. He looked like a prehistoric man performing yagna to appease the Sun God. He was not looking at anyone and was heard chanting “Guru Alekh, Mahima rakh”. The crowd around was repeating after them aloud. His family members and office staff were too perplexed whether to laugh or cry seeing such a sight.
Glossary
Khudurukuni Puja – A pooja performed by girls to get a good husband.
Damru–An instrument played by snake charmers.
Nageswari–a raga
Mahuri–An instrument played by snake charmers.
Shravankumar – A puranic story on a faithful son.
Guru AlekhMahima rakha–A Chanting done by Mahima sect bhaktas.
Khanjani – A musical imstrument.
Krupasagar Sahoo is a leading name in contemporary Odia literature. With twelve collection of stories and six novels to his credit he has created a niche for himself in the world of Odia fiction. Many of his works have been translated in to English and other major Indian languages. Drawing upon his experience as a senior Railway officer, he has penned several memorable railway stories. He is recipient of several literary awards including Odisha Sahitya Academy award for his novel SESHA SARAT.
Unexpected,
Unwanted,
Never ever imagined
You will come
Take me in your grip,
All on a sudden
Without any notice.
Unprepared,
Very scared,
Reluctant to accept
But there was no choice.
I started making room
In my body
And in my mind
For accommodating you
So that I keep going,
Whatever way possible.
The world around me
Changed abruptly,
Love turned to sympathy
My strength became
My weakness
While I searched
For new support
To steer away
From the difficulties.
Dealing with you,
Was quite challenging
As there was no respite
From the routines
While balancing life
In new reality.
Slowly, out of necessity
I developed friendship
With the enemy
Who came as a guest
To ruin all my plans
And change
The course of my life.
It was not easy
Keeping track of time
Living every moment
As if , it is the last chance
To fulfill my dream.
But, I started enjoying
The new regime,
Bidding farewell
To the Sun in the evening
While welcoming
Each and every sunrise
With renewed spirit.
I slowed my breathing
For concentrating
On my surroundings
And looking inside
To know my real identity.
This is a new world,
So close,
Yet, it has been
Hidden from me.
How can I blame you,
My unwanted friend !
The universal enemy!
Who has helped me to realize
The meaning of living.
The time with you
Has been better spent
While I feel, I have wasted
My entire life
Doing nothing, worthwhile.
I wished to please
All I came across
Including my family,
How foolish of me
Chasing an impossible dream.
But for you
I would have died a fool
Thinking always that
I am successful
Making all happy
And truly grateful.
Life need not be selfish
Nor it can be lived alone,
Nevertheless,
Important to get away
From the illusion that
The boat of life
Sails in the company
Of each other.
It is indeed, a lonely path,
One has to negotiate
All the hurdles
Till he reaches
The ultimate destination
"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 three books on collections of poems in Odia i.e. “Ananta Sparsa”, “Lagna Deha” & “Niraba Pathika”, and two books on collection of English poems titled “The Mystic in the Land of Love” and “The Mystic is in 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.
Every person has a story to tell,
their birth different,
their life unalike,
their deaths, disparate.
Isn't it just so beautiful,
we live in the same world after all,
all connected by one thread of life,
but our version so diverse,
from the view of our neighbour's.
I look at the scene before me,
the sun setting over the horizon,
for you it's the beautiful hues,
for me, signifying the end, a completion.
The way a colour looks to you,
might not look the same to me,
Both our versions named blue,
but isn't that what we've learned to accept?
Every single second a lesson we learn
shaping our model of the world
two people never close to being the same
The sonder sinks into my beating heart
Everyone battling their own demons,
Walking down their own paths,
Crying tears of happiness and despair,
Can the ocean hold all of our emotions?
You're my aesthetic, girl,
You're the story behind,
All the poems I write,
All of them about you.
You're my aesthetic, girl,
Don't you leave me behind,
You're the world to my moon,
You're all I'm holding onto.
You're my aesthetic, girl,
All the blacks and whites,
That I paint across my canvas,
You're the stark contrasts.
You're my aesthetic, girl,
You're the one I dream of,
So if you change your shades,
Tell me, I'll paint them too.
You're my aesthetic, girl,
So don't be surprised if you,
Read a piece that reminds,
You of yourself, love...
Thryaksha Ashok Garla, an eighteen-year-old, has been writing since she was a little kid. She has a blog and an Instagram account with about 200 poems posted till date. She touches upon themes such as feminism, self-reliance, love and mostly writes blues. Her poems have been published in two issues of the 'Sparks' magazine, and in poetry anthologies such as ‘Efflorescence' of Chennai Poets’ Circle , 'The current', 'The Metverse Muse', 'Our Poetry Archive', 'Destine Literare', 'Untamed Thrills and Shrills', 'Float Poetry', and in the 'Setu e-magazine.' She won the first place in the poetry competition held by India Poetry Circle (2018) held in Odyssey. She's pursuing psychology. She's a voracious reader, a violinist, and dabbles in art. She can be reached at: thryaksha@gmail.com by e-mail, Instagram: @thryaksha_wordsmith and on her blog https://thryaksha.wordpress.com/.
Kanaka's Musings 5 : MOTHER VAMPIRE
Yes! She had been weaving and weaving tapestries of beautiful images of herself with her mother. But now everything had come to nought. She screamed. She felt her head was bursting. She had been very cautious but now she felt trapped. She felt as though she was being pulled into deep waters where there was no escape but only slow death of her dreams and wishes...
Christmas vacation would start on 20th of December, Denna had wanted so much to be with her mother now, she had decided to go home on the 19th. So many years they had been separated. The clash between her parents had worsened and they had decided to separate. The children went with their mother. They went to their grandma's house. The children could never get along with their maternal grandma's style of life. In their papa's home there was an order for everything. Mother never had to bother about them. The maid took care of them during the day and they ate delicious homemade fare. Here everything came from the hotel as her mother and grandma were too lazy to cook. The house itself was maintained very badly. Denna struggled to keep Deepak's and her room neat.
Denna was also given the charge of laundry by her grandmother, which she hated.
When it became too much for the children and peace was disrupted by the arguments of her mother and grandma they took a rented house near Denna's school. It was worse. The food for three times came from the nearby hotel. Her mother did nothing. Just went to work and came in the evening. The house was in disorder. Denna too never did anything including washing of clothes. The teachers started scolding the children for wearing dirty uniforms but their mother never bothered. Denna during weekends would wash their uniform but the clothes never became fresh or clean as she had never done them in her papa's house and never learned to do it properly in her grandmother's house.
Their mother worked in a reputed bank and held a good position which kept her totally busy. When finally their case came up in the family court, the children said they wanted to go with their father. Her mother was shocked and had told her papa then, as a parting shot, that she would get back her son Deepak. And she did. After five years of separation when Deepak was in the ninth standard he threw up a tantrum and could not be appeased in any way. He wanted to go back to his mother. And finally their mother was called and in the presence of an advocate and a witness a paper was drafted and signed and Deepak was handed over to his mother. Now she was alone with her father. He was so busy he hardly had time to listen to her or for that matter accomodate all her demands. She felt lonely and insecure once more. She was 20 years old and had just joined for Post graduation and was staying in the college convent but still insecurity haunted her.
Her papa, who was busy trying hard to catch back everything he had lost while looking after his children was happy to a certain extent. He had sacrificed his business to look after his children. Now everything seemed to be settled, his daughter was safe in the convent and his son was with his mother. So why should he worry? He was happily engaged in the construction work which had slackened in the past five years because he was struggling to look after the children. Luckily his partner being quite supportive his business did not collapse. She knew papa was happy with his work that was why he gave her a lot of freedom too, to make her own decisions.
So when Christmas approached he asked her about her plans. Usually she was the one who would chalk out plans for holidays. She told him she was busy with her assignments and would tell him when she was free. But she had already planned her holidays with her mother. He never knew that she had picked up her connections with her mother. So she did not tell him that she was going to her mother's place. She would not even take up his call in the last two days, afraid that she would spill it to him and that would make him sad and sometimes make him say a big
"No". She thought he would assume that she was busy with her various assignments that had to be completed before Christmas vacation. She decided to call him only after she reached her mother's place and then inform him.
As soon as she reached Coimbatore she caught an auto and went home. Her mother was waiting, a smile stretched across her face. Next to her stood Deepak grinning. She couldn't see her grandpa and grandma and thought they must be in their room enjoying siesta. After the first round of hugging and joyful exchanges she went to her room, which she had left when she was in her teens, while doing 10th standard. It was as if she had left only yesterday. She called her papa as she had planned and told him that, for a change she had gone to her mother's house as her mother had invited her for Christmas. There was dead silence on the other end. When the answer came it was a calm one,
"Ok, go ahead, have a nice time and enjoy yourself," she couldn't believe her ears. She thanked him profusely. Her guilty heart was at peace now.
Sitting on her cot she started reminiscing. When she was hardly ten her mother had been transferred to another state. Her Grandparents couldn't manage the boisterous children so when their mother came down after two months for a short visit they were full of complaints. She did not know what to do with them. She had come for two days' leave and had to get back to work. She couldn’t make any alternate arrangements. The two months with her parents had made them totally unruly. She too found them a nuisance with their sibling quarrels and bickerings. Maybe the children instinctively felt it. They were also at war with her and totally disobedient.
The decision was quick. She packed their clothes and got them into an auto and told them she was taking them to their father's house. They were thrilled Grandma would be happy to have them and in the large farm house they would be comfortable with their uncle, aunty and cousins. She dropped the children at the bottom of the drive at the gate and left. The children lugged their luggage and trudged up the drive to their grandmother's house. They were almost like unwanted kittens discarded outside the gates of their paternal grandma's house. Denna's
grandmother was delighted to see them. She cried when she saw them. They had been very small when they were taken away from their father's house. Now once more they were back.
