Literary Vibes - Edition CVII (30-July-2021) - ARTICLES
Title : Summer (Picture courtesy Ms. Latha Prem Sakya)
Table of Contents :: ARTICLES
01) Geetha Nair
FALL FROM GRACE
02) Sreekumar K
TRADITION AND CULTURE
ON RENT
03) Anil K Upadhyay
DILIP KUMAR THE LEGEND WILL LIVE FOREVER
04) Ishwar Pati
THE CROOKED COOK
05) Dr Ajay Upadhyaya
THE BIG PICTURE
DOCTORS’ DAY
06) Dr. Ramesh Chandra Panda
GLIMPSES OF OUR HERITAGE :: SIGNIFICANCE OF SHIVASTAKAM AND LINGASTAKAM
07) P.K. Dash
THE INQUISITION
08) Prof.(Dr.) Gangadhar Sahoo
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT – A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
09) Krupasagar Sahoo
THE HUNTER'S LAUGH
10) Sudha Dixit
THE PEACOCK
11) Dr. Prasanna Sahoo
LIGHT AND SHADOW
12) Debjit Rath
THE JINXED NAVARATNA
13) Prof. Dr. Sidhartha Das
BAJU SASTRA , SALAMI SASTRA
14) Meera Raghavendra Rao
MY MOTHER-IN-LAW AT THE FIVESTAR HOTEL
15) Seema Jain
BED NO. THREE
16) S. Ritika
TERROR TERRACE
17) Gourang Charan Roul
A TRIBUTE TO JIM: A LOYAL PET FOR 16 YEARS
18) Satish Pashine
CELEBRATE LIFE EVERYDAY
19) Sundar Rajan
LOCKDOWN UNLOCKED
20) Sheena Rath
LORD JAGANNATH
21) Setaluri Padmavathi
COMPATABILITY
22) Dr. Viyatprajna Acharya
DIGITAL VS REAL CLASSROOM
23) Vishakha Devi V.
SPIEGELSCHRIFT
24) Mr Nitish Nivedan Barik
A LEAF FROM HISTORY : ABOUT A YOUNG MAN WHO MADE HISTORY - Marvan Attapatu.
25) Mrutyunjay Sarangi
A NIGHT OF ENDLESS GIGGLES
A RED SWEATER FOR URMI BISWAS
BOOK REVIEW ::
01) Prabhanjan K. Mishra
‘ANTHROPOCENE: CLIMATE CHANGE, CONTAGION, CONSOLATION’ by SUDEEP SEN
02) Mrutyunjay Sarangi
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO AN OUTSTANDING BOOK - MANTRA YOGA BY MR. JAIRAM SESHADRI
When the bell pealed, the girls would jump to their feet and rattle off the evening prayer. Then, Neha Teacher would smile and leave the class amidst a din of thank-yous. Almost at once, Nina would pick up her heavy bag and rush to the door. Nina was wiry but strong and agile and made it a point to try to leave the room first. Martina sometimes beat her to it but she did not mind that so much. Martina was nice. Nina liked her coconut-shaped head, short, spiky hair and big brown eyes. Martina was strong too; she liked to have arm-wrestling bouts in free hours to show off her strength to the rest of the class. They had become firm friends after Martina helped Nina to attack and drive away the school bully, a massive 12 year-old, who was harassing a fresher in the dining area.
Theirs was a small class of just twenty students. The school was an exclusive one that had moulded a whole generation of women. Nina's father reminded her, whenever he was home, how fortunate she was to be studying in such a fine school.
When Nina reached the gates dragging her bag along, Kishen bhayya would be waiting there. He was always punctual. He would shoulder the bag and they would take the paved road that led to her home. The road wound along a quiet hillside. At the second bend, the quarry would shimmer into sight. She always stopped awhile there to gaze down. The disused quarry was now a deep pond. The heavenly blue water gleaming far below was like the painting they had in the library at school, the one of the Virgin Mary rising into the sky, her arms held out in blessing. When a breeze blew, the water would ripple like the robes of the Blessed Virgin might have done. A lone tree grew at the edge of the sheer slope that ended in the deep quarry. Sometimes a kingfisher would be perched on this tree that blossomed in bright yellow on certain days. The first time she had seen the flowers, she had found them so enchanting that she had stood there for a long time, gazing upwards in awe.
Today, the branches were laden with flowers."Pluck me a flower!" she said to Kishan bhayya. He set down the bag upon a stone where it rested precariously. Then he took two careful steps towards the edge of the slope, reached up and bent a bough. From it he plucked a golden beauty. The child reached out to take it from him." Careful!" warned Bhayya, "keep away from the edge."
She held the flower to her nose. It gave out a scent like the one wafting from the heart-shaped bottle that Mamma used on special occasions. Delicious!
They were home in another five minutes. It was a Tuesday; Mummy was at the Ladies' Club. Aayi , the cook, was getting ready to leave. She smiled her toothy smile at the little girl and pointing to the dining table, said, "Your favourite snacks and Horlicks, ready."
As the child was taking off her maroon pinafore and cream shirt, Kishen bhayya peeped in. " I have some digging to do ; just call if you need anything," he said.
After Nina had washed and slipped on a frock, she tucked Guddi under an arm, picked up the tray from the dining table and walked carefully to the garden seat. Kishen bhayya was digging around the rose bushes. Clods of earth rose in the air and fell back to the ground as showers of brown powder. One clod, however, landed on his head; Nina laughed out loud at this. Kishen bhayya shook off the bits and came up to her. In a mock-menacing manner, he took her by the shoulders and shook her. "I shall eat you if you laugh at me again!" he growled. His hands landed on Guddi who was on Nina's lap. They played with the doll. "Your dirty hands; you've stained my frock and my gudiya!" Nina cried out, stomping her little feet. Kishen bhayya gave her a namaste of apology. Then he went back to his digging.
Nina did not care for several of Kishen bhayya's games though she enjoyed listening to his tales of his own little daughter, of the tickling and kissing games he demonstrated that his daughter enjoyed playing with him. Her name was Neha and she was a big girl now; Kishen bhayya described how big she had grown when he had last gone home on a visit.
On Wednesday morning , on the way to school , she saw that a hundred flowers seemed to have blossomed on her tree!" I want dozens!" she cried out in delight.
"In the evening" he replied. "I shall try my best."
In the evening, as they neared the quarry, Kishen bhayya asked, "Don't you want those dozens? Why don't you pluck them today? Don't worry; you will be safe." He held her up by the waist and she raised her arms. She could just reach a huge bunch of flowers. She broke the slender branch and waved her trophy. He slid her down slowly, saying "I am a slide; let's play sliding when we get home." Nina said, "No; I want to play with Guddi and these flowers!" She held the golden flowers in both hands and hurried on ahead.
"Mummy!" she called out, "look what I got. Smell them."
Her mother lifted her head from the magazine she was absorbed in.
" Beautiful!" she exclaimed and buried her face in the flowers.
Then she went back to her magazine.
On Thursdays, they always had an hour of religious education. The students were divided religion-wise. Nina 's teacher was Sister Sofiya. Nina loved this sweet-faced, dreamy-eyed teacher who could weave bright pictures with words.
"Imagine a sparkling crystal vase. Without a flaw. Without a stain. Each of you is such a vase now. Your bodies are sacred receptacles meant for childbirth... .
Nina imagined a tiny baby like a Thumbelina, a fairy, or a cherub inside her. How she longed to grow up so that she could have her own living walkie-talkie Guddi !
"It is your duty to God to keep your body pure, untouched... .
She who disobeys will be punished by God. She will fall from grace. She will not be able to create or bring up a healthy, normal child. Never allow anyone to touch you in certain places. My dear girls, all life is holy... ." Sister continued but Nina no longer heard her words
The new knowledge that had flowed so sweetly from Sister Sofiya's cool mouth had seared her.
That evening, she hurried ahead of Kishan bhayya, not even stopping to gaze at her tree.
Mummy was talking to Daddy in the phone room. Nina waited until she had replaced the receiver in its cradle. "Nina, Daddy will be home next week," Mummy said with a happy smile in her voice.
But Nina had an important question to ask her. ""Mummy," she said, "Why didn't you make another baby ? You know how much I wanted a little brother or sister. Why didn't you ?"
Mummy was flustered. "My darling," she said, "why this question now?"
"I want to know," insisted the child. "Didn't God give you any more babies?"
"Nina, I wonder if you will understand... . I knew I could not have another healthy baby. There were complications when you were born. So we felt blessed that God had given us at least one. You." Mummy held out her arms to Nina but she moved back. Then she went to her room.
That night, Nina slept very little. She was a little feverish on Friday morning but insisted that she had to go to school as there was a painting competition that day.
"You are very quiet; you should've stayed home today," Kishen bhayya said, placing his broad hand on her forehead. She jerked her head away and walked on swiftly towards the school.
In the evening, a cool breeze had sprung up. Nina 's curls blew around her head. She shivered as they neared the quarry. The tranquil blue was shaken into demented pleats by the wind.
"Flowers," she commanded.
Bhayya placed her bag on the stone and moved to the edge. There were no flowers within easy reach as Nina had gathered them all the previous day.
"There; that bunch!" she cried out, pointing to one that grew a little higher, a little further away.
"That branch? Might be difficult. Let me give it a try... ."
As he stood on his toes, arms stretched upwards, Nina moved behind him. She pushed him with all the strength in her nine-year old body.
Kishen bhayya toppled. He seemed to hang in the air spread-eagled for a second. She saw his mouth opened wide in terror. His scream disturbed the kingfisher that whirred away into the sky.
As he disappeared, she picked up her bag. When the splash reached her ears, she was already moving homewards.
Geetha Nair G. is an award-winning author of two collections of poetry: Shored Fragments and Drawing Flame. Her work has been reviewed favourably in The Journal of the Poetry Society (India) and other notable literary periodicals. Her most recent publication is a collection of short stories titled Wine, Woman and Wrong. All the thirty three stories in this collection were written for,and first appeared in Literary Vibes.
Geetha Nair G. is a former Associate Professor of English, All Saints’ College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
A few kilometres from a school I was teaching was a village. The School itself was in a village, 17 kilometres from the town, but this other village was even remote and hardly developed. When you stood anywhere in that village, you felt like standing in a low budget movie set of Mahabharat. Secretly, the villagers practised untouchability I was told.
But the dosa you get there might make you pardon the villagers for all that. In groups or alone I frequented the village, not just for the delicious dosa, but also for the kind of ambience the village had. It was like walking through a text book on Indus Valley Civilisation.
One thing I didn’t really like in that village was a tree. It even had a proper name, Ramulu, a common name among the villagers. It stood right in the middle of the road almost blocking it. You can easily take a scooter around it, but to take your car around it and get to the village, you had to be an expert driver or should have practised doing it at the cost of dents and scratches to your car.
I didn’t speak their language. Neither could I understand it. But I knew that my daughter who was only nine then was getting good at it.
She used to go play with the milkman’s son and the two daughter’s of our dometic help, Ramani. We were a little worried about it because she used to come home and ask question regarding adult life. One day, I discussed this with my wife and she said she was not worried about it since it cured my daughter of some elititsm which had crept into her from a city school. From her friends she had heard several fantastic stories about the village.
One day she sat near me and told me several of those stories she had heard. Among them was the story of Ramulu. She meant a man and not the tree.
Ramulu was a villager, an outcaste in his own village. He was accused of poaching, thieving and all that because nobody knew how he found his food. He never did n work other than sitting under balck currant trees guarding the fruit and even that was only seasonal. Now they pay five rupees for that. So, you can imagine what they would have paid for that service 20 years ago.
Before he was allowed a residence (actually a hut), he used to sleep under this tree in rain and shine. It was not very tall those days and its shade offered him good protection.
Eventually Ramulu was given a hut to stay in. It was no secret that the Panchayat Member built a toilet of his own from the money allocated. Ramulu moved over to this hut from under the tree and stayed there for long. In fact, he grew old there. On sultry afternoons, he could be seen sitting under this tree fanning himself.
Funding for a new road was allocated by the Panchayat and a wide mud road was planned. The road had to be built or cut where the tree was standing. Nobody had the heart to tell Ramulu that his tree was about to be felled. He heard about it only the day before the tree was to be cut. He was seen under the tree the whole day, his eyes flowing profusely.
That night he didn’t go back to his hut and slept under the tree.
He was found dead the next day.
The Panchayat decided not to cut the tree and manage somehow. Because of that a bus which came to the village only on market days had to be stopped much before the village. But everyone was willing to put up with it. The tree was named after him.
On special days, when people light holy lamps in their home, a lamp is placed under this tree also.
O, such a dear story. I kissed my daughter for telling me the same and asked her to go out and play. It is not good for small children to see adults in tears.
The dosa in the village tasted even more delicious from that day onward.
“It is like dying,” said Dr. Madhavan
“What?”
“This shifting,” he replied.
We were loading a truck, trying to help him shift his residence. He was not a real doctor, but that was how he was known among us. He had learned a little bit of ayurveda and homeopathy as a hobby and gave medicines only to those who were very close to him. So far, safe.
It was quite a usual thing for him to shift residence. He never had a house of his own and never thought of owning one.
“Anyway, we are all on rent here?” He had told me once
“Meaning?”
“This earth, this body, this everything.”
I didn’t want to continue the conversation. I had get back home to watch a football match.
We all liked him. He was good company, a social drinker and smoked only occassionally. No health issues, so no wailing to listen to.
He was not living with his wife anymore but there was no bad feelings between them. They had no children, but he was only happy about it. In fact he was more happy about whatever he didn’t have than what he had. He lived his philosophy of life.
We also benefited from his ideas, though we were not able to follow them or put them into practice. We listened to all that when we were upset or worried.
When we were not sad, we went to him to listen to his singing. He was a good singer and entertained us with all kinds of songs, right from Tagore’s Gitanjali to the fast numbers in Hindi movies. How we enjoyed them!
And yesterday, he breathed his last.
The funeral was attended by so many in-spite of the restrictions due to corona. We didn’t know he had so many friends. Maybe he had kept in touch with them via e-mail or something.
After the funeral we had to empty the house and move his furniture and everything to his wife’s place.
While we were loading the truck, a friend remarked.
“This is like shifting houses.”
“What?”
He stared at me in surprise and said, “This death.”
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.
DILIP KUMAR THE LEGEND WILL LIVE FOREVER
A tribute to the last of the Great Trinity Dilip Kumar (11 December 1922 - 7 July 2021)
Dilip Kumar is no more with us. He was ninety-nine. He had been suffering from serious ailments for some years, and he had been in and out of hospital from time to time. The end had to come, yet the departure of the last of the Great Trinity, the other two being Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, jolts us that our link with the era of the greats is finally snapped. The lovable tramp and the urban gay Lothario had their own niche; they were also great film-makers. That made them Movie Mughals. Dilip Kumar did not officially venture into production and direction, but he was the undisputed Great Mughal of acting. He was the pioneer of Method Acting, before Hollywood actors like Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Rabert De Niro took to it. The internalisation of the character made him the Tragedy king after he played a series of sad roles, culminating with Dilip Kumar becoming Sarat Chandra’s Devdas. Pathos was never as heart-rending as Dilip Kumar singing on the screen, Mitwa laagi re ye kaisi anbujh aag.
Oh my love! What is this unrelenting fire singeing my heart!
You have not come
My restless heart, and restless eyes
Each silence tells me hundreds sad tales
I am left with tears and
All that was endearing is gone
Oh my love, Oh my love!
Mitwa laagi re ye kaisi anbujh aag by Talat Mahmood from Devdas (1955), lyrics Sahir Ludhiyanavi, music SD Burman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=218py1kN1AU
Getting into the skin of tragic characters film after film took a toll on his mental state. He had to consult a psychiatrist in London, who advised him to change tack. And he took to comic roles like fish to water. Dilip Kumar was the meek Ram and the flamboyant Shyam, which became a template for twins-separated-at-birth in Seeta Aur Geeta and Chaalbaaz – one sibling suffering all the indignities, unjust usurpation of her inheritance by cruel relatives; the other, growing into a free and wild spirit, swashbuckling and feisty, who swaps places in a mix up, and puts fear in the hearts of the crooked aunts and in-laws.
In this clip Shaym devours everything that is available in the restaurant and walks out with a swagger, without paying of course. The meek and hungry Ram had to first slink away from Waheeda Rehman because when sometime back when she along with her parents had visited his home with marriage proposal, his trembling hands had spilled the tea on her dress, and he could not stammer a word. After she was safely out of sight, he gingerly enters the restaurant for a bite, while Shyam is going out of the other door. The mayhem that follows is hilarious.
Dilip Kumar as Ram and Shyam in Ram Aur Shyam (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVYEC_6CXTg
Today every actor dances on the screen. In those days it was a rarity for mainstream actors. Shammi Kapoor became a sensation as the Elvis Presley of Bollywood. But when the song demanded, Dilip Kumar danced up a storm.
Nain lad jainhe to manwa ma kasak hoibe kari by Rafi from Ganga Jamuna (1961), lyrics Shakeel Badayuni, music Naushad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRlR86GzsfM
But the charmer Dilip Kumar was one of the greatest reel and real romantics. Ladies swooned over his hair style. He spoke his love with his eyes and a soft touch sent the damsels’ hearts aflutter with desire.
Nain mile nain huye baawre by Talat Mahmood and Lata Mangeshkar from Tarana (1951), lyrics Prem Dhawan, music Anil Biswas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSxhEFgOTXc
Tarana was the beginning of Dilip Kumar’s long romance with Madhubala in real life as well. In the film they finally unite, but with the villain around, who poisons the ears of the father and the villagers, there is heartbreak and separation in between. Dilip Kumar is even more economical and understated in this absolutely poignant duet of separation than when the lovers were together - Seene mein sulagate hain armaan, aankhon mein udaasi chhayi hai (Desire is searing my heart, but there is sadness in my eyes. Oh, to what desolate land has the fate brought me from your loving company!).
Seene mein sulagate hain armaan, aankhon mein udaasi chhayi hai by Talat Mahmood and Lata Mangeshkar from Tarana (1951), lyrics Prem Dhawan, music Anil Biswas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk_0ML7iuVE
No wonder there were stories of his romantic liaison with a legion of co-stars. Some stories were unsavoury and controversial, such as with Madhubala herself, with whom he was said to have the most intense love affair. This ended in bitterness, which ended with Madhubala’s exit from BR Chopra’s project, Naya Daur (1957), to be replaced by Vyjayanthimala. But his professional work remained superlative. Three years after the break-up, Dilip Kumar and Madhubala lit up the screen in one of the grandest love legends, Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Dilip Kumar’s work earned him a number of Filmfare Awards for the Best Actor; the highest recognition for achievement in films, Dadasaheb Phalke Award; the second highest civilian award, Padma Vibhushan; and the highest honour given by Pakistan, Nishan-e-Imtiaz. Another recognition of his stature was when he was made Sheriff of Bombay.
But for all the accolades, he had a troubled entry in films. Born Yusuf Khan in an orthodox Muslim family in Peshawar, his father could not countenance his son getting anywhere near films. Yusuf would have continued in his family business of fruit selling and running military canteen in Poona, but for an accidental meeting with Devika Rani of Bombay Talkies. She was charmed no end and instantly decided to cast him in Jwar Bhata (1944). Appearing with real name was out of the question for the fear of his stern father. Several screen names were discussed, and finally ‘Dilip Kumar’ was chosen which stuck to him. However, his debut film as well as his next two films with Bombay Talkies, Pratima and Milan, did not create much waves. He got his first big success in outside production, Jugnu (1947), with co-star Noorjehan. Meanwhile, Bombay Talkies was facing internal turmoil with one branch led by Sashdhar Mukherjee and his brother-in-law, Ashok Kumar, setting up their own production house Filmistan. Dilip Kumar had two big successes with them in 1948 with Shaheed and Nadiya Ke Paar. By now he was on the path of everlasting glory with Mehboob Khan’s Andaaz (1949), Aan (1952), Amar (1954), and a string of outside productions, including K Asif’s magnum opus, Mughal-e-Azam (1960).
Everyone has one’s own favourite Dilip Kumar. A cinematic landmark is Dilip Kumar on the piano with four greatest Mukesh songs in the film Andaaz (1949). The first one, Hum aaj kahin dil kho baithe, is a seemingly innocuous statement that he has lost his heart somewhere for someone, but the viewers are in no doubt who that someone is, as Nargis in the frame does nothing to dispel the misconception of Dilip Kumar, rather her riddled responses are more than ‘just friendly’. You can’t blame him if he is more direct in the second song, Tu kahe agar jeevan bhar main geet sunata jaaun. By the third song, Toote na dil toote na saath hamara chhote na, the third angle Raj Kapoor has entered the frame, but there is still some ambiguity and hope as Nargis in her bimbette innocence rests her elbows on the piano, and cupping her chin looks at Dilip Kumar smilingly. Raj Kapoor, too, not suspecting anything major, makes himself comfortable at the piano. Dilip Kumar,
By the fourth and the last piano song, Jhoom jhoom ke naacho aaj naacho aaj, gaao khushi ke geet, there is no doubt about Raj Kapoor-Nargis relationship, and Dilip Kumar in a heart-wrenching voice sings Kisi ko dil ka dard mila hai, kisi ko man ka meet. Nargis has now realised the mess she has created, and you can see her inner turmoil keeping her glued to the sofa, away from the piano. Raj Kapoor, by her side, casts a meaningful glance at her. The tension becomes unbearable for her, and she leaves the scene midway. In the four piano songs Dilip Kumar shows a range of emotions in Arithmetic Progression. These songs are also a testimony to Dilip Kumar’s powerful Method Acting. He is not exuberant in romance, nor maudlin when everything is shattered. He just smiles and speaks in a soft voice to show love when everything is going well, and he sears your heart with his intense inner pain by just his sad face and liquid eyes.
Jhoom jhoom ke nacho aaj by Mukesh from Andaz (1949), lyrics Majrooh Sultanpuri, music Naushad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sln3l13aNIU
It is sad that for such a legend the last years of his life were beset with ailments. Befittingly, Maharashtra government gave him state funeral. Dilip Kumar’s mortal body is no more, but he would live forever through his characters on the screen.
Anil K Upadhyay is a retired IAS officer. He has wide-ranging interests in music, literature, sports and current affairs. He writes a well-acclaimed blog www.songsofyore.com, devoted to old Hindi film music. This article is slightly modified from an article earlier published on the blog Songs Of Yore.
Morning shows the day, as the saying goes. So true of our part-time cook! Supposed to report early in the morning, she strolls in leisurely at her own pleasure. My wife is put in a dilemma: To wait or not to wait? She demonstrates her distressed state by pacing the floor and scanning the street below for any sign of the cook. She keeps her fingers crossed till her target is sighted turning the corner to our house. Thank heavens! My wife’s face lights up with a smile that outshines the sunrise! She is refrained from a spontaneous performance of a cartwheel only by her bulky physique! I smile too, anticipating the sumptuous dishes that the master cook would deliver from her kitchen.
There are days when my wife’s vigil goes in vain. The cook doesn’t turn up. No notice of absence, or any explanation for taking leave. She simply fails to come for duty. When my wife tries contacting her on the mobile, she is met with a variety of response. Sometimes the cook gives a flimsy ground like ‘fever’ for her not coming, which my wife says really means: “Going for the matinee show of the Salman Khan blockbuster!” At times neither the cook nor her husband responds to phone calls, setting off alarm bells ringing. Why is she not picking up the phone? Has that woman down the street hijacked the cook’s services with promise of higher wages? How will our lunch boxes get ready and packed in time? Then there are the assorted demands of the children to be met. If one wants noodles, the other insists on upma!
The name of our celebrated cook, ironically, is Suryamukhi (sunflower), a beautiful flower known for its devotion to the sun. From sunrise to sunset, it follows the path of the sun across the sky. But Suryamukhi the cook is neither beautiful nor reliable. Her beauty (or lack of it) leaves me cold. She could be a ‘has-been’ Miss World for all I care! Her truancy in the kitchen though is a big headache—for my wife and, in turn, passed onto me. When a pivotal lead actor responsible for running a household doesn’t turn up, things fall apart and the centre (my wife) cannot hold. After running helter skelter like a headless chicken, she lets off her steam on poor me! A day that started with a perfect sunrise is ruined by an apathetic cook.
Why then do we persist with such a cook? Why don’t we sack her the moment she comes back from one of her self-authorised ‘vacations’? The reason, as I mentioned earlier, is her mastery at cooking. Whenever she deigns to show up in our kitchen, she adds a Midas touch to everything she prepares. Not only is the taste of her dishes amazing, but the care with which she serves them is heart-warming. Even my wife’s anger melts the moment Suryamukhi enters the kitchen and mesmerises us with her dazzling culinary skills. The bottom line is, we can’t afford to forego the prospect of attaining nirvana at the hands of the cook just because of a little 'dereliction of duty' on her part!
Ishwar Pati - After completing his M.A. in Economics from Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, standing First Class First with record marks, he moved into a career in the State Bank of India in 1971. For more than 37 years he served the Bank at various places, including at London, before retiring as Dy General Manager in 2008. Although his first story appeared in Imprint in 1976, his literary contribution has mainly been to newspapers like The Times of India, The Statesman and The New Indian Express as ‘middles’ since 2001. He says he gets a glow of satisfaction when his articles make the readers smile or move them to tears.
It started off as a routine morning walk in the fields. These open stretches of land, over the years, have become my silent companion. They did cast a spell on me, in our first encounter and all their familiarity has failed to kill off their charm. In summer, they radiate in the yellow glow of rapeseed (a variety of mustard), the colour changing to golden red in the autumn. When nothing is growing on them, the ground comes alive with captivating patterns of furrows, carved out of the farmer’s toil. The furrows, with their rugged contours, follow no rules of symmetry, but are far from irregular. They have a pleasing appeal of proportion; what they lack in vibrance, is adequately made up by harmony. It seems, the ground had been lying, long in wait, for an opportunity to show off its hidden beauty.
Listening to music has long been one of my favourite pastime, during these walks; an enchanting experience, hard to beat and difficult to describe. The melodies seem surreal, transporting me to a higher plane. I must have heard this music, at home, in the lounge or, while driving, in the car, hundreds of time; how the fields inject this magic into the same old stuff, is a mystery to me. The rhythms sound heavenly, as if Gods have descended to earth to play their favourite instruments, just for me.
But, it was different today. In fact, it hasn’t been the same for a while. I am a manager in the bookstore chain, Cornerstones. In its heydays, the name, Cornerstones, projected prestige; it was the biggest player in selling books. I considered myself lucky to get a job in it. I had worked methodically to move up the career ladder to a middle manager position. But, nothing had come to me, without a price. The demands of the job had sent all the dreams from my youth, into hibernation. Priorities of earning a livelihood had overtaken pleasures of living life. I was nonetheless, content with my staid life; well, until I heard of my imminent redundancy at work. It had jolted me out of my sedate equilibrium.
It had sent my spirits spiralling down and I found myself at life’s crossroads, unsure of my next move. My sadness would not have been so deep, if I had, so far, lived a fulfilled life. I realised, I had invested the last ounce of my vital energy in my job, with none left for pursuing my passion. In effect, I had put my life on hold, waiting for the right time, when I could stop doing things and just be myself.
Most of my life was spent working in retail sector and I had little work experience outside. Retail business had been reeling from the onslaught of online shopping habit for a number of years, a trend, accelerated during the pandemic over the past year. Although more and more people had picked up reading, to kill the monotony of Lockdown, and sale of books was booming, book shops were shutting down at an alarming pace.
Like many companies, Cornerstones’ sales had been hit badly by online suppliers of books, and it had been grappling with its dwindling profits. In order to boost its revenues, it had added an Online wing to its business, but this was not enough to offset the high overheads from maintaining its high street stores. As the work force was shrinking, and jobs were being axed steadily , as a middle manager, my position was an easy target.
Although my redundancy was not unexpected, its impact was no less distressing; no amount of preparation was adequate to soften the blow. Although the redundancy package was generous, I was dreading the uncertainty and beginning to despair over my long term job prospects. I had applied for more than a hundred jobs but many of them simply did not bother to reply. I guess, the competition for the few posts, I was chasing, was too stiff. I even pursued junior jobs, but again had no luck, perhaps, because I was considered overqualified for them. I was in my fifties and chance of finding a job in the current climate was slim.
I was out walking this morning, without my phone. To leave home without the phone was unusual but, given the state of my mind, nothing was too strange. No phone means no music. My first thought was, absence of music would make the walk rather dull. To be honest, actually, music was not completely lacking. The atmosphere was filled with chirping of birds, providing the optimal ambience without interrupting my stream of thoughts. But the thoughts were gloomy with no prospect of cheer. The morning serenity enveloping the fields hang like a curtain, heavy with worries. The bracing morning air failed to lift my sinking spirits.
My walking path ran parallel to a hedge, with several bends on its way. When I turned on one such bend, there stood a deer, facing me. We see plenty of rabbits, pheasants, fowls, and foxes, but deers are not a common sight in these fields. Its sudden appearance, at such close quarters, gave me a startle. The last time, I saw a deer, so close, was perhaps, when I visited a zoo as a child. This proximity allowed me to examine the deer’s face closely; it had a rather quizzical look, as if, it was asking me, what I was doing in its path.
Soon, two more deers joined in. These were bigger and looked like full grown adults. We all stood still, in total silence, each waiting for the next move from the other. As if, the deers could read my mind, they realised their mistake of treading on alien territory . All on a sudden, all three of them turned round to trot off into the fields.
While I was still wondering, how these deers had veered off their usual path, several more deers jumped out from behind the hedge and followed them, into the open fields. I simply stood there, staring at the herd; the deers looking progressively smaller as they moved away from me.
Before they became too small to go out of my sight, an animal, no bigger than our family pet, a Border Collie, jumped out of the hedge. With its diminutive size, I was unsure, at first, what animal it was. Soon, it became clear, it was a deer, and from its size, it must be quite young. The fawn stood for a moment, looked around and started to run in the same direction that the herd had taken a few minutes ago.
The fawn, for some reason, had got separated from the rest of the herd, to be left all alone, I guessed. To confirm my theory, it became obvious that the fawn was too young to keep up with the herd. As the herd kept moving away, the gap between the herd and the fawn grew longer.
I could not help feeling sad for the poor fawn. While I was secretly hoping that somehow, it would find the strength from somewhere to bridge the gap and reunite with the herd, to my dismay, the fawn suddenly stopped. From the distance, I was standing, I could not work out, what was in the fawn’s mind. As if, it did search for the herd but failed to find it; so, it stopped to collect its thoughts on a new strategy. Suddenly, it started running in anew direction, at an angle from the original, moving further away from the herd. It was certainly a stupid decision, in my mind, and from where I stood. It was beyond me to figure out what made the fawn to change direction. Most likely, the fawn was lagging too far behind, making the herd going out of its view. In the process, it probably, got disorientated. Or, may be it was distracted by some sound or scent. Whatever the reason might be, it left me really worried about the safety of the fawn. These fields are frequented by dogs, some of which would clearly find a deer cub an easy target to chase and kill for a meal.
I could feel the urge, building up inside me, to somehow reach out to the fawn and redirect it towards the herd. In fact, I burst out shouting, ”Stop”. “Silly me,” I thought, and stood there feeling helpless. The fawn was clearly too far away for my voice to reach. I could only comfort myself with the hope that there were not many dogs in the fields at that time.
How I wished that the fawn could see the bigger picture, which I could! The fawn kept trotting in the new direction, without any sign of slowing down. It seems, it found an extraordinary burst of energy in its legs, but at the wrong time. I could imagine the fear, it must be feeling in its heart, running all alone in the open fields.
I could see it disappearing into a ditch separating the field, it was running on, from the next patch. This got me really worried; is this the end of the poor fawn? Perhaps, It had run out of strength; may be, it could not move anymore. I could imagine it lying exhausted and scared, in the bottom of the ditch. Soon, it would end up as a tasty meal for some savage dog.
I breathed a sigh of relief, when I saw the fawn emerging form the ditch. It resumed running into the adjoining field. It was now running further away from its herd, which it has, by now, left far behind. “How long can the baby maintain this sprint and where would it end up?” I wondered.
I had to resign myself to imagining the worst fate for the poor fawn. I feared, it would soon get so far away from its herd that reuniting with the herd would be impossible. The thought of the exhausted fawn, savagely attacked by dogs, was just too painful.
With a sinking heart, I was about to turn round to return home. The depressing thought of the tragic end for the baby deer had dampened my mood and I decided to cut my morning walk short. The face of the poor fawn would haunt me for a long time, I thought.
That is when I spotted another deer, almost miraculously, appearing from nowhere, running in the same direction as the fawn. The sight of the deer, following the fawn, gave me some relief. “At least, they can derive some strength from each others company,” I thought. Running all alone in these fields, must be quite frightening for the fawn. It would be in danger from all sorts of predators. Given its limited life experience, it would be too vulnerable. No doubt, the company would make a difference; it would lift its spirit.Perhaps, it can run faster now.
But, I was not sure, if the fawn could somehow sense that the other deer was following it. How I wished again, I could shout out to the fawn that soon it would have company of another deer. Even if, it’s not from its own herd, at least, it’s of the same kind. In my desperation, I started praying, asking for supernatural powers; so that I could send a message across to the fawn to say that company was on the way.
Compared with the fawn, my higher vantage point was a distinct advantage; it gave me a far wider view of the field. How I wished for the fawn to somehow to get a gift of the sight, I enjoyed, due to my height.
I was frozen at the site, peering into space. The trees in the distance stood helplessly as mute witnesses to the plight of the fawn. A faint mist still lingering in the horizon, was slowly melting away, as if, it was reluctantly revealing a secret.
