Literary Vibes - Edition CIX (24-Sep-2021) - ARTICLES
Title : On Nature's Lap (Picture courtesy Ms. Latha Prem Sakya)
Table of Contents - ARTICLES
01) Geetha Nair G
TRAVELLING COMPANIONS
02) Ishwar Pati
ANGEL HEART
03) Sreekumar K
DIL SE
04) Krupa Sagar Sahoo
BHAINSA THE LITTLE BUFFALO
05) Prof.(Dr.) Gangadhar Sahoo
THE POSTPONED LUNCH
06) Dr Prasanna Kumar Sahoo
THE UNFORGETTABLE MEMOIRS
07) Sunil Biswal
RI TAN’GI HO’RU
08) Ms. Chinmayee Barik
NUN
09)Dr. Milon Franz
MEMORIES IN FULL BLOOM
10) Pratyush Raj Sama
A STORY OF DREAM, STRUGGLE, AND ADAPTATION: MY MEMORIES IN RUSSIA
11) Setaluri Padmavathi
MY VISIT TO LAKSHMI PURAM (A VILLAGE IN INDIA)
12) Gourang Charan Roul
NEW YORK – FROM A TOURIST’S PERSPECTIVE
13) G K Maya
THE BLUE LOTUS
14) Prof (Dr) Viyatprajna Acharya
MIRACULOUS TULASI
RIPPED JEANS
15) Sheena Rath
MA DURGA..... THE INVINCIBLE
16) Vishakha Devi
THE LITERACY BRIDGE - IN NEED OF REPAIR
17) Shruti Sarma.
MY DEAR FRIEND
18) Dr.Radharani Nanda
THE BLUE SAREE
19) Prof. Nachiketa K Sharma.
THE DILEMMA
20) Satish Pashine
TOO BUSY TO SAY SORRY
SATTU GOES TO THE BIG SCHOOL!
21) Nitish Nivedan Barik
A LEAF FROM RECENT HISTORY: ONE FAMILY, ONE NATION AND ONE COUNTRY
22) Mrutyunjay Sarangi
BABA'S FILTER COFFEE
REVIEWS
01) Prabhanjan K. Mishra
AN OVERVIEW – Fourteen Poems from 108th Issue, Literary Vibes
02) Sreekumar K
WHERE DOES POETRY COME FROM
I boarded the train to Trivandrum at Nellore. I was breathless as I had run from the entrance of the station, leaped up and down the steps of the overbridge and dashed into my coach just as the monster started shuddering to life again. Rolling my suitcase behind me, I found my compartment. After stowing away the suitcase under my seat and placing my lap-top carefully on the folding table between the two windows, I sat down. I was facing the two other passengers in my compartment. They were an elderly couple, maybe in their early seventies. He was holding a pillow, looking out of the glassed-in window at the night lights moving backwards. She was spreading a sheet on the upper berth. It was exactly nine at night.
Husband’s eyes were now assessing me. He smiled and said,”Hello, young man. Are you the occupant of this lower berth? Would you mind… .” “Exchanging it with my upper berth? Sure. Why not?” I completed the sentence for him.
He looked relieved. Wife smiled gratefully. The Ticket Examiner plonked himself down next to me at that point. He told us that the fourth occupant hadn’t boarded. So, the other upper berth was likely to be vacant the whole night.
I scrutinized the duo who would be my companions for the night and probably for quite a part of the coming day. Singularly uninteresting, was my first assessment. I had hoped for some congenial company that would help to keep my unhappiness at bay. Not a pretty girl, the wish of every man ; no! I had had enough of pretty girls for the moment! A man of my age, perhaps, with whom I could talk. But these two seemed unsuitable. Husband was a lean and elegant man with a balding head, withered face and long legs that ended in stylish shoes. He had on a woollen jacket; why did old people have to travel by air-conditioned coaches if they couldn’t bear the cold, I wondered. Wife was rather plump with a few wisps of grey hair framing a brown, lined face. She seemed stuffed into a blue kurta. Gnarled feet peeped out of the loose ends of a white salwar.