After they settled down Denna told their grandma that they had come to stay there as their mother had been transferred to Delhi. Grandma immediately called her son and told him that his children had come back and were safe with them. Their papa came and took them home. The maid who was there to look after them when they were small still came daily to cook and clean the house for their papa. She was asked to stay for the whole day to cater to their needs and to look after them. Papa had not changed a bit. He was lavish in pampering and fulfilling all their demands as he used to. But as days went by he became very strict when it came down to things like manners, cleanliness, household chores and studies. He hated fibbing and blew his top if they lied. He was almost like a woman scolding and correcting them for little, little things. They started hating him. They felt their wild, unruly freedom was curtailed, though they were fed and clothed and pampered and treated with utmost care. Yet she couldn’t stand the sight of him and would answer back rudely for everything, which he ignored. His life mission was to make them better children who would be useful to home and society.
Once her aunt Kanaka found her crying. After consoling Denna, her aunt told her to think about her papa's plight. Kanaka then explained to her in a way the child brain could understand what her father was doing. He was multitasking, she explained which men are not, as a rule, good at. Men can do only one or two things at a time. Going out to work and bringing money to support their family is the norm for them. It is the mothers who look after their children. They have a watchful eye and would correct and mould them to become better human beings. And this hatred she feels for her father would be diverted to the mother if the mother was there. So being a mother to them and a father and at the same time running a flourishing construction unit was such a stress for him. Besides he was worried that if he did not correct them and teach them the duties of a girl or a boy he would be a failure as a single parent. That was why he was behind them like a woman telling them to do this or that as it should be done. Denna slowly softened as she started looking at him from that angle and became more pliable.
Yes, Denna thought, from cooking, to maintaining a house, to personal hygiene, were all taught by their father. Now she knew how to run a house efficiently and take care of herself and others. But somewhere while growing up in her insecurity she realised that she neither trusted her mother nor her father. They had been selfish in their own way and forgotten the two children in their fight. Living in a world of insecurity she learnt to fend for herself and use both of them till her wings grew strong to fly away. Her aunt Kanaka sensed this and had spoken about it to her. How she found it Denna hardly knew. Once she had told Denna that after she got a job and settled down completely she should look after her father and her mother who would be old and helpless by then. She should care for them. Yes she had to think about it… She happily postponed such thoughts for the present and started planning for the coming days. How she would spend her days with her mother and make the ten days an unforgettable joyful chapter in her life. She was so happy, getting back her mother.
Rest of the day flew by joyfully. She spent most of the time talking excitedly with Deepak catching up with all the news she had missed. Her grandmother looked weak and withdrawn. She had a nurse to look after her and so she was content. Grandpa too looked peaceful. The house was kept very neat and tidy, nothing was out of place. It was grandpa and Deepak who took care of the house and the garden. Her mother did the cooking, which really surprised her, a part time maid came to clean and tidy up. It all looked cozy and comfortable now. Atlast she was with her mother now nothing mattered. She felt her mother too had changed.
For the past five years when she had been with papa her mother had never spoken to her but she would speak to her brother. It had hurt her so much that she would cry in her sleep not being able to bear her mother' s indifference and hatred. So she kept her mother at bay even when she yearned for her mother's love. Then all of a sudden one evening after she joined for PG, while she was sitting in her room getting ready to do her assignments she got a call. It was a strange number. Yet she took it up. The hello at the other end sent a shiver down her spine.The voice was unmistakable. Why was mother calling? Her mind raced in fear. But it was a friendly call. Denna soon thawed down. Every evening she called and Denna awaited that call.
She had never seen this side of her mother. Her voice was so caring, oozing with love and her tinkling laughter was mesmerising, all lured her towards her mother. She even stopped calling her papa which had become a ritual for her. If he called she hurriedly cut down the phone on one pretext or another. Her heart yearned to be with her mother and enjoy that motherly love and warmth she had secretly longed for, as she grew up and had missed when she really needed it. At last she was with her mother. Yeah, she was going to enjoy every second of it. This state of euphoria was short lived.
The next day only she realised why her mother had been so loving towards her. The next morning as she was helping her mother in the kitchen her mother told her without mincing any words why she had invited her for Chrisrmas. With her heart racing, she listened to her ruthless explanations. Her dreams toppled like skittles, one after the other, when she realised why her mother really wanted her home. She needed a housekeeper to take charge of the house. Her grandmother was sick and was undergoing cancer treatment. Day by day she was becoming weaker. She couldn’t run the house anymore. Most of the time she was in bed. So a maid was hired to look after her. Now they needed one more to keep the house running. They couldn’t afford a full time house maid. It was for this, Denna was lured away from her college. Besides Denna wished only to be a school teacher and wanted to go for B.Ed. Once, in a moment of trusting love she had confided this desire to her mother. This seemed to be feasible for her mother now, Denna need not attend college anymore. She could stay there and run the house while she went back to work as her leave would come to an end soon.
She would be leaving for Delhi in a day or two and Denna had to take charge of the house. She could forget her studies for the time being. The paid seat which her father had got for her after much effort was discarded easily and the good results she got for the first semester was dismissed callously. If fortune favoured, her mother continued ruthlessly and if she got a transfer to her hometown she would think about sending her for B.Ed the coming year. Now she needed Denna to look after her parents and Deepak as a housekeeper and nothing else.
How easily Denna had fallen into the vampire trap!
Denna felt like screaming her head off! The richly woven tapestries with pictures trying to capture her mother' love for her and making up the time lost with her mother, scene after scene moulded in a huge frame and hung in the wall of her heart fell down and shattered into smithereens...
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
You walk away dragging along your cloak of fantasies
I, for one, once enclosed within
Thought of it as my sky and universe
Only to realize now
That it was just a thin sheet that flew over me, a hologram.
You walk away
My starlit sky vanishes
The cool breeze that played with my hair, turns into storm
The drizzles become heavy rain
I sink into the water
You shoot away like a comet, slowly fading off from my vicinity
The show has ended.
I am headed back to the kingdom of nothingness
The bellman rings his bell and announces "We welcome back another fool!"
I pass the gate of devastation,
Walk through the streets of dejection,
And lock myself up in my hut of isolation
Sharanya Bee, is a young poet from Trivandrum, who is presently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature in Kerala University. She also has a professional background of working as a Creative Intern in Advertising. She is passionate about Drawing and Creative Writing.
SOME, SOMETHINGS..
Dr. Molly Joseph M
Some, somethings
are like that..
slowly,
they waft in...
unbidden,
the soft wind
touching
caressing
and leaving..
the cuckoo's
cry
echoing
and fading
over
the distant
valleys
of deepening
silence...
yes, like
the unseen
finger's touch
over your
forehead
in that
delirious
night
of fretful
fever..
from
the one
wakeful
for you
throughout...
those days when
you toiled hard
with studies
at night
and dozed
over your
books,
the one hand
that took you
to bed
slowly,
wrapping you
up and
switching off
the light....
yes, they
come
and leave...
the dew drop
that carries
the night's
dreams ...
the bubbles
of studied
silence
over the
placid
lake....
only to
disappear
unawares...
Dr. Molly Joseph, (M.A., M.Phil., PGDTE, EFLU,Hyderabad) had her Doctorate in post war American poetry. She retired as the H.O.D., Department of English, St.Xavier's College, Aluva, Kerala, and now works as Professor, Communicative English at FISAT, Kerala. She is an active member of GIEWEC (Guild of English writers Editors and Critics) She writes travelogues, poems and short stories. She has published five books of poems - Aching Melodies, December Dews, and Autumn Leaves, Myna's Musings and Firefly Flickers and a translation of a Malayalam novel Hidumbi. She is a poet columnist in Spill Words, the international Online Journal.
She has been awarded Pratibha Samarppanam by Kerala State Pensioners Union, Kala Prathibha by Chithrasala Film Society, Kerala and Prathibha Puraskaram by Aksharasthree, Malayalam group of poets, Kerala, in 2018. Dr.Molly Joseph has been conferred Poiesis Award of Honour as one of the International Juries in the international award ceremonies conducted by Poiesis Online.com at Bangalore on May 20th, 2018. Her two new books were released at the reputed KISTRECH international Festival of Poetry in Kenya conducted at KISII University by the Deputy Ambassador of Israel His Excellency Eyal David. Dr. Molly Joseph has been honoured at various literary fest held at Guntur, Amaravathi, Mumbai and Chennai. Her latest books of 2018 are “Pokkuveyil Vettangal” (Malayalam Poems), The Bird With Wings of Fire (English), It Rains (English).
I came from a faith,
Different,
Very little I knew
About this little boy blue.
So very sweet looked he,
Yet I wasn't fooled ;
I recognized him to be
As naughty as me.
They told me enchanting music he played,
"Like the pied piper?" I queried
"Somewhat", grinned the grandmother
Of my Gujrati friend..
And then one Rakhi,
My 'Bua'* arrived to tie that silken thread,
Of kinship on my dad's wrist;
My mother lavished her affection
On this 'sister in law's
From a different tradition..
A present she left for my mother,
A jewel box painted beautifully :
A clear blue lake with pink lotuses...
A carved, shallow boat peacefully floated unhurriedly..
A damsel's lovely hand
Playing in the water;
Her head rested in the lap,
Of a youth engrossed
In playing the flute;
It was my little boy blue,
All grownup and handsome!
The peacock feather he wore, was the same
And the half-closed eyes, too..
It was that moment
That I fell in love, with Love..
My pencils this spectacle drew,
That remains etched in my heart till this day..
The brother and the sister are long gone ..
The box rusted and was thrown away..
But see what remains !
A living fusion of traditions,
Of love beyond faiths and religions..