As the image of the hapless, frightened fawn was churning my inside, I could sense strange vibes, which I had never felt before. It felt something like a phone, vibrating in the silent mode. But, no, it was different. Nonetheless, out of sheer habit, I thrust my hand in my pocket, when I remembered, I had no phone with me, that day.
So, what is it? Is this a message for me? And, from whom? I frantically searched for the receiver, lying somewhere deep within, for decoding the message, someone was sending me from further afar.
Perhaps, that is really the big picture. I wonder, who has been agonising hard for me, all along!
First of July is National Doctors’ Day* in India. There was no need to remind Dr Sitakanta Das, how special the day was. The air was abuzz with greetings for doctors, but Sitakanta’s mind was else-where. The “Happy Doctors day” messages from friends and well-wishers, meant to cheer him up, simply served as a prickly reminder of his sticky situation.
His mind rolled back to his first day in Medical College, many years ago, when he embarked on his med-ical career. His family’s pride on the prospects of him becoming a doctor, mixed with his own youthful idealism, made a heady mixture, potent enough to make him feel slightly dizzy.
Today, more landmarks in his long medical career, flashed before his eyes. He never forgot the day in the First year Medical course, him entering the grand dissection hall, for learning human anatomy by cutting into cadavers. His eyes almost smarted with the memory of the pungent formalin, used to pre-serve dead bodies. Starting clinical medicine in the third year was another memorable day, when, draped in the long white coat with a stethoscope round his neck, he stepped into the hospital for learn-ing the craft of medicine from patients. He instantly felt very grown-up, with a heavy sense of respon-sibility, as if, the dangling stethoscope had infused a massive dose of maturity into him. He remembers his graduation from the College with the MBBS degree and completion of internship, marking his entry, as a full-fledged doctor, into the hallowed profession of Medicine; each milestone, permanently etched in his mind.
The College atmosphere was genial, with friendly seniors and approachable teachers; the entire set-up, comprising of hostel, lecture halls, laboratory, library, and hospital wards exuded a sense of cosiness. As he walked out with his degree, his rose-tinted view of Medicine barely prepared him for the rough and tumble of doctor’s life in the wider world.
He fast learnt the hazards of the real world, picking up necessary survival skills, along the way. His thir-ty odd years of professional journey was far from smooth sailing. There was no dearth of challenges, some more tricky than the others; the situations were just demanding enough to keep him engaged and alive. The excitement occasionally boiled over to frenzy, but the adrenalin rush of these rare oc-casions added some thrill to his otherwise unexciting life. Nothing, however, unsettled him, let alone hindering him from doing his job.
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But, everything changed on that fateful day, exactly two months ago. It was the first of May. He start-ed his outpatients clinic, like any other day. His reputation of a no-nonsense doctor with a human touch, attracted patients in hordes. He ordered very few blood tests or scans, often defending his fru-gal practice with, “We do not treat scans or numbers on test reports, we are in the business of treating people.” The foundation of his practice was a blend of age-old clinical wisdom and moral integrity.
While most MBBS doctors, hanker after specialisation, Dr Das chose to remain a generalist. For him, delving into patients’ stories, making sense of their confusion, and deciphering their symptoms in a diction, they understand, are powerful therapeutic tools, at doctor’s disposal. The generalist’s single most valuable expertise is the ability to recognise the sinister, which demands urgent or specialist at-tention. Mercifully, many illnesses are self-limiting. Of the rest, doctors can cure only a handful of them, but always comfort patients by allaying their anxiety through reassurance.
In the clinic room, people of all ages came streaming in, clutching pads of papers, with worried looks and eager anticipation, for their precious few minutes with the doctor. The room, crowded with peo-ple, was buzzing with activity. Despite the apparent scene of chaos, the clinic was functioning, in a smooth and orderly manner.
The flow was disrupted by a noise, rising above the din of the room, coming from the direction of the clinic door. A woman, slouched on a wheel chair, was being pushed by a bunch of people, a few of them busy, on the phone and others talking in a tone, signalling a sense of urgency. Their animated chatter caused a commotion, and drew Dr Das’s attention in the direction of the door. He wondered, what her problem could be, making her family and friends to rush her in, without waiting for their turn.
The patient was promptly transferred to the examination trolley, standing in the corner of the clinic room. Dr Das was hurrying to conclude his consultation with his patient, thus freeing him for attending to the patient, just rushed in. But, he was rudely interrupted by a young man, who came up to him, demanding that he should immediately attend to the patient on the trolley. Dr Das indicated him to a chair in front of him, while finishing his notes on the patient, just seen.
But, his concentration was shattered by the scream of his assistant, Rajkishore Badajena, coming from the direction of the trolley, carrying the newly arrived patient. “Sir, she is not breathing!”
Dr Das flung himself out of the chair and rushed to the trolley. He immediately got down to examining the patient. When he could hear no heart beat, he started resuscitating the patient. He tried to obtain details of the patient’s illness and her medical history, alongside his attempts at reviving her. Despite a sustained effort at resuscitation, there was still no sign of life. That is when he stopped to declare,”I am sorry, the patient is dead.”
“What do you mean, dead!” retorted the young man.
By now, Dr Das had realised that she was actually brought in dead. He tried to clarify the bits of infor-mation, he had gathered from different members of the group, hoping to piece them into a coherent account of how she met her tragic fate.
The young man, who seemed to be the spokesperson of the group, was finding his probing questions irksome. His impatience finally boiled over to anger and he challenged Dr Das with “Don’t try to act smart, Doctor. You treated her with injections and cardiac massage. You don’t do that to a dead body. She was certainly alive, when she arrived here in the wheelchair.”
Without losing his composure, Dr Das explained that for a patient, brought in dead, a post-mortem examination would be necessary for establishing the cause of death; without this a death certificate could not be issued. His explanation simply made the young man more angry, who was in no mood to listen to his reasoning. Soon they were embroiled in a heated argument, over the death certificate.
Dr Das struggled to convey what actually happened: although the patient was brought in dead, they gave her the benefits of doubt, and tried to revive her anyway. But he didn’t have a chance. The young man suddenly lunged at him with a heavy blow on his face.
The group accompanying the dead, by now, had surrounded Dr Das, scolding him for his delay in at-tending to the emergency, “Had you attended to the patient soon enough, she would have been saved.” While he was still gathering more details of the patient’s circumstances and her illness, they reiterated their demand that Dr Tripathi sign her death certificate.
While he was explaining the official procedure, necessary under the circumstances, and why he couldn’t issue the certificate, the whole group got into a shouting match. As Dr Das was trying to fig-ure out the real issues, and get his thoughts together, he was clobbered with more blows from the group. He had little time to process what was happening to him. Fortunately, Mr Badajena came to his rescue. He intervened to protect him form the blows and ushered him away, diffusing the immediate tension.
Pandemonium broke out in the clinic room. The patients and the accompanying family members were struggling to grasp, what was going on. They were left standing like dazed onlookers in a disaster zone.
Badly battered, Doctor Das was at a loss, to piece together the dramatic sequence of events, unfolding at such a rapid pace. He was relieved to find that he had sustained no serious injury, but for two chipped teeth, requiring minor dental treatment. But this experience, the first of its kind in his doctor’s life, left him visibly shaken.
He was sent off duty, on medical leave, for a week. While he was recovering from this ordeal, mes-sages from colleagues poured in, expressing outrage at the appalling violence on a faultless doctor, and sympathy for his injuries, sustained on duty. He also learnt that, the young man, the main culprit in this vicious attack, was the nephew of the state Home Minister. The rest of the gang, who followed suit in manhandling him, were his friends and members of her family.
Whilst Dr Das was trying to make light of the event, describing his injury as rather trivial, his colleagues urged him to take action against what they saw as a brutal assault on medical fraternity. The young man, the chief assailant, was known in the area for his string of misdeeds. But he had rightfully earned the nickname, Mr untouchable, from the shield of protection, he enjoyed through his uncle. Nobody dared to take any action on him for fear of reprisal. Even his cronies would get away with antisocial behaviour of all kinds, as they also had the patronage of authorities in the State hierarchy. The dire consequence of standing up against them was a powerful deterrent, sufficient to put people off.
The assault on Dr Das brought up their repressed anger and pent up frustration, to the fore. What would be a better opportunity to nab this rogue? A criminal conviction with a fitting sentence for this senseless attack on a doctor on duty, would teach him a lesson and send the right signal to the public.
“If you gloss over this, it would embolden these scoundrels and perpetuate this dangerous trend,” his friends exhorted to him. “Of course, doctors are not saints,” they said, “and there is no dearth of rouge doctors, but Dr Das was the last person to deserve this ill-treatment.”
He was also visited by his senior colleagues, including the Chief District Medical Officer (CDMO), gen-erally addressed as the Chief, who was visibly distressed at his ordeal. Sitakanta was an example of a vanishing breed of doctors, whose professional ethics and personal probity were exemplary. While most doctors had succumbed to the temptation of bending their principles, if not breaking them out-right, by normalising corrupt practices, Sitakanta was known by patients and colleagues alike, to be an exception.
Dr Das asked the Chief, how best to deal with his ordeal. Going by his sympathy for his assault and his abhorrence of the assailants’ conduct, he was certain of his support, if he chose to take them to Court. But the Chief was a man of the world and he knew that the situation was far from straightfor-ward.
“You should be the last person to suffer this ignominy from such ruffians,” the Chief told him. “Of course, you have every right to press charges for this assault; you don’t need my approval, let alone my permission.”
He hesitated slightly before proceeding, “In a perfect world, pursuing justice in the courts is the obvi-ous way forward. But, here, playing your cards right would pay better dividends than standing up for principles.”
Dr Das struggled to follow the Chief’s line of thought; he could not quite work out what he was hinting at.
“The people, you will be facing in court, are well connected, with direct access to the highest offices of the State. You must not let your heart rule over your brain in this matter.”
“Should I be scared to do what is right, because of the political clout of these rogues?” he asked, in surprise.
“I can tell you, the Home Minister is deeply ashamed of the misconduct of his hot-blooded nephew and his friends, He sends his apologises on their behalf.”
“But Sir, accepting this abominable act, lying down, would send them the wrong message. All my col-leagues are unanimous, they should be taken to task, as a service to our profession, if not for myself.” Dr Das said.
The Chief continued with his advice, “The Minister is eager to compensate you handsomely for your injury and distress. He wants to know, what would your price be, in cash or in kind. Your cooperation will be suitably rewarded, delivered with utmost discretion; nobody can trace any link, whatsoever. I give you my personal guarantee in this matter.”
Dr Das stared at him, wondering, “The Chief should know me better; how can he even imagine, I could stoop so low?”
As if the Chief could see Sitakanta’s inner thinking in his eyes, he tried a different tack, pandering to his ego, this time, “Hope, you understand, where I am coming from, Sitakanta. A wise man sees opportu-nities in every adversity. Forgiving the wrong-doers would enhance your reputation. You will grow in stature in public’s mind,” he concluded.
Dr Das’s heart sank, as he was digesting the Chief’s proposal. “How does he expect me to sacrifice my principles for personal gain?” Although it was hard to dismiss his cautionary warning, outright, Sitakanta’s disappointment at the Chief’s hypocrisy deepened, as his real motive for the visit dawned on him. Has he come here as the Minister’s agent to negotiate a deal in exchange for not pressing charges over the assault? Perhaps, expressing sympathy was a mere ploy!
Since the incident, Dr Das had been in two minds over his next move. His gut reaction was to drop the matter here and simply move on. The injuries, after all, were not serious. Although the episode was painful, he would recover from the trauma, with time. The unpleasant prospect of facing the police, lawyers and court officials, added to the reasons against a Court case.
But, is he merely giving in to his base instinct of fear? What about the duty, he owes, to his profes-sion? By dropping this matter, he would be letting his colleagues down and shirking his responsibility towards the society. At the end, it was his disgust at the Chief’s proposed course of action, which made up his mind.
He finally relented, yielding to his colleagues’ demand for justice through the legal channel. He must stand up to this atrocious treatment of professionals in the hands of the public, who dare to assault doctors, with impunity. His supporters were counting on his flawless professional reputation and the egregious violence on the innocent doctor; absolutely certain that the facts of the case would favour the doctor. They didn’t have a shred of a doubt that the culprits, however well-connected, could es-cape justice.
The case of assault on Dr Das was duly filed with the police. The prime witness was Rajkishore, who saw the whole shocking assault, really close. The assailants would have little defence for their criminal conduct. It should be an open and shut case, everyone thought.
However, he rues the day he ceded to his colleagues’ wishes. His decision triggered a chain of events, totally unforeseen, beginning the longest nightmare of his career. It came as a shock, when, after a few days, Dr Das was arrested and taken to police station for questioning. It transpired that he was facing charges under the Corruption Act for demanding money for signing a death certificate. The al-legation was that when the distressed relatives of the dead woman asked Dr Das for a death certifi-cate, he made up a pretext of the need for an autopsy. It was further alleged that, his initial reluctance to issue a certificate, was really a plea for a demand of 50,000 rupees. The distressed relatives pleaded with the doctor for a reduction in the sum, he was demanding, but he didn’t budge. As the family re-fused to pay the bribe, Dr Das became angry for wasting his time. In the heated stand-off, that fol-lowed, the doctor pushed them. A brawl ensued, which left many of them injured.
To their dismay, they learnt that the members of the family had obtained medical certificates to sup-port their injuries and had arranged eye-witnesses willing to testify in court that Dr Das was demanding money for the death certificate.
Dr Das was suspended from his job, with immediate effect. He was deeply perturbed by this new de-velopment but kept a brave face. Secure in his conviction of his own innocence, he hoped, this would simply wash over him. He gave his version of events, to the police in his hour long interview, which was totally at odds with the story behind the allegations.
In his innocent world view, he was expecting the case to proceed no further. To his dismay, the charg-es against were not dropped and he was summoned for a court appearance. Under a new initiative, to root out corruption in government posts, his case was fast-tracked and the date for the hearing promptly arrived; it was 30th June.
Despite this distressing new development, he was still hopeful of a full acquittal. He had a dependable eye-witness, Rajkishore, who had watched the entire event in question. Surely, truth will prevail at the end, he consoled himself. Nonetheless, the prospect of being in the dock and facing questions by law-yers was disconcerting. He kept reminding himself that he had nothing to fear as he was totally inno-cent. But, his anger at the injustice of him having to prove his innocence, kept gnawing at him from inside.
On the night before the Court date, Sitakanta found his anxiety, mounting to an unbearable pitch. He kept consoling himself that the case was bound to go in his favour and this whole ghastly episode would soon be behind him.
But all his hopes were dashed in the morning; he woke up to the terrible news about his key witness, Rajkishore. Overnight, he had sustained multiple fractures in both legs from an accident and had to undergo emergency surgery for saving his life. Next morning, he was under heavy sedation and obvi-ously too ill, to attend the Court, for giving evidence.
Dr Das’s initial reaction to this grave news was concern for Rajkishore’s injuries. Thankfully, his life was saved, although he was not out of danger yet. The next forty-eight hours would be critical.
As the day progressed, more news followed. His phone was never busier; calls poured in from his friends and colleagues. More stories on Rajkishore’s ghastly accident surfaced. But, what actually happened was still a mystery. The stories were slightly different in details and sequence of events and it all added up to a really murky account.
It was difficult to tease apart the facts from rumours. But, it was an open secret that the Minister’s men tried to stop Rajkishore from testifying in the Corruption case against Dr Das. When that failed, they pressured him to change his eye-witness account of what happened in the Clinic room on the fateful day. He was offered bribes in exchange for withdrawing his police testimony and changing his evidence in the upcoming hearing. When nothing seemed to work, he was threatened with dire conse-quences.
As both the carrot and the stick failed to produce the desired result, an attack on his life was planned as the sure way to eliminate his evidence in the Court case. A fake accident was staged, in which he was hit by a lorry. Fortunately, not everything went according to plan; his life was saved. But he sus-tained life changing injuries to both his legs.
Sitakanta Das had pinned his hopes on Rajkishore, certain that his honest testimony would clear his name. He was horrified to realise, how in his naivety, he had overlooked these dangerous conse-quences of testifying in his corruption case, putting his life in jeopardy, in the process. Rajkishore was too loyal to Dr Das; he could not contemplate not offering his services as the eye-witness to the case. But, he was obviously too vulnerable; these powerful people in the state hierarchy were capable of ruining his life, if he went against their wishes.
Dr Das was under no illusion about his own power, or the lack of it; all his reputation as a popular doc-tor of immaculate integrity was no match to the might of the Minister and his cronies. In fact, he could not offer Rajkishore any protection from his menacing goons and their devious ways.
His lawyer managed to get his case adjourned by a month. He knew that Rajkishore’s testimony would no longer be his saviour. In the meantime, they would have to devise their next strategy and arrange another witness for the adjourned hearing.
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Sitakanta Das forced his drifting mind to settle, to focus on here and now, the first of July. After a life of dedicated service, he finds himself suspended from his post; his crime is standing up for his princi-ples. Everyone knows, the corruption charge, slapped on him, is false. But proving his innocence in the courts is far from simple. He has lost his prime witness, with no alternative in sight; the sword of Dam-ocles is still hanging above his head. His suspension remains in effect until the case is concluded, pro-longing his nightmare. What a way to celebrate the Doctors day!
While Sitakanta and his lawyer were grappling with their legal quandary, another crisis, more deadly, was brewing, in the village, nearby. There had been a serious accident, involving a car, driven by the daughter of the Home Minister, who had knocked off a cyclist. The car was turning round a blind curve at speed and obviously she could not see the oncoming cyclist. The car was travelling too fast for the curve, and it skidded violently when she jammed the brakes, hitting a concrete wall on the roadside. Both of them were flown off, landing on the road, with serious injury to their heads.
Soon, a crowd gathered at the scene of the accident. As the identity of the car driver became known, the news of the accident did not take long to reach the Minister, Mr Harihar Adhikari. In no time, Sudhir Paatjoshi, his trusted right hand man, arrived at the scene with two assistants. It became clear that both the motorist and the cyclist had sustained serious injuries and would need immediate hospi-tal treatment.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been a simple job to call an ambulance for transporting them to the nearby hospital. But these were extraordinary times. The COVID-19 pandemic was raging and all the hospitals were full, leaving very few empty beds for emergency cases like these accident victims. It was even difficult to get a spare ambulance quickly to accident sites. So, the Minister’s men prepared to ferry the minister’s daughter in their vehicle.
But, there were two outstanding issues to be resolved before they could do anything at all. First, they had to locate a hospital bed, for her. They phoned a number of hospitals in an area of fifty miles radius, before they found one. The task was made doubly difficult, because, they were looking for an Inten-sive Care Unit (ICU) bed. The injuries were so serious that nothing short of an ICU bed would do. It is precisely these ICU beds, which were in short supply as all such beds had been used up by the surge in COVID-19 patients in the prevailing pandemic.
There was another problem; the hospital had only one ICU bed and here were two critically injured pa-tients. As the man, searching for a hospital bed was none other than the Home Minister himself, surely, a deal of some kind could be made. The doctor, they thought, could somehow conjure up an extra ICU bed.
But, the man, at the helm of affairs, in the hospital, was no ordinary doctor either. He was Dr Sukumar Mahapatra, who had recently returned to India after a ten year stint in the USA.
India has hospital chains, mushrooming across its length and breadth, equipped with the state of the art medical technology. It is teeming with highly skilled doctors, whose expertise is world-class. But the majority of them are specialists, dealing with problems in heart, brain, eyes, bones or joints. The hospi-tals are mostly in cities, catering to the wealthy, who, armed with the latest medical facts from Google’s Encyclopaedia, would demand a Brain scan, as the very first test for a headache. But what about the vast majority of Indians, who live in villages? They have little choice but to rely on pitiable government hospitals with crumbling buildings, inefficient infrastructure, demoralised staff and mea-gre resources.
Dr Mahapatra was chasing his dream of filling this gap by providing quality medical care in rural India. He had named his centre, Hospital Suryoday (Hospital Sunrise), symbolising the dawn of a new era in medical care for the real India. Since its inception, he had managed to run it as a path-breaking centre, providing judicious medical care at an affordable price.
Mr Paatjoshi was losing patience with the doctor at Suryoday Hospital, who was not prepared to make any concessions at all. The Minister, who had arrived at the scene by then, personally pleaded with the doctor but to no avail. The doctor was a man with a mission, and his mantra was: Never compromise with your principles, because the alternative is the slippery slope of corruption. All the haggling pro-duced only one effect; it made Dr Mahapatra more resolute in his stand.
While negotiations were ongoing over the phone, the patients’ condition was deteriorating. The minis-ter’s daughter was getting delirious. The cyclist was getting clouded in his consciousness. The minis-ter’s men simply did not know what to do next. The thought of the minister’s daughter dying under their gaze was unthinkable. But they were clueless as to how to deal with the injured cyclist. In desper-ation, they signalled each other, indicating that they would ferry the Minister’s daughter alone, leaving behind the cyclist.
A small group of men had gathered in the meantime. Although they were too scared to ask them what they were up to, they were watching them closely and listening to their frantic phone calls. They could make out that the sticking point was a hospital bed.
As the Minister’s men walked towards the roadside, where his daughter was lying, a middle aged man, at the head of the pack, moved forward, to confront them with, “You can’t simply leave him behind to die, can you?”, pointing at the cyclist.
“No, we are still looking for hospital beds. I am sure, we will find it soon. Rest assured, as soon as we do that, we will arrange his transportation.”
“We won’t let you shift only one patient, leaving the other behind.”
“So far we have located only one bed. So, let’s save one of them first, while we are still searching for more. Why lose this bed as well?” Mr Paatjoshi asked.
“But why her first?” He asked.
Mr Paatjoshi, who was already feeling harassed by the moral rectitude of the awkward doctor in the hospital, was exasperated by this confrontation. He could feel the urge inside him, to utter, “It is the Minister’s order.” But restraining himself, he said, instead, “She has the best chance of survival.”
“How do you know?” he asked Mr Paatjoshi.
“How dare you question my decision? Are you a Doctor?” Mr Paatjoshi snarled back at him.
“You are no doctor, either. At least I know more about Medicine than you. I have worked as a Com-pounder in Primary Health Centres, and seen many emergencies, accident victims and injured people in my job”
“So, Doctor Saab, tell us then, of these two casualties, who has the best chance of survival?” Mr Paat-joshi ridiculed him, folding his arms against his chest, with palms, joined, and head, bowed, in mock-veneration.
“Let Mahapatra Sir be the judge of that. You must take both of them to him and let him decide,” he replied sternly.
“Can you really stop us?” retorted Mr Paatjoshi, “Can’t you see, this is Home Minister’s order, pointing at the Home Minister in the vehicle?”
In a flash, the Compounder laid himself flat on the ground in front of the vehicle, after saying,”Unless you take both, you have to drive over me.”
Soon, a few more men jumped forward from the pack, to lay themselves on the ground, totally block-ing the road, saying, “See, if you can drive over us, to get out of this spot first.”
The Compounder knew, the crowd would support his actions, but he was uncertain if they were pre-pared to go all the way, like him. Now, any remaining doubts, he had in his mind , disappeared instant-ly. Bolstered by this show of strength, he rose from the ground to give Mr Paatjoshi a piece of his mind, “You have made our saint like doctor’s life an absolute misery. You have put his honest assistant’s life in danger, for telling the truth. You have, so far, got away with all your evil deeds and devious plans. Now, you can’t get out of here, with her alone.”
He took a deep breath before continuing his monologue, “If anybody has got the permission to play God, it is the doctor, not you or your boss. Now, for a change, let the doctor do his job without threat or bribe. Take both the injured or leave empty-handed!”, before going behind the vehicle to lay him-self firmly behind the rear wheels.
The ministerial vehicle, now totally boxed in, put Harihar Adhikari and his coterie in a fix, literally.
The air stood still, the ministerial flag had hung its head low, hiding its face in dejection.
Mr Adhikari took a look at his bleeding daughter, lying helplessly on the roadside and turned towards the crowd, gathered in front of his vehicle. He had already contacted the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, warning him of potential rioting at the accident site. The Superintendent of Police (SP) was also in the loop, keeping the reinforcement ready for action. All he needed to do was to signal the SP to send the force.
Sudhir Paatjoshi could read the Minister’s mind, and told the men, lying in front of the vehicle, “This is Minister’s final order. He has made all the arrangements with the DIG of Police. The reinforcement is just a phone call away.”
Immediately, more men from the pack, joined the Compounder, laying themselves on the ground be-hind the vehicle.
Mr Paatjoshi got off the vehicle, to go round the bend, for surveying the state of the road beyond. He was amazed to see a jam packed crowd. He returned to the vehicle and whispered in a frightened voice, “Sir, there is trouble ahead.”
Mr Paatjoshi had helplessness written all over his face. Mr Adhikari’s exasperation was reaching its peak. In a fit of rage, he got off the vehicle and pushed himself through the crowd, while Mr Paatjoshi was imploring him, “Sir, Sir, don’t go there, please!”
Mr Adhikari was, by then, incandescent with rage and carried on regardless. He was taken aback when he saw a huge crowd, stretching as far back as his eyes could take him. Their number was hard to es-timate, probably a couple of hundreds. He could not work out, how so many had turned up so quickly. More alarmingly, they were armed, with crowbars, sickles and swords.
The sight of the weapons set his blood to boil. By the time he returned to the vehicle, his mind was made up; ordinary police can’t control this murderous mob, only armed police will do. He decided to phone for reinforcement of armed police.
Before executing his deadly plan, he wanted to get the nod from the Chief Minister. He quickly briefed him of the situation over the phone, seeking his permission to deploy armed police on the rioting crowd.
“Have you gone mad!” he shouted.
“But Sir, these people are blatantly breaking the law. It’s the only option left now for maintaining law and order.”
“Of course, you are the Home Minister, Law and order is your portfolio. But, you are falling into the trap, the crowd has laid for you. They are waiting for the armed police to be let loose on them. Soon there will be a violent scuffle. Remember, there are many self-styled social activists, who are waiting in the wings to publicise the police brutality in its most colourful version.”
“Sir, if I can’t use the police to disperse the crowd, please give me permission to deal with this unruly mass by their own method,’” he begged. “My army of men know very well, how to thrash them out of shape.”
“Don’t do this mistake Harihar, I am imploring you. These so-called champions of civil liberty will have a field day, writing about the abuse of power and position by the Home Ministry. And, we also have to be mindful of the forthcoming election,” came the reply.
“What about my daughter, Sir? Her life is in real danger…,” his voice trailed off.
“I share your fatherly sentiments, Harihar. But, as a public servant, you have a greater responsibility. Your duty to the people should trump your feelings for your family.”
“Sir, what do I do then?” Mr Adhikari sounded desperate.
The breeze, in the meantime, had picked up momentum, setting the flag on the vehicle to flutter noisi-ly. To the minister’s ears, it was laughing aloud, mocking at his impotence.
“Whatever you do, don’t forget, it is the Doctors Day today,” the Chief Minister said before hanging up.
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News, like this, does not take time to travel; it reached Sitakanta at lightning speed. One would have thought, it brought him some comfort. Only he knows deep inside, if it did; because it was hard to tell from the flicker of visible emotion in him on receiving the news. Perhaps, the message was yet to sink in or Sitakanta was too numb to react.
25th June 2021
* The first of July is celebrated in memory of the legendary physician, Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy MRCP, FRCS. He had the rare distinction of combining excellence in diverse fields of Medicine and Politics. He is often regarded the Maker of the Modern West Bengal and served as its Chief Minister from 1948 unit his death in 1962. Not many know that he is also one of those, who was born and died on the same date, 1st July.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All names of characters are fictitious, but, most of the events, depicted in the story, are rooted in reality.
Dr. Ajaya Upadhyaya from Hertfordshire, England. A Retired Consultant Psychiatrist from the British National Health Service and Honorary Senior Lecturer in University College, London.
GLIMPSES OF OUR HERITAGE :: SIGNIFICANCE OF SHIVASTAKAM AND LINGASTAKAM
Shivashtakam or Shiva Ashtakam is a powerful mantra in praise of lord Shiva. It is said that reciting Shivashtakam will give you immense courage to face obstacles in life. It is also very popular among the people with its first charanam that starts with “Prabhum prananatham vibhum vishwanatham“. It is appropriate to chant Shivashtakam mantra with devotion.
According to Hindu mythology, Lord Shiva is the destroyer of evil and is the omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent God. Yet, he is forever calm and unmoved, sitting in perpetual meditation. His image and power are known to inspire and enlighten even the most troubled minds.
Sri Adi Shankaracharya, the author of this Mantra, came up with it in a state of complete Shiva consciousness. The depth of Shiva's image described in the mantra makes it one of the most commonly practiced mantras of Shaivism.
Benefits
The Shivashtakam mantra holds several benefits for the mind of both the chanter and the listener. Listening to Shivashtakam along with meditation helps in the following ways.
Healing power: If practiced regularly and with undivided focus, the Shivashtakam can have long term healing effects on the chanter’s and listener’s temperament and mental strength.
Improves decision making ability : Through this chant, the intention to overcome suffering becomes stronger and it becomes easier for the mind to make decisions on the problems with clarity and intuition.
Improves path to prosperity: As a result of its effect, chanting the Shivashtakam can bless the life of the chanter with abundant health and happiness, while also opening up the path to prosperity. Shivashtakam mantra is part of the ancient healing chants.
The above are the primary benefits of the Shivashtakam Mantra. This chant is also known to remove pain, and improve confidence in the listener.
Shivaashtakam is one of the most powerful mantras written to sing the glory of Lord Shiva. It is said that a devotee who sings it with full devotion after taking bath and wearing clean white clothes, goes to any Shiva temple with some cow's milk, Bel leaves, Sandalwood, Flowers, Rice, Fruits etc.and most importantly, a pure heart, Shiva Shambho blesses him/her with immense strength and light to fight and get through all problems and obstacles that life offers. The Shivashtakam mantra is a prayer for willpower, wisdom, and patience to overcome our worldly struggles. This chant consists of eight verses (known as Ashtakam) and is a humble call for the blessings of Shiva. Shivaashtakam has 8 verses and they are..
Shivastakam Hymn
[I pray to You, Shiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who is the Lord, Who is the Lord of our lives, Who is Vibhu, Who is the Lord of the world, Who is the Lord of Jagannatha (Vishnu), Who is always dwelling in happiness, Who imparts light or shine to everything, Who is the Lord of living beings, Who is the Lord of ghosts, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[I pray to You, Shiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who has a garland of skull around the neck, Who has a net of snakes around His body, Who is the destroyer of the immense-destroyer Kala, Who is the lord of Ganesha, Whose matted-hair are spread-out by the presence of the waves of Ganga falling on His head, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[I pray to You, Shiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who scatters happiness [in the world], Who is orating the universe, Who is the universe Himself, Who is possessing the adornment of ashes, Who is without a beginning, Who is without a measure, Who removes the greatest attachments, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[I pray to You, Shiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who resides below a Vata (Banyan) tree, Who possesses an immense laughter, Who destroys the greatest sins, Who is always resplendent, Who is the Lord of Himalaya, various Gana and the demi-gods, Who is the great Lord, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[I pray to You, Shiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who shares half of His body with the daughter of Himalaya, Who is situated in a mountain (Kailasa), Who is always a resort for the depressed, Who is the Atman, Who is revered by (or Who is worthy of reverence by) Brahma and others, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[I pray to You, Shiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who holds a skull and a trident in the hands, Who endows the desires of those who are humble to His lotus-feet, Who uses an Ox as a vehicle, Who is supreme and above various demi-gods, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[I pray to You, Stiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who has a face like the Winter-moon, Who is the subject of happiness of Gana, Who has three eyes, Who is pure, Who is the friend of Kubera (controller of wealth), Who is the consort of Aparna (Parvati), Who has eternal characteristics, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[I pray to You, Shiva, Shankara, Shambhu, Who is known as Hara, Who has a garland of snakes, Who roams around the cremation grounds, Who is the universe, Who is the summary of the Veda, Who is always dispassionate, Who is living in the cremation grounds, Who is burning desires born in the mind, and Who is the Lord of everyone.]
[Those who chant this prayer every morning with devotion for the Trident holding Shiva, attains Moksha, after having attained a dutiful son, wealth, friends , spouse and a fruitful n fulfilling life. May the Shiva Shambho Gauri Shanker bless you all with His Love and keep you protected under His care.]
Significance of Lingashtakam
The Lingashtakam is a strotram (hymn) in praise of Shiva Linga. Lord Shiva is also called in many names like Maheswara, Rudra, Pasupati etc. The Linga is a symbol for Shiva, just like Sankha (conch shell) and Chakra (discus wheel) are symbols of Lord Vishnu. Linga also means the gender of a being. We have Stree Linga (Female gender), and Pumlinga (Male Gender).The Lingasthakam Stotram is a prayer formed of eight salutations or invocations offered to the Supreme Deity in his aspect as Linga. Linga is the universal symbol of creation and source of everything. This prayer glorifies the Shiva Linga and details its greatness Sri Lingashtakam is a popular 8-canto hymn, a prayer song chanted during the worship of Lord Shiva. As per legend reciting this eight para mantra on Shivalinga with great devotion will get one moksha and reach the Shiva Loka after one’s life. The last para is an appendix that summarizes the benefits of chanting Shiva Lingashtakam. Chanting this Mantra gets peace of mind and helps in keeping evil, negative energy and thoughts away – grants good health, prosperity, and wisdom and induces positivity, confidence, and willpower as well as the removal of obstacles in endeavours.