Blue and white. Matangi’s favourite colours. Matangi, my beloved wife. When we fell in love, that summer evening as she charmingly anchored a programme, I had sat riveted in the first row. When our eyes met across spaces, who could have foreseen it would come to this? Our romance had been a dream, a langurous flight aross rosy clouds and the silvery moonlight. Our marriage and the weeks that followed were enchantment, pure enchantment. She was a perfect homemaker. My life had been transformed. I knew I was the luckiest man alive. But soon afterwards, she had landed a coveted job. The interview for the teaching post had been held months ago. She had almost given up hope of being a part of Hyderabad’s prestigious academic coterie when the intimation arrived. She had joined soon after. Of course, it meant she had less time for cooking and cleaning but she managed things quite well. And then, I landed a new job.. I had shown her the mail that lay like a plump seer fish on the screen of my laptop. To me, it was a triumph, the biggest fish I had netted in my professional life. Matangi’s reaction had been sober. After scanning the words, she had raised those lovely eyes to me. There was worry like a dull curtain screening their beauty. “But, Shankar, you aren’t taking this up, are you?” I reeled, but recovered fast. After she had listened to all my excited words, she replied, calmly, “But this job means we will have to stay apart, in two different cities.” “Matangi!” I exclaimed. “You mean to say you won’t come with me?” That was when the problem had begun. She was determined to continue in her new place of work and I was equally determined to take up the new job at Chennai’ it was a dream come true for one with my qualifications.
As the train rocked and sped through the night, I lay awake, reliving our fruitless interaction the previous evening. Matangi had refused to budge from her stand. That she had got this position was a near-miracle. There was no question of resigning. She would never again get a permanent job in such a prestigious place; people were willing to kill for UGC-paid teaching posts.. She argued that we could meet over extended weekends. There were summer holidays and plenty of other holidays for those in teaching posts. So many couples these days made such adjustments. I didn’t love her or care about her future; that was the root of the problem… .
Finally, I lost my temper.”You don’t love me, you ****” I had shouted at her. “I am done with you!” I mailed the office requesting a week’s leave, packed a bag and left for a friend’s house near Nellore. He hadn’t been at home, though. I had spent a wretched night and day in a hotel room and decided to go home, to Trivandrum, to my dear mother, my 24/7 homemaker mother, by the first available train. She stayed alone in our ancestral home, old, but healthy enough to run the house single-handedly as she had always done.
All through the night, I had tried to arrive at a solution. I was determined not to be a part-time husband. I would have to choose between life with Matangi and my new job. I remembered a childhood moment, getting ready to hop from one slippery boulder to another across a flooded stream… . I could arrive at no decision.
I must have dropped off by five or so. When I opened my eyes and glanced downwards, I saw my travelling companions seated as they had been the previous evening. They were spruced up and looked like they had just boarded the train. I looked at my watch; it was past seven. As I scrambled down, Husband wished me a good morning and Wife gave me a beaming smile. I responded in the same coin and then, extracting my toiletry bag from my suitcase, I made for the bathroom. When I returned, there was a paper cup of steaming tea waiting for me.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, as I sat down opposite the couple. “May I pay you for the tea?” Husband chuckled at that and waved a lean hand as if shooing away eight rupees. “Are you going all the way to Trivandrum?” he asked. God in heaven, I thought, as I nodded an answer to this, will I have to suffer his conversation all day?
The newspaper came bawling along and I hid myself behind The Hindu. But that couldn’t last for ever. Breakfast came by soon and as we ate poori-masala, Wife said to me, “You didn’t sleep much last night, did you? I could see you tossing and turning, from my berth.” The sympathetic smile that accompanied her words thrust down the retort that had risen to my lips.
I continued eating. Husband had risen and was pouring out water from a natty-looking flask. “She has a delicate throat,” he said to me, as he carefully handed his wife a lidful. With a pang, I thought of Matangi pouring out cup after cup of tea for me as I sat glued to my laptop on Sunday mornings.