A simple gift, of love, true,
Turned me, like, Krisna, 'Blue'
*Bua - paternal aunt in hindi (father's sister). My dad had a dear gujrati friend, whose wife tied Rakhi to my dad every year and was subsequently my 'Bua'.
P.S. I will share my Krishna painting on WhatsApp since I'm unable to upload it here.
Ms. Kamar Sultana Sheik is a poet, writing mostly on themes of spirituality, mysticism and nature with a focus in Sufi Poetry. A post-graduate in Botany, she was educated at St. Aloysious Anglo-Indian School ( Presentation Convent, Vepery) and completed her degree from SIET womens' college, Chennai. Her professional career spanning 18 years has been in various organizations and Institutions including the IT sector. She is a self-styled life coach and has currently taken a break to focus on her writing full-time. Sultana has contributed to various anthologies and won several prizes in poetry contests. A green enthusiast, blogger and content-writer, Sultana calls herself a wordsmith. Sultana can be reached at : sultana_sheik@yahoo.co.in
Illustration by: Mukund Nair
I open the trapdoor
To my inner world,
Down the long flight of steps,
Undulating passages and chambers -
Some, cobwebbed and caked in dust
Some in ruins, with rubble piled high
Some, where the ghosts are kept at bay
Some, with a view
I search for the one, warm and cozy,
Longing to
Sink Into the softness of the wing chair
By the fireplace,
Have the plush rug caress my tired feet
And listen endlessly to the music within.
Is it just playing truant or
Lying wrecked
Beneath the ruins?
Radhika Nair, a computer science engineer, left her corporate career for delving within. She lives in Kochi and when she is not writing, she sings.
The rising sun shining gold
Carpeting the sky threefold
It's sparkle spreading on every household
Beautiful blooms of marigold
That every hand would love to hold
After plucking them from their moulds
In every garden at your threshold
As beautiful stories unfold
The morning sunshine has come
The air filled with the fragrance of cherry plum
Did you hear the sounds of the drum?
Oh! i see a ladybird on my thumb
Golden rays embellish the day bright
I can see a soaring kite
It's radiance doesn't discriminate
Every noch it stimulates
Giving options to liberate
As the sun sinks
Darkness begins
Stars shining silver
Hoping for a better tomorrow.. To Deliver
Like the streams of the river
Sheena Rath is a post graduate in Spanish Language from Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi, later on a Scholarship went for higher studies to the University of Valladolid Spain. A mother of an Autistic boy, ran a Special School by the name La Casa for 11 years for Autistic and underprivileged children. La Casa now is an outreach centre for social causes(special children, underprivileged children and families, women's health and hygiene, cancer patients, save environment) and charity work.
Sheena has received 2 Awards for her work with Autistic children on Teachers Day. An Artist, a writer, a social worker, a linguist and a singer (not by profession)
Life all around is and shall be beautiful.
Clear clean depolluted naturally simple
Not merely because we wistfully want it
But because deliberately we make it
Not just with resolute determined confidence
But with sensitive sensible competence.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Life is in the mind of the experiencer
Love for life shows up its beautiful side
Not to get deterred by its other side
Day dreams now turn into goals worthy
Sumptuous smiles replacing poverty
Aligned right to the cosmic rhythm
Moving forward steady calm and firm
Steady efforts however small or slow
Part of a taskforce or just solo
Deliberate focused action
Dreams now into achievement turn
Shall not get submerged into the ground
Of thoughtless insensitive ugly dumps around
Not made just to grow and decay helplessly
Shall live worthy of nature-gifted beauty
Pristine nature, phoenixes indestructible
Life all around is and shall be beautiful.
Padmini Janardhanan is an accredited rehabilitation psychologist, educational consultant, a corporate consultant for Learning and Development, and a counsellor, for career, personal and family disquiets.
Has been focussing on special education for children with learning difficulties on a one on one basis and as a school consultant for over 4 decades. The main thrust is on assessing the potential of the child and work out strategies and IEPs (Individual Educational Plans) and facilitating the implementation of the same to close the potential-performance gap while counselling the parents and the child to be reality oriented.
Has been using several techniques and strategies as suitable for the child concerned including, CBT, Hypnotherapy, client oriented counselling, and developing and deploying appropriate audio-visual / e-learning materials. Has recently added Mantra yoga to her repository of skills.
She strongly believes that literature shapes and influences all aspects of personality development and hence uses poetry, songs, wise quotations and stories extensively in counselling and training. She has published a few books including a compilation of slokas for children, less known avathars of Vishnu, The what and why of behaviour, and a Tamizh book 'Vaazhvuvallampera' (towards a fulfilling life) and other material for training purposes.
I’m the backbone of the nation
and a food bowl of any state;
Folks stare at me with a smile
as I welcome them with peace!
I am not comforted with tar road
but a wooden plank gives a way;
People don’t mind a pebbled path
and muddy spaces, that they walk!
I attract you with greenery around,
Any part of the earth paints green;
Neem, mango, and coconut trees
replace your air conditioned rooms!
The colourful shrine of temple top,
the different sounds of chirping birds,
and the fun filled hearts of tiny tots;
give you a thrilling mind and ecstasy!
A fresh water pond between roads
gives life to mankind and animals
The tidal waves gently come and go,
Kissing your face with cool breeze!
Cottage dwellers invite you with love
and affection, and their delicious food;
Their houses are small, but heart big
that makes you reside in their hearts!
Mrs. Setaluri Padmavathi, a postgraduate in English Literature with a B.Ed., has over three decades of experience in the field of education and held various positions. Writing has always been her passion that translates itself into poems of different genres, short stories and articles on a variety of themes and topics.
Her poems can be read on her blog setaluripadma.wordpress.com Padmavathi’s poems and other writes regularly appear on Muse India, Boloji.com and poemhunter.com
Wallowing in the depths of despair
Cocooned within a soul
That constantly seeks repair!
Like a baby in the womb
Only it’s not comforting
This darkness feels more like a tomb!
Scorched by the fires burning in this hell
Screaming in silent agony
I know my torture, no one can tell!
Piercing through this murkiness
I see a glimmer of light
And feel a loving, gentle caress!
Unwrapping, unravelling, blooming, free
The soul rejoices in the freedom
That this breaking out guarantees!
Floating on the wings of a dove
Finally washed off my sins
I step onto the pearly white
Welcomed by God’s unconditional love!
Liberated from the wickedness
Healed and forgiven
On my way to my Lord
On this stairway to heaven!
Neha Sarah is a Wild Child, a voracious reader with a wild imagination, who has always found beauty in the written word. By the grace of God, She is blessed with the talent to write her heart out and her poems reflect her thoughts, fears, triumphs and defeats.
Papa, you have to tell me how the rice tastes today, OK?
Rice? It should taste like any other day. Why should there be any change in a dish like rice? I looked quizzically at my daughter. Our family was just about to begin dinner at the table, me, my wife, my daughter and my son.
It should taste exotic, since it is me who has cooked it today, she looked proud. Radiating like she had completed a task of filling liquid oxygen into belly of the cryogenic rocket engine of a shuttle about to blast off to space. This was the first occasion she had ever done some cooking which landed on family dinner table.
Oh, in that case, let me taste. I almost took a spoonful of the rice but a high pitch voice cautioned me, “Freeze!!! Do not do that, let the food be served.” It was Soumya, my wife.
I shifted attention to my daughter. How come you did this very unlikely act of cooking whole pot of rice all of a sudden? Acquiring new skills during lock down? Or that online class was less inspiring than this new adventure trip into the kitchen?
Mummy was busy on rearranging the cupboard at the drawing room; I assured her that I will try my hand at this and she won’t be disillusioned. And papa! Believe me, I did it all by myself using my experience of observations of mummy cooking it a zillion times. Said my daughter.
Ah! Very good, this experience of yours will save you a lot of trouble one day. No experience of ours is in vain.
So that’s how the dinner time family chatter began that day.
You know, one day you will recall this day and thank yourself for trying this. Here, let me tell you a nice anecdote about it. I offered to tell my kids stories they always cherished.
My son who had his eyes riveted on his smart phone and one ear on the ongoing discussion quipped in “Didi, you have triggered papa to open his chest of those dusty, clichéd old stories. I have heard most of them not less than a dozen times. Papa, do us a favor, focus on the dish of hilsa fish you so relish. And the story can wait". My son opened the lid of casserole containing steaming hot hilsa fish curry and the aroma filled the air. My attention was on the curry but my intention was to make best use of occasion to tell a story about how seemingly insignificant experience of today turns out to be a big asset of experience at a later day.
I used the serving spoon to help everyone with pieces of fish taking care not to spill the gravy on the table.
Ok, I promise not to use my old stock and draw from my fresh stock of stories of your generation. Both the son and daughter looked at me.
My wife who was all along bringing in various dishes to the table and arranging them finally settled and started serving us the food. She was not happy over a session of sermon over a course of meal.
See, stop that sermon of yours at the dinner table. Either do justice to the food or the topic. Both cannot and should not be mixed.
But that was how my family had dinner always. Unending chatter of one topic over another till we exhausted the food and sometimes we carried on the discussion much after we had finished our food or until one of the phones rang, the maid came or someone called at the door.
So what's that new story from your stable papa? My daughter was little impatient to hear it.
Ok, let me first taste the rice cooked by you.
OK OK It is exotic. Better than the hilsa curry I hope. I tried to boost her morale.
Papa, you should be honest and dispassionate when giving your comment, she said, though it was quite visible that she loved my compliments.
Am I not doing that? Just mix the hilsa gravy with rice and put it in your mouth. You will know what I mean.
Well then, come to the point papa, what is the brand new story then?