When we come the question of who composed the Lingashtakam? To be candid, there is no solid evidence to give credit to any identified composer of this beautiful Lingashtakam. However, many believe that it was written by Sri Adi Shankaracharya considering his poetic way of writing the Astakams and also looking at many of his compositions that matches with that of Shiva Panchakshara stotram composed by Sri Adi Shakaracharya. However, some authors believe it was not his work. They say Lingashtakam is much older to this date, and gives credit to Maha Muni Agasthya.
The conventions associated with the ashtakam have evolved over its literary history of more than 2500 years. Ashtakams were a very popular and generally accepted genre of devotional and general poetry during the golden period of Sanskrit literature, and also that of Vedic Indian Literature. One of the best known ashtakam writers was Adi Sankaracharya, who created an ashtakam cycle with a group of ashtakams, arranged to address a particular deity, and designed to be read both as a collection of fully realized individual poems and as a single poetic work comprising all the individual ashtakams. He wrote more than thirty astakams in stuti [dedication] to various deities.
Each stanza lists the God’s glory and the benefits of worshipping the Shiva Linga. It states that the Linga is worshipped by Vishnu and Brahma as well even though they are part of trinity. Filled with peace at all times, it destroys any suffering caused by the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Worshipped by Sages and Gods, it is powerful enough to take away the pride of dreadful demons like Ravana. It burns away sexual desire. Adorned with fragrances, the Shiva Linga brings increased intelligence. Decorated with gold and precious stones and radiating the effulgence of shining gems, it even caused the destruction of Daksha. (Daksha was one of the sons of Lord Brahma. In the Hindu scriptures Daksha at one point insulted Shiva and Shiva destroyed him. Daksha was later forgiven by the merciful Shiva.). It is covered by sandal paste, haldi and kumkum and adorned with garlands. It has the power to destroy the past karmas of worshippers. Whoever recites the Lingasthakam Stotram on a daily basis in the presence of Shiva would get salvation. Shiva Linga, it is believed as the universal symbol of creation and source of everything. The Lingasthakam Stotram should be chanted to offer prayers to Lord Shiva during Shivaratri festival. Worshipping Shiva Linga with this prayer and decorating it with garlands and flowers, offering fragrances and fruits is a nice way to please the Lord and seek His blessings. Regular recitation of this hymn gives the devotees peace of mind and keeps him away from all evils and bad thoughts. Those who chant this mantra regularly become healthy, wealthy, prosperous and wise its power helps the devotees acquire positivity, and confidence.
The Lingashtakam chanting process:
The Lingashtakam Stotram is one of the most revered hymns in the Hinduism. Mantras have unique power associated with them. Be it science or religion, the most important thing is belief. Every ritual we perform impacts our lives in some way or the other. According to the Hinduism, regular recitation of Lingashtakam is the most powerful way to please Lord Shiva and get his blessings. A devotee should chant this humn in the early morning and evening in front of the Shiva Linga to get connected with the Supreme Lord Shiva and the desired results. Following is the Sanskrit version and English translation with Sanskrit pronounciatio:
The Lingashtakam Hymn
I bow before the Sada Shiva Lingam which is the eternal Shiva,
which is worshipped by Brahma, Vishnu and the Devas
The Lingam Which is pure and resplendent,
The Lingam that destroys the sorrows of cycle of birth and death.
I bow before the Sada Shiva Lingam
That is worshipped by gods and saints,
The Lingam that destroyed the kama and the one that bestows mercy on people.
The Lingam that subdued the pride of Ravana
I bow before that Lingam, which is the eternal Shiva.
I bow before the Sada Shiva Lingam the eternal Shiva,
The Lingam that is lavishly anointed by all the aromatic and scented pastes
The Lingam behind the power of elevated wisdom
The Lingam that is prostrated by the Siddhas, Suras and Asuras.
I bow before that Lingam, which is the eternal Shiva,
The Lingam that is adorned with gold and precious gems
The Lingam that looks great by having Lord of Snakes coiled around it.
The Lingam that destroyed the Dakshas Yagna
I bow before the Sada Shiva Lingam
The Lingam that is applied with Kumkuma and sandalwood paste
The shining Lingam that is adorned with lotus garlands
The Lingam that wipes out the accumulated sins
I bow before the Sada Shiva Lingam
The Lingam that is worshipped by deva ganas
The Lingam that is worshipped with genuine feel, great devotion, and consciousness
The Lingam whose splendour is like that of a million suns
I bow before the SadaShiva Lingam
The Lingam that resides on the eight petals
The Lingam that was the cause of the entire creation
The Lingam that can destroy the eight aspects of the poverty
[Anyone who chants the holy octet of the Lingam,
In the holy presence of Lord Shiva,
Would in the end reach the world of Shiva.]
I bow before the Sada Shiva Lingam
The Lingam that is worshipped by the guru of sura’s (Brihaspati) and suravaras
The Lingam that is worshipped by the flowers from the celestial gardens of gods
The Lingam that is always supreme and divine of all (I bow to that Lingam)
The one who recites this Lingashtakam in the abode of God Shiva Would in the end reach the world of Shiva and enjoy the compassion of Great God Shiva.
Significance of this Hymn
Lingashtakam is good but while chanting you must know the meanings and then start chanting. Secondly, the most authentic for Shiva is chanting Maha Rudra, Namaka, Chamaka and Mahanyasa. Practice it and know the meanings and start chanting.Most importantly while chanting you must concentrate on chanting by closing your eyes and forget about the deity in front of you. Rudra is the life force behind evolution and without his force it's difficult to move forward. Shiva in Sanskrit means Lokakalyan or auspiciouness. Rudra means Life Force. Shiva's dance is ultimate meaning of spontaneity in creation and dissolution. This Ashtakam prayer is a declaration of faith, obedience, love and devotion to Lord Shiva in His aspect as Shivalingam. It is considered highly auspicious to listen to Lingashtakam and its benefits are numerous. It is said that anyone who chants the holy octet of the Shiva Lingam with great devotion would in the end get moksha and reach the Shiva Lok.
Worshipping a God can be done as a rupa (visible form) or arupa (invisible form). Along with this great God Shiva is also known to be worshipped as ‘Arupa-rupi’ which means ‘a form with no form’ that is the Shiva Lingam. Worshipping of Lingam brings the devotee much closer to God Shiva. Puranas, and many other holy Shaivite scriptures as this form is greater to the usual murthi form for worshiping.
Worshipping of Lingam was known to be one of the ancient practices in Hinduism. Such Linga worship can be done in many ways like abhishekams, rituals, or even by praising with holy chants, stotras and ashtakas. One such is Lingashtakam, that explains the greatness of Shiva in the Linga form and describes many aspects of Lingam.
In order to understand how mighty the spiritual importance of Linga form can be, easily known by reciting the Lingashtakam as some of its stanzas like ‘Brahma Murari Surarchitha Lingam…’ and ‘Siddhasurasura Vanditha Lingam’ clearly explains its greatness as the Shiva Lingam form is not only worshiped by Vishnu, Brahma and several other Gods but also by the Asuras and demons. Reciting simple yet in depth Astakas like Lingashtakam meaningfully, enlightens the devotees and brings them much closer to the Great God’s mercy.
Mantra means - manan?t tr?yate iti mantra? — mantra is that which protects the mind from random thinking!
The chanting of mantra is an end in itself and not a means to a goal. The chanting of a mantra itself leads to tranquillity, clarity of mind and self-realization. It is one of the tools to aid meditation - along with visualization and deity yoga.
Dr. Ramesh Chandra Panda is a retired Civil Servant and former Judge in the Central Administrative Tribunal. He belongs to the 1972 batch of IAS in Tamil Nadu Cadre where he held many important assignments including long spells heading the departments of Education, Agriculture and Rural Development. He retired from the Government of India as Secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises in 2008 and worked in CAT Principal Bench in Delhi for the next five years. He is the Founder MD of OMFED. He had earned an excellent reputation as an efficient and result oriented officer during his illustrious career in civil service.
Dr. Panda lives in Bhubaneswar. A Ph. D. in Economics, he spends his time in scholarly pursuits, particularly in the fields of Spiritualism and Indian Cultural Heritage. He is a regular contributor to the Odia magazine Saswata Bharat and the English paper Economic and Political Daily.
Something most unusual had happened. The literary world was aghast. The publishers and printers were mortified. An emergency Zoom meeting of office-bearers of Publishers’ And Printers’ Association (PAPA) was convened. The President came straight to the issue slotted for deliberation, and decision.
A New Author (NA), unheard of till date, had self-published his first book in June, 2020; and thereafter had gone ahead to publish nine more books by May, 2021. Ten books in eleven months! Definitely, a fraud. An impostor, or a plagiarist. An Urban Naxalite, perhaps, intent upon sabotaging the established order, taking advantage of the corona crisis.
All shops, including book shops, had been closed owing to the lockdown. Unsold inventory of already published books had piled up in go-downs and transit points. Readership of printed material, including newspapers and magazines had touched rock bottom with regular readers fearing to touch any material delivered by a courier. Existing investments had turned into NPA. No income accrued to established publishers to enable them to pay even bank interest. Staff salary hadn’t been paid for months. Writers’ commissions hadn’t been released for lack of funds. A full-blown crisis for PAPA and all its members.
When did any author publish so many books in such a short period, asked the defenders of the established world order of critics, editors, cover designers, literary agents, publishers, printers, marketing specialists, book venders; in fact, all the players, big and small, in the book publishing and printing industry? A fair question to ask. A reasonable doubt had been raised. Hence, it was incumbent upon the Establishment to order an Inquisition for fact finding, forensic analysis, and a thorough questioning of the person claiming to be an author.
Requesting the government to order a CBI enquiry was also contemplated. However, there was no guarantee that the CBI, already overburdened and overwhelmed with its Narada, and similar sundry investigations, could conduct an expeditious inquiry, and submit a prompt report, or put up a charge sheet in the competent court. No delay could be risked since the author was reportedly working on more manuscripts, and secretly plotting to publish a few more books in the coming months. To nip such dangerous, and subversive activity, it was necessary for the Establishment to intervene urgently, and decisively, for which a quick enquiry and report was necessary. Veteran industry players prepared the Terms of Reference for the enquiry. A panel, with expertise to detect heresy, plagiarism, or content fit to be censored, was commissioned to conduct the investigation, and submit a detailed report to PAPI’s Vigilance Committee on or before 15th July, 2021.
Terms of Reference (ToR):
The panel will inquire into the following matters, and submit its detailed report including recommendations for remedial measures along with all annexes, in ten copies, not later than 15th July, 2021:
1. Has NA caused willful damage to PAPA? Are his activities suspicious, subversive, and mala-fide? Does NA’s publication of 10 books in 11 months constitute a subversive activity to sabotage and ruin the Publishing And Printing Industry (PAPI) of India? Is there a deep conspiracy involving foreign hand to cripple India’s PAPI?
2. Has NA received any foreign funds for his current, or any other projects and enterprises? Has he received any funds from hawala sources? How much has he invested in these projects till date, and how much income has accrued to him?
3. How’s the quality of NA’s prolific publications, and how are his future prospects?
4. Steps required to be taken, in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term (in a tabular form in an Excel Sheet), by the Government, and PAPA to protect the larger interest of all the stake-holders of PAPA including writers.
Panel:
Vishnu Godbole, Author and Former Chief Secretary of a large State,
Dr Saraswati Raichoudhury, PhD in English Literature, Eminent Professor, and a Shakespeare Scholar, and
Dr Priyamvada Lakshmi Jain, PhD in Economics from Columbia University, and a senior civil servant, to examine the financing of the project, whether any secret foreign funds had been received, whether all compliances were in place, RoI, Source of Funds, Taxes, GST, etc.
Health Check-up
A complete health check-up by a Medical Board (MB) had been ordered and completed. MB’s Report indicated that NA was reasonably healthy for his age, though with high bad cholesterol, NAFL (Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver), mild but manageable spondylosis, and high IOP (Intra Ocular Pressure) for which he was under medication. MRI of NA’s brain revealed expected wear and tear with decades of use. A few cells had begun shrivelling, and withering away. His mental capacity had peaked in his forties, and was on the decline, thereafter, and now, much reduced compared to its optimal capacity. But no other unusual activity, or tumour to induce frenzied activity among the brain cells. Looks good enough to function reliably for another 20 years or less depending upon the overall fitness and functionality of the other critical parts of his system. Significantly, the Board had noted several tendencies of manic euphoria, especially when NA had been queried about his career as an author.
The Panel held Virtual Meetings, but was authorised to summon NA for personal appearance, and narco-test, if deemed necessary.
Modality- Open Trial, Transparent. Secret ballot, public opinion poll, too.
Questionnaire- An expert panel nominated by the Industry had designed the Questionnaire.
The Inquiry: Procedure & Steps
A team of veteran editors had made a detailed forensic analysis of the entire text, including the Preface, Dedication, Copyright, Epigraph, etc to detect if there was any hidden, subterranean, subversive stuff with potential to corrupt minds of innocent, unsuspecting readers, and jeopardising their mental health.
All the 10 books were read by reputed literary critics, capable of tearing the reputation of even established authors to shreds, if they so desired. AI-driven software, with ability to detect even a single sentence copied and pasted, without acknowledgement and authorisation, from another author’s work, read the entire content, and reported as follows: No plagiarism found. The author’s style was not like that of any other author. He wrote only like himself. Simple prose, with negligible flourish of purple passages, and scant use of popular literary devices. Pretty ordinary, even insipid, but easy to understand. Literary merit and quality: accomplished human readers, and Professors of English Literature and Language, may separately assess.
Author’s Diary entry, 15th June, 2021
I was neck-deep into my current manuscript when I received the notice from the Inquisition.
The Questionnaire was long, consisting of 51 Main Q.s, with sub-questions I, ii, iii, iv, etc for several questions. I thought of counting the total number of queries raised, but dropped the idea. No point in questioning the wisdom of the Inquisition. Better to sit down to answer all questions with due diligence. There was a statutory warning at the beginning. All Q.s must be truthfully answered. Inquisition reserves the right to order a narco-test, if deemed necessary. At the end was a post-script: Considering the amazing ability of the author to speed-write, completing the Questionnaire must have been pretty easy! Wow, Inquisition had a sense of humour, too, though at the author’s expense.
After answering the Questionnaire, an affidavit swearing to the veracity of facts and submissions, and duly stamped and notified had to be attached; and the entire submission had to reach the Inquisition Office, by Speed-Post Only (No couriers allowed admittance to our premises!), latest by 30th June, 2021.
On 5th July,2021 at 6.00 pm, I was required to appear before the Inquisition, vide Zoom, at my own cost, for further inquiry.
The Interview
NA was directed to appear before the august panel for an Interview on 5th July, 2021 vide a Zoom meeting.
After perusing the written reply by NA to the detailed Questionnaire, the reports by the Editors and the Critics, the AI report, and the Medical Board’s report, the panel proceeded to quiz NA about his crazy enterprise.
VG- You’re clearly a man in great hurry. Could you please explain why this sudden rush, especially since you had published nothing for 65 years?
NA- I seek your kind indulgence to peruse the annexes to my written reply. A list of more than 50 ‘middles’ published in various English dailies, including a few national dailies, is submitted. Should you like to read those publications, I may submit the photocopies of the relevant paper clippings. Should I?
VG- No, that won’t be required. We are talking of books, aren’t we? Do ‘middles’ count as serious writing? I’m not too sure. Had you published any book before 2020?
NA- No.
VG- So, why such a rush?
NA- Life is ephemeral, you know. It’s best to do what we can while we’ve the time, ability, and inclination. Don’t you think so?
VG- Did you approach any reputed publisher to publish your books?
NA- Yes, I did.
VG- How many? Did they all reject your manuscripts?
NA- One. No, he didn’t reject my manuscript. But he didn’t say yes, either. I wasn’t willing to wait.
VG- How long did you wait?
NA- A little more than two months. Maybe, I should have waited patiently for a few more months. But I decided to try self-publishing.
VG- How did you get to know about self-publishing?
NA- From my daughter, who self-published her book long before me.
VG- (whispered to co-panellists: The subversive tendency runs in the family, it seems!) How could you learn all about publishing so fast?
NA- I’m still learning. Sometimes, I get stuck up, and to resolve such issues I seek my daughter’s help.
VG requested SR to ask her questions.
SR- Why do you write?
NA- You may as well ask why I breathe!
SR- Why have you published only ‘creative’ works? Have you thought of publishing text books or similar books with some utilitarian value?
NA- Excellent idea. I could do that, but I don’t have the ability and resources to persuade Universities to prescribe my books under their approved syllabi.
SR- How would you rate the quality of your books in a scale of 1 to 10?
NA- If I say ‘10’ or ‘1’, you might think I’m crazy. I’ll play safe, and give myself 8, maybe. You’re an eminent Professor, how would you rate my books?
SR- If I were not on this panel, I might never have read any of your books. Sorry, I can’t share my rating with you. It’s confidential, you know.
It was now PLJ’s turn to interview NA.
PLJ- How much have you invested in your books?
NA- I hope that’s not a trick question. If your query is about the money that I’ve spent upfront, it is INR 3207.00, paid to an editor. Plus, a one-year subscription to prowritingaid, an editing software, for which I paid USD 59.25 through my credit card.
PLI- That’s hard to believe. Publishing a book doesn’t come so cheap, and you’ve published 10! How did you do it for free?
NA- I got my family to chip in with the cover art work and design. The rest of the stuff I did myself.
PLJ- How much time did you invest for each book? What value would you put to that?
NA- Much time and effort, I must say. On most days I worked 10 hours or more. Value of my time? That’s a difficult one. You’re an Economist, why don’t you tell me that? Well, I’m inclined to value my intellectual work at INR 500 per hour. Would that be reasonable, what do you think?
PLJ- Did you receive any funding support, from domestic or foreign sources, for your books?
NA- None. Copy of my certified bank accounts are annexed to my written reply.
The Panel held a Zoom meeting for their final deliberations. Each panellist made a brief submission.
Vishnu Godbole (VG) observed that a fast-track time-frame for writing and publishing a new text-book was about two months, and for a creative work, it was at least three months. Thus, 10 books would require at least 30 months to write and publish. The present case defies the standard protocol, and the SOP for new creations.
Dr Saraswati Raichoudhury (DSR) observed that the literary merit of the books was only about five in a scale of one to ten. Themes had been randomly picked up, plot structure was simplistic, the characters rather sketchy, and not well-developed. All books, already at the bottom of Amazon’s selling list, are doomed to fail.
Dr Priyamvada Laxmi Jain (DPLJ) reported that the author had so far invested a mere 3207 rupees for all the six books. Unbelievable! The minimum cost of publishing a book, excluding advance royalty for the writer, at the current prices, was 35000 rupees. But the author has spent only 3207 rupees for his first book, and NONE for his subsequent nine books. That’s impossible, and unacceptable. But scrutiny of his bank accounts, IT returns, etc didn’t reveal any money trail. His bank accounts had been verified to confirm this. No foreign fund had been received by the author, not even through hawala channels. NA had made no cash payment either because his remote publishers- KDP, Amazon, and Notion Press did not accept cash payment. No other person or entity, on his behalf, had made any payment to the publishers. Till date, the author had sold a few copies of his books, and the total commission he had received from his publishers was only 2955 rupees. The author may eventually break-even and recover his investment, but that’s in the future. If this inquiry concludes that he’s a freak or a fraud or both, then his career is doomed.
The panellists unanimously agreed that the author was suddenly, simultaneously, and insolently staking claim to be a short-story writer, a poet, a translator, a motivational writer, and a storyteller for children. He was clearly attempting to confuse the literary world, and the innocent readers by leaping from one genre to another, almost with the unabashed glee of a monkey.
Report Summary
(Point-wise with reference to ToR)
1. NA’s activities are without doubt suspicious and ABNORMAL, and entirely contrary to established SoP for the Book Publishing Industry. Owing to NA’s queer activities, public faith in PAPI has been considerably eroded, and its Brand image has been seriously dented causing incalculable financial loss to the industry.
2. Present status of Return on Investment (ROI) suggests that NA would incur financial loss. From purely financial perspective, his enterprise is Quixotic, to say the least.
3. Literary merit of his books is average. NA’s future as a creative writer is doomed. He would soon exhaust his ideas and resources.
4. PAPI may use NA’s misadventure as a Case Study to dissuade future desperadoes from similar foolhardy enterprises.
PAPA Resolution
After careful consideration of the Panel’s Report, PAPA’s Vigilance Committee drafted the following Resolution which was unanimously passed by the Governing Body:
1. No member shall aid or abet, directly or indirectly, nor have any transaction, interaction, or relation, whatsoever, with NA.
2. No review, excepting highly damaging ones, of NA’s books will be published by anyone.
3. A polite, but strongly-worded letter, will be sent to the Association of Self-Publishing Platforms (ASPF) to advise their members such as KDP, Amazon, Notion Press, Pothi, and others, to refrain from cohabitation with this UN (Urban Naxalite) masquerading as an author, and attempting to overthrow our benevolent and compassionate, fair, transparent, and democratic rule over PAPI.
***
Note:
The Inquisition is one of the stories from the author’s latest book: The Mysterious Ladies and Other Stories.
Link for the Kindle eBook is: https://amzn.in/2xn6TuB
The author’s profile is at http://amazon.com/author/pkdash
***
P. K. Dash was born in Khuntpali, a village near Bargarh, Odisha and spent his childhood in the village.
He studied English Literature and Linguistics from G.M. College, and Sambalpur University. He taught in G. M. College, Sambalpur, and worked in the State Bank of India before joining the Indian Administrative Service. During his career in civil service, he worked in Madhya Pradesh and New Delhi.
After superannuation as Additional Chief Secretary to the Government of MP, he lives in Bhopal with Sanjukta, his spouse. He is now a full-time author pursuing his passion for writing.
He has published ten books including a bestseller on "How To Be An Author in 7 Days: A Beginner's Guide to Self-Publishing" (Available at https://www.amazon.in/dp/1637811837). He can be contacted at pkdash81@gmail.com.
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT – A Different Perspective
In mythology we know how Goddess Maa Durga was born with all powerful weapons to kill the most dreaded demon Mahisashura. In Mahabharat we have heard how Mata Gandhari and Kunti were respected in the families of Kourabas and Pandabas. In Ramayana we have read how powerful was Kaikei , the second wife of Raja Dasharatha .
Again two great wars, Mahabharat and Ramayana were fought for the dignity of women.
In ancient era the right to choose one's partner was given to the daughters (Swaimbara Pratha). We have read in Mahabharat how Arjun won the difficult test by hitting the target (the eye of a moving fish fixed on a wheel at the top of a post by looking at its image through the reservoir at the base of it.) Moreover in that courtyard on the day of Swaimbara, Draupadi had the audacity to object the participation of Maha Dani Karna, the king of Anga which speaks of the women's empowerment at that time. In the Ramayana we have read the story of breaking the Bow of Lord Shiva worshipped and preserved by Maharaja Janaka by Rama Chandra, the eldest son of Maharaja Dasarath of Ayodhya, to marry his daughter Seeta. These are the two age-old bright examples of women's empowerment in the Dwaper and Treteya Yuga respectively.
The story of Dashyu (Dacoit or thief) Ratnakar who was transformed to the great saint Maharshi Balmiki is a fascinating one. Here the empowerment of his wife played the most crucial role for his transformation. When Dashyu Ratnakar asked his family members if they would share the vices of his most heinous profession, all the family members including his faithful wife, vehemently opposed in one voice.
This protest brought a great change in him and he meditated with full dedication to be blessed with the transformation to a great Saint Maharshi Balmiki who later wrote seven volumes of RAMAYANA. Keeping this on the back ground, I am writing my experience of women's empowerment as a husband in this modern era.
Ishaneswar temple of Burla was built on two hillocks on the west bank of the river Mahanadi in the residential campus of Mahanadi Coal Field (MCL). It is the famous Shiva temple of Burla managed by MCL. Its unique feature is its natural beauty. Built on the hillocks, surrounded by thick green plantations, its base is always washed by the cool water of the river. On the opposite side is the Laxmidungri hill on top of which stands another temple contrast in color to the greenery of hill. Cool breeze blows all throughout the day. Anybody who reaches that spot and sits down in the temple complex for a few minutes will automatically become a devotee of Isaneswar. As a routine I used to visit Baba Ishaneswar daily in the morning, practice half an hour for Asana & Pranayam. Then being motivated with positive vibes I started my daily routine work. Month of Shrabana (July-August) is a pious month for all Shiva devotees. Every Monday devotees carry water in special earthen pots from nearby river, walk with bare feet to the temple to pour the water on the Shivalinga. There is always a heavy rush in the Shiva temples on Mondays.
It was the first Monday of the month of Shrabana. My mother and daughter got ready to visit the Shiva Temple by five in early morning to avoid rush. My wife was supposed to accompany us. She was still asleep. I called her, there was no response. Then I tried all methods to wake her up but the only reply that came from her was, "Please wait for five minutes." I made all arrangements to go to the temple, including keeping the car ready. After ten minutes when I came, I was surprised to see that she was in the same position on the bed. When I tried to wake her up with a violent shake she very politely replied. "You go, I will come later."
My mother, daughter and myself went to the temple. The rush had just begun. The devotees with pots full of water, brought from the nearby river Mahanadi had already made a queue. They had to pour the water on Lord Shiva. The Nana (head priest) saw us. He arranged everything within a short time and helped us to finish the pooja. Then we worshiped Hanumanji in the adjacent temple, went round the temple, took Prasad and got ready to return home. It took around forty five minutes to one hour. We reached our quarters at around seven. When I entered into the bedroom, I saw my wife still asleep, face covered with the shawl and snoring peacefully. Actually she was enjoying the morning sleep with full satisfaction without being disturbed. When I shook her she woke up and asked, “Have you returned from the temple?”
Then I replied in affirmative. I asked her when she would visit the temple. She calmly replied “You have visited the temple with your mother and daughter. That is enough. There is no need to visit the temple. The virtues (Punya) you earned, I have got 50% share as I am your Ardhangini (Better half)”. A little later while taking a cup of tea she reminded me of the story of "How Dashyu (the robber, murderer) Ratnakar was transformed into Saint Balmiki," On that day I understood what women empowerment means.
Prof Gangadhar Sahoo is a well-known Gynaecologist. He is a columnist and an astute Academician. He was the Professor and HOD of O&G Department of VSS MEDICAL COLLEGE, Burla.He is at present occupying the prestigious post of DEAN, IMS & SUM HOSPITAL, BHUBANESWAR and the National Vice President of ISOPARB (INDIAN SOCIETY OF PERINATOLOGY AND REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY). He has been awarded the BEST TEACHER AWARD of VSS MEDICAL COLLEGE,BURLA in 2013. He has contributed CHAPTERS in 13 books and more than 100 Scientific Articles in State, National and International Journals of high repute. He is a National Faculty in National Level and delivered more than 200 Lectures in Scientific Conventions.He was adjudged the BEST NATIONAL SPEAKER in ISOPARB NATIONAL CONVENTION in 2016
THE HUNTER'S LAUGH
Krupasagar Sahoo
It was a wintry morning.
The eyes of Netra, the station porter, glowed up in excitement when he spied a carrion, lying on side of the railway track. The carrion shimmered in the tremulous morning light of the sun. It was the blood-splashed body of a deer that lay with the legs outstretched beside the track.
Posoita happens to be a little known station in the dense Saranda forest. Here, at sundown, one can hear the roars of the tigers. sometimes at dawn the locals bump into bears who, maddened by the aroma of the mohul blossoms, strayed into the vicinity. Here one finds in plenty the soft meat of the harad birds, and that of peacocks, wild cocks, rabbits and kurtas courtesy the tribals of the Ho community. But now thanks to his good luck, the deer came as a bonanza. Netra gave out a wild cry of joy while hurrying towards the colony. The crows and the parrots flying across the sky thought as if the Naxalites had blown off the station. The Station Master and the others stood up in curious anxiety to know what happened exactly.
The dead deer was shifted to the lamp room. A meeting was convened in the Bada Babu's chamber. It was resolved to hold a grand feast.
Banerjee Babu had his home in Calcutta, where his family lived, He stayed here alone. Such a small station as this did not have either a goods-shed or a parcel office. The earning from booking office was meagre, which was the solitary cause of his worry. Physically, he looked just skin and bone, but his voice cut like blade, he used it as a tool for the station administration here.
Narahari Barik was the Assistant Station Master. Everybody called him chhota babu. He had been married for just a year. He had left his young bride home. He did not feel it safe to bring her to this jungle area. But his mind doted on her. He grabbed every opportunity to get back to Odisha...
There was one Jaga Rao, the Switchman, whose work was limited to day time. A man from Srikakkulam, he had got just a few days left to hang his boots. There is none at his home as his wife was no more, his daughters were married off. The station cabin was his home where he cooked his food and rested.
Nand Lal was the gateman. A middle-aged man with a fat midriff, his eyes looked red as blood. His wife treated him with broom-lashes every night when he returned home dead drunk. At times he had to spend the nights in the station to escape her wrath.
The station porter lived in the nearby tribal hamlet. He was a bachelor, a frolicsome youngman, who always found himself in the best of spirits. He had just completed two years in the Railways. After a day's hard work, he revelled in the company of the pretty tribal lasses in the nights. He was the only happy man among the sad lot.
In the meeting the chunk of one's duty was finalized.
Just then, an information reached them about the visit of the Safety Officer who had to inspect the station that very day. The ensuing visit of the Safety Officer dampened their otherwise rising spirit as a bolt from the blue. A stockily-built man, his face was round as a tiger's. Though he sported no moustache, it could still portend disaster that could send a chill down their spines. A top-notch officer, he never felt a stab of conscience to suspend an official or transfer him on flimsy grounds. He nurtured sympathy for none. Work as hard as you should - this was the mantra of the management. An eerie silence pervades when he enters the office exactly as the leaves stop to hunter in the jungle when a tiger gets wild.
So this officer had earned a nickname. "Tiger Sa'ab". All the officials had just one question on their lips. "What's Tiger Sa'abs programme?" Everyone got glued to the Control Room phone to hear the live commentary on his itinerary.
The daytime feast was deferred to the evening. It was not known when he would barge into the station, any station for that matter on his way. Posoita station was on high alert.
Soon the news spread that the Tiger Sa'ab had already boarded a goods train, N. Shalimar after travelling by road to Rourkela.
The goods train was conferred with all honour that is usually meted out to the mail or express trains. Like all other employees, the Station Masters at all stations were on their guards. like the gateman at the gates and the switchmen in the cabins. All had donned their neatly pressed uniforms. The signal posts stood, like Air India's mascot Maharaja, a little bent forward to greet the safety Officer.
The N. Shalimar whizzed past the Posoita Station at half an hour past seven. Leaning out of the window of the West Cabin the Switchman held out the green beacon light. The Station Master and the porter stood attentively on both ends of the train of the train with beacon lights in hands. As the train was passing the Station Master, in cap and neat necktie, saluted Sa'ab such hard that the cap fell off his head. The Gateman used all his might to blow whistle in such a way that the bats hanging from the green tamarind tree fell down in fright.
The Driver was speeding past spiritedly humming a tune all through the distance. The guard let out a cry of relief. The danger has passed.
After it was confirmed that the Tiger Sa'ab had already left, the spring wind began to waft in its aroma on the Posoita Station.
Bada Babu did not forget about the feast despite his busy schedule. "Go and see how far has the cooking progressed." he instructed Chhota Babu to oversee everything around, and said, I'd asked that stooge, Bideshi, to do the needful. Unless one is not on his guard. the cook would rip off everything. Let me find out position of train and then come.
Bada Babu could hear the distant sounds of the N. Shalimar chugging through the Saranda forest. It must have crossed the tunnel by now. There was no chance of Tiger Sa'ab's returning from there, he thought. He would be ready to milk the warmth of the chilly night under cover of a blanket at Chakradharpur. Bada Babu breathed a sigh of relief.
The feast was under process in the station's rest room. The tiny Posoita Railway Colony had a set of quarters, side by side which could accommodate 7 to 8 people. Overshadowed by two rows of sal and mohul trees the quarters were hardly visible from a distance. The unoccupied quarters served as the rest rooms for inspectors and reliever staff. The vampire bats thronged the place to make them their home when no one was around.
It was here the revelry was in the full swing. For over two hours there was no train to pass the station. Bada Babu chose to uncork a bottle of liquor, Clever Nand Lal had arranged two types of liquor, Mahuli and Chauli. He had already exhausted a bottle while intermittently humming a tune of Bhojpuri song.
The grassy taste of the fried deer meat went wonderfully well with the slightly sour taste of the country-brewed Mahuli.
Just then a man in his late 50's appeared at Posoita along with his two companions. A stockily built man, he seemed to have waded through a pool of water whcih was evident from the wet parts of his uptumed trousers at the bottom.
The strangers made for the cabin gate which seemed to have closed. The nearby barrier gate was down to prevent the vehicular traffic.
Then they headed towards the last cabin. Its door was kept ajar. There was no Switchman though his Khaki apparels were left in a hook. Down below and behind the cabin lever there lay some crockery items.
A boy of 12 or 13 occupied the Assistant Station Master's chair trying to tum some block instruments.
- Who are you?, asked the man
- I am Bideshi.
- What are you doing here ?
- Guarding.
- Whom ?
- The bull.
The man could not perhaps put a can on his increasing curiosity so he asked.
- Which bull ?
- A strong bull. Every night it comes to the station to rest, after it spent the day in the tribal village. Bada Babu has asked me to guard the bull lest it should gorge the station documents.