After breakfast was over, I hid myself again behind the newspaper. After a while I looked out of the window. Coconut palms, little houses almost lining the tracks, a river, were flashing past us.
Yes; we had reached Kerala. I glanced at my companions. I saw that the lady was reading what looked like a detective novel. The man was looking a little bored, a little fidgety. He caught my glance. I quickly turned back to the window. But my sudden absorption in my native land was broken by his cheerful voice. “ My name is Mohankumar.” “And I am Saritha,” added Wife, lifting her head from the book.
“I am Shankar Nath,” I replied and went back to the trusty Hindu. Mohan Kumar made one more effort to strike up a conversation. “I used to work for BSNL until I retired twelve years back. What do you do, Shankar?” “I work for an MNC. I am posted at Hyderabad,” I replied. “MNCs. We didn’t have them in our young days, did we, dear?” The lady snapped the book shut and nodded in agreement. “Saritha was selected as a P.O, a probationery officer, by a leading bank in India when she was barely twenty one,” he declared, looking proud of his wife’s achievement.
“In those days, just after nationalization, that was the most coveted job among the educated youth,” he continued. She restrained him with a playful nudge and said, “I worked for the bank, moving from place to place, positon to position, for nearly forty years. It was tough.The children studied in at least five schools! But I was determined to keep my job. And no jumping from job to job as you youngsters keep doing today. Now, I am totally relaxed, after I retired ten years ago.”
What garrulity! I mused. I was doomed.
“And now, we are travelling as much as we can, while we still can.” he took over. “Both of us love travelling and we are making up for all the lost years.” He smiled lovingly at her and she smiled back. A pair of old turtle doves! I smothered a laugh.. Then, abruptly, I thought of myself, forty years from now. Would I be alone or would Matangi be with me? I looked at the lady, trying to imagine her with my wife’s face superimposed; greying, wrinkled, shapeless, lovable. The newspaper had fallen onto the seat.
“We are returning from a delightful stay at Araku Valley. Have you been there?” asked the man.
‘Yes, on my honeymoon… .” I could have cut out my tongue but it was too late. Now, I was in for it!
But I was in for a surprise. They didn’t follow up this alluring lead. Instead, they spoke of the places they had visited in previous years. Chail, Darjeeling, Jaipur. They were especially eloquent about Chail, the unspoiled hill station fairly close to spoiled Shimla. “We booked the special room in the best hotel there. It has an incredible view of the hills.We enjoyed our days and nights there.” Mohan Kumar held his wife’s hand in his as he spoke.
Such happy memories! Such joie-de-vivre! Together! That was the key word- together.
Where were the the loneliness and unwantedness of the old that I had heard so much about? Did I want to lose Matangi? No. Of course, it would mean discomfort and inconvenince for me. Hotel food, laundry problems, travelling. Ah well; I would have to bear it all.
Little stabs of envy pierced me as I surveyed the happy couple in front of me.
As if she had read my mind, the gentle old lady said, “I am sure that when all your work and commitments are over, Matangi and you will have a rollicking old age.”
I must have jumped a few inches from my seat. The Hindu jumped to the floor. Matangi! How in the name of all that was wonderful had she found out my wife’s name?
With a sweet smile she said, “Son, when the train stopped somewhere early this morning, I woke up. I heard you cry out that name in your sleep several times… .” Then, she picked up her book again and continued reading. Mohankumar too was silent but gave me an understanding glance. I picked up the newspaper.
We did not converse after that. But I was holding a long and calm conversation with myself. As the train neared Thrisur, Mohan Kumar stood up and started getting their luggage together. I helped him pull out a heavy suitcase from under the seat. As I was pulling out a second suitcase, he stopped me with a gesture. “No, that’s mine. I get off only at Kollam.”
As the train chugged into Thrisur station, the lady got up. They embraced each other lovingly. Then, picking up her handbag, she smiled at me, saying, “ Be happy.” Rolling the suitcase along, the two moved to the door.