Were you not (munch-munch) trying out new fonts to spice (munch-munch) up your power point presentations yesterday? I managed to speak while munching at a mouthful of rice liberally mixed with hilsa fish gravy with a chilli squeezed for extra taste. I took care not to let the divine taste distract my mind from the task at hand. Err, at back of mind.
So !!! Came the questioning look from my daughter.
The fonts are called true type fonts. It was not always so with computer printing. For a long time the print outs from computers were merely obtained by arranging a matrix of dots. Till Steve Jobs came up with the true type fonts that came in so many styles and were scalable. Steve credited this innovation of him to his past experience of learning calligraphy at a long past when he had no specific plans for future and was learning calligraphy to explore possibility of radically changing the desk top publishing.
I know that, for that matter there’s no one who does not know that. Came the caustic remark from my teenage son who was quick to let his opinion known especially in a caustic tone.
Wait, wait, I am not finished yet. I will top it off with a personal story of mine. I had to quickly add this to save my reputation of original story teller which I found was at stake.
By now we had finished with the food and instead of leaving the dinner table we all were sitting glued to the chair. The Kids felt that their father was in mood for a lengthy session of his story telling.
I got my first job at the coal town of Talcher long back, when I just was out of college. The construction firm I was engaged in was doing the ground work of a “merry go round rail lines” for the coal company. As an apprentice engineer it was my duty to collect the various samples from site and get them tested at a nearby lab of an engineering college. I was given a jeep with which I made trips almost on a daily basis between the site and the college lab. Jeeten, the driver of the Jeep was a Bihari man in his late fifties and soon we developed good rapport. As a young man I always longed to learn to drive and soon Jeeten could fathom my desire and happily started giving me hands on lessons in driving. The official trips became pleasure trips and soon I swapped my role with that of Jeeten as I took the driver’s seat and he the rider. He became so confident on my new found skills that he could actually focus on elaborate ritual of rubbing pinches of guthka between both his palms and blowing away the waste products with a round of clapping, and put the finished product under his tongue. I was the happy sponsor of the sachets of Guthka as my “Guru Dakhina” and took his clapping as applause for my driving skills.
Before my driving skills matured to that of a formula one driver’s I had to relocate to Laxmipur, this time as site engineer of a bigger construction firm that was laying the rail lines between Koraput and Rayagada in the district of Korpaut. Koraput is the highlands of Odisha and right on top of Eastern Ghats mountain range at heights of a thousand meter above MSL. The roads passed through mountains winding through valleys and cliffs.
During my stay in Laxmipur, on one occasion, I had to travel to Koraput on a very short notice at late night. Koraput was a good 50KM away. The only way I could do so was by trucks plying on the route. Public transport was almost non-existent in those days. I posted myself at the local chowk waiting for approaching trucks moving in direction of Koraput. There were not many trucks that day and few did not stop even though I waived my hand asking them to stop. Soon I was joined by a similar passenger like me and I was happy to have a co-passenger as he was a local youth and that increased our chances of getting a lift by passing trucks. Finally after waiting for an eternity, we could see head lights of an approaching truck in the distance and braced ourselves to stop it. As the truck drew closer, my friend waived his hands frantically and almost stood in middle of the road. The truck did stop and my friend tried to climb up into the cabin, me in toe.
“Hey, driver, open the door, we have to go to Koraput” my friend shouted in Odia trying to be loud above the roar of the engine.
Loud came the reply “I will not take you” in chaste English.
Why, my friend demanded to know. He felt he was entitled to this privilege as he was from the locality. As was the practice in this place, trucks doubled up as passenger carriers and they never denied entertaining passengers wishing to take a ride.
Louder came the reply “Coz I don’t like your face!!!”.
With this the door was opened and the driver leaned over from his seat to look at us.
My friend was taken aback by this sudden confrontation that too in English and needed some time to respond. But by then propelled by the urgency of my situation I had climbed up the ladder and had pushed myself into the cabin. The driver pressed the accelerator and the truck leaped forward leaving my awe struck friend behind at the dark road. I had no time to call him, no time to close the door as I was pressed against the seat by the accelerating truck just like passengers are pressed against the back of the seat in an aircraft about to takeoff on the runway.
And then, I realized that I was inside a truck that was moving fast, or too fast on this narrow winding bumpy mountain road. That I was the only other person in the truck apart from the driver. There was something else that was not right. Yes, the cabin was full of smell of alcohol. From the dim reflected light of the head lamps I saw the face of the driver, eyes half closed, sweating profusely, body barely erect at the seat. Oh God!!! Where did I land, I was inside a truck driven by a completely drunk man! I vainly searched for the possibility of another person who was shouting at my friend in chaste English “I don’t like your face”. There was none. So it meant this driver was shouting at us.
The driver must have been observing my plight and took pity on me. Looking at me he said in English:
Do not be scared. I am fully in control. You will reach Koraput in right time.
It was a bewildering moment for me; I was completely at loss to comprehend what situation I have landed in. The way the truck was swerving from left to right and right to left on the mountainous path was getting on my nerve. I thought maybe I was destined to die this way. There seems no way out for now.
Hey young man, where are you headed at this time of night? You do not seem to belong to this place? The driver looked at me questioningly.
I mumbled in halting English, I am new to this place. Just into my second week and that I was with one of the railway construction company.
Now, we were entering into a ghat section and I wished to tell him to slow down a bit so as to be within a safe speed limit. I tried to distract him by asking questions.
But you too seem not to belong to this place either, and you also do not fit into role of a driver of a truck. I preened intently at his face to know his reactions.
Ah!!! Call it destiny, call it bad luck, or call it Karma, I can’t help it. I Premnath Mishra from Rourkela am here as a prospector, to try my luck and turn the wheels of my fortune back to the glorious days I had. This time his response was in Odia, in an accent I was not too familiar with. But it gave me a little hope and put me in a slightly advantageous position to engage him in a conversation so that he remains alert and remains within a slow speed limit that was so crucial to remain alive. One wrong turn, one miss on brake pedal would toss our vehicle off the steep face of the hill.
An oncoming truck from opposite direction approached us and the headlight blinded us making our driver move to extreme of the road. He was cursing the other driver in choicest expletives. In the bright light I could see that he was dressed immaculately the shirt neatly tucked just like corporate executive.
The oncoming truck passed us and darkness prevailed inside the cabin again. I threw my next question at him, Are you staying in Koraput ? Going back after a days work ?
Home? my people have disowned me. Rightly so. Who will wish to have a person like me to be around doing nothing and with all bad company, worse habits, drinking, smoking all day long. Now I only have one friend, my truck!!! He extended his arm and caressed the dash board like someone caresses pet animals. My truck has never and will never let me down.
Hey boy, will you please open that box and hand me down that ?
He motioned me to open the glove box and hand over some thing. I obliged by opening the box and found a bottle of liquor and before I could do anything, he goaded me to hand over the bottle to him. I had no choice but to hand him the bottle. Holding the steering at one hand he deftly unscrewed the cap and threw it away. With one eye on road and controlling the steering wheel, he craned his neck and poured the contents of the bottle and emptied half of the contents in successive gulps. His face was now glowing strangely and a sense of calmness was drawing upon him. He looked at me and offered the bottle.
Have a sip?
I panicked and folded my hands, shaking my head saying No, thank you.
He put the bottle on the seat in the space between him and me and tried to speed up by pressing on the accelerator.
Any little hope that was in me of a safe journey was removed from my mind. For a moment I thought of asking him to stop the truck and get down. But the idea of being stranded in middle of a dark highway in an alien land seemed more threatening than the known dangers of being in a truck driven by a drunken driver.
My mind started working on a safe exit from the situation. I somehow must handle this man from drinking any further and must keep him engaged in talks so that he does not doze off putting both of us in peril. I refused to reconcile to thought of dying in this remote corner in such an unearthly hour at the hands of such a drunkard.
Hey Sir, how come you speak so good English, even I can’t speak that good.
He looked at me with a glint of pride and pointed at the glove box. Please open that box again.
I opened it and scooped inside and out came two voluminous paper backs, one, “The Carpet Baggers” and the other “Gone With The Wind”.
Premnath, the drunk driver was watching me take the books out and spoke in a slurred manner: Hey boy, read one book a week and you are as good as the best. My father taught it to me, he was a voracious reader. I could not be half as worthy as he wished me to be. See, that’s the reason I am here in Koraput as a last ditch attempt to turn back the clocks of my fortune, or misfortune? He he he.
His talking was becoming incoherent, delivered with pauses, the driving erratic and I was again filled with a chilling fear because we were approaching the worst part of the ghat roads. In the blink of a second, faces of my father, mother and whole family flashed before me, as if they were mourning over news of my death in a desolate ghat road in a truck accident. I thought to myself, only a miracle can save me now from this. Oh god !!! Save me !!!
Then I caught him finish rest of the liquor from the bottle in one gulp and look at me, asking a question, do you know how to drive ?
Drive??? Yes, er No, Yes I can drive but not this monster of a truck. Why?
Here, hold the Steering wheels while I just straighten up a bit.
Saying this he just slumped on his seat the truck running fast in a deafening roar tearing through the dark night ahead. I had no time to brood, no time to decide. I had to grab the wheels and with all determination had to turn, twist, negotiate the turns coming one after another on the ghat roads. I thought to myself, so this is how my life was meant to end.