- Where have they all gone ?
- To eat the feast.
- What feast ?
- A deer feast.
- Where's it going on ?
- In the rest room ?
- Why didn't you go ?
- After the bull comes, l'll lock the room and go. May be l'll go after bada babu's arrival.
The stranger then asked his companions to check the train signal register, Station Master'sdiary, Private number book, failure register, officers and inspectors register. "I'm just coming" he told his companions.
"Aay boy", he then turned to Bideshi,"Show me the place where the feast is going on".
The boy was awe-struck, who's this sa'ab? Is he the Tiger Sa'ab? Is he the Tiger Sa'ab, the person that the Station Master went crazy waiting for? Then he thought to himself. No, no, Tiger sa'ab is gone. Who could this man be "Let's go, or you'll lose your share of deer-meat." the stranger told Bideshi cajolingly. But the boy was in a fix. The stranger's voice became increasingly harsh, and he cocked.
"Are you going or not? Or else"....
Then he boxed his ears. Bideshi did not complain, but led the way. The stranger followed him, a torch in hand.
The evening camival was getting colourful when the meat was cooked on slow fire and getting tender. Some 7 to 8 people sat encircling the fire.
Under the spell of liquor, Jaga, the Switchman, tried to stand on his feet. "Aye, I am Dwivedy, you know." he warned trying to imitate the voice of the Safety Officer and then continued. "Do you know me, I'll transfer you all. Ha ha, ha!"
Then Narhari stood up, and imitating a penguin's gait, muttered, "May be you are Dwivedy, but I am Trivedy, your father. You bloody, I'll suspend you."
Now it was Bada Babu's tum. Stretching his legs wide, like Charlie Chaplin;s and holding a bottle in hand, and putting a cap on head, he blurted out, "You know, I'am Chaturvedy, Dwivedy's grandfather!"
The crowd burst in to a wild laughter
Bada Babu then gorged the contents of the stomach that carried the stench of the liquor. By giving him a nudge, Bideshi whispered.
- "Get up Bada Babu, get up"
- "Why?" he asked, "did the bull come?"
- "Not the bull, but the Sa'ab?"
- Has the bull turned in to a Sa'ab? Are you drunk?
Dwivedy, the Tiger Saab, who had returned from the Saranda tunel after stopping the train bore it no more. Standing by the threshold, he roared as though thunder rumbled through the soot-black clouds.
On hearing such loud sound, with rapid flutter of wings the bats settled into the darkness. The male and female parrots woke up in fright. The male parrot said to its female parrot. "The hunter would have laughed ominously this very way before he caught in his net a flock of doves."
"True, yes, true, the Royal Tiger would have burst in to a similar laughter when he saw the herd of deer dancing around in the impenetrable thickness of the dense forest." Replied his sweetheart, the lady parrot.
Krupasagar Sahoo, Sahitya Akademi award winner for his book ‘Shesh Sharat’ a touching tale about the deteriorating condition of the Chilka Lake with its migratory birds, is a well recognized name in the realm of Odiya fiction and poetry. The rich experiences gathered from his long years of service in the Indian Railways as a senior Officer reflect in most of his stories. A keen observer of human behavior, this prolific author liberally laces his stories with humor, humaneness, intrigue and sensitivity. ‘Broken Nest’ is one of many such stories that tug the heart strings with his simple storytelling.
“Didi! Hold my hand,” Shubha said to me. I was surprised. Normally Shubha, though very quiet and aloof, was a confident girl. At the tender age of just ten, she was a sober and mature kind of person. Now, that courageous girl was looking dazed and confused. I held her hand and asked, “Yes Honey! What’s the matter?”
We were walking on foot as part of the marriage procession (Baaraat). There was a band, blaring out film songs, right in front. Some people were dancing around it. Shubha, too, was part of the procession but she had been keeping a little distance from the crowd. She had seemed somewhat pensive. And now suddenly she had turned towards me and asked me to hold her hand. I felt a bit concerned. She was my favourite sister. I asked her what the problem was. She faltered and said, “Didi! I am walking with you, my cousins and other children, aren’t I? But, suddenly I felt that I am not part of this throng; that I am walking alone on the pavement and watching everyone dancing, singing, having a good time. But I am there as well, in the crowd. “Shubha” is watching “Shubha” with others. I am here, on the pavement, and I am also there in the procession. How is it possible? How can ‘I’ be at two places at the same time?” I looked at her, puzzled. She was dead serious and disturbed. I had no answer. I did not understand the situation. She saw me nonplussed and said, “Didi! I feel as if I am a soul watching my body from a distance.” She clutched my hand tightly and whispered, “Am I dead or going to die? I have been told that when your soul leaves your body, the body dies. Then it’s either buried or cremated. If I am a soul then how come my body is walking in a ‘baraat’? How is it still alive? If that body is really ‘I’ I mean ‘Shubha’, then who or what is the other I?
I looked at her amazed! It seemed as if she were in a trance. Such words, coming from a ten-year-old kid, sounded bizarre. I felt scared. Suddenly, a memory came racing into my mind. A strange incident came alive from the past. I held her hand firmly and said, “Shubha! You are imagining things. May be you are tired. Let’s walk fast and go to the bride’s house quickly.” We reached the bride’s house ahead of everybody and in the hustle and bustle of their hospitality, everything was forgotten. Shubha too seemed like herself.
The memory that came out of the archives of my mind was something that had happened long back. I was nine years old at that time. Shubha was only one and a half. Papa was very fond of travelling. He was particularly fond of visiting famous temples, not only because of his religious faith but also because he wished to enjoy their architectural beauty. He liked to visit holy personalities, famous for performing miracles. The good thing was that he used to take the whole family along with him. He often said that frequent outings, sightseeing and visiting historical places broaden one’s perspective and develop one's personality. So we were used to frequent trips.
One Dussehra time, we were thrilled when Papa announced, “This time we are going to the South.” Wow! We had visited the North, North East, Bhutan, Assam, Punjab, MP and many North Indian hill stations many times, but not the south of India. Excited, we packed and started our journey towards Kerala, God’s own country. It was wonderfully verdant and bountiful, with blue backwaters on one side and green hills on the other. We saw temples, resorts, lakes and many other places. One whole day was reserved to be spent at the celebrated Krishna temple.
The incident I am going to recount happened there. Maa, Papa, I, my elder sister and little Shubha, reached the temple by car. We left the car outside, a bit away from the temple premises and started walking towards the temple. Shubha was sleeping on Maa’s shoulder. As we neared the temple, Shubha woke up and looked excited. At the threshold of the temple, she began to babble something incoherently. Then, to our surprise, she started talking clearly. Until that time she had not spoken clearly. We were amazed to hear her say, “Look! There is Krishna. Maa! Kanha is calling me.” She was almost falling from Maa’s shoulder, shouting, “Let me go, lemme go.” All of us were speechless. Papa was ahead of us. He turned back and irritably asked us to hurry up. Maa clutched a flailing Shubha tightly and we reached the sanctum. There, Shubha became uncontrollable. She cried, “Let me go. I will become a cow or a peacock and fly away.” Oh! How could a cow fly? It was absurd. But again she struggled and shouted, “Look! Kanha is playing his flute. I want to dance. Let me free. I’ll become a mor (peacock) and fly away.” She went on and on. All this ruckus made the pujari look up from his duties and gaze at us with annoyance. But as he gave ear to her words, he said to Maa, “Take the girl outside. Take her away, right away.” We stood still, not comprehending anything. He came forward, touched Maa, almost shoved her, and with urgency in his voice, said, “Ma’am, please go. Take the baby out or she will die.” Papa, who had been standing amazed at his youngest child’s sudden stream of speech, came forward and enquired what was happening. The pujari said,” Sir! Your daughter has had a vision of Krishna. If you don’t take her away, she will die. Nobody survives after seeing God.” Papa looked at the pujari as if he had gone mad. In a panicky voice, the man cried, “There is still time. Please go away.” Maa ran out, holding the struggling Shuba firmly. My sister and I followed her. The moment all of us were out and away from the temple, Shubha became quiet. We asked her, “Baby! What happened?” She looked blank. There was no reaction.
Anyway, all of us, except Shubha, had ‘darshan’ by turns and went back to our hotel. I remember Shuba saying “mor” (peacock) several times as we stood outside the temple. But none of us could get even a glimpse of it. It was a bizarre experience. I shuddered when I remembered the pujari’s words. Subha didn’t speak about that or like that again. We moved on with life. Certain things are beyond our comprehension, so we let them go.
Shubha grew up as an aloof child. She was intelligent and a topper in her studies. She had a dreamlike, ethereal quality about her. My friends used to love her. They often remarked that Shubha was a very cute but a lost–looking kid. Yes, she was always ‘lost’, especially in crowds. So when, after the incident on the road, I asked her whether she had any memory of the incident at the Krishna temple. She said she remembered nothing at all. I asked her if she remembered seeing a peacock in Kerala. She looked at me with bewildered eyes.
Shuba was fond of drawing and painting. She had a fetish for collecting coloured feathers. She would pick up any she found and buy unusual and pretty plumes and quills from tonga drivers who decorated their horse’s crest with feathers. She got hold of an old album and fixed the feathers in it, arranged in a colour code. I realized she had the maximum number of peacock feathers in it. She was fond of dancing like a peacock in the rain. Those were the days when we all used to run out and play in the rain and even splash muddy water on each other.
As a teenager, Shubha began to write poems. We laughed at her, saying, loneliness makes one a poet. She would blush and hide her notebook. Her poems had an element of sadness and longing in them. I started keeping an eye on her.
One day I went to her room. She was not to be seen but her poetry notebook was on the ground. It was open. I always had an uncanny feeling about it. I felt her poems speaking out – actually whispering. I could not decipher what they were saying. Her album of feathers was also there with colourful feathers scattered around. They disturbed me. Red, yellow, orange, beige, purple and even white feathers were there but no blue-green, conical one with an ‘eye’ in the centre, no peacock feather was to be seen. I went out onto the veranda. There, in a corner, gazing out, was my ethereal little sister. What was she gazing at? Buildings, clustered and ugly; the view from our city dwelling? “Shubha!” I called out. She turned to me with a faraway look on her face, pointed to the empty sky and whispered, “Look, Didi! Mor.”
It was then that my eyes fell on something lying on the floor. It was a perfect peacock feather.
Sudha Dixit, was born and brought up in UP. Presently settled in Bangalore.. She is doing what she always wanted to do - painting landscapes and portraits & writing poetry / articles on net and various magazines, including print media.
She looks at nature with myopic eyes & paints it wearing tinted glasses, with poetry in her heart. Poetry just happens. It acts as catharsis in her life, removing the toxin from her heart in the form of words on paper. It’s therapeutic. This high spiritedness reveals itself in both, her poems & paintings.
LIGHT AND SHADOW
Dr Prasanna Kumar Sahoo
Halo !
Good morning, madam !
Alok ! Ananya at this end.
Yes mam, please don’t get annoyed. I did commit a great mistake. I assured you never to enter the premises of your residence in my life time. But I forgot my pledge being overwhelmed with the joy of my success.
Alok, please listen to me.
Mam, I was totally fastened with the love and affection of your mother during my one and half years of tenure of looking after your res-garden. She never considered me as the gardener, rather she loved me like her son. How could I forget touching her feet and getting her blessings to start a new chapter in my life after I became the topper in the IAS examination? I am not at all a mean and ungrateful person. In spite of your warnings I broke my promise and ran to your premises to reciprocate the love and affection she had bestowed upon me. Believe me mam, I met her in the portico while she was on the verge of starting her morning walk, touched her feet and returned after I received her blessings. Even I didn’t try to meet my most affectionate Kunimaa. This is the ultimate mistake which I promise never to repeat. Please forgive me for the last time.
Alok, don’t interrupt me and please listen to what I am saying. I am not this so called Ananya madam but your beloved Anu. I want to meet you in person. Would you not give me this chance? Would you debar Anu to meet her Alok at least once to express her feelings?
Mam, It is impossible for me to say ‘No’ to you. Even in the past I never disobeyed your requests. Unfortunately I don’t have a permanent residence in this city. I am bound to my promise not to enter your premises again. Where can I meet you? Presently I am staying with my friend in his rented house, located in a slum. I know pretty well that Ananya, the beloved daughter of a highly placed state official can’t visit this area. You select the place suitable to you.
Again madam! I think you can’t stop calling me madam! Ok. I would select the place and timing of our meeting and let you know through a whats app message. Bye.
Alok remained motionless and speechless for a pretty long time. In his mind’s eye he could visualize the happenings of the past, one after another like the reels of a movie. He was immersed in the sweet unforgettable memories of the chapters of his life.
He was the only child of a poor father, Akulananda who lived in a remote village, Masanibandha in Kalahandi, the most backward district of Odisha. Though a matriculate he did not prefer the job of a teacher or a clerk. He was a lover of nature and had boundless love and affection for trees. He did not possess any agricultural land but had converted the available little homestead land to a beautiful garden by utilizing the leisure time he had after study hours, with his labor and unstinted effort. Fortunately after attaining eighteen years of age he could get his choicest job of a gardener in the office of the District Collector and Magistrate of Kalahandi district at Bhawanipatana. His job was to look after the vast garden at the Collector’s residence. He was provided the servants’ quarters in the premises of the Collector’s residence to stay. Alok’s grand mother had passed away since long and his grand father also left for the heavenly abode few years after his birth. Thereafter, his father requested his cousin brother to occupy their ancestral home and look after the surrounding garden in their absence and they, Alok and his parents, shifted to their allotted quarters at Bhawanipatana. From his very childhood he worked with his father in the garden in his leisure time and also mastered the art of successful gardening. But he could not be immersed in his father’s profession because he wanted to fly high and had skyscraping desires. He passed his entire childhood and college days in the quarters observing the fashionable job of a highly placed official, and the others. He aspired to be like one of them in future. He was a hard working and meritorious student and realized the amount of hard endeavour needed to succeed in an all India competition to achieve his goal. He passed matriculation examination with more than ninety percent marks to his credit and joined college in Bhawanipatna. During college days he interacted with the Collectors who were posted there and had some idea about how to prepare for IAS examination. He also learnt driving in the local driving school and received a driving license to drive light motor vehicles. During his post-graduate education days in Economics at Bhawanipatna his affectionate mother contracted Uterine Cancer and though his father spent all the money they had and also the amount drawn from his provident fund account, she succumbed to the dreaded disease.
In spite of all his misfortune he was not disheartened, did not give up his mission of becoming an IAS and came out as topper in University level in postgraduate examination in Economics. To add to his misery his father retired after two months of completion of his study. They had to leave the official quarter and shift to their village to live in their ancestral home. The money his father received after retirement was spent in repairing his ancestral home and making it suitable for living. They had no other source of income except his father’s meager pension amount.
To conquer the IAS examination it was strongly desirable to udergo coaching preferably in a well established coaching centre in the capital. But how could he meet the expenses? He was prepared to do any job. He needed a job which would meet the running day today expenditure of stay at the capital, expenses of the coaching and also provide enough time to attend the coaching session and to prepare for the examination. But who would provide him such a job at this juncture in a short notice when many meritorious and higher qualified personnel were roaming in the street without a job. He felt as if his dreams would be shattered like the ocean washing out the sand structures on its beach.
At this juncture Harisankar Uncle who was his father’s intimate friend and was serving as a gardener in the State Secretariat came to his rescue like an angel. His boss Mr Anurag Samantray was in search of a gardener for his own residential garden. The condition for the job was that the person should be young or middle aged, besides being an efficient gardener would possess a driving license to drive an LMV, would agree to stay in the servants’ quarter, would get food free of cost from the kitchen, would drive the officer’s personal car when required by his wife and two daughters and would get a monthly remuneration of ten thousand rupees on the first day of the succeeding month. To Alok the proposal appeared like a godsend gift. What more did he need? He could pull on with this job at the capital and the pension money was sufficient for his father to meet the expenses. But he pleaded before Hari uncle not to reveal his real identity lest his preparation for the IAS examination would be hampered. Hari uncle could show Alok’s driving license and informed his boss that Alok is matriculate and an efficient gardener. So after ten days, Alok, the post-graduate in Economics, joined as a gardener in Anuragbabu’s residence in the capital.
Mr Anurag Samantray, IAS, was the Additional Chief Secretary of Odisha. His wife, Anupama Debi, though highly qualified, was not a working woman, she was a successful housewife, managing the household meticulously. They had two daughters. Ananya Anindita, the elder one, was pursuing studies in B-Tech Computer Science while Anima Anamika, the younger one was a +2 Science student in the local Ramadevi Women’s College. All of them were soft spoken, affectionate and far from being arrogant and egoistic. In no time Alok mixed with them and considered them like his kin. Anupama Debi liked Alok even more than her own daughters. He called Anima affectionately as Kunimaa. Ananya, though addressed him calling his name, always showed a nice and polite behavior towards him. In reciprocation he addressed Anupama Debi as Maa and Ananya as madam and they never grudged and displayed their annoyance.
For Alok the lone house in the backward was tailor-made because he would not be disturbed and prepare perfectly for the examination. He was working in the garden in the early morning hours, in the day time he was attending the coaching centre, in the afternoon either he was working in the garden or driving the car and taking them to the market for shopping and in the evening he was completely free and dedicated the time for reading and watching news and events related to his preparation with the TV set, provided by Anurag babu. Time rolled on smoothly. He cleared the preliminary and the main examination with a higher percentage of marks and was called for interview. He did so well in the interview that he was confident to clear the examination with flying colours.
Although he liked Anima like his younger sister, for Ananya love arose at first sight. He had profound weakness for her in the corner of his heart. He was never at ease in the presence of Ananya. He was a silent lover though he very well knew the heaven and hell difference between him and Ananya who was a moon of the sky and unreachable for him and never expressed his feelings before her. But there was always a burning desire in the interior of his heart to have her as his life partner.
Now the mission had been accomplished. He would most probably be an IAS qualifier. The situation demanded that he would leave the present job. He decided to approach Ananya and express his hidden love in front of her. Still he could not gather courage to face Ananya in person. He tore down his heart in a letter, sealed it in an envelope and requested his Kunimaa to hand it over to her elder sister. Though Anima was little confused and suspicious, she handed over the letter to Ananya and went to her college.
Curious, Ananya opened the letter and felt as if the ground was slipping from her feet. Again she went through the contents of the letter.
Ananya, my sweetheart,
Please don’t get astonished and annoyed. From the very first day of joining here I loved you and lost my existence within you. Since then Alok, the worshipper of your love and affection, is waiting to adore you with his lamp of unredeemed fathomless love. I know you are beyond my reach and I can never dream to attain your social status. But what can I do? My treacherous and disobedient heart is beyond my control. From the very interior of my heart I earnestly desire to have you as the partner of my soul and mind in the walk of life. I am eagerly waiting for your positive consent.
Alok
Ananya got distressed and could not believe her eyes. What a treachery and unfaithfulness! What a shameful betrayal of the love and affection bestowed upon him by her family! However, she composed herself. She was alone in the household and had to decide the future step before her mother returned from the get together of Officers' Wives Association. She thought for a while and summoned Alok through the house cook to meet her in the drawing room immediately. Sensing grave consequences, Alok presented himself before Ananya like a criminal facing court proceedings. He could not look directly at Ananya.
“Alok! Look at me. How could you dare to write such a letter? What a shameful reciprocation you have meted out in exchange of the whole-hearted love and affection, our family poured upon you! My answer to your letter is that you leave our establishment once for all within one hour from now. This month is coming to end within a couple of days and you have not received your remuneration for this month. Accept this envelope which contains a sum of thirty thousand rupees - ten thousand for this month and compensation of twenty thousand for two months as you have been discharged instantly without any prior notice - and get lost. Remember not to enter our premises ever again.”
In no time Alok packed his belongings, loaded them in an auto-rickshaw, vacated their campus and came to stay in the rented house of his friend in the slum area. Exactly after a week the IAS Examination results were announced and he came out as the all India topper bringing glory to his state. In spite of this overwhelming success he was unable to forget the sad treatment meted out to him by Ananya. How could Ananya become so rude? But how could he be unfaithful to Maa, Anupama Debi? Ignoring Ananya’s warning, he rushed to their residence to touch the feet of Maa Anupama and to have her blessings. And this phone call from Ananya was the consequence of that event.
He came to reality by the telephone call of a journalist who wanted to interact with him. Even after receiving such unkind cruel behavior and repudiation from Ananya he had not lost hope. Somebody from his inner mind was telling him, “Ananya is solely yours. None but she only is your sweet heart and companion of life. You can’t live even for a moment without her.” He was frantically waiting for her message. It was very difficult for him to pass time. Every moment was looking like an hour. At last at 1 pm the much awaited Whats App message entered Alok’s cell phone. “Alok, daddy and mummy would proceed to Puri at 4 pm today to worship Lord Jagannath and seek His blessings. It would be better if you could forget the past and reach our residence at 5 pm so that we could interact in a friendly manner. Hope you would not disappoint me. Your affectionate Kunimaa and beloved Anu (not Ananya madam), would be eagerly waiting for you in the drawing room.”
Overwhelmed with unbound joy Alok kissed the message on the cell-phone and pressed the mobile on his chest as if feeling the heartbeat of his beloved and adding her heart to his. Oh, four more hours to meet his sweet heart! Why Anurag babu chose 4 pm, not 2 pm to leave for Puri? Why time was passing so slow? To pass four more hours was unbearable for him. In this distressful hour many apprehensions were hunting his mind. Why Ananya who only a week before repudiated him and meted such unruly behavior, was eager to meet him? Did she really love him? Was she after his IAS position? As far as he knew Ananya, she was not a cunning and unscrupulous girl, rather she was a simple girl far from being calculative. But why she adopted such a puzzled demeanour? What was the real truth behind such dual presentation? Anyway, he would try to unravel the real facts when they would meet in the afternoon.
The much awaited moment reached. Keeping aside the pledge not to enter their premises, he, for the second time in a row, put his feet in their residence. He found both Ananya and Anima waiting for him in the drawing room. Immediately Anima attacked him saying “Alok Bhai! How could you forget your beloved Kunimaa after becoming the IAS topper? You didn’t give me a chance to meet you”. How could Alok clarify the situation which was beyond his control? Ananya came to his rescue. She told Anima; “My dear sister, I have invited your Alok Bhai for a personal talk. You proceed to the kitchen and along with the cook uncle prepare delicious snacks for your Bhai. We will call you after we complete our conversation and all of us will eat together. Is it ok?” Without any grudge Anima proceeded to the kitchen. But Alok felt as if she left the room with profound joy allowing them to talk freely and had silent endorsement for their meeting.
Even after the departure of Anima, Alok could not gather courage to face Ananya and sat silently looking down to the floor. Ananya broke the silence.
“Alok. You are not talking. Definitely you are annoyed with me. Yes, why you will not be annoyed with me? Anybody in your place would have behaved the same way after the barbarian behavior of mine. You are observing Ananya for the last one and half years. Have you ever tried to unravel the real truth behind the occurrence or whether Ananya was not a prey to the circumstances? Definitely some unsavory thoughts must have hunted your mind that this selfish Ananya is enticed with your IAS rank and therefore, is trying to bridge the created gap.
Now, Alok. Be prepared to tolerate the hard punch from Ananya. I knew your real identity which you kept secret from us, since long. I don’t remember the exact date. On that day I was under a little mental turmoil and was roaming in the garden when like the other days you were out. Suddenly I marked that your room was not locked. Probably you had forgotten to lock the door. To lock the door I entered your room to find out the lock and was taken aback discovering the heap of books, periodicals, English news papers and notes. I wondered what was our gardener doing with all these books. I noticed a diary with your name written on it along with the books on the table. Pardon me Alok, I could not resist the temptation of going through the diary and after reading it, a new chapter of your life opened before me. I could realize the sacrifice of a highly educated meritorious person for achieving his target and fulfilling the dream of childhood.
Alok! Instantly at that moment I loved you and surrendered my soul, mind, heart, everything under your feet. Believe me Alok, I loved the gardener Alok and not this IAS topper Mr Alok Ranjan Dhal. I did not know whether you loved me or not. But one thought was hunting my mind that my discipline-loving father would never agree to this proposal which was beyond his dignity. I also never wanted to go against the wishes of my parents. Knowing all the facts, daddy would not have forgiven you and must have punished you with more rude and barbarian behavior. He might have handed over you to the police framing some fictious charges which was not at all impossible for him. How could I have tolerated all these? So I decided to refuse your proposal and tried to keep you away from our house. I was pretty sure that if you propose for my hand after your selection as IAS, my daddy would readily agree to it. And my affectionate lover would have accepted me after realizing the whole situation.
Another piece of good news for you. When you vacated our house my parents enquired as to why you left so suddenly. I constructed one fake news item that you received a message regarding grave illness of your father at your village requiring your immediate presence. They accepted my clarification because they never disbelieved me. This morning my mummy asked me to give consent for the marriage proposal with you. I agreed to the proposal but asked her,
'Would Alok agree to it?'. She confidently told “Why not? Alok is my son and respects me extremely. I have profound faith on him. He would never say no to me. You leave the matter to me”. Thereafter they decided to proceed to Puri to seek the blessings of Lord Jagannath for culmination of our marriage proposal. Your Kunimaa was also aware of all the facts.
Was it not true that you were eagerly waiting for my response? My dear Alok. Ananya is determined to be yours not only in this birth but also in all other births to come. Your Anu surrenders herself before you. Now it is up to her mad lover whether to embrace his beloved sweet heart Anu or to shun madam Ananya Anindita Samantray."
Alok’s joy crossed all boundaries. Alighting from the sofa he kneeled on the ground in front of Ananya, brought out the red rose from his pocket and uttered affectionately; “Oh, the reigning queen of my heart! Now Alok is proposing to have you as the companion of his life. Oh my darling sweet heart! Do you agree to my proposal?”
Tears of happiness rolled down from Ananya’s eyes. Accepting the red rose from Alok she lifted him from the ground, embraced him and put her head on Alok’s chest. Two bodies became one. Alok tightly embraced her and affectionately kissed her forehead
Being startled with the loud voice of Kunimaa from the other side of the door screen “Wa, wa. What a beautiful grand union!” they came to senses and got separated. Kunimaa complained to her elder sister that she waited for a long time and was not called in. So she came to ask when to serve the snacks and was fortunate enough to have viewed such a romantic scene. She was overjoyed and asked Alok “Mr Alok Ranjan Dhal, the IAS topper! What should I call you now, Alok bhai as usual or my brother-in-law?”
Dr. Prasanna Kumar Sahoo,MD (Pediatrics) is a retired Joint Director Grade 1 of Health and Family Welfare Department of Government of Odisha and now a practicing Pediatrician at Vyasnagar, the Steel City of Odisha. Besides being an eminent Pediatrician of Odisha he is also a prolific writer in Odia. He pens down the real happenings around him and his characters are his patients, the parents and his colleagues. He has contributed a book in Odia " BABU SAHOO KALAMARU " which is an unique characterisation of human values and nature and is adored by one and all. He is also a Columnist in Health Problems and writing on different aspects of current health issues since last several years in a local monthly Newspaper " The Kalinga Nagara Bulletin". He has represented the state in several National Platforms. He has a record number of 24 Awards, Local, State and National, noteworthy being PURBANCHAL SISHU BISESANGYA SHIROMANI AWARD 2017 and MAHATMA GANDHI AWARD 1997 by Government of Odisha. He is Life member of many Organisations including Indian Medical Association, Indian Academy of Pediatrics and National Neonatology Forum. At present he is State President of both, Indian Academy of Pediatrics and Pediatrics Allergy and Applied Immunology Chapter.
THE JINXED NAVARATNA
Debjit Rath
Exploring new terrain has been a lifelong passion for me. The hills and the sea always hold a mysterious attraction for me. Besides, I had a great desire to visit those places with my children and see the mesmerising effect on their tender mind. It was late winter of 1996 and till then I had never seen or experienced snowfall and that was the reason for me to plan a visit to Mussoorie in December. I had at that time the least idea of what the next few days held in store for me.
I left Rourkela by train with my wife and two minor daughters. On the way I narrated them the lovely sights of the sub Himalayan forests, the streams rapidly flowing through the gorges, the grandeur of the Himalayan rivers and specially the thrill of travelling uphill on the serpentine roads carved on the steep slopes of the mountain. After reaching New Delhi, we took a hired car for four days for our visit to Mussoorie through Haridwar. I had requested my company’s Liaison office at Delhi to arrange a good rental car with a tested driver but our experience later was quite to the contrary. This part of the country was quite new to us. We had only heard many stories about difficulties faced by tourists and were also cautioned about the choice of timings for our travel. The road passing through Meerut and Muzaffarnagar was not very safe for travel after sunset. There were reported incidents of loot, dacoity and criminal assault on travellers on this route. The miscreants were reported to be putting road blocks and attacking unsuspecting tourists as the vehicles stopped. Those were days when this particular belt was known to be lawless. Therefore after a day’s halt at Delhi we started for our destination early in the morning. As we moved nearer to our destination it was getting colder. Coming from a warmer region we all put on heavy warm clothes and jackets. On the way we tried to get more information from the driver about the places we were passing through. It was usual to bank on the driver as a part time guide since he was the only local person available for us. But to our dismay, the driver was nowhere near our expectation, rather we found him to be a bit imbalanced and erratic in his response. The car provided to us was also not up to the mark. Anyway I settled for making the best of what was available to us.
After a strenuous yet thrilling journey and a short break at Haridwar, we reached Mussoorie on the foothill of Garhwal Himalayan range, known to be the ‘Queen of Hills’. After locating our hotel and checking in we started off on our stroll on the Mall Road. The next two days were spent mingling with the tourists to visit popular spots like The Kempty Falls and most of the time we were back again on the Mall road visiting the different shopping outlets and eateries. Paratha and Tandoori Chicken served hot in the Punjabi Dhabas were savoured by the whole family. The stroll on the mall was equally an exotic feeling and the children were regaled as the mountain cloud engulfed us. However, our expectation of experiencing snowfall was belied since there was nothing of the kind in sight. We were told, contrary to our belief, that Mussoorie very rarely experiences snowfall although at higher altitude in nearby locations we may get to see snowfall, if we are lucky. So with one more day available with us, we decided to go up to Surkanda Devi temple, around 40 kms from Mussoorie and located at a height of around 2700 metres. To our dismay we did not come across any snowfall and all that we could see was ‘pala’, a local term for frost. The mountain sides had layers of icicles. We stopped the car and both my daughters tried to scoop the ice and satisfy their curiosity about the freezing conditions of Himalayas. Of course after a tedious climb we reached the temple and the divine beauty of the snow clad Himalayan peaks unfolded before us. According to mythology as Lord Shiva began his Tandava with the corpse of the Sati, Lord Vishnu sent his chakra (Sudarshan) to destroy the corpse so as to save the universe from destruction. Different parts of the body of Sati fell in different locations and were later turned into Shaktisthals and important Hindu pilgrimage centres. It is believed that Surkhanda Devi Temple was the location where Sati’s severed head fell on the ground. After enjoying the fabulous view of the mountains we climbed down the hill and had a stopover at the picturesque hill station Dhanaulti.
On our return journey we realised that the car given to us had multiple problems and the tyres were pretty bald and not fit for the hilly terrain especially when the road surface becomes slippery with frost. Half way to Mussoorie we confronted the first shock, almost an encounter with death. As the car was negotiating a bend suddenly it started skidding and in seconds it went into a spin. There was no time to even say our prayer. I missed a few heart bits and could hear others scream. In next few seconds the car stopped on the edge of the road and then we realised that with one more spin we would have been thrown down the mountain slope to land in the gorge a few thousand feet below. We got down thanking our stars as the driver toiled to bring the car to the centre of the road. That was simply a providential escape from the jaws of certain death. For the rest of the drive no one spoke a word. My daughters were still to overcome the shock as we reached our hotel. Their tender mind might not have realised the catastrophe we escaped but the memory of it sent chill down my spine for years.
The next morning we started our return journey and to the next event that was the second landmark of the ill-fated tour. On our way down the hill to Dehradun came Sree Prakasheswara Mahadev Temple and in its premises there was Shiv Ratan Kendra, a shop dealing with semi precious stones. My wife, with her extra religious temperament always preferred to stop at temples to pay her obeisance to different deities. After a darshan, we visited the gem stone gallery. The prices looked affordable. As an honest officer working in Government sector I had not been able to buy any jewellery for my wife in long years of married life. I could see her picking up a ring of Navratna stones. It had nine different tiny stones and cost around three thousand rupees. I thought this was the opportunity to please her and make up my inability to satisfy her love for jewelleries. We knew very well that they were not the real precious stones but semi precious stones, which are generally not available in our region. After this purchase we proceeded on our journey. Although we had heard stories that when stones do not suit a person they may bring misfortune, we never realised that we may be victims of the same. From childhood I was taught to rise above superstitions. How can the mere stones affect one’s fortune? That was absolutely rubbish. Well, did the events that followed shake up my belief and conviction nurtured over years?
After a short break at the temple we were on our way to Delhi. But I always had the desire to visit other exotic location on the way. I had earlier enquired about other probable dream locations which may come on the way. One such place mentioned to me was the Sahasradhara around 14 km from Deheradun. Sahasradhara as the name denotes comprises thousands of springs with sulphur water dripping from stalactite formations. The streams create numerous pools of sulphur water with therapeutic properties. Tourists swarm the scenic spot and take dips in the sulphur water. The springs dot the small river Kali Gad, which is a tributary of Song River. The driveway descends to the river course from a height and as we approached the springs, we discovered ourselves in the midst of a heavenly surrounding. We spent long hours without realising that we were getting delayed for our return journey. It was little late in the afternoon when we left the spot to drive up the slope. Halfway on the slope there was a loud thud and the car stopped. The driver got down and opened the bonnet to inspect. After few minutes he came back and to our horror announced that the crank shaft had broken. This meant the car will be stranded there at least for a day. Time was passing fast and since that road just led up to the Sahasradhara spot it was also the road to return back to the highway. By then most of the tourists had returned back.
The road was soon wearing a deserted look with one or two vehicles passing by us in a gap of 10 or 15 minutes. It was an alarming situation. There I was in a strange and desolate location with a family of wife and two minor daughters and four to five heavy suitcases which we carried all along for our tour. Those days the mobile phones were yet to be introduced in our life. That meant we had no way to contact anyone for rescue. We waited for the next car and there it was with a family of four members. They stopped as we waved. It was a family from Bengal. They were ready to extend a helping hand, at least to take us to Deharadun. But with the available space they could only accommodate three of us – me, my wife and the younger of the two daughters. That left no room for my elder daughter and the luggage. Then we had to find more help. The sunset was nearing and we realised that soon we will be left abandoned, engulfed by a pitch dark surrounding. To our good luck another vehicle – an SUV appeared with a Sikh family from Punjab. They had very little space left in the vehicle but agreed to accommodate our luggage and along with the luggage one of us. Finally, we decided that my elder daughter can get accommodated in that vehicle. We were to be dropped at the taxi stand in Deheradun from where we could hire a taxi to go back to Delhi. For me those were moments of trepidation. We were supposed to be following the SUV keeping it in sight. I had the least idea about the location of the taxi stand in Deheradun. We were at the mercy of strangers. While the Bengali family were very friendly and were trying to restore our confidence, we lost sight of the SUV. I was trying to maintain a strong exterior but my heart beat was deceiving me. We did not know the Sikh family and their background and had to leave with them our 16 year old daughter. Overcome with panic I even forgot to note their name and contact details. The only alternative for us was to pray to God and I had a strong faith in my wife’s prayers. She had unquestionably demonstrated the power of her faith on multiple occasions in the past. Somehow we reached the Taxi Stand, which was quite crowded and I had to frantically look around for the SUV. After a panicked look around for 15 to 20 minutes, I could locate the SUV parked in a corner. My daughter waved from inside the vehicle. What a relief it was as if my wife’s prayers had been heard! We took out our luggage, thanked the Sikh family as they were in a hurry to leave. In the meantime the Bengali family helped us to find a taxi and the driver, after negotiation, agreed to take us to Delhi. By then evening had approached and we were on our way to Delhi, our destination being the JPC Guest House, which was booked by us beforehand.
The experience of the past few hours being fresh in mind I kept myself alert with a steady look on the road. Soon it was nearing midnight. The stories I had heard about the dangers of that highway occupied my mind and were bothering me all through. We noticed a roadblock put by the police ahead of us and a truck moving at breakneck speed rammed into it just a few yards ahead of us. We had again a narrow escape as the steel plate flung in the air grazed our car’s bonnet. The rest of the travel was through late in the night. We felt a bit relieved as we passed Meerut and the road got a bit crowded with Delhi bound traffic. It was 2 AM by the time we reached the Guest House. The care taker was decent and we settled back in our rooms after disposing off the taxi.
The next morning my nephew, who had just joined a job in Delhi after graduating in Mechanical Engineering from Odisha came over to the Guest House and we spent some time visiting the busy and popular markets of Delhi. Although we had left the traumatic experience of our tour behind us, a feeling of some bad omen kept goading me. Uppermost in my mind was to complete this tour quickly and be back in the secured environment of Rourkela, my place of work. We had our return journey scheduled by Rajdhani Express late in the afternoon. My nephew accompanied us to the New Delhi Railway Station. Just as we neared the station my younger daughter started feeling motion sickness. As we moved through the entry gate she was about to throw up. I signalled the driver to stop and asked my nephew to get down with her so that she can relieve herself on the roadside and then they were to join us near the stairs to the platform, which was just visible ahead of us. We then proceeded straight to that staircase and unloaded our luggage from the car. Thereafter we waited for them to join us but they were nowhere to be seen. Since it was getting late, we decided to move to the platform No.10, where our train was expected. By the time the coolie kept the luggage on the platform we could hear the announcement that the train was to arrive in 15 minutes. Another five minutes passed and we were still waiting for my nephew and daughter to join us. Thereafter it was time to panic. I had a bag slung on my shoulder and I decided to scan through all platforms. The New Delhi Railway Station with multiple platforms was pretty huge as compared to the platforms in smaller towns, which we were accustomed with. I kept climbing up and down the stairs and ran though the platforms calling my daughter’s name loudly. It was quite a scene with the passengers giving strange looks. They must have been guessing that someone is lost and the man was crazily looking for the person. Every minute counted. My nephew was also new to Delhi and had a rented attic as his residence, which was shared with a roommate. So there was no option for leaving my daughter behind to come to Rourkela later. Besides, those were the days when it was too tough to get a reservation in Rajdhani Express. One had to book reservation months before the date of travel. Various thoughts about our predicament were passing through my mind, as there was only three minutes left for the train to enter the platform. With the climbing up and down and running through the platforms I was panting and gasping. Just then I could see hands waving at me from a distance. It was my younger daughter and nephew. In no time we were together and I literally dragged my daughter back through the stairs and through the ramp to climb down to our platform. By then the train was chugging in to the platform. We hurried up to board the train and were soon settled in our earmarked berths. Then only I gathered that my nephew had gone to the main entrance of the station and after enquiring had gone to the platform where another Rajdhani Express was expected to arrive at almost the same time. In any case I felt relieved that major problems were averted.
The train started and on the way we had many things to discuss about our travel. We had a close brush with a chain of disasters. What could have caused this? We had gone on so many holiday tours before and never had we encountered such chilling moments. Then, the only difference was the Navratna ring that we bought on the way. My wife had already concluded that the ring was responsible for it and she had taken it out and kept it safely in her purse. If so, what about the car having a narrow escape from accident prior to our acquiring the ring? It might be that we were already passing through a bad patch and the Navaratna ring aggravated it further. Rest of the journey was eventless. The next day we were back in the comforts of our home in Rourkela. The first thing to do on the following morning was to go to our temple and place the Navratna ring near the deity as an offering.
Debjit Rath retired as Executive Director of Steel Authority of India Limited. Specialised in the skills of communication his motto is to serve the community, live and let live. To him the essence of life is to spread the message of love and kindness. To him every day spent on earth is memorable and has a meaning ordained by destiny.
Kumar Purnima is a happy and gala annual festival in our family. Everyone from more than a year infant to elderly grandparents don new clothes in the evening. Persons younger to the other pay respect by touching the feet or offering ‘mundia’ and the elders give a token money as blessings. The youngest in the family earns the highest on Kumar Purnima day. After dinner, which is usually a feast hosted by the eldest in the family, children count their monetary blessings and preserve them as treasure. It is just not only their pocket money but annual earning. The earning is not questioned by anyone and preserved with care and love. Children enjoy the pleasure of spending that little amount as per their desire.
Unlike the happy and enjoyable days of every Kumar Purnima, 1974 was different for me. I had boarded a passenger train, as student concession railway tickets did not permit to travel in faster trains, from Balasore to Berhampur. I was returning from an Army attachment Senior Division N.C.C. Camp. Exhausted, worn out and partly nihilistic I was blank and feeling lonely all though many of my peers were travelling with me. The solitude was due to missing the grandeur of Kumar Purnima. Besides, the experiences in the camp was in reality not only unique but arduous for me.
Since childhood, I was never good in physical training , outdoor games far to say athletics. At the earliest opportunity I would try to make myself sick during P.T. classes and had no experience of N.C.C. in school. I was good in studies and academic activities like debates , recitation and essay writing. Very occasionally played badminton when in class 10. No one in our family was attracted towards sports, a bouquet of academics far from physical training. My schooling days was full of changes in schooling medium due to shifting of schools as per the authoritative decisions of my respected father. A rolling stone gathers no moss. In reality, I could not gather a basket of loving child hood comradery. But in later half of life the huge spectrum of cohorts form various schools and colleges , adapted to wide varieties of professions and businesses, with whom I had studied for a short period once upon a time has become an unique experience for me.
After completing Pre-University and Pre-Professional studies and examinations from Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, joined M.B.B.S. studies at M.K.C.G.Medical College, Berhampur. Although I was within the top ten in the all Odisha entrance examination for selection to MBBS Course, could have joined S.C.B.Medical College, Cuttack (the most coveted institution for medical studies in Odisha) but as my father was Professor and Head of Pathology at MKCG Medical College ,Berhampur and was admitted there as per his decision. I had studied classes 9th to 11th at Berhampur. Have done last three years of schooling in Berhampur, was familiar with the town and its culture. Even being a day scholar, had good number of friends from Berhampur, former Revenshavians and new comers from other places who had been admitted to MKCG Medical College.
In technical colleges, especially in Medical Colleges, the comraderies is much more than general colleges. My debating poseur and stage freeness made me elected to be the Class Representative in first year(1973). It gave me some extra importance, more amidst the fairer gender, and encouraged me to become leader in all fields that a student in medical college comes across.
Many of my batchmates were physically stout and fit , many were athletes and joined Senior Division N.C.C.. One of them was a very close friend of mine Lalat (Late Prof. Lalatendu Patnaik). By this time I had gathered good number of friends from both genders. Many used to come to our quarters located inside the medical college campus for combined studies. Most of the boys were hostel boarders. Anatomy was particularly difficult to memorise, Physiology demanded constant discussions and Biochemistry required repeated hammering of the brain. We often sat after college hours till late evening discussing studies punched with gossips .
It was Durga Puja time. Most of the student had left for home even if there is no official Puja vacation in medical curriculum. Few had stayed back to attend ward duties ( teaching in the patient-wards). Senior Division N.C.C. of M.K.C.G.Medical College was to participate in an Army attachment camp at Balasore. This was a technical camp where cadets from then existing three medical colleges, two engineering colleges (at Rourkela and Burla), three engineering schools ( Cuttack, Berhampur and Jharsuguda) and signals division were supposed to participate. It was a ten days camp. MKCG Medical College was allowed to send twenty cadets only. Couple of days prior to the camp, Lalat told me that only 18 students have agreed to join the camp and coaxed me to join. I thought that this will be a golden opportunity to get a certificate for attending army attachment camp which will nullify the deficit of my non existing physical activities but sulked as had no knowledge as what such camps require from a cadet. My concept regarding N.C.C. Camp was akin to going on an excursion, which I was never allowed to experience.
My father was a strict disciplinarian for me. He always guarded me with regards to friend circle and extracurricular activities. He had a perennial feeling that I would go wayward if out of his control. It was not so for my two sibs , both daughters, one 4years elder and the other 9years younger to me. Somehow he was fond of a few of my medico pals. Lalat was one of them and could convince him to allow me to join them for the camp . But not even being a regular cadet how can the NCC authorities accept me for attending a tough army attachment camp ? Lalat and another batchmate Kundu (Late Dr. Asit Baran Kundu), both had athletic built , could convince the N.C.C. authorities. Another batchmate Mihir Das (Dr.Mihir Kumar Das) was a dedicated cadet and was second in command of the N.C.C. Company of M.K.C.G. Medical College. Kalandi (Dr.K.C.Biswal) another robust cohort was also part of the contingent.
I enrolled for the camp. Uniform given to me required modification or else would have looked like “The Tramp”. With haversack , metal water bottle, two sets of uniforms and beret headgear with metal logo made me look like a true cadet and of course I was proud. I boarded the passenger train to Balasore from Berhampur with 18 other cadets, few batchmates and many seniors. The journey was full of happiness and merry making knowing little about what was in store for me next day. We reached in the evening. The saga started. From railway station we were made to walk in column up to the camp which was Zilla School ,Balasore. It reminded me of my Stewart School days when we were made to walk in similar lines, much less disciplined, to attend movies like Tokyo Olympic 1964 or Saheed in United Talkies of Cuttack. M.K.C.G.Medical College contingent was allotted one empty class room on the first floor. Quite commodious, we kept our haversacks on the slots assigned to each of us in the room. New experience of an urban-camp life enthused both excitement and puzzles in my mind. We were asked to gather in the hall below for briefing.
Personnel from the Indian Army were there in uniform. Few looked young and smart and were at the head of the table. Immaculately fitting olive green attire, metal logos on beret, belt and shoulder sparkling and boots glistening. Very impressive affair for naïve like me. The camp in charge was a Major and Adjutant was a Lieutenant from Armed Forces, the regiments or battalion to which they belonged was much beyond my concept to appreciate. The rest were more elderly , some with grey hairs, and had red strips above the insignia on the shoulders of their uniforms. Even if pin drop silence was to be maintained, I could not restrict my inquisitiveness and asked Mihir sitting next to me in Yogasan with clenched fists resting on the knees. Mihir whispered ‘JCO’. The word was not available in my database and so kept mum. Later in the night he explained to me about Junior Commissioned Officers. The adjutant stood up, saluted the camp Commandant and sought permission to start the briefing. Remembered some scenes from English movies that I had seen during the pre-medical days. But this was more impressive and apt. The laziness waned off and I was all excited, felt as if part of Indian army. He gave the details of the course work, eight one hour classes every day with practical training on map making, distance measuring, rifle ( .303) handling, physical warfare without arms so on and so forth. He also assured that one day we will have field training at the garrison area in Balasore and one day on the sea at Chandipur. He also said that cadets are free to go for marketing in the evening for one hour after getting due permission from the camp authority. Nothing could be more exciting for an inexperienced novice who still dreams the Army Attachment Camp to be a holiday excursion. The details regarding langar (food timings and schedule), bathing area and lavatory will be shown to each group by one officer with red strip. Then ‘dismiss” which I could not follow but all got up from padmasan and so did I. We were guided to the dining area.
Accustomed to austere meals as a boarder of East Hostel, Ravenshaw College, I had no issues with food except that the rotis though hot were too big and tough for my teeth. The curry served was a mixture of vegetables with minimum spices and there was one more dish too. The pleasure of sitting with friends and seniors in a community dinner made me ruminate the hostel days in Ravenshaw. The gossip, cutting jokes and comedies went on till the bell rung. We cleaned our respective utensils and went in line to designated rooms. Laying the sheet on the floor and then mimicking to sleep was a must. The Adjutant gave his rounds to ensure all of us were asleep. Gazing at the roof of Zilla School classroom induced sleep soon in the already weary body.
Dawn brought the training schedule as fast as sunshine. We all got up and were directed to timely wash up for breakfast in uniform. The area for brushing and facewash was okay with me as was the bathing area but the lavatory zone exposed my gross inexperience of N.C.C. Camp life. The 50 year old East Hostel lavatories used to be scary to me as they entertained number of boarders with piles of nightsoil without any attempt to be cleared. The stain and odour would keep any sleepy soul run for his life. I used to refrain from clearing my bowel for couple of days till time permitted to rush to one of my father’s cousins home at Ranihat. The pothole lavatory on a cordoned area with planks over it (with holes) of N.C.C. Camp was indeed a shock for me. I eagerly looked for recuse. One of my cousins had joined Indian Army soon after completing engineering studies, was actively involved in 1971 war and was now posted at Balasore and was in the rank of Major in Indian Army Corps EME. I sneaked out at lunch time and searched his quarters in the Army Garrison area of Balasore. His wife Rani Bhauja was too surprised to see me knocking the door. Before she could complete her queries I rushed to the toilet. After easing out, explained her the whole situation and made her to roll with laughter. Treated with hot paratta and lovely omelette I left their quarters immediately. My cousin was in office and so could not meet. My cousin was an affectionate person but too religious to his job and did not believe in crossing lines.
Nest day started with two theory classes taught by JCOs. Knowing that we were Medicos they were soft towards us. Then came ‘Gutham Gutha”. A tall dark Sardar JCO was to train us with this martial art. It made me laugh in my mind thinking that when army is fortified with deadly weapons what was the necessity for training in physical assault and martial art ? It took me half a century till the events in Doklam in 2020 where our rigorously trained soldiers with Guthum Gutha could neutralise two and half times the number of Chinees soldiers well trained in their martial mart without firing a single bullet to realise the importance of this physical training. My head bows down to the strategies , training and valour of our armed forces. While visiting Ladakh in 2015 as a tourist saw a board displayed near the highest Army Fortification area of the world of Indian Army reading “Train Hard Fight Easy”. Well, most of us only tried to learn the theoretical aspects with soft training in Guthum Gutha except for Kalandi. He went into true training and in the process badly hit the shin of the leg of our Sardarji trainer with his boots. We were apprehensive that Kalandi will be punished but the tall Sardarji smiled at him and patted him on the back. How generous and affectionate for us in spite of being battle hardened and tough for the enemies are our soldiers. May it is the unique character of our Armed Forces.
The afternoon classes included handling of rifles. In senior division it was with 0.303 rifles. The training started with instructions for cleaning the muzzle, donning the rifle in the proper way and positioning with rifles, belly in ground and eye focussing through the “U”. Instructions for the coming morning was to be in uniform and carry our water bottles.
Falling in columns, were asked to march from Balasore to Chandipur on sea immediately after an early breakfast, a distance of nearly 20Kms. What a memorable event. In Medical College (Berhampur) once myself, Lalat and Kundu had been to Gopalpur on sea for arranging a bus from the agriculture training centre at Aryapalli for class picnic but failed to catch the only evening bus for retuning and had to walk all the way back 12 Kms. This experience was much more enjoyable. All singing patriotic songs with widely variable notes and pitch invigorated our spirit and pleasure. Reaching Chandipur walking all the road had made us tired. After one demo-session on how to revive a fallen army truck food packets were served and all were at ease. Excitement enthused gossip, army discipline drowned amidst youthful jest. The Commandant and team were vigilant but non interfering till the bell rang again around 3pm. In columns we were marched to the sea bed zone. What a mesmerising scene. The sparkling sombre waves of the Bay of Bengal, in their majestic style were gradually encroaching towards the beach slowly but steadily. The sea recedes more than 20 kilometres in the morning leaving a hard sand bed behind only to return late in the afternoon. The Britons found the site ideal for testing long range guns and artillery weapons. The saga had continued till then. We found the hitting part (bullet equivalent) heads of already fired missiles on the sea bed and many picked up a few to carry home as memoires. I carried three, two bigger and one smaller but slender all the way home to Berhampur. My father was initially scared as whether it was legal to keep these missile parts at home but later painted them as the Devine Trinity Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra. Till date they are with me.
Exhaustion could not beat the excitement and happiness endeared by the visit and all walked back to the camp in Balasore. New experience added lots of inputs for gossip all night in the floor of the classroom assigned to be our camp.
All pleasures have to end to be remembered. Training with rifles started immediately after breakfast. The naïve, slender physique and inexperienced cadet in me could not match the physical strain and dedication required for training with 0.303 rifles. I decided to try my best. The brisk and thundering commands of the JCO, “Baju Sastra” to hold the rifle by one hand by the side in attention position and then quick “Salami Sastra” demanding to hold it in straight up in front of the nose to be followed by more exercises drained all the energy off my misfit body. The competitive spirit and apprehension of humiliation forced me to match with the other already experienced cohorts and peers. It reminded me of the age old saying ‘Rome was not built in a day’. No one should aspire to be an achiever overnight . Every game in life is different, good in one does not mean to be good in all. My dream of becoming a successful cadet in senior division N.C.C. started waning off. Reality has to be accepted. After couple of hours of exercise with rile, was physically worn out and could not sustain longer. In the afternoon the body started feeling warm and muscles playing villain. By sunset I was down with fever and severe malaise. Dr.S.K.Sahoo then Assistant Professor in Physiology from our medical college was in charge of our contingent and was also the Medical Officer for the camp. Not being a clinician, was not versed with treatment of fever. I met him in the evening in the medical room. He feigned sympathy and advised me to take some analgesics. My father being a senior doctor, we always had some physician’s sample medicines at home and I had carried some . A sulpha drug with brand name “Madribon” was used for fever and was considered higher antimicrobial drug in those days. I was carrying some samples with me and Dr.Sahoo vaguely agreed to allow me to have them without understanding what it meant. After dinner, I was really sick and down with high fever. The floor of the classroom now acting as bed added more discomfort to my shivering body and aching soul. I started taking Madribon.
The morning was a bit better for me although the after effects of rifle exercises refused to abandon my body. After a quick breakfast, reverted back to the room and went for a nap after analgesics and second dose of Madribon. Wearing a white lungi and vest I had covered myself with the dohar supplied in the camp and was fast asleep till tramping sounds of army boots and a commanding voice scared me off my covering. The Camp Commandant along with Adjutant were on inspection and finding a cadet missing from training and instead sleeping in the room blew their rage off. I slowly stood up and wished them in my civilian ‘namaskar’ which was more a cause of irritation than appreciation to them. A blast of scolding shook my body but the accusation of indisciplined churned my nerves. The oratory in me did not deceive me any further and politely but firmly started explaining them my physical limitations and ill health. The Commandant was in no mood to listen a word, maybe I had not followed the procedure to be declared sick as required in military discipline due to complete inexperience, and pointing his finger towards me said “this fellow talks like a Naxalite and can mobilise half of the country”. Till date I ponder whether it was a derogatory remark or complement for me. Thinking that spelling out the names of the medicines would convince him that I was genuinely sick mentioned about Madribon. “ What you are taking Mandrax ? ” came out with full blown pace from his mouth with anger at its height. Mandrax (methaqualone) was the brand name for the then banned psychedelic/narcotic drug and to think that such a drug is being consumed by a cadet in an army attachment camp was more a shock than crime for them. I then mentioned about my visiting Dr.Sahoo past evening in medical room. He was summoned. Dr.Sahoo conveyed the truth and I was pardoned. It took me two days to recover and was exempted from rifle exercises. No more ‘baju sastra’ nor ‘salami sastra’.
On the eighth day, those who wanted a day off were granted permission. Myself and Lalat went to Baripada and met some friends vacationing at home. Rabi Jee (Prof.R.N.Jee) was at home in Baripada and treated us with unforgettable delicious mutton curry with mudhi (puffed rice). We were back by evening to the camp, did not want to tarnish my reputation any further.
The last day was memorable. There was an one act play competition between different contingent of cadets. Dr. B.K.Giri, a very senior and popular medical professional of Balasore and a dramatist in his college days was the judge. We were adjudged first. Following the drama competition was closing ceremony. One cadet from each contingent was to place his experience. I represented M.K.C.G. Medical College, Berhampur and by habit praised one and all but also expressed regret for our shortcomings as per expectations.
The day after the closing ceremony we boarded different trains to our respective destinations from Balasore station. It was Kumar Purnima day. Ruminating the events in the only N.C.C. camp that I attended in lifetime created many unsolved questions and mixed reactions in my amature brain. Memories like Gutham Gutha, Chandipur on sea remains ever pleasant while Madribon , ‘baju sastra’ and ‘salami sastra’ will always be anecdotes for me. The journey back home from the Amy Attachment Camp on a Kumar Purnima evening was so different.
Prof. Dr. Sidhartha Das is a renowned Medicine Specialist and Diabetologist of Odisha. He retired as Principal of the SCB Medical College, Cuttack. He is a recipient of many awards including Life Times Contribution Award (2014), Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, Life Time Achievement Award (2019), Research Trust of Diabetes India, Distinguished Services Award (2019), Research Society for Study of Diabetes in India. He has been, among other things, the Chairman of the Association of Physicians in India, Odisha Branch (2011) and Vice President, Diabetes India, and a Medical Expert for the Odisha Human Roghts Commission (2010-19). He lives in Cuttack and is passionate about literature, reading and writing poems and anecdotal stories.
MY MOTHER-IN-LAW AT THE FIVESTAR HOTEL
Does the dining area in a five-star hotel really look so gorgeous? Asked my mother-in-law who was occasionally looking up from her sewing,
to watch the Hindi serial on the TV. The old lady was sitting in her high backed chair which was positioned in the drawing room in such a way that it enabled her not only to have the best view of the TV screen but also of those people who had to walk past our house to reach the main road. Though she had a smattering knowledge of Hindi and could speak a little English ,having studied in a convent in her childhood , she had a particular fondness for Tamil and took pride in speaking the language like a Tamilian . She attributed her prowess in the language to her circle of friends who were mostly Tamilians . (In fact she spoke her mother tongue with a pronounced Tamil accent ).She would regularly watch only Tamil serials , good , bad or worse. Therefore, I was surprised that my mother-in-law showed interest in a serial other than Tamil and in the scene where the hero and heroine were having their dinner in a posh hotel. She was a very principled person and did not believe in wasting a single minute. Her day would begin at four-thirty with a hot glass of coffee which she would pour down her throat without the glass touching her lips, then a quick cold water bath irrespective of the season which was followed by her prayer session Then she would get engaged in making at least two dozen “bathis” a day, (she was adept at twisting the cotton into shape and make the bathis stand absolutely erect in the diya) . She would cut the day’s vegetables for me and offer to help me in the kitchen. Then we would sit on the floor to have Lunch in the Indian style, she would call it “floor meals” as opposed to table meals. After lunch, she would rest for a couple of hours. Another glass of hot coffee and her sewing session would start with a few young women coming to learn embroidery from her. She conformed to her own rules and never liked any of us interfering in the way she preferred to lead her life, especially after my father-in-law passed away. she chose to lead an austere life sacrificing a lot of things he used to be fond of. The huge glittering diamond studs she wore all her life were replaced with pearl ones, the nose ring with a cluster of diamonds made its way to the locker along with the half a dozen gold bangles she usually wore .Though we did not like this transformation of hers , we could not persuade her either to wear the jewellery or eat the many sweets she chose to give up just because my father-in-law was fond of them. She believed that it was the only way she could pay her tribute to the departed soul. ( I knew how difficult it must have been for someone who had a sweet tooth to give up laddus, Jangris, jelebis and kheer which she never touched the rest of her life).
Noticing the old lady looking in awe at the five-star décor, the mouth watering dessert spread , “would you like to see the ambience of a five star hotel for yourself?” I suggested
“What“, she expostulated, “do you think I will ever step into a place like that!”
“what is wrong, now a days we find even orthodox women like you do go to five -star hotels on occasions,“ I said.
You must be joking, I don’t think any one wearing a nine yards sari like me would ever visit a hotel, leave alone a five-star one at that, moreover, what would people think” she said, suddenly becoming very serious.
Oh, she appeared more worried about what people would say more than anything else and she was right in a way I thought but refrained from saying so.
“ Not to worry, I am sure the hotel will not have any objection to admitting women wearing nine yards saris. Why bother about what people think? I am sure it is no sin to visit a hotel these days” I reassured her.
Suddenly a bright idea struck me. I thought our wedding anniversary which was just a week away would be an ideal occasion to “treat” my mother-in-law to a “dinner “of sorts at one of the five star hotels in the city and ventured to suggest the same.
“Are you crazy? She literally pounced on me. You very well know that I don’t eat anywhere else other than at our home.”
Well, lets all go and you could just sit there and watch us eating, I don’t think you should mind that, I said, stressing on the last word.
She relented after some persuasion and agreed to accompany us on the condition that we would not insist her on eating at the place.
Dressed in a bright green “sungadi” sari (she always wore only Madurai sungadi sarees, which are cotton sarees with tiny motifs all over and border on both sides) and a milky white cotton blouse, the 8o plus gray haired tall lady Looked a picture of grace and dignity. Her face was smooth and flawless even at her age and she carried herself with poise.
Wearing her slippers after dusting them with a cloth she kept exclusively for the purpose, she was all set for the visit. She appeared like an excited child who was promised the moon . Looking at her ,I thought probably, she had a secret desire all along to see the five star culture people talked so much about.
O n reaching one of the five star hotels closer to where we lived, my husband stopped the car in the portico, and after all of us alighted, he gave the keys to the valet for parking the vehicle.
Seeing the man getting into the car and speeding away, my mother-in-law appeared all concerned and wanted to know why the man was taking the car away.
I told her he was the valet who would park the car for us and bring it back when we announce for it.
As we entered the hotel, the doorman greeted us with a smile and bowed reverentially before my mother-in-law . She blessed him with the words, “may you have a long life” and the young man looked both amused and embarrassed at the singular attention he received in return.
Turning to me she said, “ look, though young, he is so well mannered unlike some of them his age.” I did not want to tell her that it was part of their duty and he was just doing it.
We made our way to the buffet section and were beckoned by a middle aged man in a suit who enquired whether we preferred a table in a non-smoking area.
“ What do you mean by that, don’t you know people are not supposed to smoke in an air conditioned place like this?
The man though flabbergasted at her outburst soon composed himself and observed, “ madam, you seem to be so well informed’ and the old lady appeared pleased at the unexpected compliment.
Before she could say anything else to upset him I said we preferred a non smoking area and were directed accordingly. As we took our place and expected my mother-in-law to do the same, she dragged the chair a little away so that she kept a distance from the table and sat on it (the orthodox lady that she was , touching the dining table was taboo because it was something “jhoota”).
The waiter who came to our table wished to know whether we preferred
chicken or tomato soup .
‘What do you mean, we are Brahmins and strict vegetarians , my people don’t even take eggs ,( we did not know where to look when she said that with such conviction).
Tomato soup please, I said to the shocked waiter.
While biting into the freshly fried cauliflower pakodas which accompanied the soup, I noticed my mother-in-law keenly observing people around .
Picking up our plates we headed to the buffet . When we came back to our table I found the old lady missing. As I was wondering where she could have gone, I noticed her standing and chatting with the chef at the jelebi counter . When I caught her eye she waved gleefully from there. I wondered what she could have been saying to him, probably she was giving him lessons in preparing jelebis the right way, I said to myself.
Then she moved from there and when I thought she was joining us,
I saw her walking towards the far corner where a young couple were seated. She pulled a chair and not only made herself comfortable but started a conversation with them. I could not hear what she was saying because of the distance but noticed her vehemently nodding her head. ( it was usually her way of expressing disapproval ).
My God, what was the old lady up to, I began to wonder whether it was wise on my part to have brought her to this place. I was sure she proved a gooseberry and the couple would be cursing her presence in their midst. After what appeared an eternity , she left them and went to the table next where a lady was seated alone and sat facing her. ( This time I could see only the back of my mother-in-law’s head. ) The lady dressed in a salwar and kudti appeared to be in her thirties, and had short hair. I could not understand Why on earth my mother-in-law was interested in picking up a conversation with another stranger.
We were just finishing our dessert and since there were two others seated
at our table, I whispered to my husband to go and fetch his mother. .Before he could summon her back, to my relief I noticed her coming towards us with a scowl on her face.
Where have you gone wandering? I asked , quite annoyed.
I only went to look around and talk to some people, she said matter of factly.
As we were driving home, I asked her what she thought of the five star ambience and the people she met there. I was more curious to know what she was saying to the young couple and later what transpired between the lone lady and herself which upset her.
“The ambience be damned, people don’t seem to have any values anymore in Chennai. I never even imagined in my wildest dreams that people would be so, so uninhibited” she said in one breath.
What has provoked you to be so uncharitable with your remarks, I asked
Puzzled .
She suddenly became silent and withdrawn the rest of the day which was quite unlike her I thought. She was certainly worried over something ever since she met and spoke to the people who were total strangers at the hotel and she was hesitating to come out with it. I did not want to probe either .
The next morning over lunch she asked abruptly , “ when will Saritha complete her studies and return? Does Saritha also wear such stupid indecent western outfits which reveal her skin so much?
Saritha was my daughter studying for her MBA in one of the colleges in the U.S.
“Maybe, next year, if she completes in time, I said casually. How am I to know what she wears while she is there, “I added.
Does she have any boy friends? She asked next.
Since I did not know how to answer her question, I paused.
“Tell me, does she or doesn’t she,” she insisted on an answer.
“Honestly, I don’t know” , I said and that was true because the girl had never spoken to me about any of her boyfriend/s.
But why do you sound so concerned? I don’t think you should unduly worry about Saritha, because she is quite mature and is capable of looking after herself, I reassured the old lady but could see that she was not convinced..
I wondered who would reassure me for that matter and decided to keep my fingers crossed till my daughter returned from the U.S. Probably with a degree and a ……I did not feel very comfortable at the thought.
What were you talking with that lady sitting all by herself in the hotel? I asked quite sure that my mother-in-law would not tell me.
You mean that divorcee? she asked with contempt in her voice.
How do you know she is a divorcee? I hope you did not ask her, I said hesitatingly.
So what if I have asked her, don’t you think its odd for a woman to visit a hotel all by herself?
Not any more, because times have changed , I said.
“Times have not changed but values have” commented the old lady.
N. Meera Raghavendra Rao , M.A.in English literature is a freelance journalist, author of 10 books(fiction, nonfiction) a blogger and photographer .Her 11th. is a collection of 50 verses titled PINGING PANGS published in August 2020. She travelled widely within and outside the country.She blogs at :justlies.wordpress.com.
Sameer was barely through with his dinner and was stretching his hand for the glass of water when his mobile phone began to ring. It was his elder sister calling. Sameer’s heart missed a beat and he was filled with a premonition because just an hour ago, he had talked to her. His father’s health was a bit precarious. He was in his early eighties and had lived a very full and meaningful life with much liveliness and spirit. Somehow, Sameer mustered courage and picked up the phone. His fears came true when didi told him that Papaji’s condition had deteriorated and as per medical advice, it was decided to shift him to a big hospital in Delhi.