I had to forcibly kick him out of the driver’s seat and somehow managed to sit there myself. I forgot that I am at wheels of a truck far bigger than the small flimsy jeep that Jeeten so ardently taught me to drive. In a moment of staring at death face to face, my hands and legs just positioned themselves at the accelerator, brakes, clutch and I braced to move the monster of a truck within the roads that continuously changed. I was lucky that there was no head on traffic. I was lucky that there were no animals crossing the road. I had luck on so many counts that I forgot to count them. I just managed to slow down the truck and pullover to side of the road, and stop it. Fumbled for the ignition key and finally in a terrific roar the engine stopped. I was shaking uncontrollably at what I had just experienced. I thanked God and I thanked Jeeten who had saved me from an untimely death. Premnath was crouched between the door and the seat and snoring loudly. I put the ignition key deep inside my pocket and switched off the lights. Lest, the drunk man wakes up from his slumber and starts driving again. I was immediately engulfed with pitch darkness. It took me a while to become normal from the rush of adrenaline. Now I could hear the noise coming from the dark jungle around, that now seemed like music. I could see the stars twinkling in the sky, Ursa Major right in the horizon with the pole star blinking and assuring me that in times of danger, I could rely on God, the one and only absolute truth. I waited for the day to break and the sun to rise so that I could take another passing vehicle to Koraput.
And then papa, how did the story end? Asked both my kids.
Enough, you are sitting at the dinner table for too long a time, go and wash your hands. The maid will come any moment now to clean up, chided my wife.
Ok, that’s a long story. Since I am alive to tell you the tale, we will discuss that tomorrow.
Er.Sunil Kumar Biswal is a graduate Electrical Engineer and an entrepreneur. He is based in Sunabeda in Koraput District of Odisha. His other interests are HAM Radio (an active HAM with call sign VU2MBS) , Amateur Astronomy (he conducts sky watching programs for interested persons/groups) , Photography and a little bit of writing on diverse topics. He has a passion for communicating science to common man in a simple terms and often gives talks in Electronic media including All India Radio, Radio Koraput. He can be reached at sunilbiswal@hotmail.com
Fear of tricky questions
That needs to be answered
But ignoring them always
To avoid heart shattered
Fear of the mood swings
That needs to be conveyed
But not being confessed
To avoid getting messed
Fear of making the choice
That needs to be correct
But prioritizing myself
To avoid pain and protect
Snigdha Kacham has a passion for writing and puts her thoughts on the work as if those lines are confiscated from her life.She enjoys loitering to observe nature. Very imaginative with handful of dreams.
I don't talk but my lips part,
I close my eyes and make a wish.
My thoughts are really big
But the life is short and frail,
How do I go about fulfilling my dreams.
It will all be over before I bid adieu,
I must strive to reach out for the stars.
Seeing me in a turmoil,
My inner voice thus spake-
Live your dreams.
You needn't speak out your mind to others,
But they are just right to be put down on paper.
Let them freely flow on paper,
Take form of wonderful verses from your heart.
Affirm it strongly to yourself-
They are big enough to carve a niche for you.
So go ahead and pursue your endeavors
With a never give up attitude.
Sujatha Sairam is a free lance writer and blogger. She has great flair for writing and aspires to be a published author very soon. She's a winner of many online contests. Her short stories and poems are a part of more than a dozen anthologies. She's the Co-founder of an online counseling site titled sthreejeevan.com which works towards the empowerment of women. Her family and friends have been a great support in this pursuit of hers.
BRAVING A WALK OVER CAPILANO SUSPENSION BRIDGE
The Capilano Suspension Bridge, which is world’s longest foot bridge with a height of 230 ft. and a span of 450 ft. built across the Capilano Canyon of North Vancouever is indeed a man made wonder amidst wonders of nature in this city. But once I stepped onto the swaying planks of the wobbly bridge I had second thoughts on continuing my journey as my pulse started racing .Involuntarily my hand reached the cool steel cable for support and I felt confident of making it to the other end. Halfway through the bridge I saw people clustered in places and clicking away their digitals( I couldn’t manage to do so as balancing myself was itself a problem) .It was a photo spot and the view was simply marvellous ---clear water rushing far below, streams cascading down the canyon walls and gravity defying trees clinging to vertical rock. After a little climb over the gently sloping bridge to its far side we stepped into a forest of cedar( The First Nation’s people of British Columbia coast have called the cedar “tree of life”) ,Douglas fir and hemlock, the giant trees that began their climb toward the sky before Europeans set foot on North America.
Another adventure awaited us when we followed the winding paths and elevated timber frame boardwalks( which again reminded us of a similar experience in Cairns) which took us high above the forest floor for a squirrel’s eye view of a thriving coastal rain forest. This 650 foot long rainforest canopy walk is made up of a series of cable bridges suspended between platforms that reach as high as 12 stories (manmade wonders) and take you from the forest floor to the upper branches and from deep in the forest to the edge of the canyon and back again. It was totally unique and breathtakingly close encounter with the very heart of the forest in the midst of a city!
N. Meera Raghavendra Rao, a postgraduate in English literature, with a diploma in Journalism and Public Relations is a prolific writer having published more than 2000 contributions in various genres: interviews, humorous essays, travelogues, children’s stories, book reviews and letters to the editor in mainstream newspapers and magazines like The Hindu, Indian Express, Femina, Eve’s Weekly, Woman’s Era, Alive, Ability Foundation etc. Her poems have appeared in Anthologies. She particularly enjoys writing features revolving around life’s experiences and writing in a lighter vein, looking at the lighter side of life which makes us laugh at our own little foibles.
Interviews: Meera has interviewed several leading personalities over AIR and Television and was interviewed by a television channel and various mainstream newspapers and magazines. A write up about her appeared in Tiger Tales, an in house magazine of Tiger Airways ( jan -feb. issue 2012).
Travel: Meera travelled widely both in India and abroad.
Publication of Books: Meera has published ten books, both fiction and non-fiction so far which received a good press. She addressed students of Semester on Sea on a few occasions.
Meera’s husband, Dr. N. Raghavendra Rao writes for I GI GLOBAL , U.S.A.
Words do not
Break so soon
Do not
Dissolve so soon
Do not
Die so soon
They threw words at me
That do not break
Do not dissolve
Do not die
They threw words at me
In the midst of all
They threw words at me
Like alms to
A man on the street.
Time will come
When i shall repay
Each and every one
Much more than
What they gave me
But, tell me, O, tell me
Where will i ever throw
The words they have
Hurled at me?.....
Ravi Ranganathan is a retired banker turned poet settled in Chennai. He has to his credit three books of poems entitled “Lyrics of Life” and “Blade of green grass” and “Of Cloudless Climes”. He revels in writing his thought provoking short poems called ‘ Myku’. Loves to write on nature, Life and human mind. His poems are featured regularly in many anthologies. Has won many awards for his poetry including , Sahitya Gaurav award by Literati Cosmos Society, Mathura and Master of creative Impulse award by Philosophyque Poetica.
"I'm off duty," he seemed to say,
As he kicked up his heels and floated away;
The evening turns black-and-white into grey—
He loomed over me, he wavered, shrunk,
Then stretched over the road, to scare a passing drunk.
Then vanished utterly in the dark.
I wonder, does he become a nomad each night,
Untethered to me, free to take flight?
And does he become, on cloudy days,
Part of a giant gestalt haze:
Linking up with others of his shadow-kind—
Leaving us dull mortals behind?
Gita Bharath describes herself as a Tamilian brought up in the Northern parts of India. She currently lives in Chennai. After teaching middle school for 5 years she has put in 34 years in the banking service. She is a kolam & crossword aficionado. Her poems deal with everyday events from different perspectives. Her first book SVARA contains 300 thought provoking as well as humorous poems. Many of her poems have appeared in anthologies.
WORKING FROM HOME? THIS IS FOR YOU
Sanjit Singh
Covid-19 has brought the entire world to a standstill and has taken a huge toll on the normal functioning of society. As a result, many people have been forced to work from home in order to prevent the spread of the virus. While working from home saves a lot of time in commuting to the office, it has also taken a toll on employee productivity as many people are unable to balance between their work and family. If you are a working person and want to find ways of working efficiently from home, here are some techniques to improve your work productivity and overall well being.
Fix a proper place to work
When you’re working from home, ensure that you fix a particular place for working and work only in that place. Keep all your necessary office supplies nearby so that you don’t waste time looking for things when you really need them. Fixing a workstation at home will condition your mind to enter into work mode the minute you step into your “little office”.
It is also recommended that you put on your work clothes while working from home. This not only ensures that your appearance is presentable while attending meetings, but there is a psychological theory known as “enclothed cognition” which states that the clothes you wear have a direct impact on your attentiveness and work productivity.
The correct posture
If you are working on a computer/laptop, ensure that the screen is at your eye level so that your head, neck and spine come in a straight line. This position will help you avoid any strain on the neck and back. While working for long hours, it is completely natural to slouch after a while. If this happens, stand up and go for a small walk or do some stretching exercises. This will help improve blood circulation and prevent chronic ailments in the future.
Schedule your work
Schedule time periods when you are at work and focus solely on doing your work for a period of 30-40 minutes. Turn off the internet on your phone and keep it somewhere else so that you don’t get distracted when you’re working. This will ensure that you stay completely focused on your work so that you can complete your tasks in a short span of time. Communicate your work schedule to your family and ask them to respect it. It is equally important to schedule some family time as well so that you don’t miss out on spending time with your family members.
Take breaks and rejuvenate
Ensure that you take a short break every 45 minutes in order to rejuvenate yourself. This will enable you to relax your mind which increases work productivity. To ensure that you get back to work after your break, set an alarm and leave it at your workspace. That way, when you go to turn it off, you will automatically get back into work mode.
Keep in touch
Make an effort to maintain contact with your co-workers. This will help you keep track of pending work and co-ordinate your activities. Try to communicate via video calls rather than texts and hold a team meeting at least once a week. A conversation with some familiar faces will help you feel connected in a time of isolation.
Snack healthy when you’re working.