Within half an hour, Sameer had made all the arrangements to leave for Delhi. During the long six hour overnight journey, he was in a very perturbed state of mind, all the time preparing himself for any eventuality on reaching Delhi. With many apprehensions and unknown anxieties, the six hour journey seemed like six days to him.
On reaching Delhi, Papaji was entrusted to the care of doctors and his treatment was started while he was kept in the ICU. Many days passed. Gradually, it was conveyed by the medical experts that Papaji’s ailment was likely to remain for long, and would confine him to bed in all probability. But otherwise, he was out of danger and his condition was improving, and the doctors said they were likely to shift him from the ICU to a room. Sameer heaved a sigh of some relief for the time being.
But after some time, Sameer happened to be face to face with a very strange reality of life. Papaji had fallen asleep and Sameer was sitting in a chair close to his bed in the ICU. Suddenly, he was startled by a commotion next to him. On the bed next to Ppapaji, that is bed number three, there was an elderly gentleman and around him, there was a hurried and panicky movement of doctors, nurse and the staff.The nurses were running around nervously, arranging the oxygen cylinder and other required medical apparatus.
Sameer saw that the doctors were perhaps trying to revive the heart of the patient through pumping. Standing next to them on the other side of the bed, Sameer could see a gentleman, anxiously moving to and fro. He was a tall, slim, very cultured and sophisticated man of about fifty- fifty five. Just then, he was joined by a tall beautiful and smart looking woman in her late forties. The clear lines of anxiety and concern on their faces could explicitly explain their relationship to the patient. Their mental worries and emotional turmoil was self-evident. Sameer could relate his present condition with what he himself was going through till just a few days ago and he could not stop himself from involuntarily gazing in that direction again and again. The patient’s son and daughter-in-law stood at that place, their minds full of apprehensions and hearts full of deep grief and anguish. Their eyes were constantly trying to assess the outcome of the doctors’ efforts. On catching a glimpse of the patient’s face, Sameer recalled having seen him that very morning in the room next to the ICU, sitting in his bed, as his son was making him drink some soup. At that time, he didn’t seem to be so sick.
Just then, a doctor came and informed the patient’s son, “We are trying our best to revive the patient’s heart after the massive heart attack that he had suffered but at the moment, it is difficult to say anything.” Sameer observed the tears held-up in the corners of the eyes of the patient’s son as he was struggling to not let them fall. With beating hearts, they were waiting for the doctors efforts to yield some positive outcome. A single moment could prove to be decisive and define the boundary between life and death.
After grappling with the situation for twenty minutes, the doctors conceded defeat. The patient’s face was covered with the white sheet. The doctor took the patient’s son to a side apparently to break the bad news to him, and he closed his eyes, allowing the welled up tears to have their way, as he could not control them any longer. Who knows how many memories of the countless moments spent with him in the course of their lives must have flashed on the canvas of his mind in those few instants? Or possibly, thoughts of the impending horrible practical realities and rituals were also going on simultaneously in his mind!
Sameer was thinking: “With the death of one human being, how many relationships are snapped at a stroke, relationships built over a long period of life, nurtured with so much love and care, with so much effort, braving all the storms and obstacles, ups and downs of life. Everyone experiences sorrow and pain in accordance with his or her bond and association with the departed soul.”
But the truth of the matter was that Sameer’s father whose condition was very critical in the morning had improved by now, whereas this other gentleman, who was fine till the morning was no more now. How ironic could be the course of events in life, with such sudden reversals as one could never expect!
The dead body was taken off the bed, put on a stretcher and handed over to the relatives. The ward boys, on their return after handing over the dead body took turns to lie down on the same stretcher, it being a routine matter for them. Back in ICU, the nurses had changed the sheets of the bed, replacing them with freshly washed, clean ones. Five minutes later, when Sameer’s glance turned that way, he saw that there was a new patient at bed number three.
Seema Jain is a bilingual poet writing in English and Hindi, a short story writer and a translator. She has four books of Hindi and English poems, two edited books, one book of translation of poetry from Hindi to English with another one, a novel, in the publication process. She recently retired as Associate Professor & Head, P G Dept of English at KMV Jalandhar with 39 years' experience of teaching English Literature and Language. Her poems and short stories have been widely published, translated, anthologized and recited during International Poetry Conferences, Webinars, and on TV and radio.
Recipient of many awards, she is the Founder President of Litspark: A Literary Forum, besides being on the Editorial Board of Different Truths (A registered Digital Media Portal), a member of English Scholars beyond Borders (A prestigious international body of English Scholars) and a life member of Shakespeare Association of India.
A sudden slam on the terrace door startled Priya. Lost in sharing sweet nothings with her boyfriend over phone, Priya was now at the far corner of the terrace. It was nearing midnight, pitch darkness loomed over her anxious face. She heard the door being latched. She saw a rugged masculine face lit by a fuming cigar. In his deep voice, he declared on his phone, “Come to the terrace. Maal (Booty) is here.”
Priya had joined college recently. She befriended a classmate and they had grown close. This new companionship was a thrilling experience for her. She was always lost in his thoughts and messages. Tonight, their usual phone call had grown quite intense and she had slipped out of her house just to avoid any suspicion from her parents. She innocently came to the terrace and lost track of time. Since the network on the terrace was feeble, she drifted to the far edge of it to realise there was an unknown person on the terrace. Her heart was thudding like the amber edge of the cigar now. To add to her bad luck, there was no mobile network where she stood. She heard another knock on the door. “Guru, open the door!” Soon, she could see four vaguely familiar faces surrounded by marijuana fumes.
Priya sighed a relief that these guys weren’t aware of her existence and were lost in their booty: Marijuana. She put her phone on silent mode and scanned the terrace for a possible exit. She knew there was only one entrance cum exit, at the middle of the terrace. These guys were sitting close to it. It was a multi-storey apartment and she was quite sure her shrieks won't be heard by anyone. Her only escape would be to rush towards the exit and hope these people were too stoned by the drug to react. She could wait until morning or hope her parents spot her absence. But they must be fast asleep, she was on her own to get out of this mess.
She waited some more time, hoping that the drug kicked in. Mustering all her courage she darted towards the exit door. Did her fate bribe the darkness! She tumbled on a cable wire and almost landed near the feet of the leader! She somehow managed to get on her feet and dashed to the exit! Was her fate seeking revenge on her? The exit door was locked!
Guru wasn’t sure whether it was the hallucination from the drug or if he actually saw a girl! “Guru, that girl is a real maal!” One of his disciples declared. His drug dazed self felt an adrenaline kick! “Guys. We are here for a treat! Oh angel from Eden! Is it my perfume that made you land here?” He chuckled an evil smile.
Priya was hiding on the other side of the terrace. She was regretting her decision! “Why didn’t you just sleep on that side of the terrace! Jumping from the terrace and hoping to be rescued by superman was a saner choice than this!” Priya was clueless. She had lost her phone when she fell down.
Guru’s disciples were confused and aroused at the same time. “Guru. We all saw the girl, it’s real. Lets go find her. There is no escape, we locked the door!” Guru took a long drag. “Kids, girls are like this cigar. The more you wait, the more you relish them! Oh Angel. You are mine. I know you are as eager to meet me as I am. But my sweetheart, cigar will feel bad if I abandon her for you!” Guru gave a hearty laugh and continued relishing his cigar lazily.
They all were startled by a knock on the door. “Guru, this is Bholaram, the watchman! Open the door, will you!” Guru opened the door and put a hand around Bhola. “Oh ho Bhola, I settled your expenses in the evening only. Why bother us here, until you also have become a drug addict?” Everyone gave a meek laugh at this joke. “No Guru. I got multiple complaints that there was no water supply. So I came to check the valves!” They all went to the other side of the terrace to realize the valves were closed. Guru stiffened at the enlightenment! “What a fool I was! That girl! She closed the valve and sneaked out when we foolishly kept talking to Bhola!”
By this time Priya had gone downstairs and made distress calls to everyone awake! She had latched the door obviously so that the culprits remained locked in the terrace. She took the mob to the terrace as soon as she could. When she opened the door, she could only see Guru.
“Priya dear! Where did you go? And who are these people?” When someone from the crowd asked Guru who he was, he declared, “I am Priya’s boyfriend.” Priya was taken aback by Guru’s words!
“I don’t know him!” She declared.
“Oh come on Priya. We had such a small fight! Isn’t this your phone? Can you check the most frequently dialed number and give it a call?” said Guru, acting innocent. Guru’s phone was ringing when she called her boyfriend’s number.
“If I am not her boyfriend how come I have so many photos of her on my phone?” Guru looked intently towards Priya and moved his face to the side, a perverted action of making a pass at her. Priya’s seething blood felt tarnished to be associated with this gangster. He was smarter and more dangerous than she thought earlier.
He thought to himself, “I took her lightly once, but I won't let this young girl bring my drug business down. My luck that I caught hold of her unlocked phone when she fell down. Editing her boy friend’s number and transferring her photos via bluetooth was easy.”
Confusion floated around in the crowd. He continued, “Guys, it is our personal matter. I am not sure why Priya brought you here? If you all give us some privacy, I think we both can sort things out.” Guru was triumphantly feeling pity for Priya who kept looking down out of shame, wondering what went wrong with her phone probably.
The crowd was looking expectantly at Priya now to wipe the questions off their face. Priya finally looked up. Surprisingly she was smiling! “Dear Mr. Guru. When you made a pass at me, I felt a surge of loath. But thankfully, my functional brain alerted me that in the commotion, I forgot to latch the exit door. It was actually your signal to your gang members to escape while you kept us engaged with your dramatic performance! Clever usage of my phone by the way!” It was Guru’s turn to be surprised.
Priya continued, “You know we millennials are infamous for two things: Our nocturnal habits and our addiction to phones! And obviously we Indians are addicted to the word ‘free’! ” She gave an intentional pause to let the question marks hop in desperation.
“As soon as I understood your intentions, I texted in our millennial’s WhatsApp group that whoever grabs a bunch of guys running down tower C with a stalk of booze and brings them to the terrace will get to have all of the booze. We respond to text much faster than calls you know!” She winked at Guru this time. “Presenting to you the four culprits, we don’t need a drug test to identify they are stoned. And as a bonus, we have our sweet innocent Bholaram!” Priya ordered Bhola, “Bhola, you know that my dad is the general secretary of this apartment. We even know people in your home town and we can make sure you don’t get a job anywhere in the city. So think twice before taking a side here.”
Bhola did justice to his name and confessed at one go. It didn’t take long for police to come and arrest Guru. It turned out that Guru was conducting such illegal activities for a while now. Guru gave a piercing look at Priya as he left. Priya shuddered and at the same time felt confident that her presence of mind could save her in future as well.
Ritika likes to find an unusual angle in the usual things. Her work is mostly written in hindi and english, but she likes experimenting in other languages as well. Her articles are often published in the newspaper ‘The Hitavada’. Her poems can be found under the pen name ‘Rituational’ in Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rituational and in her blog: http://songssoflife.blogspot.com/ & Her Contact: ritika.sriram1@gmail.com
A TRIBUTE TO JIM: A LOYAL PET FOR SIXTEEN YEARS
After taking over charge of Khurdha Central Excise and Customs Range in the first week of January in 1996, my first job was to pay a courtesy visit to Sri G.C.Bahubalendra, a brilliant officer who excelled in his career to bag the prestigious Presidential Gold Medal for Excellence and Distinguished service for the year 2018. He was the senior inspector of the range, who had met with an accident a fortnight ago and convalescing in his home. I was welcomed by the barking of his cute pet he had adopted a year ago. At the first encounter with the pet, I got enamored and liked its behavior. Bahubalendra babu told me all about the road accident he had been in, two weeks ago. He had been advised rest for another week and would resume his duty after the plaster was removed. Meanwhile his pet had crept into the room and was perching on the floor as if listening to our discussion. As its behavior fancied me, Bahubalendra babu suggested me adopting a recent born sibling of Silu - a mixed breed of spitz and pomerian bloodline. I liked the idea and concurred. Since the pup was only seven days young and the size of my palm, he suggested moving him to his new home after a month.
On a fine Sunday, after about a month, the pup arrived majestically escorted by its retinue at my residence in Gajapati Nagar, much to the delight of my family members. At the first sight, my daughter Sonali and son Gaurav were very excited, as expected. They could not stop cuddling the little creature that looked like a bundle of white fur. My wife was delighted as well. It was a grand welcome for the yet to be christened pup. In the evening, we took the pup to a dog care centre at Unit-4 run by Dr. S.K.Ray for doing the registration and administering anti-rabbis and distempering shots. When the vet enquired about the name and age of the pup for completing the registration, my daughter instantly christened the pup 'Jim’.
Thus, Jim became a family member and began to enjoy the entire house as his playground. He would chase a ball in the portico yapping excitedly, his tail whipping up a storm. He would pull down all the cushions from the sofa and playfully hide behind the heap of cushions. In the beginning, he was fed bread and milk, but in due course, he was weaned away from a puppy’s diet with supply of broths that consisted of chopped vegetables and chicken stock alternatively, with bowls of minced liver. We took care not to include scraps in his food. Occasional home style mutton biriyani proved to be his delight. On Sundays or days when we hosted parties, Jim would be in a state of ecstasy, as the aroma wafted throughout the house, he would forsake even his afternoon siesta to hang around the kitchen, hoping to get something, maybe a piece of chicken or lamb from the indulgent and benevolent madam.
As dog parents, our duty was to impart proper training and manners to Jim to behave properly with the visitors. For imparting training, our driver Abhay, volunteered in his spare time. My children would enjoy playing fetch and tug-of-war with Jim on their leisure time. Gradually, with time, Jim began to distinguish the sound of my car from that of others, because his whole body would be wagging a welcome when I drove through the gate into the portico. Soon it became a regularity with Jim to come to the verandah leading to the portico, and would wait for a pat from me, and in return would lavish a lick. He was already used to waiting for me to return in the evening, and I believed he could recognize the sound of the car’s engine at some distance. By the time I drove in, he would be in waiting in the verandah, tail wagging, to be picked up for a well-come home kiss and lick. Jim started to accompany me in my morning walks to the nearby Sainik school ground when he was six months old and curious as hell to explore. For his protection from the stray street dogs, I used to carry a walking stick which formed a habit with me and continue till now. Though still a pup, Jim began to be inquisitive, alert, his ears cocked to any new adventure or mischief he could conceive and get up to. He was also discovering a world in which other strange creatures like squirrels, lizards, birds lived and was keen to make their acquaintance. Given his size, the animals first caught his attention were the parks' many squirrels. They could run down trees, skip across the grass, and scamper back up the branches in a manner that fascinated Jim. He would bark and chase after them, his rump trembling with excitement, full of accomplishment of victory as he dashed after one, then another, and then another. There was no way he could ever catch one, and it provided him with good exercise, so I used to let him give chase till he was exhausted. Now that he began to gain confidence, his next target was any bird that darted to alight on the ground ahead of him. He would scamper after them, and then bark indignantly when they would fly away. Jim became chaffed with his own importance. After chasing the birds when they would lift off noisily, Jim would turn around to look at me exultantly, as if grinning to say, ’Boss,did you see that?' ‘Good boy’, I would say, beckoning him back. As much as Jim liked morning walk in the park,he enjoyed rides in the car even more. After Abhay, my driver-cum trainer left for his home town to get married, I used to drive my car to office and back. When Jim would be taken for a joy ride in the evening or morning or to be taken to the vet for routine distempering shots, he would be happy to enjoy the ride and would look out of the car window excitedly sniffing the outside breeze dashing on his outstretched face, poking his head outside the car window. Lest he would leap out of the moving car, when taking Jim out, either my son or daughter would accompany Jim sitting beside him in the back to keep an eye and an outstretched hand for Jim. This might have won us admiring glances from the passersby to see a dog taken on a ride in a car.
For all his bravado, Jim was not the bravest little dog. Sharp sound would startle him. He was not used to arguments at home or on the street, which might have scared him. But nothing frightened him as much as Diwali firecrackers or thunderstorms during monsoon. Generally, fireworks annoy dogs because their hearing is very acute. They cower for shelter not so much out of fear, but because they feel assaulted. Over the period before the Diwali festivities, when children down the street began setting off the stray firecrackers from their hoard, Jim would look for the familiar shelter under the sofa or bed and these would become a temporary home till a few days even after Diwali, when all the pyrotechnics were exhausted.
As I was a morning walk enthusiast, Jim would like to accompany me during my early walk to the Sainik School ground. But during summer, the temperature rising from the morning up to 42 degrees Celsius, we would set out early to avoid scorching sun rays. Still, I would feel the sweat running down in streams which even the cotton T-shirt could not absorb, and Jim his tongue hanging out, looked like he could collapse. But valiantly, he would keep up, matching step for step. For a little dog, he not only had a lot of stamina but also a very strong streak of loyalty. Even though these outings exhausted him, never once did he flinch, and indeed, I would have had a more difficult time keeping him back than taking him along. Back home, I would rehydrate myself with lime water. Jim used to lap up the water from his bowel, but greedily enjoy it most noisily if I would put some ice cubes in the water bowel, and then collapse on the floor next to it.
In this way almost 14 years passed smoothly. In the beginning of 2011, Jim developed a wart like lump on his back which was increasing in size day by day. It gradually turned into a sore and started bleeding at times when Jim would rub his back against the door. One Sunday when I was giving a bubble bath, to my utter shock I discovered some maggots in its oozing wound. Being worried for Jim’s health, I took him to the vet Dr.Ray, in the evening. After a thorough check up, the vet diagnosed the wart as a benign tumor and advised immediate surgery to root out the unhealthy growth. Jim was administered anesthesia and the wart was removed by incisive surgery. Jim bore his lot stoically and did not whimper during the entire operation. After the operation was over, when Jim came to sense, I sat talking to him affectionately and he would only look up pathetically, as if to ask, “What is wrong with me? Will I be all right? I will get okay, won’t I?” My entire family prayed that Jim would, indeed, get okay. To our great relief, Jim after convalescing for a week was fit to resume morning walk with a lethargic space.
In January 2012, Jim almost completed 16 years and looked worn-out and couldn’t move out of the house compound, let alone walking in the street with me. He couldn’t enjoy normal food. Seeing his famished condition, in consultation with the vet, I supplemented his food with multivitamins. But Jim would like to savour the mutton broth which was specially prepared for him. We nourished him with care hoping Jim could regain his health and run with me further till my retirement on 31st July. But fate willed otherwise. On 30th June before starting for office, I arranged his bed in the verandah adjacent to the portico and draped my Kashmiri shawl on the bedridden Jim for his comfort and beg leave for my office and drove out my car for office. Jim tried to raise his head with difficulty to have a look at my moving car. I had barely driven for 5 minutes when I received a call from my wife informing that Jim is extremely restless and seemed to be searching for me. She knew Jim had very little time left and asked me to return immediately. I took less than 5 minutes to reach my home. Sony was insistent that Jim had sensed my presence. He certainly seemed to have had more than a dog’s sixth sense when it came to recognizing the sound of my car. Just as I reached the point from where his ears usually picked up the car’s sound, Sony my wife said, Jim had barked violently, then jerked, and was no more.
In the fleeting moments immediately after his passing away, and seeing him lifeless before me, I could sense the jigsaw puzzles of his life fitting together before my eyes - his playfulness as a puppy, his growing affection for me, his attachment, faithfulness, and his wisdom. His life span had played out before me as a conscious adult, and the guardian of the pet for long 16 years. Shutting his eyes with my hands, I called upon Suna, the caretaker during our absence, and Mahendra, a software professional who resided in my roof top room and loved Jim, to collect all Jim’s favorite toys and his feeding bowels, and his bed and to remove the collar belt and to wrap up Jim with the Kashmiri shawl. After my family members had a final look and bade tearful farewell, I drove Jim on his final journey, accompanied by Suna, and Mahendra carrying shovels. I had already selected the mango orchard behind the University campus, for his resting place under the shaded mango trees forming just like a green canopy, very close to my house that, for long sixteen years had been his home. Suna selected a secluded place under a big mango tree and dug a hole where, surrounded by his favorite toys, and packed in salt for early decomposition of his mortal remains, we laid Jim solemnly to rest. I planted a hibiscus sapling, which Mahendra had collected, in Jim’s memory.The sky was laden when his inert form was lowered into the grave by Suna and Mahendra. Suna took the burial responsibilities as he loved Jim very much and scattered soil over the wrapped form till there was nothing visible of Jim. As I put final handful of soil into the grave, few drops of my tears fell on the grave, the final resting place of Jim, our love who had blessed us with 16 years of his life.
Barely a fortnight after Jim’s departure from our life, a street dog, who had been watching us enviously during our morning walk regimen near the hotel Angan in the Sainik School square, was drawn to me and lay prostrate on my path showing his belly. I felt sympathetic towards the dog and began to feed him with biscuits and occasionally with leftover rotis from my kitchen and gave him the name - Jim to enliven the fond memory of my departed pet. Interestingly for me, the second adopted pet, proved to be a faithful, well behaved, peace loving canine and equally endeared by the passersby and the hotel guards. Perhaps the age-old human-canine bonhomie still continues between man and dog, since beginning of the world.
Gouranga Charan Roul (gcroul.roul@gmail.com) : The author, after completing post graduate studies in political science from Utkal University, Odisha in 1975, worked as a senior intelligence sleuth in the department of Customs, Central Excise & Service Tax and retired as senior superintendent. As a staunch association activist, he used to hold chief executive posts either as General Secretary or President of All India Central Excise Gazetted Executive Officer's Association, Odisha for 20 years. Presently in the capacity of President of Retired Central Excise Gazetted Executive Officer's Association, Odisha, coordinating the social welfare schemes of the Association. Being a voracious reader, taking keen interest in the history of India, Africa, Europe and America. In his globe tottering spree, widely travelled America and Africa. At times contributing articles to various magazines.
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“If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time, not tomorrow or next year…Today should always be our most wonderful day.” – Thomas Dreier* |
When we look back in life we have many things to thank for. When we consider what we were back then and what our aspirations were actually like many of us will find that we have far exceeded our expectations. This immediately makes us happy and that calls for celebration. But, should we compare our achievements with others we may get disappointed because grass is always greener on the other side.
If happiness is our goal which I believe it is then we should enjoy the good things that we have. It really doesn’t mean that we can not be a little ambitious looking forward to challenges that might come our way in future.
In the following paragraphs I am dwelling on a few ways which I have personally found useful to celebrate life everyday and to remain positive and cheerful.
Making A Mental-List Of Achievements:
On some rare nights when I am not able to sleep I do this. I go back through my life and make a mental list of my achievements which made me and my folks happy. I find that it has really been good and fulfilling like being able to go to engineering school without money, educating and marrying-off daughters rather well, buying a house, seeing the world and so on. I am immediately more peaceful.
Starting The Day As A Celebration:
We get-up early and look forward to all the possibilities that the day might bring. We usually go for a brisk walk seeing familiar faces, waving and greeting them. The pandemic has made things a little different and much as we would not want we have to maintain a little distance and wear masks which we hope will be thing of the past sooner than later and we are optimistic about it.
Coming back, we sip our favourite cup of tea with short breads and breathe in the aroma, feel the warmth, and enjoy the comfort. At this time we prefer to watch some travel or life-style programme on the TV rather than the often repeated bad news and Covid-19 statistics. These are our few minutes together and we experience all the positive vibes that the morning brings to us and boosts our mood all day long.
Spoiling Yourselves:
While we have no quarrel with those who believe in life after death, moksha and all that nice philosophy, we firmly believe that its one life and is meant to be enjoyed. To enjoy life one must be healthy in body and mind with no confusions. My wife Archana keeps a beautiful house and cooks healthy and tasty meals. We have the biggest freeze this small flat can accommodate which is always full of goodies we both relish. We are grateful that we can do that and
In fact, we believe that treating yourself to a chocolate bar or perhaps your favourite beverage is a great way to finish your day on a high note. For the dinner, we tend to think healthy and often choose a fruit salad or other healthy, good tasting options that add to our celebration without adding further inches to our waistline. On Saturdays we splurge a little and enjoy our little party. We know that we are not athletic or models and its ok.
Pretending You Are The Most Important Person In Your House:
Sometimes we pretend that we are the most important people in the house. We run the fountain, burn candle, put aromatic life in the diffusor and take out nice cutlery , even a bottle of wine. That’s celebration to us and lifts up our spirits. Postponing good times to “when the children will come” kind of thought takes away so much from your life.
Doing Something Silly:
Nothing is silly if it doesn’t intrude on others and makes you happy like wishing a total stranger, giving different fun descriptive names to people in your private talks and laughing over the fun, watching 3 episodes of a TV show end to end, sharing old or new pictures on social media, sharing a naughty joke with old buddies and so on. This 20th July I wished myself happy birthday on WhatsApp and Facebook. That was fun and attracted many likes and good messages almost double than normal times. When I left my first job I gave myself a farewell party and invited my 25-30 colleagues who I overheard were trying to make some collections for my farewell.
Life is not meant to be experienced in baby steps and acting just a bit silly from time to time reminds all of us about our humanity.
Giving Yourself A Gift:
We give gifts to people from time to time on weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and so on when we are invited to such celebrations. We also give gifts to our family members. Amazon and likes have made it quite simple.
But, since our own birthdays and anniversaries are private celebrations meaning that we do not have invitees we don’t get gifts very often. We like gifts and so we give gifts to ourselves as well as to others. There are times when giving a gift to ourselves is more than justified. It should be a gift that reflects the moment and provides you with something that can be enjoyed for a long time or perhaps be shared with others. We reward ourselves with a holidays and trips and lunches and dinners for two.
There are many different ways to celebrate life, so take a little time each day to remind yourself that there are many reasons to celebrate being alive on our beautiful planet. Just a few minutes each day of reflection and celebration will boost your spirits and have you looking forward to tomorrow and the opportunities that it will bring.
“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
– Robert Breault**
*Thomas Dreier was an American editor, writer, advertising executive, and business theorist. The Thomas Dreier Reading Room at Peter H. Armacost Library, Eckerd College is named in his honour.
**Robert Breault is an American operatic tenor. Born in Michigan, he holds a B.M. degree from St. Norbert College from which he received a distinguished alumni award in 1997. In addition, he holds a M.M., and a D.M.A. from the University of Michigan where he studied voice with soprano Lorna Haywood. His early training also included two years of study at the San Francisco Merola Opera Program, and an internship with Michigan Opera Theatre. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah where he teaches voice and serves as Director of Opera at the University of Utah School of Music.
Shri Satish Pashine is a Metallurgical Engineer. Founder and Principal Consultant, Q-Tech Consultancy, he lives in Bhubaneswar and loves to dabble in literature.
" Good Morning Diksha madam. This is your student Pratiksha here. Good time to talk madam?
" Yes Pratiksha. Tell me. How are you doing in this lockdown.
" I wanted to discuss with you regarding the monthly activity of our literary club," said Pratiksha. Missing my college life and friends madam. Trying to stay connected through the social media."
She was the secretary of the college literary club and a very active member.
" I also saw you Facebook page where you have posted the covers of your forthcoming translation into Gujarati of a collection of short stories for a writer from Chennai. I have read your book titled xxxx , a combination of prose and poems. By taking up the translation, I feel you are widening your horizon on the literary field madam. Not only that you are a role model for youngsters like me to follow your approach."
" This opening just came out of the blue", began Diksha." It was a Sunday afternoon and I read in the newspapers that the Lockdown has been extended by another fortnight due to the alarming pandemic situation prevailing in the State. 'Covid fatigue' was beginning to hit everyone hard and I was mentally figuring out ways to combat this menace at home and stay positive. That was when I received a call from my niece Alpana."
" Hi Aunty. I have something interesting right down your line. A poet from Chennai is working on a unique project of translating a single poem on Full Moon in English into multiple languages and is looking for a like minded poet to have it translated into Gujarati. You came to my mind immediately and hence my call to you," said Alpana.
" I immediately grasped the opportunity as I felt it will keep me mentally occupied and not give room to unnecessarily worry about Carona. I started exchanging messages with the poet and soon learnt that he is also a versatile writer. His collection of short stories has been translated into many Indian regional languages and I felt it would be a good avenue for me to venture into it in Gujarati after I complete the translation of the poem in Gujarati. . So I requested for the soft copy of the stories. I found each story to be different that carried a positive message with it. There was a unique story of Mynahs being the portogenists that attracted my attention. As a trial, I translated this story and submitted it to a monthly magazine to which I am a regular contributor. The story was published and I got a good feedback from my readers and well wishers."
" This gave me the confidence to come out of my comfort zone and take up the translation very seriously. Not only that, as the stories unfolded the focus on the delivery gave me a positive outlook. It saved me from the mental stress due to Corona that might otherwise have engulfed me. I was able to get the translation ready for release as planned."
"As a next step I became highly motivated and also got mentally prepared to translate my book xxxx in Gujarati into English, which I would never have visualised had this opportunity not come my way," concluded Diksha.
" Thanks for sharing your thoughts and rich experience with me Madam. I will bring this into our discussion during our next Literary club meeting in college. I am sure it will impress many others to come out of their comfort zone, think differently and not get bogged down by mental blocks."
S. Sundar Rajan is a chartered accountant, a published poet and writer. His poems are part of many anthologies. He has been on the editorial team of two anthologies.
Travel to Odisha, an ideal amalgamation of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu cultures. Formerly known as Kalinga, a place for devotees,a land of temples and historical wonders. Odisha gets its name from "Odra",a kingdom which is mentioned in the epic Mahabharata.
Lord Jagannath is found for the first time in Buddhist literature. A keen observation of Lord Jagannath's face resembles the image of a serpent while the lower part of the idol indicates a log which is worshipped by the tribals(Savara).Prior to this there is no mention of Lord Jagannath in any literature or writing. This unique image of the deity helped the oriyas to remain united as a race and respected the deity with all powers in the world.
In 1500AD a poet named Sarala Das described Buddha as Jagannath. An evolutionary process, thus Lord Jagannath is the original concept of God among the tribal people. He is unique and universal...... Lord of the Universe.
The temple was originally built in the 12th century much after Ashokas Kalinga conquest. Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra are idols made of Neem wood. The possible reason why, could be resistance to all kinds of decay and smeared with sandalwood paste. Medicinal properties of sandalwood protects the idol against fungal growth. The temple originally had a statue of Vishnu with four hands holding :::Shankha, Chakra, Gada, Padma(conch,wheel,maze,lotus)made of Blue sapphire,hence the name "Neela Madhab"(Blue Vishnu). Lord Jagannath was originally worshipped as a blue stone idol in the cave of Blue mountain.
Scriptures say that Neela Madhab was an idol in the possession of a tribal king Biswabasu. He found the stone and felt it's divinity and started worshipping it. This was later fetched for King Indradyumna by Bidyapati for the creation of Lord Jagannath idol. It is still believed that the blue stone is present inside the idol of the Lord and is transferred to the new idol every twelve years.
A pilgrim came before the king and described the great God, later the king requested his younger brother Bidyapati to go in search of the legendary divinity. He did not eat or drink before seeing the Lord. He bathed in Rohini kunda and finally saw the God being worshipped by the Deva's. He returned to Avanti and narrated everything. Now the King decided to go in search of the Lord,but when he arrived, The Lord has disappeared and the entire area was covered with golden sand. "The king must do Tanya in order to worship"!!.
The divinity of Neela Madhab went on :::::
"in this world i will not give darshana in the form of Neela Mahab but i will manifest in four forms::::
Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and the Sudarshan Chakra. Wait near the chakra tirtha, a red log would come afloat and signs of Chakra, Gada, Shankha and Padma will be seen every where. Go there!! take out the log and carve four deities only then can you worship me.
The blue stone pieces are the Shalagrams worshipped as the living Vishnu.,the supreme God.
"Nabakalebra":::::a ritual that involves replacing of the existing wooden idols with the new carved ones.(occurred in 2015 in Puri) The idols have no hands, legs and ears. The idols are replaced every 12years, but only in the year that has an extra month (adhika masa) in the Hindu lunar calendar. Only a Brahma Neem tree is chosen to sculpt. Once the job is done the energies of the old image are transferred to the new ones and later the old images are buried in the Koili Baikuntha .No priests only the artisans are permitted inside the chamber.
Devasnana is yet another ritual just before the Yatra or "Jatra".
"Rath Yatra "...or the "Chariot Festival"is celebrated in honour of Lord Jagannath who is the tenth incarnation of Lord Vishnu. It's about the annual journey of the siblings from the temple to their aunt's temple in Gundicha .They are brought out in a formal procession called "Pahandi".Devotees sing and dance, Brahmans and the poor are given alms and charity.
Three chariots are made::
- Nandighosat::Lord Jagannath (18wheels)
- Taladhvaja:::Balabhadra (16wheels)
- Devadalana::: Subhadra(14wheels)
The emergence Of The Lord from the temple is a symbol of his presence amongst the ordinary on earth. The pulling of the divine chariot by devotees signifies the united force of human beings.
Showcases the power of Unity and Brotherhood. The year 2020 marked as the historic Rath Yatra, where the chariots were not dismantled but preserved, the annual event took place with the absence of devotees. Once the festival is over the chariots are dismantled and the woods are used in the kitchen of the temple to prepare "Bhog".
This year "Ratha Jatra" falls on the 12th of July 2021 it usually rains on this day.
May Lord Jagannath liberate us from all evil and obstacles and may we all be surrounded by His Blessings always.
Jai Jagannath!!
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).
She has been writing articles for LV for the past one and half years. Recently she has published her first book.. "Reflections Of My Mind",an ode to the children and families challenged by Autism
Belief is the key to any relationship, but anyone can get trapped in love. At a particular age, either a girl or a boy longs for a long lasting relationship or connectivity. When a male and female fall in love, they focus only on their ambitions, goals, dreams and future. Two strangers wish to live together like two peas in a pod. Happiness is important for them more than anything else. They interact, interpret, discuss, and question with each other in order to find similarity or same qualities.
Is it so easy to find and feel compatibility? Not at all.
"Life is never easy and full of puzzles." The moment you solve one, the other one appears in front of you. Facing challenges and hurdles is inevitable for a human being in the society. If two different personalities wish to start their married life, they require to find ways, suitability and comfort without any doubt. Some couples will never be able to find similarities in this manner and continue to live with opposite mannerisms. Anyway, time and tide waits for none. As the time passes, a few people believe that happiness can be found in this way too.
I met a few girls who complained about their marital issues, though they married their loved ones. They said there's no compatibility in their lifestyle, food habits, culture, income, tradition, caste, colour, decency etc. Ah! Reasons are unlimited and they found it's difficult to live under the same roof! I questioned them astonishingly, "You chose your partner after loving him for a long time, then what happened now?" They outrightly told me that they're not happy in their lives and would like to go for divorce which requires a lot of proofs! Their words are ringing in my ears, "There's no compatibility in us."
Once upon a time, couples hardly thought of divorce though there's no compatibility in their relationship. Man is a social animal and trapped in the principles of the community. The word "separation" was rarely heard from them as they trusted marriage is an institution and can adjust with opposite views! By nature, human beings are kind, loving, concerned and forgiving. I strongly opine, these might have helped them to move on, having a fake smile on their faces. Love is an expression which can be felt and noticed by others.
As they grow educationally, spiritually, psychologically and culturally, they became decision makers. In a relationship, both man and woman are responsible for a "divorce" and future consequences. Very few parents accept it and a lot of people try to convince their sons or daughters for togetherness, but this happens if everything goes well. I noticed, divorce is obtained by a large number of couples today, though it's tough. It's not a surprise to see people saying, "Divorce is the key to peace and happiness."
In conclusion, I strongly feel that it's better to live separately, if two people can't get adjusted with their marital life. Moreover, education may not change their minds in this regard. Advices and discussions hardly help them if they've decided to go for divorce. Mutual divorce is easier than legality. Is it easy to go for mutual divorce? Ah! Very tough, because both parties should agree with many opinions. Compatibility can be found in many cases too. It all depends on how one looks at the scenario. Final decision should be wise, beneficial and suitable to both!
Mrs. Setaluri Padmavathi, a postgraduate in English Literature with a B.Ed., has been in the field of education for more than three decades. 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. She is a bilingual poet and writes poems in Telugu and English. Her poems were published in many international anthologies and can be read on her blogsetaluripadma.wordpress.com. Padmavathi’s poems and other writings regularly appear on Muse India.com. Boloji.com, Science Shore, Setu, InnerChild Press Anthologies and Poemhunter.com.
Casually I have been discussing with my colleague just a few days prior to the COVID restrictions....now that we have exhausted all teaching tools and students are catching up fast, they themselves presenting seminars with power point presentations like pro…. WHAT NEXT?? Didn’t know that I was prophesying a new era in teaching.
In the wake of COVID pandemic, teaching-learning in all sectors has taken a gigantic leap. Initially, resistance to change was felt. Some were very fast to pick up the new trend and led others from the front.
Few were pretty resistant…”phew…what is this digital teaching learning process?” “Eeow…how to talk to a ghost class!” Where is the charm of ridiculing a guy or a girl for their unmindfulness ..if nothing else, commenting on their dressing sense, playing games on mobiles or making a dosing student alert! Yes, lot of events have been missed during these virtual classes. There is no more uproar of laughter on cutting a joke, no commotion when the classes are stretched beyond time…yet it is all happening, there is no other go. This is the new normal….and till how long, no one knows. Naturally a question pops up in our minds, is this going to be the trend forever? Is digital classroom going to replace the real classroom?
Well, I was asking what'll be new but nature gave us a big jolt and we all were catapulted to the current scenario and that too when we were so unprepared. And of course, with pride we would say apparently, we have been successful in digital classrooms too, overcoming initial hitches.
Basically, what digital classroom requires is:
1. The teacher should be willing to learn and venture into an unknown or half-known world.
2. He/ she must be techno-savvy.
3. Willing to put extra effort to search for best possible and easy to use tools on internet or in their own systems
4. Teachers should be creative enough not to bore the students with dry lectures but putting questions to students randomly and asking them to switch on the camera.
5. Videos and animations that we used already in real classrooms should be in abundance.
6. The teachers should be camera-friendly and keep the camera on for themselves so that the students remain connected.
Apart from these classroom hacks, we can upload assignments, have a flipped pattern classroom teaching once a while, ask some students to present seminars etc.
Initially to make my BDS students catch up with the MBBS students, I had to release a few PPT with narration and released them as YouTube videos and embedded them on my website.
Coming to evaluation, it was still a greater challenge. The written tests were nothing more than open-book exam systems. The google form subjective question answers were widely plagiarised. Students couldn’t imagine that teachers can be smarter than them to verify it. The only possible way that I could see was to have a direct viva by video calling with rapid fire questions, which will have least cheating possibilities.
But the bottom line is whether we can replace the classroom with digital mode of education.....it is a big NO, for the time being.
For the following reasons it may take another decade before really it is replaced so...
- Not all teachers can cope up (There are some teachers who have not grown out of pure chalk and talk teaching even.) Let’s rest the question of which method is better at the moment which may require a full session.
- The practice has to start from school, for the students to get acquainted with the online lectures and assignments etc. The malleability is definitely better at younger age.
- There should be a buffer time to have both modes and gradually we may migrate to digital mode.
- More tools and modalities will be required to accommodate a greater number of students on a single screen so as to maintain connectivity with the students and teachers.
- Evaluation methods have to change drastically. Introduction of AI (Artificial intelligence) may prepare a separate question paper for each candidate which may avert the cheating aspect.
- In Medical curriculum it is difficult to take exams without seeing patients though the concept of simulation labs has been introduced recently by CBME curriculum too. However, an interim arrangement can be done with virtual patient case studies. Albeit it won’t have the same effects that a practicing doctor should obtain as a trainee before entering into the field where he will be dealing with real human beings.
- We’ll lose on the front of inter-personal communication which is very vital for doctors. The psychological faculty of brain may take a new twist.
What makes Indian doctors so special across the globe is, their commitment, servitude, adjusting to the Nth extent while working in the pleomorphic country like India with second highest population and most importantly their human touch.
With the concept of digital classroom usurping, the rise for demand of doctors being met with increasing seats in Medical colleges (from 100 to 150 and now 250) a very disturbing question arises…are we going to lose the compassionate Indian doctors? Will machines be treating the patients?? Will human touch be giving way to artificial intelligence??? Are we going to be overpowered by technology like the Bhasmasura??
Dr. Viyatprajna Acharya is a Professor of Biochemistry at KIMS Medical College, who writes trilingually in Odia, English and Hindi. She is an art lover and her write-ups are basically bent towards social reforms.
The ambrosial aroma of chicken quesadillas wafted throughout the house as my mother gingerly removed them from the oven and transferred them onto the earthenware plates which lay in wait. As we dived into supper, I recounted the day's work to her - leaving out all the jargon.
My team and I had been working on uncovering the existence of mirror dimensions for about seven years until we finally cracked it today. I still remember my first day to the very last vivid detail: The brand new lab with all the up-to-date equipment; the internationally greatest minds who sat around the modernized Round Table as I adumbrated what we would commit ourselves to for at least a decade. I even theorised about the possibility of Leonardo Da Vinci being from the mirror dimension! The all-nighters and micro-sleeps had finally borne fruit and the satisfaction was most definitely not describable in words.
The mirror started to show weird signs right after the team arrived from their month-long breather. It was suddenly reactive to the experiments as if it were alive. And traces of fingerprints riddled its surface — from the other side. The team was overjoyed that we had finally made a connection. Our files would soon be the very foundation of modern science. When I looked up at my mom, I saw that her face beamed with pride. She donned her I-knew-you-would-do-it smile and I felt yet again like a kid. When we then turned ourselves in for bed, I could not stop dreaming about the possibility of an upcoming Nobel prize. A content simper spread across my face, my eyelids slowly closed and I drifted into a deep slumber.
Being awoken by the obscenely loud clanging of pots and pans as opposed to the subtle tune of my morning alarm made me quite grumpy. I felt hungover and everything seemed out of place. In a poor attempt to head for the bathroom, I accidentally tripped over a long flight of stairs and there I noticed the unusual, suffocating stench of smoke. I raced down, got a hold of the fire extinguisher and dashed into the kitchen. It was a miracle! My mother had burnt breakfast and this was the first time I had seen it happen. I quickly offered to help and put together a lousy pancake stack and served it up for my mom. She rapidly scarfed them down, grabbed a pen and paper and began to jot down the grocery list. My heart skipped a beat when I noticed that my mom was writing with her non-dominant, left hand. Lunging for the newspaper to cover up the confuzzled expression on my face I tried to remain as calm as I could. My pulse raced as I quietly wondered what I had done wrong. Where was my mom and was she alright? Questions flooded my head until I laid eyes on the fresh print before me.
The retrographic script of the headline seemed to manifest into a malicious grin and taunt me. All my life, I wanted to achieve my ambition just like everyone else. I never knew that one day, I would be living it. I had quite literally woken up on the wrong side of the bed.
Vishakha Devi, the second daughter of Mrs and Mr S. Vijayaraj, is born and brought up in Chennai. She did her primary schooling at Rosary Matriculation School, Santhome and is now pursuing her middle school education at Vruksha Montessori School, Abhiramapuram. Vishakha, currently in the eighth grade, loves the English language and has a significant penchant for writing short stories. She has received many awards for oratorical and essay writing competitions at the school and inter-school events.
Encouraged by her English teacher, Ms Vidya Shankar, she has now begun her maiden journey into the world of poetry.
A LEAF FROM HISTORY : ABOUT A YOUNG MAN WHO MADE HISTORY - MARVAN ATTAPATU
The leaf is from Cricket history. Cricket, like any other game, has many surprises and lessons to impart. We learn how to keep calm in adverse situation from M.S.Dhoni for which he is well-known as Mr. Cool. Channelizing anger, one may learn from Dada (Sourav Ganguly) or from a roaring Kohli. Similarly the lesson not to give up in the face of ignominious failure, also we get from Cricket! Attapatu in our neighborhood is the stunning example of the latter.
Marvan Attapatu made his debut as a 20 year old lad in Test cricket for Sri Lanka in 1990; he scored a duck in his first innings. And again, in his second innings he crashed with a zero on the score board.
He was dropped from the team whereupon he went back to the nets for more practice. He played more first-class cricket where he made impressive scores. The wait was not too long now. Just after 2 years he was called upon to show his mettle in Srilanka’s international cricket. This time, he had already put in rigorous effort and practices at the net. But lo, his scores unfortunately were Zero again in the first innings and just one in the following one!
Not surprisingly he was dropped again. Attapatu did go back to the domestic cricket where he impressed the onlookers and selectors by scoring tons, the runs, though huge, were not perhaps adequate to wash away his great pain and trauma he would have suffered for his blatant failures in the past internationals. Well, seventeen months later, opportunity knocked on his door again. Marvan got to bat in both innings of the Test. But look, his scores were a pair of zeros. What a bad luck for the budding talent.
At that time his average was 0.16, 1 run and 5 ducks under his belt. In such backdrop, would the selectors ever give him another chance? It was said that he lacked the big-match temperament, and his technique was not up to mark at the highest level. He would have naturally pondered what went so wrong with him at international level. Undetered, Marvan never stopped aspiring and trying.
Three years later, another chance came on his way, thanks to the selectors for having faith in his talent. This time, he rose to the occasion and did not prove the selectors wrong. He came extraordinarily brilliant, Marvan Samson Atapattu wrote his illustrious career thereafter, scoring over 5000 runs for the country which included sixteen centuries and six double hundreds. And more significantly and deservingly he went on to captain his country. All this despite taking over six years to score his second run in Test cricket. The trajectory is bound to surprise many. The table had turned, and Attapatu was now described as one of the most technically adroit batsman of his time.
It is a lesson to learn from Attapatu how to handle failure and never to lose heart but bounce back to victory with perseverance and determination keeping your cool by leaving the nightmarish failures buried in the past. Attapatu’s struggle was for six years of trying, and failing. In a situation of steady iconic failures anybody in his place would have been tempted to give up, try another career or seek a switch over of his passion from cricket to something else. Or he could have just remained satisfied limiting his interest to playing a club or county cricket if possible. Or as said the easiest would have been for him just to give up. But he was great at heart not to give up. That made history. Atapattu mesmerised the people with his knocks that rolled into centuries. One could say that when he was on a song, he brought everyone else alongside with him. He has the record of scoring centuries against all Test-playing nations.
When failure or rejection stares somebody on the face he or she should think of Attapatu. By not giving up, and rather believing in yourself you can hitch your wagon to a star. If you stick to your gun, the run will automatically come. You could even rise to be a captain of the game or leader of the enterprise some day. So the young people must take a leaf from Attapatu’s life history, never to give up so easily even when failure hurts you so much!
In an interview to the Indian news paper, The Hindu in 2020, Attapatu said how Attitude is very important. ”You have got to have that attitude where you are ready to improve yourself everyday. It’s a learning curve for everybody, be it a batsman or a bowler. You need to keep that in mind. You need to learn something new every day,” the ‘zero to hero’ had said.
Mr Nitish Nivedan Barik,who hails from Cuttack,Odisha is a young IT professional working as a Senior Developer with Accenture at Bangalore
A NIGHT OF ENDLESS GIGGLES
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Sukanti got up, startled. Shrikanta was gently shaking her shoulders. She looked at the clock, it was fifteen minutes to two, way beyond midnight. The silence outside was eerie.
"Wha...what happened?"
Shrikant was looking miserable, something was troubling him,
"Have you ever suffered the pangs of separation?"
The question went over her drowsy head, like a bouncer from a fast bowler in cricket. She blurted out groggily,
"What? What the hell is that?"
Shrikant repeated, somewhat embarrassed, as if he didn't mean to ask the question, but couldn't help himself,
"Have you ever suffered the pangs of separation?"
Had it been a normal husband, a run of the mill, sane type husband, Sukanti would have burst into anger and given him a mouthful of expletives, but she knew her man, a sensitive, kind soul whose wet heart sheds copious tears at all kinds of spoken and unspoken woes of the world. She has been his sounding board for the last twenty four years. In the early years of marriage his love for old film songs and the habit of breaking into one at every turn used to thrill her. Ah, such a romantic husband, singing Chaudvin ka chand ho to his demure wife on moonlit nights! And his favourite Hemant Kumar number, Mujhko tumjo miley, ye jaahaian milgaya! He even used to write beautiful poems and present them to her. As the years rolled on, and kids appeared and disappeared, living happy, contented, free-from-parents life in hostels, Shrikant forgot writing poetry. Instead he would sit late into the night, listening to old songs and drenching his heart with thoughts of unrequited love and melancholic sorrow.
But this was a new high, even by Shrikant's exalted standards. Such a thing had never happened earlier; waking up Sukanti at close to two in the night. She ignored his question and tried to get back to sleep, but sleep eluded her. She checked if Shrikant had managed to sleep; she found him tossing on the bed, hitting one leg against the other, and sighing.
She felt bad for him,
"Not getting sleep? What were you doing so late, the usual?"
Shrikant must have nodded in the dark befor replying,
"Sorry I woke you up."
"It's ok, now that sleep has deserted me, let's talk. Why this question about pangs of separation, this midnight assault on the inner recesses of my heart? Were you listening to old songs, one after another, the ones that will make a block of stone burst into tears?"
"Yes, you want to hear me singing?"
"Ok, may be, I will go off to sleep listening to you singing".
"It's a Mukesh song, feel the pathos."
Shrikant started singing...Jhoomti chali hawa, yaad aa gaya koi...
"But this one you have heard so many times earlier...."
"Today I saw the video clip also and it melted my heart, again and again and yet again. Just before that I had listened to Tootey hue khwaboney, Seenemey sulagh te hain aramaan, and Tum naa jaaney kisi Jahan me kho gaye... All with video clips. The anguish on the face of Dilip Kumar and pain in the eyes of Madhubala pierced my heart. It's as if a deep melancholy rose like wild waves in my heart and churned up my consciousness. I was stunned by its intensity and it made me wonder, if you have felt something like this in your life? Somehow I wanted to know, just couldn't resist the urge to ask you if you have ever felt the pangs of separation."
Sukanti pinched his arm in the dark,
"You are a confirmed idiot, a sentimental fool. You married me when I was about twenty years. I had just completed my B.A. and was getting ready to join M.A.. From the RamaDevi Women's College I would have moved to VaniVihar, the University. For the first time I would have studied in a coeducational institution. But you whisked me away. I didn't get a chance to fall in love, so where was the scope for feeling the pangs of separation? Without the pangs of love, how could there be pangs of separation?"
"How about the times you used to take the kids to your parents' home during summer vacation?"
"Hah, you were such an embarrassment that time, calling three times a day, sometimes the late night call used to stretch to an hour. My two Bhabhis used to tease me all the time. So where is the scope to feel the pangs of separation?"
"But I also used to go away on my official tour, leaving you to fend for yourself?"
"So? In those two or three days also you used to call five-six times. Moreover, I knew you would return in a few days. I used to miss you, but missing some one is not the same as pangs of separation!"
Both kept quiet for a minute. Suddenly Sukanti started giggling, and didn't stop. Shrikant was amused but before he could ask, she said,
"You are getting weird. I must take you to a doctor. Otherwise some night you will wake me up and ask, 'Kanti, tell me how much you love me? What is the intensity of your love for me?' Hah, isn't that funny? A man and a woman get married, live together, share a bed, raise their kids, go though all the trials of life hand in hand and one day the husband would ask the wife, tell me, how much you love me! Is the love between a husband and wife bound by a length, width or depth? Can it be measured? And does one have to fall in love with her husband? It just happens, it's a given in life, just like the parents' love for the kids or the children's attachment to their parents. But let me tell you, now that you have raised the question, you are one of the biggest devils in the world."
Shrikant was shocked,
"Hey, what did I do, to get this big certificate from you?"
"See, you whisked me away when I was barely twenty, because of you I couldn't go to the university to study, and missed all the fun. If I had enrolled in M.A. In Psychology, I am sure some boy would have fallen for me, we would have started a romance, chatted under the tree for hours, written love-soaked letters to each other. May be my mother would have accidentally found one such letter, my father would have spewed fire like an angry dragon. There would have been a big drama in life, they would have stopped me from going to college, I would have given up food, pined for my beloved, and....and.... then only felt the real pangs of separation. My dear husband, thanks to you, I was deprived of such a rare, unbeatable experience of life."
She started giggling again. Shrikant was curious,
"But tell me, don't you have any knowledge of some one falling in love and suffering the pangs of separation?"
Sukanti got suddenly animated,
"O yes, yes, of course. I may not have experience, but I have knowledge. When we were in high school we had a classmate...if I remember right, her name was Suhasini. A Bengali girl, very sweet looking, her cheeks were like rasagollas, round and shining. She was madly in love with a boy from her colony, I think his name was Supriyo, she used to talk about her Supriyo dada all the time. When the classes ended she would come out of the school, her books clasped to her bosom, a smile lighting up her face. Supriyo dada would be waiting outside on his bicycle, both would start walking. Suhasini would always be drowsy in the class, sometimes dozing off. When we asked her she would say she was reading Supriyo dada's letter in the night, sometimes twenty times, often thirty times. When they used to walk together he would keep telling her jokes, she would be rolling with laughter, he would be touching her hand, her shoulders and sometimes her cheeks. Suhasini would be pining for more intimacy from him, she would tell us how she would be tossing on the bed in the night, remembering his touch and wishing Supriyo dada was with her, creating magic with his hands, touching her and whispering his love to her. When she would say this to us, her eyes would go soft, as if she was melting away to a sweet world of dreams. Then she would sigh and appear to be very sad. May be those sighs were the pangs of separation, I don't know, but often we would share her sadness. Their romance continued till I left school, I don't know what happened after that."
"My God, such an interesting story! Is your knowledge limited to only the saga of Suhasini or there are others also?"
Sukanti giggled again, remembering something. Her face brightened, even in the darkness of the night, in the usual way women get a glow when they were about to launch into a piece of delicious gossip.
"We had a class mate in the last year of our school, she was a Muslim. Her name was Ayesha, a beautiful lissome girl with expressive eyes, like they had a few dozen poems buried in delicate splendour inside them, eager to come out. Once she had gone to watch a movie with her parents at Shriya talkies. She bought some popcorn and soft drinks during the interval, the crowd was heavy near the stall. She turned and suddenly bumped into a fair, adolescent boy, innocent looking, a shy smile perpetually perched on his lips under a freshly sprouting moustache. Her heart took a few somersaults and collided with the somersaulting heart of the young innocent. In the flash of a moment they dived deep into the ocean of love and came up gasping. She ran away, her dupatta hiding her bashful face, he stood frozen, rest of the movie forgotten like some yesteryear's untimely rains. After the movie was over, he followed her rickshaw on his bike and found out where she lived. Within a week the romance between Ayesha and Laxmikant grew like a tsunami and threatened to go berserk. They couldn't live without each other even for a moment, beautifully written letters in scented paper flew like colourful kites between them and Ayesha lived in a dream like state all the time."
Shrikant was aghast,
"Romance between a Muslim girl and a Hindu boy? I can visualise a lot of pangs..."
"Yes, her mother found one of the letters and went ballistic. Ayesha first denied the affair and then shed copious tears, pledging to commit suicide if she was prevented from meeting her "Jaan". The family called an emergency meeting of close relatives and it was decided to send her away to Bhadrak to her uncle's place. So she was stopped from going to school and two days later made to board the train, escorted by her mother, two brothers and a couple of relatives who looked like butchers with wrestling as their part time hobby. Ayesha had somehow managed to send word to Laxmikant through a friend about her impending trip. So the love-lorn young boy also got into the train and managed to find a place a few seats away, but within her sight. Luckily Ayesha's brothers didn't know him, otherwise the butchers would have chopped him to pieces fed to the dogs near the railway track. Can you imagine, the lovers looking at each other, their hearts torn to a thousand pieces, yet unable to even talk to each other. Their eyes brimmed with tears, but they were afraid to shed them for fear of getting beaten to a pulp. You have been talking of pangs of separation, here it was even worse. They were so close to each other, but separated by miles of intense yearning. Can you imagine their state of mind?"
Shrikant nodded, his heart filled with tons of sympathy for the love-lorn youngsters.
Sukanti continued,
"When Ayesha got up and walked towards the toilet, hoping Laxmikant would sneak away to meet her, one of her brothers and the two butchers followed her. Laxmikant didn't even make an attempt to get up, he knew it would be futile. Ayesha hoped that in typical film style Laxmikant would snatch her from the cruel relatives when they reached Bhadrak, and together they would ride away to the evening sky, glorious clouds drenching them with showers of sweet love. But nothing like that happened. Her cousin had come to the station in an old car with half a dozen relatives. They surrounded Ayesha and her mother in all excitement and whisked them away. Laxmikant had come out of the station and stood there helplessly, his eyes blinded with tears."
"Did he meet her later?", Shrikant's voice showed the sadness he felt.
"No. It took just one week for Ayesha to get over her sweet dreams. The half a dozen cousins at her uncle's place were chirpy, boisterous and playful. They didn't leave her alone even for a minute to pine for her lover. There was a stall in their street which specialised in mouth watering kebabs and rolls. Soon Ayesha fell in love with Shami kebabs as if they were her soulmates and Laxmikant quickly faded into a hazy memory. Fed by unending kebabs, Ayesha's beauty bloomed like a delicate flower in summer rains and a distant relative who had a roaring garments business in the town proposed to make her his begum. She fell for it because she was told there was a kebab stall near his house whose kebabs 'were so good that dozens of them were sent by parcel to the royal family of Murshidabad every evening by train.' I met her a year after her marriage, she had come to visit her parents. She was visibly pregnant, she had added at least ten kilograms to her weight. She gloated over her husband who devoured kebabs and her rosy cheeks with equal fervour. He was a motor cycle freak and drove so fast that Ayesha had to sit in the back glued to him like a frightened goat. When I asked her how one sits like a frightened goat on a motor bike, she offered to give me a demonstration, I declined."
Shrikant was curious,
"And what happened to Laxmikant?"
She giggled,
"What happened to Laxmikant? Come, bring your ear close, I will tell you."
She whispered something and bit his ear. He recoiled,
"O my God, such dirty thoughts! From such a seemingly pure mind as yours! I am horrified."
She giggled more loudly,
"After twenty four years of marriage dirty thoughts become a sort of second nature. And my dear husband, did I know any dirty thoughts when I came from my parents' place, an innocent, nubile girl of twenty? You only taught me all the dirty things of life, remember?"
He remembered and felt shy, yet strangely fulfilled.
Sukanti turned to him,
"Now tell me your experience of pangs of separation. But first tell me, why do you get so emotional, so involved when you listen to these sad, melancholic songs? I don't know any of your friends doing that!"
Shrikant let out a long, heavy sigh,
"Kanti, you must have read somewhere that all men are equal, but let me tell you straightaway, all men are not equal, some are more sentimental than others, the sorrow and pain of the world move them and shake up their heart, flooding it with intense feelings. I have been always like that. Even as a child if I saw a street dog being beaten I would start crying, thinking of the pain it must be going through. When I grew up, the heart continued to remain touchy and prone to strong emotions. And by the time I was in the high school, a new, hitherto unknown feeling seized me, the feeling of love and the sorrow of unfulfilled passion. I was in a coeducational school, there was a girl three years junior to us, she was like a delicate, lovely flower. When she walked it was like a white flower with red dots swaying in the gentle breeze. Thoughts of her pervaded me like a slow fire spreading over a desolate winter, the heat of the burning passion making me breathless and the iciness of the unfulfilled love turning me into a cold stream flowing into an ocean of despair. Every waking moment I was obsessed with her, oh, how I wished I could talk to her once and pour out all my love in cascades of soulful torrents."
Sukanti was curious,
"Did she know about your insane love for her?"
"Nah, how could she? This heartthrob of the school used to walk with her eyes downcast, a faint smile playing daintily on her soft lips. And mind you, there were at least a hundred others like me, looking at her with their hearts fluttering like amorous butterflies."
"So you finished your schooling without talking to her?"
"Yes, and the same story was repeated in the college for the next six years. It's like standing on the banks of many rivers but ending up as thirsty as ever."
Sukanti giggled. She liked the simile, more so because she thought she got a husband so pure and unsullied by a love affair. The next moment she received a jolt. Shrikant exploded a minor bomb,
"But all that changed when I started my first job."
She shrieked,
"What! Don't tell me you had a love affair!"
"No, no, nothing like an affair, just listen. You know before I got my present job I was working as an officer with a nationalised bank. When I joined I was assigned for training to the local head office. My first three months were spent in the loans and recovery section. I was put in charge of Shefali Didi as my mentor. She was couple of years older to me, may be around twenty eight years of age. Unmarried, she was a very pleasant but aggressive person. She took over my life in a way I didn't know existed, she taught me everything about the complicated world of banking, and took me along on her scooter when she went on field inspections. Sitting on the back seat of the scooter behind her made me feel awkward, but she didn't care. I used to enjoy the fiery shouting she used to give to the defaulters. I almost felt like hiding, listening to her tongue lashing in unbelievably strong and often fiery language. She insisted on my sharing her lunch and dropped me at my small, rented apartment in the evenings. Well, I fell head and shoulders for her, my pent-up love overflowed like a pond in monsoons."
Sukanti had never heard of this earlier. In a shaky voice she asked,
"Was she beautiful?"
"Yes, she had a long, sharp face with a beautiful figure, she used to dress up nicely, always in jeans and colourful kurtis. But there was something strange about her, I could never fathom what it was at that time. One evening we were having coffee in a restaurant on the way back from a field inspection. She was looking really beautiful that day. The yellow dress on her looked like a stretch of mustard flowers swaying gently in an evening breeze. I was listening to her talk but nothing was registering in my mind. On a sudden impulse I took her hand, my eyes fixed on her animated face. She was stunned for a moment, the hungry look in my eyes must have told her of the silent passion that was raging inside me. She gently freed her hand and grinned at me, 'Shrikant, don't do this again, don't ever try it. If you do that, I won't speak to you. If I was to hold someone's hand I would have done it long back'"
Sukanti was surprised,
"Did you try to know why she preferred a lonely life?"
"Yes, when I asked her, she told me she was not lonely. Five years back when she was working in some other town, one evening a girl knocked at her door. She found it was Renuka, the young cashier of the branch - a soft, sweet, dimpled girl who could melt a few hearts with her winning smile. She was pregnant. It seemed Renuka had been cheated in love by some scoundrel and her parents had asked her to abort the baby. When she refused, they threw her out of their home. Shefali Didi took her in. They have lived together ever since, sharing the same bed and bringing up Shefali's daughter like a loving parent."
Sukanti let out a small groan,
"Parent? Are they......?"
"Yes, I asked Shefali Didi what was her exact relation with Renuka. She smiled, 'if we were married, I would have been her husband'"
Sukanti giggled,
"O, no wonder you sensed something strange in her. She was a he, wasn't she? So what happened to you after that?"
"Nothing. Nothing happened. Knowing what she was, I came out of my obsession in a matter of few seconds. It's as if my vision got cleared after a cataract operation. I spent a few more months in the bank and we remained friends. Then I got the present job, quit the bank and married you."
Sukanti sat up,
"Hey, you have never told me about this! Any other interesting episodes? Are you still brooding over some unfulfilled love?"
"Yes, but it's a different kind of love now. I am in love with a shadow."
Sukanti started giggling again,
"A shadow? Don't tell me I have become a shadow for you!"
"No no Kanti, you have nothing to do with it. Let me see, how I can explain to you. Difficult, but let me try. We all create small small worlds within our life. Some worlds criss cross with each other, some do not. For example I am in a different world when I am in office, meeting people, discussing things with them, building new plans, new projects. There I have my colleagues, bosses, subordinates. At home it's a different world, it's you, me and the children. Rarely the two worlds meet, except when there are family get togethers, or we go on the annual picnic. Yet, beyond all this there is a different world in which my heart lives, my mind wanders, weaving dreams, fantasies. It's a world, where I am a famous poet or a lyricist, a dramatist or a novelist. In that world sometimes I yearn to climb Mount Everest or to roam around in the Alps. When I sit back in that world, I often regret that I could not be a champion athlete, a celebrated cricketer, or a popular singer. I could not be one who the crowds could clap and welcome, or groups of college students could stop and point out on the street, whispering to each other my name and wishing they could be like me. Within that world I also have several others, the world where unrequited lovers sing songs of unfulfilled promises, where young men and women are tormented by pangs of separation from each other, and perhaps yet another world where hunger pervades, frustration reigns and untold miseries drive people to end their lives. At the end of it I believe no life is complete, everyone in this world chases an elusive shadow of fulfilment. But don't worry, in our own little world of you and me, the shadow does not exist. It's not your competitor, my sweet wife, you have fulfilled me in a way only you could."
Overcome by emotion, Shrikanta moved closer to his wife and gathered her in his arms.
Sukanti started giggling again, it looked like a night of endless giggles for her.
A RED SWEATER FOR URMI BISWAS
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Harishankar got down from the train and looked around. It was seven thirty in the morning. The small Panagarh station, in a remote corner of West Bengal, looked very impersonal, it neither welcomed him nor turned him away. Only two other passengers had got down with him and hurried away to the exit.
Harishankar wondered what to do. He slowly walked to the only tea stall a few feet away and bought a cup of tea,
"Bhai sahab, how far is Debipur from here?"
The man, in no hurry, smiled. Somehow the smile took a new shine, thanks to the two front teeth missing. It looked reassuring.
"Depends on how you are planning to go there. If you walk it will take about an hour, if you take a rickshaw, may be, fifteen minutes."
Harishankar nodded and walked over to a nearby bench and sat down to sip the tea. Despite the huge roof overhead, the heat from the sun was overbearing. He had started sweating. Beads of sweat were starting to form on his head. He raised his hand to wipe it out and remembered his head was bald. He had recently shaved it off, during the funeral ceremonies of his father. It was twenty five days since his father died.
Suddenly he was filled with the thoughts of his father and it made him sad. Harishankar got immersed in his father's memory. Baba was a good man, had raised his three sons well. The loss of Harishankar's mother just three months after his retirement had devastated him for a few days. But he had bounced back. He was a man with a lot of zest for life. He had an exceptionally brilliant mind. Somehow destiny had given him a raw deal. He wrote many exams for different services but finally succeeded in getting a clerk's job. He had risen to be an office superintendent by the time he retired after thirty three years, but not a single day of his life passed without reading a newspaper from the first page to the last, reflecting on political unrest in Honduras or cyclone in Haiti. From the drainage problem in Bhubaneswar or the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar to tourist influx in Honolulu, everything animated him to no end and he would comment on them to his wife or to colleagues in office.
Baba decided to settle down in his village after retirement. His youngest son Ramprasad was a teacher in the local school and welcomed his father to stay with his family. Soon Baba became a sensation in the village, greeting everyone warmly, talking to the villagers, joining the group of gossip mongers in the evening at the local tea and snacks shop. But within a few months the villagers got tired of him,
"Uncle, we have such a lot of problems here, the drought conditions, people dying of snake bites, why are you telling us about Queen Elizabeth's rheumatism or Donald Trump's cold? How do we care if ice is melting in Antarctica when our local canal has been dry for the last two years?"