If you’re looking for something to munch on while you’re working, snack on whole foods that are rich in nutrients. (Such as nuts, fruits, vegetables, etc.) Try to avoid junk and heavy snacks as it will make you lethargic and unproductive. Never have your breakfast, lunch or dinner while working as your mealtime is a very sacred time that has to be spent with the family.
If you’re a bachelor living by yourself, you can do a video call with your family/friends if you feel lonely while having your meals. A good meal with some familiar faces will help you stop worrying about work and give you an enjoyable eating experience.
Stop your work at the end of the day.
Once your work schedule is over, close the laptop/computer, take a shower, change your clothes and enjoy the rest of the day. Just because you’re working from home, it doesn’t mean that you have to be at work 24/7. Rest and relaxation at the end of the day will keep you rejuvenated which will enable you to face the next day with ease.
Conclusion
These are some techniques that have helped me do my work efficiently. What are the techniques you follow to make your work-from-home experience productive? Would love to hear about it soon.
Sanjit Singh is pursuing B.Com (final year) in Loyola College, Chennai. His hobbies include juggling, origami, shuttle badminton, public speaking and writing. He has a blog on wordpress.com named "Sanjit Singh - Unconventional Wisdom." The aim of my blog is to present simple solutions to complicated problems that his generation faces.
Gandhijee’s experience of eating meat and then becoming a staunch vegetarian.
Priya Bharati
Dear readers,
I would like to share some experiences of Gandhijee on vegetarianism which he has shared in his autobiography. This is more for the youngsters who may not have read about his experiments with life.
Gandhiji belonged to Vaishnava community and is family was staunch vegetarian. He was very devoted to his parents and knew that they would be shocked to death if by any chance they would come to know that he had eaten meat. But he had been so much brain washed by a friend of his who had somehow convinced him that the English people were stronger and could rule us because they ate meat. Gandhijee’s mind was bent upon to this reform not because he would relish its taste but because he wanted to be strong and daring and wanted his countrymen also to be so and they would free India from British rule.
Gandhijee’s mind was in a confused state. On one hand he had this zeal for reform and on the other the shame of hiding like a thief to do this act. Finally one day he went with his friend near a river and saw meat for the first time. He could not relish it. The meat was like leather and he felt sick after having it. That night when he went to sleep, he felt as if a live goat was bleating in his stomach. He woke up every time but then tried to compose himself saying that meat eating was part of his duty towards his country.
Gandhijee’s friend was not a person to give up so easily. He prepared palatable dishes and was able to make Gandhi relish meat. This went on for a year. On the days Gandhi had such feasts with his friend, he would skip his meal at home telling his mother that he had no appetite to eat. This act of deceiving his parents was gnawing him from within. Therefore he took the decision not to eat meat till his parents were alive. It was a great sin to lie which he was doing by trying this food reform.
Before going to England Gandhijee had to make a promise to his mother. His mother hearing from someone that anybody going to England was bound to eat meat and drink liquor. Gandhijee made a vow in front of her and his family Guru not to touch meat, woman and liquor.
Gandhijee sailed to London but being too shy and tongue tied never took his meals at the table with others. He was hesitant to speak English or to use fork and knife and could not muster enough courage to ask if the food served had any meat. On way one English man befriended him and invited him to the table to have food with others. He advised him that England would be so cold that everybody tends to be meat eaters. Gandhijee told him about the vow he had taken to abstain meat eating. He also asked for a certificate of being a non-eater of meat which he readily got. He kept this certificate for some time but when he saw that people who were meat eaters too could get it, he lost all the charm of possessing it.
After reaching England, Gandhijee stayed with a friend who gladly accepted him and taught him English ways and manners. His food became a great problem. He could not relish bland food cooked and was too shy to ask for more pieces of bread. So mostly he remained half fed. His good friend got so disgusted with the state of things and said, “Had you been my brother, I would have sent you packing back. What is the value of a vow made before an illiterate mother who is ignorant about the conditions here? It is pure superstition to stick to such a promise. Your persistence will not help you here. You also confess that you liked and relished meat and took it where you could have avoided but here it is absolutely necessary. What a pity!” But, Gandhijee was adamant and stood firm on this. He said, “I know that you are my well-wisher and I cannot match you in an argument. So take me as a foolish and obstinate person but I cannot break my vow.”Gandhijee’s friend did not pursue the matter anymore. His only apprehension was that his friend would become weak without meat and not feel at home in England.
Gandhijee was staying with an Anglo-Indian family. Here too everything tasted insipid and he was also too shy to ask for more pieces of bread after being served once. By then Gandhi was more at home about the place. He wandered around in search of cheap vegetarian restaurants. At long last he found a vegetarian hotel of his choice in Farringdon Street. The sight of it filled him with joy just like a child finally getting hold of something that he longed for. Here he found a book “Salt’s Plea for Vegetarianism” and purchased it for a shilling which was for sale. This was the first full meal he ate with satisfaction. He was greatly impressed after reading this book. Till then he had been a vegetarian because of his vow but after reading it he became a vegetarian by choice. He read many more books on vegetarianism and after this dietetic experiments became an important part of his life.
Gandhi’s friend came to know about his obsession with vegetarianism and decided to make one last effort to change him. He invited Gandhi to a big restaurant and he knew modesty would forbid his friend to ask any question. The first course served was soup. Gandhijee dared not ask his friend in the midst of so many diners whether the soup was vegetarian or not. So he summoned the waiter. His friend enquired him about the reason and on finding out his intent said, “You are too clumsy to dine in a decent society. So it is better for you to go and dine somewhere else and wait for me outside.” Gandhijee was too happy to hear this. He went out. There was a vegetarian hotel close by but it was closed. Gandhijee did not mind being hungry and later accompanied his friend to the theatre. His friend did not say a word about it then and never raised this topic again. This was their last friendly tussle and Gandhijee respected him all the more because of the difference in their thoughts and action.
Gandhijee read the books on vegetarianism where writers had written on the religious, scientific, practical and medical aspects. Gandhijee found various types of vegetarians. Some considered flesh as non-vegetarian and took fish and egg. Some others took eggs only as they considered it to be a part of vegetarian food. For Gandhijee being vegetarian was absolutely to follow what it meant to his mother that is no meat, fish and eggs and not the one his wider experience, pride or better knowledge taught him to interpret.
Priyadarshana Bharati has a passion for writing articles, short stories and translation work but reading is her first love. Two of her translated books which have received wide acclaim are “Rail Romance, A Journey By Coromandel Express and Other Stories” and “Shades Of Love”. Next in line are “Kunti’s Will” and “ A Handful Of Dreams “. She works as a Consultant in the areas of Content Development, CSR Activities and Training & Development. She had a long career in the corporate sector and as a teacher. As a translator, she is known to retain the indigenous flavor of the original writing. She regularly publishes articles in her website - www.priyabharati.in - For any queries my contact: priya.bharati65@gmail.com Facebook - @authorpriyabharati.in
Down the memory lane I recollect marooned Kashmira and the Kashmir Valley.
It was October 2014. In September an unforeseen flood had devastated everything in Kashmir Valley. Road transport was cut off. Bus service was not resumed. I was waiting at Jammu bus terminal for a vehicle to go to Srinagar in the early morning. Amina, a Kashmiri lady had contacted a taxi driver and was waiting for a co-passenger to share her taxi fare. Her ailing mother was calling her to Srinagar, beauty of Kashmir. The Heaven on Earth was calling me and one Srinagar based taxi driver was waiting for passengers to return. Our urgency put us in the taxi (Alto car) that ran like a snake on the main road, mogul road via Rajouri, Poonch, Shopian, on the hills and valleys, meadows, cascading streams and rivers, under the apple trees full of ripe apples in the hamlets and villages.
On the way I was frightened to see a young man going on a horse with a gun on his shoulder. I presumed him to be an extremist and asked Amina to see him. But she remained silent.
At about 2 pm we stopped at a roadside eatery to satisfy our hunger. In the meantime the driver had gone outside. I asked Amina about my fear of the extremist and kidnapping since we were going in an unknown taxi with a stranger as a driver.
She replied- 'In Kashmir girls and ladies are held in high esteem. My sitting with you in this taxi will save you as my own man. To clear doubt, I have already told the driver that we are working at an office in New Delhi and we are friends. So he will not think of doing any harm to you.'
Now that my co-passenger Amina was my savior, my mood was jolly.
I asked her- 'Why are you and many Kashmiris so beautiful with your rosy cheeks and golden body? This is a rare and incredible colour combination. But this typical beauty is not seen anywhere else in the world except Kashmir. What is the secret behind it?’
She came closer and whispered in my ear - 'Thanks for appreciation. God has made us so and that's our identity. Ask God to reveal the secret'.
The sweet discussion continued during the journey. Finally it came to an end. We reached Srinagar in the evening that ended our short empathy and friendship. No light was there. No hotel to stay in and to fill my starving belly.
I called one auto-rickshaw driver. He told- ‘There is nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep in. Everything you are carrying will be stolen. Life is not safe. None to help you. Stranger! Please go back’.
But where to go? An unknown fear was killing me. My frightened legs reached the Dal Lake. The adjoining area including roads, streets, markets were washed away by the violent flood. The hotels were closed. Light had gone out. The sad plight of tourism was all-pervasive. No tourist was there except me.
But the flood was a boon in disguise to Dal Lake and adjoining garden on hillside. The wild weeds were swept away by strong current of flood water. Now its water was clean and transparent. The sun and moon could see their beautiful reflections on it. Different fascinating flowers were beginning to bloom on the hillside garden and Dal Lake. Still its natural beauty could not attract tourists due to fear of fury of floods.
In the bright darkness of the evening, a young lady with shining eyes and twinkling teeth, a 'Kashmir-ki-kali', named Kashmira called me- ‘Won’t you be my guest in my Shikara and boathouse which are deserted without tourists and waiting for you? The devastating flood has taken away everything from us including our life and living. Please be kind enough to help our earnings.’