Unfortunately, having spent his entire working life behind huge piles of files in Secretariat, Baba had no solution to the canal going dry or the drought making the parched soil develop into gaping cracks. Gradually he got bored talking to people, and his warmth for the villagers and the village came down drastically.
But soon Ramprasad and his wife had a new cause for worry. They were shocked at how gullible Baba was. Anyone who came with a sob story to Baba went back with a hundred or two hundred rupees in his hand. Soon the whole village knew that he was a sponge who can be easily squeezed for drops of dollops. Ramparasad was aghast when he found Baba was behaving like a rich Sultan of a Caliphate throwing away money like sand from his vast deserts. In panic he spoke to the eldest brother Shivshankar in Mumbai who advised him to send Baba to Harishankar at Bhubaneswar for sometime.
That's how Baba came to live with Harishankar and Sujata for close to a year. Their only son was away at Bangalore doing a job at an IT company. They were living in a government quarter at AG colony, since Sujata worked in AG's office. Harishankar's job was with the regional head office of LIC. Both used to leave home at 9.30 in the morning and return late in the evening. Baba was happy reading all the books and magazines at home in the first one month. Once they were finished he got restless. He contacted a few of his old colleagues from the Secretariat, but except one, everybody was away from home, living with their children in distant places. The only friend left behind in Bhubaneswar was at the other end of the town, ten kilometres away. So meeting him was not possible. Baba had to be content talking to his friends over phone.
When Baba became restless Harishankar got a membership for him at the State Library. It was at a walking distance from home and Baba was excited to see the thousands of books there. A few days later he found a group of young men and women pouring over books in a separate, big enclosure. It looked like they were all studying seriously. He went to a young man and sat near him. From the corner of his eyes he could see him pouring over a General Knowledge book. He looked at the young man and smiled,
"Preparing for some exam?"
The young man nodded his head shyly,
"For Civil Services uncle."
"O! Tell me which is the capital of Nicaragua?"
The young man thought for a minute and shook his head. Baba smiled,
"Managua. Do you know who wrote Gulag Archipelago?"
The poor man had never heard of the book. He looked blankly. Baba declared triumphantly,
"Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he was a dissident Soviet writer. Have you read any books of Dostoevsky? Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov?"
"I have heard of Crime and Punishment, but never read it."
He was feeling a little embarrassed, as if he had missed a lot in life.
Baba nudged him,
"Read, read a lot. Then only you will succeed"
He looked to his left. There was a girl practising maths. She looked harassed, her hair was unkempt, face pale and haggard.
Baba asked her,
"Are you preparing for the Banking exam?"
The girl stared at him and kept quiet.
Baba repeated the question, she just buried her head in the book and ignored him.
Baba moved a few seats away and stopped at a bearded man, slightly elder than others.
"What exam are you preparing for?"
The man glared at him, and kept quiet. This time Baba was not prepared to give up so easily,
"Are you also preparing for banking exam?"
The man snorted, as if a red rag had been sworn to a rather proud bull,
"Banking exam, that is for kids. I am preparing for Chartered Accuntancy Entrance Test", he said gruffly.
"O, then you have to have a big mathematical brain, a mastery over algorithms".
The man gave Baba a withering look and went back to his book.
The next few days Baba spread himself thick in that small enclosure, giving tips on G.K., Maths, English to the bewildered group, who desperately wanted to be left alone.
Then one day the inevitable happened. Baba was smilingly approaching the group when someone loudly whispered, "Beware, the old bastard is approaching, God knows how long he will bore us today". There was a collective groan in response to that.
Baba heard it and stopped in his track, the smile on his face frozen like an icicle from a hanging roof. He bemoaned how badly the Kaliyug had gripped human beings. Here he was, trying to do noble deeds and the young ruffians were foul mouthing him! He stopped going to the library after that. His heart was not in it anymore.
Harishankar and Sujata would not have known all this. But Baba had this habit of telling them during dinner the details of whatever had happened during the day. He knew the art of narrating things with great gusto, holding his audience spellbound.
Baba somehow managed to stay at home for a week and then developed a desire to teach slum children as a part of his social responsibility. He asked Harishankar to find the slums where he could do it. And reminded him that he would do it free, won't charge a pie. Sujata had her doubts. She told him these days the slum children also have mobiles and browsed films and music all the time. Baba wanted Harishankar to give it a try anyway.
Harishankar called his school mate Abhay who was a head master in a local school and asked him if he could persuade some slum children to take free coaching from Baba. Instead Abhay suggested that if Baba could come to the school and teach some weak and backward students after the school hours, that would be a great help.
Baba jumped at the idea, could not sleep in the night out of excitement. Next morning he left for the school. For the next two months he was the happiest member of the family, excited as a school boy, leaving for the school in the morning with a tiffin box in hand and returned in the evening, smiling like a cat fed with unlimited supply of fish.
And one fine morning Abhay called his friend in the office. Harishankar asked him,
"How is my Baba doing? Is he upto your expectation?"
Abhay let out a groan, as if someone just pricked his bum with a sharp pin,
"Hari, there is a crisis in my school now. All the teachers are threatening to go on mass casual leave for a week."
"Mass casual leave? Why?"
"Hari, can't you find some other outlet for Baba's endless energy? When I offered to give him some extra classes for the kids I thought he would come towards the end of school hours and teach the backward children. But Baba is different, he thinks even the teachers are backward, the staff need training in accountancy and book keeping. So he comes at ten along with everyone else, sits in the teacher's common room and gives them tips on history, geography. Maths, English and what not. The teachers are drained out. The staff are exasperated. Teachers are threatening to go on leave for a week, saying, let the wise old man manage the classes. After all he knows everything, he is Sarvapalle Radhakrishnan - the guru of all gurus. I want to tell Baba not to come from tomorrow, on the ground the parents are protesting about the late stay of the children in the school. You also say the same thing to him. Please, Hari, don't misunderstand me. Baba used to spend an hour in my room every day, giving me lecture on how to run the school and about the evils of Kaliyug, his favourite subject. The only good thing coming out of that was, I used to drink three glasses of water during that one hour, which helped me to keep my internal system clean and my temper in control."
Harishankar suppressed a laugh. He almost told his friend he knew this would happen, it was a miracle that he and the teachers tolerated Baba for two long months.
Baba was crestfallen that evening. Sujata couldn't bear his agony. She suggested to Harishankar that he should go to the village and bring a boy from there to live with them. He would help Sujata in household work, but more important, Baba would teach him and enable him to pass High School exam as a private candidate.
Harishankar called Ramprasad to make arrangements. Next Sunday he went to the village and returned with a boy of twelve years. Arun, who had never left the village earlier, was quite excited at the beautiful, tree lined roads, the tall buildings and the big shops in the city. But what killed his excitement was Baba's insistence on studies. The moment Baba sat down with the books after Harishankar and Sujata left for office, Arun would run away to the toilet and sit there for half an hour, hoping that the old man would have wound up the study session and gone off to sleep. Little did he know that Baba never slept during day time. Despite Arun's reluctance Baba persisted like a stubborn money lender running after a defaulter.
One Sunday morning after about three months Arun asked Harishankar, "Sir, why Nepal is so unlucky, how long the Oli government will keep falling and rising up again?" Harishankar was stunned, but was secretly happy. He knew Baba and Arun have got into the right track and now the running would be smooth.
A few days after the arrival of Arun, another surprise awaited Harishankar. One evening while returning from office he saw Baba and Arun playing cricket with the kids of the colony in the small maidan nearby. He got down from his motorbike and went near the maidan to watch the game. In the next half hour Baba batted for twenty minutes and bowled for the rest of time, all the while giving lecture to the kids on the principles of sound batting and bowling. Harishankar wondered how long the kids would tolerate him, but to his surprise Baba was quite a hit with them, mainly because he bought a new bat, a couple of balls and three stumps for them, promising to replace them whenever required.
Baba was always in the habit of going for long walks in the evening, sometimes for more than an hour. He would sit at some park, talk to people there and return home to narrate all that to his son and daughter-in-law over dinner. Eight months into the stay Baba suddenly became a little reserved during dinner. It was as if something was bothering him, unsettling his mind. He talked less, appeared moody. Once in a while he surprised everyone by wondering how life gives a raw deal to people, how loneliness can eat into the vitals of a person. Sujata thought he was missing his wife, Harishankar asked him if he would like to spend some time in the village. He shook his head. No, he was quite happy here, in Bhubaneswar. Gradually Baba became quiet during dinner, his mind elsewhere as he absent mindedly nibbled at the food.
And suddenly things took a surprising turn, throwing life into a spin. Shivshankar, the eldest brother called and asked Harishankar to send Baba to Mumbai for a couple of months. His wife had developed severe Spondilitis which refused to go away and she was bedridden. They needed someone to stay home and attend to phone calls and visitors. Baba was reluctant to leave Bhubaneswar, he looked morose after hearing of his imminent shift to Mumbai. Harishankar assured him that it would be only for a couple of months. Wasn't it his duty to help the eldest son when he needed it? Baba nodded but a pall of gloom descended on his face. That evening he was very late returning from his walk.
Baba left for Mumbai after two days. He never came back. Confined to Shivshankar's small apartment in Chembur, he felt restless. Something was troubling him, gnawing at his heart. One fine morning, a month into his coming to Mumbai, he had a massive stroke in the early hours and never got up. The two brothers and their wives gathered in Mumbai, since Shivshankar's wife could not travel to their village due to her worsening Spondilitis. The rituals were carried out in Mumbai.
The brothers often discussed about Baba's sudden demise during the mourning period. It was difficult to believe that such a loud, lively person left so suddenly. They looked into the papers left behind by Baba. There was nothing of importance, except a packet tucked in the cupboard among his clothes. There was no address in the packet. Harishankar opened the packet. There was a red sweater with just one piece of paper. Baba in his impeccable handwriting had simply written, "To Urmi Biswas, because you love red."
Everyone looked at each other, wondering who was Urmi Biswas. Baba had never mentioned this name to anyone. They decided that whoever she was, she could be found only in Bhubaneswar. Was she a former colleague from Secretariat? Or one of the young women preparing for banking exams at the Library? Where did Baba meet her? Sujata remembered Baba's strange behaviour towards the last days of his stay in Bhubaneswar. Did he meet her in the park after his evening walk? Was she the lonely woman he used to be sad about?
Harishankar and Sujata returned to Bhubaneswar after the rituals were over. Urmi Biswas never left their mind. And one day Sujata found out who she was. She told Harishankar in the evening over dinner,
"You know, I accidentally stumbled upon her name in the office today."
Harishankar was surprised,
"She works in the AG's office?"
"She used to. I never knew her because she was one of hundreds of Senior Auditors who work in our office. It seems she applied for voluntary retirement fifteen days back. Just submitted the papers and vanished. Didn't even wait for a farewell. I called Mishra Babu, her boss, to my room. Her pension papers were to be processed by me. The papers revealed she was fifty five years of age. Not married, no dependants. Her photograph shows a very ordinary face, but the eyes were very expressive, sad, like she carried all the sorrow of the world on her humble shoulders. Mishra babu told me that she was good in her work, but very unsociable, didn't talk to anyone. Someone who used to know her from her village had once mentioned that she had carried the burden of the entire family at a very young age. She was the eldest and had to bring up two brothers and four sisters. She took care of their studies, got all of them married and as it happens in middle class families, became unwanted after that. The parents had already died long back and she was all alone, had no friend, no relative visiting her. That devastated her. About twenty years back someone from the office had tried to get close to her by promising to marry her, but she found out he was already married and beaten him with chappals, her anger and pent up frustration coming out in torrents of abuse and merciless beating. After that she stopped talking to everyone in the office. Now she has left the town, surendering her official quarters, probably intending never to return. All that connects her to the office is an address in a village in West Bengal and details of a bank account where the pension is to be remitted. She has not left a phone number. I have brought the address with me."
"Do you think she is the mysterious woman Baba used to meet in the park?"
"Most likely. Baba must be talking to her over phone from Mumbai. Remember, a few people called his number after his demise and RamPrasad's wife informed them that he had passed away? She must have been one of the callers. Broken, she would have applied for Voluntary Retirement after that."
"Now, what to with the red sweater?"
"You must go and hand it over to her. It was meant for her and must reach its destination."
Harishankar groaned and kept quiet.
That is how, a week later, Harishankar found himself sitting on a hot bench on a sultry August morning in a desolate railway station. Suddenly the loneliness of this place, the impersonal vacantness, made him nervous. His mind was assailed by doubts. He wished he had not come on this strange mission. What if Urmi Biswas was not there in the village? Who knows, she might have left for Benares or Haridwar on a pilgrimage, may be to pray for Baba's soul? And if she was at home would she welcome Harishankar? What if she refuses to admit knowing Baba, preferring to wallow in her loneliness for the rest of her life? Or what if she tells him that Baba had fallen deeply in love with her, they had become soulmates for each other? How embarrassing! Harishankar wondered if it will be prudent to meet her.
Harishankar looked at the small suitcase lying on the bench beside him. What if the red sweater inside had a small heart of its own? Would it be throbbing in anticipation of reaching its destination finally? Or would it, by a sixth sense, be sensing the dilemma in Harishankar's heart?
Somehow, for the umpteenth time he wished he had not come looking for Urmi Biswas with a red sweater tucked in his suitcase like the relic of a forgettable past. He realised it is not necessary that one should always reach his destination. Sometimes travelling made more sense than reaching a destination.
He got up and slowly dragged his tired feet to the tea stall. The owner of the stall smiled at him, this time his two missing teeth somehow made Harishankar strangely nervous. A shiver ran down his spine, like a ghost hurtling into a precipice.
Harishankar muttered, in a barely audible whisper,
"Will you give me one more cup of tea please?
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.
BOOK REVIEW::
‘ANTHROPOCENE: CLIMATE CHANGE, CONTAGION, CONSOLATION’ by Sudeep Sen
Publisher :: Pippa Rann Books & Media, UK.
1.
Sudeep Sen’s latest book, Anthropocene: Climate Change, Contagion, Consolation, is a multi-genre volume — well-produced, elegant, tastefully designed — conceptualized on a grand scale, and complex in its simplicity. The motif of serrated-damaged peepal leaves on the cover and on the separator pages of each section of the book, evoke the misery and ravages that climate change and the corona pandemic has ushered into our condition — into the world of vegetation and soil, sea and air, and other life forms. These two devastating calamities — global warming and scourge of the corona pandemic — are the major emotions/themes that form the poem-movements in this book.
It is difficult to place the style of Sen’s poetry in Anthropocene. More than half the pieces are in the form of lucid lyrical poetry containing a musical word-quality. The other half comprises a combination of ‘prose poetry’ and ‘poetry-photography’. Many of the prose-poems are set in the form of news reportage without elements of figurative language; while others contain poetic qualities of allusions, metaphors and inbuilt rhythm. Separately, well-shot photographs, lovely and moody, are anchored by short poem-extracts. Most poem-extracts accompanying the photographs provide an antithesis, walking separate paths with their own moods and imagery. As the poet reveals in the prologue of the book — the mixed format is intentional, displaying a variety of moods subtly imbedded in this work.
The poet has chosen a difficult subject — the effects of global warming on the climate; not only on the soil, sea, flora and fauna, but on humans too. We see this through the devastation that the recent corona pandemic has caused. Few would have dared to choose this as a subject of a full-fledged collection of poems — such sombre and numbing subjects. But Sen has muzzled them into his poems to walk this challenging literary path, steering the geological and scientific phenomenon through a rough-hewn terrain, taming the untameable beasts through the skill of his literary arts.
Most of the poems are laments — grieving in myriad ways for the pain caused to the ravaged earth, for the suffering of humanity — living and dying without dignity, for the earth’s green cover getting eroded, and for the ice-caps and glaciers melting, for the air pollution beyond acceptable breathing quality and other maladies. The harrowing state of nature reduced to this, and suffering humanity, makes the poet disconsolate. His despondent heart after losing hope take to songs as the last resort — for catharsis. The poems are also his own way of protest and reportage — his point of view, and his efforts to help to come out of this purgatory.
The book starts with a short cryptic poem, ‘i.e. [That Is]’ — its mood mysterious, having a mystique of its own — setting an enigmatic tone to the book. This unusually titled poem is a reflective one: “i. e. // because you hear — / the sound / of a lone rustling leaf — / you hear the sea. // i. e. // because I consider / the sea silent — / you hear its silence ….” There is a sense of detachment here, before Sen gets fully immersed in the drama that follows in the rest of the book.
The concluding poem, ‘Om: A Cerement’, completing the book’s arc, ends in the style of T S Eliot’s masterpiece ‘The Wasteland’, with the invocation: “Om Shantih, Shantih, Shantih”. This poem, containing this talismanic finish, is one of his most elegant poems. It seems to be an elegy for consolation meant to comfort all, the inconsolable souls including the poet himself, the victims of global warming and the corona pandemic.
The poems in the collection have a meditative brooding quality. There are many heart-warming poems echoing prayer and invocation. The poems are pure, well-crafted and have a sublime quality — some contain consoling thoughts, and others have a stolid detached voice as if accepting destiny’s inevitable fate. They all use a well-chiselled poetic language to sing to the lacerated soul of the world.
The poet writes with a daring and confident sweep, that makes him the poet he is. He has a kind of obsession for expressing things in words, stringing them with an aesthetic loveliness. He has a poised and controlled voice that has enabled him to create a successful body of quality work. The rave comments and reviews about his poetry from people who matter, stand as evidence to that fact.
2.
The poetry in the book takes wing from the second section, the first being devoted to the prologue where Sen sets out the back-story for the project. The rest of the eight sections sing with varied emotions, ranging from acceptance, through utter hopelessness, to consoling thoughts of prayer. The work rises out of the fallout of climatic ravages due to global warming and the devastation in the lives of people due to the corona pandemic, irrespective of caste, creed, sex, nationality and material status. Both the climatic change and the pandemic have acted as great equalizers, and that presumably is the cause for the poet to never be sarcastic towards the rich and powerful, a pet subject of most poets. In ‘Love in the Time of Corona’, he holds “social distancing” as a privilege of the rich and implausible for the poor.
Thoughts glide into the realms of desperation, as in the poem ‘Disembodied’ with stark lines like: “My lungs fuelled with Delhi’s insidious toxic air …”, “where pleasures of sex are merely a sport — ” and “Skin moistened by O’Real / and not by season’s first rains —”. This powerful poem has its more voluble counterparts in Section Six — ‘Disembodied 2: Les Voyageurs’ and ‘Disembodied 3: Within’. In ‘Disembodied 2’, the poet examines the series of sculptures, ‘Les Voyageurs’ by Bruno Catalano, displayed in Marseilles and Paris — and Sen’s amazement at seeing the surreal sights of missing parts in human forms evoke in him, thoughts about the climatic change in the form of Tagorean ‘erasure’ — the vanishing polar ice-caps, mountain snow and glaciers. Also, the pandemic making a large part of the humanity vanish from our midst. “Art mirroring life — reflecting pandemic on stage.” // … /... / “People leap about — masked and veiled.” // … // … “hearts love, lungs breathe — breathless.” // … “Life’s dance continues — with or without us — ”.
The poem ‘Global Warming’ alludes to Delhi and North-East parts of India. Both areas are heating up, and added to that is Delhi’s air pollutio, among the worst in the world. Elegant lines such as “Stillness, ever stillness — / all still-born”, are placed side by side with the run-of-the-mill lines “Rain where there never was / no rain where there was” to show the stark contrasts. Do they represent the poet’s mood traversing from bad to worse vis-a-vis the fate of the earth and earthlings?
His poem, ‘Asphyxia’, is redolent with the unbreathable air of Delhi using Eliotian lines from ‘The Wasteland’ and ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ in italics, ending with a warning “this insidious dirge, this unripe rot”, cautioning that perhaps what you see is only the tip of the iceberg, and the rot is still unripe. ‘Asphyxia’ makes the reader choke and gasp.
In poems like ‘Amaltas’, ‘Heat Sand’, and ‘Concrete Graves’, he brings out the detailed topography and weather his resident city, Delhi, suffers from — further deteriorated by the dust/pollution from the construction sites and farmland-stubble burning in the adjoining States. In ‘The Third Pole’, he takes us to the Himalayas and its fading resilience to the global warming. He hopes the sonorous prayers rising from the Buddhist pilgrims sheltered in the Daramshala monastaries can stop the decline.
Section Three deals with poems evoked by the corona pandemic. ‘Love in the Time of Corona’ seems to be penned after Marquez’s ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ — both are themed with a complexity different from each other. The poet, presumably, uses the the title line to underline its import, wanting to convey the opposite, instead of love budding between two lovers as in the protagonists in Marquez’s novel of the Seventies. In Sen’s poems, love is liable to die young.
In ‘Asthma’, the allusions are stark and the stanzas bear a chiselled structure. For example, the unusual image of “brutalist architecture” has been used — “My rib-cage tangled in its brutalist architecture — / my heaving chest tries its best to clear the choke” — to its best advantage, rounding up the spirit of the poem.
The prima donna in the section, ‘Love in the Time of Corona’, in its first part sings softly of tender love, and of love’s undaunting side, of resilience and undying devotion — “Fourteen years — yet my heart flutters / infatuated like first love.” Then the mood slides into despondency: “My hands fidgety, // palms sweaty, pulse too fast to pick — / I am not allowed to touch your face.” Thereafter like a paean to love, the poet questions — “When shall we sing our dreams’ epiphanies?”
In the second part of the same poem, the poetry moves away from its dreamscape to dealing with stark reality of the misery of migrant labourers after the lockdown. His tone is laced with satire: “… hungry footsteps on highways // accentuate irony — ‘social distancing’, / a privilege only powerful can afford…..” Further along, “Cretins spray bleach … clap, / bang plates, ring bells, blow conches, light fires // to rid the voodoo —….” It indicates, love has another grammar for the dispossessed, the power to resist the adversity by staying and sticking together for the love of living. He uses humour as resilience to face the powers-that-be for their prehistoric methods of driving away the pandemic by rituals of banging, drumming and clapping.
In ‘Speaking in Silence’, the poet sings of tenderness and nostalgia — “In the coppice, I picked a driftwood piece — / sculpt-etched by wind-water — a palaeolithic // talisman I left on your rustic kitchen window. Perhaps / it lies there still — ”, the memory extending to afterlife — “I am certain we will continue walking together and alone, / now and in the life-after —…”
The rest of the third section of this book contains ‘prose poetry’. They speak of a pandemic ravaged country in stark storytelling style, often trance-like and mysterious, using magical images that may happen during a trip, i.e. after smoking weed. The next section, ‘Contagion, Corona Red’, contain more ‘prose poems’ speaking of life’s discord with its mode of living, of life gone askew, and looking at the sky, unfocused, for a solution.
‘Preparing for a Perfect Death’ contains a series of ironies, even the poem’s title is not spared. It sings darkly: “Get your papers in order — choose / your inheritors fairly — with love, care” in the morbid haste the harrowing corona has imposed. Then follows instructional phrases like “forgive those who have wronged you”, …. “donate your organs” … and the best of his satirical jibes comes as — “how and where to die, what to wear. // Be tidy … / there is no room for shabbiness here.” There is stark and dark irony, after confronting overwhelming tragedies of life and going numb in the face of extreme hopelessness, incapable of feeling further pain.
‘Skyscapes’ contains eight photographs by the poet, with line-extracts from poems from elsewhere in the book under each of the frames. All the photographs are painterly, mostly taken during the late mellowed evening, the sky as the background, with a mosaic of myriad colours. Each accompanying poem-extract appears to have a mood of its own, sometimes used as an antithesis or counter-point. Some examples: “late at night, light leaks — spilling … a cleaving shift” and “amaltas / drip ochre at 48°C, / drenched in yolky heat. // Hotter the heat, more / incandescent its colour.”
‘Abandoned Gods’ in the section, ‘Holocene, Geographies’ is a poem of dejection and acceptance of time’s erosion, depicting the degeneration of faith to a level of ritual rather than spiritual. The gods in the countryside surprise him, they lie neglected and abandoned — identified as godly only by the smear of turmeric and red vermilion. And during the occasional ritual-worship, they “come alive momentarily. // Hibiscus, rose, marigold — / match fervour and devotion, // lending …. / … / … // [a] veneer of a fleeting new life.” The subject of global warming is subtly and indirectly alluded to — “… flower petals wither / in global warming’s heat. // In its temporary finery, / at least the moment is living.”
The next poem ‘Driftwood’ interweaves the idea of decay and nostalgia, and part of the poem transforms into a dream-like soliloquy. These lines stand out for their beauty — “In the front garden facing the same sea, / …. a ballerina’s curved arch — / a stone memorial for a close friend.”
‘Undercurrents: 20 Lake Haiku’ entertains the reader immensely. To quote, “clouds lie on water, / photo-perfect and stone still — / a transient frame” …. “lake’s blue-black ink / runs deep, piercing sinews — / leaving scars, unseen”. Such poems, without stating it aloud, hold the value of human appreciation for nature in its sublime spread, in spite of climate changes like global warming, erosion of the ozone cover, water pollution and more.
‘The Gift of Light’ is a poem that seems to have been evoked by the dusk light at Delhi’s Humayun’s Tomb. Its understated poetry is impressive — “light melts to darkness / in the sanctum sanctorum — …. In this dusk-penumbra, / another laser-sharp beam // crosscuts the axis / of the light’s path,” …. “Our own quiet breathing — / a silent sacred song // softly muted — unlike the / azaan’s piercing prayer call.”
The poem, ‘Burning Ghats, Varanasi’, sings a dirge with macabre majesty as if with an authority given to it by ‘death’ itself. It speaks of the disgusting way of disposing human’s mortal remains, insane rituals, squalor, desolation, and the burning sites by the holy Ganga. It is a harrowing tale of trade and commerce of the dead, one that overwhelms the dignity of the dying or even death itself. The macabre competes with moksha. The lines of satire, jeering in tone, are nauseatingly vivid: “At Manikarnika Ghat, a mixture of sanctity and stench / rises from silted sand and wooden armatures — ” …. “… stray dogs bark, cows groan, loudspeakers bray. / On ghat-side walls, Gandhi posters preach peace. / Amid so much noise, / the business of death being transacted / carries on, without any emotion or fuss.” The poet laments, “what does prayer amid all this din and commerce / get you anyway?”, as he looks at the kaleidoscopic sights unfolding before him, “In the super-heated pyre, I hear another ritual pot break, / another skull crack, another soul take flight.”
There are beautiful lyrical poems, like constellated consolation songs, singing paeans to nature, humanity, goodness and beauty — ‘Aspen’, ‘Shiuli | Harasingara’, ‘Lenticular’, ‘Indian Skies: Cinquain Diptych’, ‘Meteor’, ‘Listen to the Stars’, ‘Corona: Elliptical Light’, and ‘Consolation’. Intermittently ‘prose poems’ keep dropping by like guest-appearances or cameos to change the mood to a diffrent vein. In ‘Language’, the poet adopts a self-deprecating tone, using images like “my bipolar, forked tongue”, …. “my tongue was born promiscuous — ”, …. and “a polygamy of grammar”. Is he humouring himself or laughing at us? Or is he being modest? — the reader is intrigued.
The concluding four poems in the book are intended as a healing touch to assuage the mind and corona-ravaged health — ‘Meditation’, ‘Prayer’, ‘Chant’ and ‘Om: A Cerement’. The most impressive is the last one, ‘Om: A Cerement’. It is a song for the living and for the dead — both crying for dignity in life and dignity after death — at a time when many do not have clean air to breathe, or adequate oxygen cylinders next to their sickbeds. Replete with images of overpowering pollution, the short supply of oxygen, mortal remains after death being disposed as orphan corpses in the rivers and on river banks, overwhelming numbers of the affected, fear of infection, and poverty — all emblematic of the book’s multifarious themes.
This last poem with its evocative title, ‘Om: A Cerement’, has a distant connect to the famous ‘The Shroud of Turin’ (believed to have wrapped Christ’s body after his death). ‘Om’ evokes a similar extreme hopelessness of the present, as had happened to Christ’s disciples after his death. But the hopelessness is followed by a ray of consolation, again a parallel to the emotions that followed Christ’s resurrection. The title is indicative of a passage — travelling through a dark and desolate tunnel, expecting light at its end. This thought-provoking poem is a mix of the sadness, both dirge-like and hopeful that a prayer induces. Prefixed by ‘Om’, the sacred humming chant converts an ordinary cerement into a holy shroud. Dignity at last in death. The last three stanzas round up the mood of the book — “A country without a government, / a country without a post-office — Shahid laments: // ‘Let me cry out in that void, say it as I can. / I write on the void.’ Om’s celebration now // an unceasing requiem. Yet we chant in hope, / for peace: Om Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.” I feel, the book ends very well with this poem, one that acts like a jewel in the crown.
3.
In Sudeep Sen’s Anthropocene, the context is contemporary. There is desperation, celebration, comfort and hope in the poems in this book. His political outlook and concerns are alive and alert. They are grounded in reality using earthy metaphors. Sen writes with confidence and flair, his voice is poised and measured. In his love poems, he does not indulge in sloppy sentimentality — instead there is controlled expression here, which successfully transmits the tenderness of deep involvement simultaneously — all marks of a mature poet.
Prabhanjan K. Mishra is a poet/ story writer/translator/literary critic, living in Mumbai, India. The publishers - Rupa & Co. and Allied Publishers Pvt Ltd have published his three books of poems – VIGIL (1993), LIPS OF A CANYON (2000), and LITMUS (2005). His poems have been widely anthologized in fourteen different volumes of anthology by publishers, such as – Rupa & Co, Virgo Publication, Penguin Books, Adhayan Publishers and Distributors, Panchabati Publications, Authorspress, Poetrywala, Prakriti Foundation, Hidden Book Press, Penguin Ananda, Sahitya Akademi etc. over the period spanning over 1993 to 2020. Awards won - Vineet Gupta Memorial Poetry Award, JIWE Poetry Prize. Former president of Poetry Circle (Mumbai), former editor of this poet-association’s poetry journal POIESIS. He edited a book of short stories by the iconic Odia writer in English translation – FROM THE MASTER’s LOOM, VINTAGE STORIES OF FAKIRMOHAN SENAPATI. He is widely published in literary magazines; lately in Kavya Bharati, Literary Vibes, Our Poetry Archives (OPA) and Spillwords.
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO AN OUTSTANDING BOOK - MANTRA YOGA BY MR. JAIRAM SESHADRI
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Name of the book - MANTRA YOGA - HOW TO INCREASE YOUR INNER POWER AND POTENTIAL
Author - Jairam Seshadri
Publisher - Rupa Publications
Year of Publication - 2021
Price - Rs. 231
To say that MANTRA YOGA - HOW TO INCREASE YOUR INNER POWER AND POTENTIAL is an eye-opener will be an understatement simply because it is an enlightening book, flooding the inner recesses of the mind with the rare light of the supreme awareness of the truth of life.
Once we accept that attaining Shanti is the ultimate truth, a lot of concepts fall into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
And what is Shanti? It is, in the author's words, "the state that hovers above pleasure and pain." Gautama Buddha was known as 'The Awakened One', because he had awakened to the peace within, the inner Shanti. A mantra is the vehicle that leads the mind in the path of Shanti.
The repetition of a mantra creates resonance which delves deep into the subconscious, tuning the minds to a state of calmness.
The author offers astounding scientific evidence, from simple high school experiments to vibrations detected by NASA's Chandra Telescope to prove that mantras have the power to stir the super consciousness, the rockbed of true awakening. Mantras induce positive thoughts and thereby influence the three gunas (traits) in human personality - Tamas, Rajas and Sattva. Mantra Yoga, or the practice of reciting Mantras with devotion, leads to purity of heart, guiding the personality to the state of Sattva and ultimately to Shanti.
Having explained the importance of Mantra Yoga to facilitate the journey towards the ultimate goal of Shanti, the author offers practical aids in chanting by outlining the different methods of doing so within the broad categories of Manasika Japa (mental repetition), Vaikhari Japa (loud chanting), Upamsu Japa (whispering or humming), and Likhita Japa (writing the mantra in silent mode). The author proceeds to present a list of the important mantras and a commentary on each of them - starting with Om as an invocation to God as a formless infinite spirit, to specific deities such as Ganesha, Suryadev, Shiva, Rama, Krishna, Mahakali, Durga, Saraswati, Mahalaxmi, Subrahmanya and Hanuman.
There are two aspects of the book that appeal to me.
First, its comprehensiveness. Different aspects of Mantra Yoga have been elaborated with a scientific explanation and drawing upon vast knowledge of Eastern and Western philosophy.
Second, despite the profundity, the book is so simple to read. Frankly, I was initially intimidated by the title, spirituality not being one of my strong traits. But the book kept me engrossed, right from the first page. It was difficult to put it down without finishing, thanks to the lucid style of writing and the use of multiple anecdotes.
The author quotes Ivan Boesky, the Wall Street financier, who said, "Of what use is the Moon, if it cannot be bought and sold?" Mr. Seshadri, through a book of timeless wonder, has led us to believe that beyond the world of buying and selling, there is a quintessential universe where Shanti reigns and mantra is the chariot which promises to take us there by awakening our inner consciousness.
Jairam Seshadri returned from North America where he worked for several decades as a chartered accountant in senior positions in well established organisations. He now lives in Chennai with the sweltering heat and suffocating humidity with a smile on his mien induced by his three dogs. His legacy, he believes, will be his WOOF SONGS AND THE ETERNAL SELF SABOTEUR, a collection of poems dedicated to the memory of his three four-legged companions.
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