Her fascinating and sorrowful appearance mesmerized me. Also I was badly in need of accommodation for my tired and exhausted body travelling on serpentine hilly roads for 10 hours from morning to evening. This was a strange coincidence of my pleasure and her profit. Without delay, I sat in her Shikara that moved. I saw the full moon in her smiling rosy face. Her Kashmiri folk song enchanted my heart while going in her Shikara. My spellbound body reached her boathouse in Dal Lake, 500 meters away from the shore. The room and dinner was no less than that of a star hotel. I stayed in her boathouse for four days.
The next dawn I went to the roof of the boathouse. The sweet chirping of birds was ringing in my ears and echoing in my heart. The reflection of rising Sun on Dal Lake with mushrooming, blooming flowers such as lotus and lily created a heavenly appearance. The beauty of sun-soaked- reddish-yellow Dal Lake and adjacent gardens on hillside was too fascinating to express in words.
In the morning Kashmira served me breakfast and kahwa tea, the taste of which was heavenly and beyond description.
During my short stay I roamed in Kashmir Valley from morning to evening by taxi. The beauty of Gulmarg, Sonmarg, Pahalgam enchanted my heart and soul. Delicious dinner was served to me by Kashmira.
And it was the last day of my Kashmir sojourn. In the dead of night & darkness, my body was collapsing hearing some bullet-sounds. I rushed into Kashmira's room in fear to save my life.
Kashmira with her usual smile told –‘Please get rid of fear. Nothing will happen. We are famous for our hospitality. Extremists know you are our source of income. They will never touch you, my guest, lest you may not come in fear of their brutality and we may lose our income. Be assured of complete safety. Their bullets may pierce into my body before touching you. You are safe in my room. Stay. No harm '.
In anger and anguish I told her – ‘The extremism and war-like situation have ravaged Kashmir and taken away so many lives'.
Kashmira replied sorrowfully – ‘Neither you, my guest and tourists at large nor we peaceful Kashmiri people are responsible for loss of peace and tranquility in Kashmir valley. Who will rectify the history? We and our Maharaja, Hari Singh agreed to remain in India for our own security, safety, protection and prosperity. But without our knowledge, awareness and willingness, parts of our beloved Kashmir was divided into three pieces: 55% in India, 30%in Pakistan, 15% in China now. For greed, selfishness, Pakistan and China are attacking or sending extremists in disguise. Our peace and tranquility are our day dreams. We are being killed and tortured. We are only cursing our fate. Who will save us and our Kashmir? We only want peace. Who will give it to us? When?'
Kashmira’s question will go on haunting me and the world at large till a peaceful solution is reached for the Kashmiri people, the whole of integrated Kashmir and Indian Subcontinent at large.
Sri Ashok Kumar Ray a retired official from Govt of Odisha, resides in Bhubaneswar. Currently he is busy fulfilling a lifetime desire of visiting as many countries as possible on the planet. He mostly writes travelogues on social media.
You cried the whole night
I can sense in depths of
night,
tear-drop stains on
the windowpane,
wet eyes
of street lamps, night sky
covered with a blanket of fog.
Fragile morning awakes soaked
in tears.
Cast away the crust
and behold
the satin- smooth night rocking
in the freckles of the waves,
restive soul of blue water, awhirl.
Curious feet descend empty stairs
into the heart of darkness.
Someday the tautness of my embrace
will slacken
lewd stars will wink mischievously
through the serrated dreams
and draw bloody lines on your bosom,
thighs.
How long can you walk
this long boulevard drunk on
the promised sweetness of
just a kiss ?
Abani Udgata ( b. 1956) completed Masters in Political Science from Utkal University in 1979. He joined SAIL as an Executive Trainee for two years. From SAIL he moved on to Reserve Bank of India in 1982. For nearly 34 years. he served in RBI in various capacities as a bank supervisor and regulator and retired as a Principal Chief General Manager in December 2016. During this period, inter alia, he also served as a Member Secretary to important Committees set up by RBI, represented the Bank in international fora, framed policies for bank regulations etc.
Though he had a lifelong passion for literature, post- retirement he has concentrated on writing poetry. He has been awarded Special Commendation Prizes twice in 2017 and 2019 by the Poetry Society of India in all India poetry competitions and the prize winning poems have been anthologised. At present, he is engaged in translating some satirical Odia poems into English.
If I rely on a flash
On my memory scroll
Masks concealed identity
To play somebody’s role
Masks now seal vulnerability
When I am 60
To snob a place on COVID roll.
Men used masks, in theaters
Often of Gods or demons
Men or women now use it
To ward off a pandemic
And the cobweb of infections.
Masked or unmasked,
Life stocks all premonitions
Hit at the futility galore
Pitfalls of existence, ego
And the elegy of positions.
Morning monosyllables of the crow
Mocks today our forced loneliness
Though in spirits subdued and low
The trickling agony in the face of a pandemic
Gradually turns to be a healthy flow.
The feeling of Macbeth; mourning
Speaking out in a deserted show
‘The scents of Arabia cannot dissolve
The smell of blood’... we know, we know.
Masked feelings, dearest though
In trying times gush forth
Like the holy Ganges in Gomukh
Unlocking the heart to barrenness
For a soothing touch, steady but slow.
Life of a river in forested rocky tracks
With surreptitious crawls and bends
Is like the woes of a rag picker
His rag bags, loads in mounting trends
So also the mankind in its journey
Trekking faith and truth as time intends.
Born on 14th August 1960, Shri Mishra is a post-graduate in English Literature and has a good number of published poems/articles both in Odiya and English. He was a regular contributor of articles and poems to the English daily, 'Sun Times' published from Bhubaneswar during '90s. As the associate editor of the Odiya literary magazine Sparsha, Mishra's poems, shared mostly now in his facebook account are liked by many.
Talent
a boon positive,
manifests on its own
when least expected, often
takes its rightful place
under the sun,
and if nurtured with loving care, shines resplendent.
Passion is it's friend,
goads to take risks
and perspire
when others sleep
in their velvet beds,
challenges harden them, make them warriors
in their battles
and they bleed, beaten and bruised.
If they don't quit
and persevere, win laurels.
Some others
don't see the light, '
tis not easy of course, and as misfortune gathers and the howling monsters
troll them, get disillusioned,
fall to evil habits and quit.
Family and friends mourn
for sometime
and deprived of blazing memories forget.
I tend to forget these days
frogs dancing in the pond after a shower of rains,
green fields running miles and miles,
mango tops and
moving hills as I cycled from school in dusk
raging storms that uprooted the trees and walls of thatched houses,
packed class rooms
where teachers taught us every thing from Sanskrit to science
and the stern headmaster who loved and advised.
Forget college classrooms where wild boys
threw kites at girls
which hit the Math teacher who frowned and didn't teach us for a year
and discussed the runs scored by Gavaskar and Lloyd and bowling skills of Bedi and Thomson.
Forget the wisdom of the history teacher who knew every thing,
Pali to Modern times and as he we went lyrical
the fellas teased as they didn't appreciate his exceptional ardour.
But can never forget,
my great guide and philosopher,
my life's polestar,
who taught us everything from Eliot to Sophocles, whose love and warmth I can never express, he carved my career.
Pradeep Rath, poet, dramatist and essayist was born on 20th March 1957 and educated at S. K. C. G. College, Paralakhemundi and Khallikote College, Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha. Author of ten books of drama, one book of poetry, and two books of criticism, Pradeep Rath was a bureaucrat and retired from IAS in 2017.He divides his time in reading, writing and travels.
I tortured Nature,
Messed with every creature..
Now it's nature's payback time...
To get back every dime..
Nature showed it's fury,
This time in a powerful and disastrous, but tiny way..
When Nature got wounded,
It got me grounded..
When I thought am superior and indispensable,
It made me inferior, vulnerable and susceptible..
Lessons learnt in the hardest way,
Should eternally stay…
But, the sooner I conquer the Nature again
I forget the misery and get ready to torture for my gain..
I never change or mend my way to protect nature.
So the poor Nature bounces back with an answer...
The cycle doesn't stop
Till, I keep the Nature on top...
When my mere existence trembles..
I understand the Nature's troubles
So...I pledge to stop torturing the Nature
And start nurturing Nature to build future…
P Suresh Kumar is a Post Graduate in Human Resources Management. Presently, associated with NALCO, a Central PSU as Manager(HRD). He just tries his hand at some writings that come across his mind. He doesn’t claim to be a prolific writer but beams with pride to be called a novice writer. He has got many unfinished articles/write ups in his kitty. He can be reached at ‘todearsuresh@gmail.com’
THE PALL-BEARERS
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
In these moments of grim foreboding
Little licks of fire
Try to ensnare the frightened snow flakes
In acts that are so final, so unforgiving.
The air is silent, hanging
Like a mournful song about to burst forth
It suddenly breaks into piercing cries
Ringing in the the pall bearers drawing closer.
Voices float in from distant horizons
Over desolate expanses of time
They come beating through the air,
Voices that once were and are no more.
As I wait for those who will carry me away
I move swiftly
Closing the doors one by one
Of rooms that I will not visit again.
(The story behind this poem: This Tuesday I visited my uncle to condole the death of my ninety-two year old aunt who passed away on 14th August. She had a fall in February and went into a coma. Miraculously, she came alive a week before her death, and started talking to everyone. She called her daughter-in-law and gave instructions about the red silk saree she had kept for her last journey, the bangles and ring that should remain on her, the small box of Kajal and sindoor she had tucked away in her personal trunk. She was so happy and proud that she would die a "Sadhabaa", a woman who predeceases her husband. After a couple of days she again slipped into a coma and breathed her last four days later. The idea of this poem came to my mind when I heard this - the idea of someone waiting for the approaching footsteps of the pall-bearers.)
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.
MY TWO FAVOURITE POEMS
(Two weeks back, I had presented the two poems I like the most in English literature and provided some explanation for the same. I had invited the readers to send to me their own choice of two of their favourite poems. A few contributors of LV have responded. I present them here. I am waiting for more to come. They will be published next week. Editor )
Table of Contents:
01 ) Hema Ravi
a) Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley
b) Leisure - W.H. Davies
02) Sujatha Sairam
a) Believe in yourself - Jillian. K. Hunt
b) Don't quit - John Greenleaf Whittier
03) Abani Udgata
a) Night of the Scorpion - Nissim Ezekiel
b) Hunger - Jayant Mahapatra
04) Sibu Kumar Das
a) The Noble Nature - Ben Jonson
b) Leisure - W.H.Davies
The following two poems are among my favourites, "Ozymandias" serves as a reminder that whatever goes up has to descend-Pride, Fame, Wealth.... Goodwill, Humility and Nobility of thought deed and action are remembered long after a person is gone. "Leisure" written by W. H. Davies talks about the joys of life that one misses in the humdrum of existence in a materialistic world. Both the poems are relevant in today's context, to let us ponder, introspect further..... to count the blessings, indulge in good to beget more good.
About P.B. Shelley - Born into a wealthy family in Sussex, England, Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from Oxford for writing The Necessity of Atheism. His radical lifestyle at times detracted from the appreciation of his work. He called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” In Shelley’s short life — he drowned while sailing at age 29 — he produced gorgeous lyrical poetry quintessential of the Romantic Era. (Source: Internet)
1) Ozymandias
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
About W.H. Davies - William Henry Davies was born in Newport, Wales.Most of his poems are about Nature or life on the road and exhibit a simple, earthly nature.
2) Leisure
- W.H. Davies
WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Hema Ravi is a freelance trainer for IELTS and Communicative English. Her poetic publications include haiku, tanka, free verse and metrical verses. Her write ups have been published in the Hindu, New Indian Express, Femina, Woman's Era, and several online and print journals; a few haiku and form poems have been prize winners. She is a permanent contributor to the 'Destine Literare' (Canada). She is the author of ‘Everyday English,’ ‘Write Right Handwriting Series1,2,3,’ co-author of Sing Along Indian Rhymes’ and ‘Everyday Hindi.’ Her "Everyday English with Hema," a series of English lessons are broadcast by the Kalpakkam Community Radio.
1 ) Believe in yourself by Jillian. K. Hunt
Set your standards high
You deserve the best.
Try for what you want
And never settle for less.
Believe in yourself
No matter what you choose.
Keep a winning attitude
And you can never loose.
Think about your destination
But don't worry if you stray.
Because the most important thing
Is what you've done along the way.
2 ) Don't quit by John Greenleaf Whittier
When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the roads you are trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is strange with its twists and turns
As everyone of us sometimes learns
And many a failure comes about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow-
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell just how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-
It's when things seem worst you must not quit.
These poems have boosted my morale in times of adversities. I have had many ups and downs in my life. I being a teacher often used to tell my students "Believe in yourself ",the way I did. In course of my teaching I came across these poems. I taught these poems with the indepth meaning relating it with my personal experiences. Children made it like an oath to repeat it in the beginning of the every class. I could find that so many of my students overcame their diffident attitude. I'm glad I could transform others' lives. These poems are close to my heart.
Sujatha Sairam is a free lance writer and blogger. She has great flair for writing and aspires to be a published author very soon. She's a winner of many online contests. Her short stories and poems are a part of more than a dozen anthologies. She's the Co-founder of an online counseling site titled sthreejeevan.com which works towards the empowerment of women. Her family and friends have been a great support in this pursuit of hers.
The task of zeroing on only two out of innumerable poems one may have read, is like taking on a project which, by definition, will remain incomplete. Though iconic poems of Eliot, Auden, Yeats flashed through the mind, I decided to choose poems by two Indian poets writing in English, Nissim Ezekiel and Jayant Mahapatra.
Ezekiel’s poem read in school text books is fused with a typicall earthiness with which you identify easily. Written in the 1950s, it captures an Indian-ness, talking about beliefs, superstitions and life set in Indian milieu.
1) Night of the Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison - flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room -
he risked the rain again.
The peasants came like swarms of flies
and buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse the Evil One.
With candles and with lanterns
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-baked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked their tongues.
With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother's blood,
they said.
May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain.
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and they sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours,
more insects, and the endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through,
groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, rationalist,
trying every curse and blessing,
powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.
He even poured a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.
After twenty hours
it lost its sting.
My mother only said
Thank God the scorpion picked on me
And spared my children.
Mahapatra’s “Hunger” considered a classic poem is noted for an unusual theme and brilliant imagery and word play the poet is admired for. It is a poignant exploration of poverty, sexuality and hunger. What lingers on in memory and returns again and again is the expression of the barebones of human predicament through words such as “ white bones thrash his eyes”, “ ..hut opened like a wound”, “ burning the house I lived in”, “ palm fronds scratched..” etc.
2) Hunger by Jayant Mahapatra
It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.
I followed him across the sprawling sands,
my mind thumping in the flesh’s sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas.
In the flickering dark his hut opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.
I heard him say: My daughter, she’s just turned fifteen…
Feel her. I’ll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father’s exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside.
Abani Udgata ( b. 1956) completed Masters in Political Science from Utkal University in 1979. He joined SAIL as an Executive Trainee for two years. From SAIL he moved on to Reserve Bank of India in 1982. For nearly 34 years. he served in RBI in various capacities as a bank supervisor and regulator and retired as a Principal Chief General Manager in December 2016. During this period, inter alia, he also served as a Member Secretary to important Committees set up by RBI, represented the Bank in international fora, framed policies for bank regulations etc.
Though he had a lifelong passion for literature, post- retirement he has concentrated on writing poetry. He has been awarded Special Commendation Prizes twice in 2017 and 2019 by the Poetry Society of India in all India poetry competitions and the prize winning poems have been anthologised. At present, he is engaged in translating some satirical Odia poems into English.
1) The Noble Nature by Ben Jonson
"It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night -
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be."
Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was a poet and playwright of eminence of his time, the time of Shakespeare too. This poem which celebrates the beauty of life though transient and sings for the splendour and not the elongated span of life is not only one of my favourite poem but also of countless lovers of English poetry.
2) Leisure by W.H.Davies
"What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this is, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare."
William Henry Davies (1871-1940) was a popular poet of his time. The beauty of the poem is that the poet laments that the small things of nature are missed because of the business of life and yet the poet has yet time at his disposal to describe those little slices of happiness that we might miss!
Sibu Kumar Das has a post graduate degree in English Literature from Utkal University (1976-78) and after a few years' teaching job in degree colleges in Odisha, joined a Public Sector Bank in 1983 and remained a career banker till retirement in 2016 as head of one of its training establishments. Occasional writings have been published in Odia newspapers and journals.
BOOK REVIEW
The Protagonist
JAISIMHA M.L.
Notion Press
As a reviewer of books for “The Hindu” almost over three decades, it is the first time I have had an opportunity to review an autobiography, where the author relates how he conquered two maladies, one inflicted in the prime of his life and the other due to the consequences of medication for the first.
This candid account of his life filled with challenges he faced career wise and health wise narrated in 11 chapters in lucid style is gripping as well as exciting for its contents. In the first six chapters he talks about his early life, his hobbies his aspirations and failures (his priorities were joining the Army and Medical profession) and how he landed in Sales which he realized was where his heart belonged. ‘Once a salesman is always a salesman’ is his refrain
The subsequent chapters: Travels and Travails, Discipline is Top priority and Illness to Wellness deal with the recurring health issues which had become an unwanted companion to him during his official travels leaving him at the end of the tether but how he bounced back with renewed vigour bring goose pimples to the reader.
This book comprising a large number of Endearing Endorsements from the author’s family, his doctors and friends bring out the author’s persona in full.
The last chapter is again something unusual where Jaisimha has a dialogue with his previous heart and the new heart that has taken its place.
It is said one cannot judge a book by its cover, but the suave dignified ‘Protagonist’ (the apt title of the book) in blue suit smiling at you certainly merits compulsive reading for its captivating contents which are sure to enrich one’s knowledge regarding the 'Emperor of all Maladies' (the title of the biography by Dr.Siddhartha Mukherjee) and its repercussions on one's Heart..
N.Meera Raghavendra Rao
Author & Blogger
N. Meera Raghavendra Rao, a postgraduate in English literature, with a diploma in Journalism and Public Relations is a prolific writer having published more than 2000 contributions in various genres: interviews, humorous essays, travelogues, children’s stories, book reviews and letters to the editor in mainstream newspapers and magazines like The Hindu, Indian Express, Femina, Eve’s Weekly, Woman’s Era, Alive, Ability Foundation etc. Her poems have appeared in Anthologies. She particularly enjoys writing features revolving around life’s experiences and writing in a lighter vein, looking at the lighter side of life which makes us laugh at our own little foibles.
Interviews: Meera has interviewed several leading personalities over AIR and Television and was interviewed by a television channel and various mainstream newspapers and magazines. A write up about her appeared in Tiger Tales, an in house magazine of Tiger Airways ( jan -feb. issue 2012).
Travel: Meera travelled widely both in India and abroad.
Publication of Books: Meera has published ten books, both fiction and non-fiction so far which received a good press. She addressed students of Semester on Sea on a few occasions.
Meera’s husband, Dr. N. Raghavendra Rao writes for I GI GLOBAL , U.S.A.
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