After the train started moving and Mohan Kumar was back in his seat, I asked him, ”Do you have some business in Kollam, Sir? Where do you stay? Thrisur or Kollam?” His eyebrows rose humorously at this novel interest and curiosity on my part. I felt a trifle sheepish.
He replied, “Saritha stays in Thrisur. I stay in Kollam. You took us for a married couple, didn’t you? We aren’t. We are travelling companions.
I picked up The Hindu which had fallen once again to the floor and fanned myself rapidly with it. The train rattled on.
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
Her name was Angel and she had a big heart. But she had been told she couldn’t love, because she had a hole in her heart. If she did, her love would kill her.
Even then, Angel fell in love. She couldn’t help it. Her heart was too big to be kept to herself. She had to share it, or she would die.
Adam was the lucky one she loved—or may be unlucky depending on how one looked at it. He didn’t know about the hole in her heart, not at the beginning. Perhaps if he had known, he wouldn’t have given his heart to her—or taken her heart. By the time he learnt about the hole in her heart, it was too late—his heart had become hers. He knew if he loved her, his love would kill her. But if he didn’t love her, if she didn’t return his love, his heart would break. So Adam steeled himself against love and tried to still his heart with a chain of silence, even if it meant suffocating his own heart.
It was Angel who broke the chain. She couldn’t bear to see Adam suffer and she couldn’t keep her own heart still. So she offered him her love. When he resisted, for her sake, she overcame his resolve with her own love.
Her love was bigger than the hole in her heart. The chasm in her heart opened wide to draw Adam to her with her intense love, till he too was lost in her love. The hole in her heart no longer mattered as she loved him with her whole heart without care. The hole in her love was full with his love and became whole.
Angel’s love was complete when Adam’s love entered her heart. And at that very moment, her heart became still!
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.
Of all the lovely things about her, the one that impressed me the most was the smell of her bathroom. Ironical as it is, I have no doubt about it even now.
She was much older to me, she would have been in her early twenties when I was born, far away, quite unknown to her. But our paths were bound to cross.
I wrote poetry and she wrote plays. I wrote for magazines which paid nothing, she wrote for theatre groups which brought her money and fame. I attended the very first show of her plays when they were staged. She never cared to read my poems.
We were not interested in literature as much as we were interested in each other. In fact, after we met, both of us wrote very little and went out of the literary radar for months.
She was a widower and open to relationships. I never slept with her. I could have but I had my family to think of. Bad press too deterred me from all that.
It was after my thirty-first birthday that I first met her. We met at a book release.
“Hey, this is Sheela. I think you have never met her,” chirped a young girl whose poetry collection was to be released at that meeting.
“Hi, I know her. But, true, we never met. Nice meeting you, Sheela.”
I had a doubt whether to address her with her surname (Mrs. Lalith) or her first name (a name I never liked) or as madam. Finally, seeing she is very pretty, I had chosen to opt for intimacy.
I sat with her at the function, listened to the same speeches, laughed at the same jokes and smiled at the same cameras. When the meeting go over, we went to collect a copy of the book and then hovered near the snacks.
“So, you like coffee? I usually drink coffee. But this is tea. Not bad.”
“I always take tea. Just like you this is unusual. Nice coffee anyway.”
Starting with that we did have a lengthy conversation. But who said what was not the point at all. I liked that. We were more similar to each other than different. For sure, we were quite different from the crowd around us, a fact revealed within ten minutes of our chat.
We decided to meet again right there for a play. Hers. It was really good though we didn’t discuss that beyond what was formal.
There were other things to talk about. Things in which we didn’t feature in any way. Renaissance, CERN, Temple Entry Proclamation, stem cells and the like.
In two weeks, our meeting became an everyday affair. We went for walks, rides and movies. We went shopping together, each time to a different mall. Whatever she bought, I bought the same as a gift for my wife. I liked her ways that much.
True, I did miss my other friends a little and my family time a lot. To some very inquisitive people I said she was my teacher. There was pleasure in lying so.
“Really? Where did she teach you?”
“In college.”
“Sure, you guys had a great time. She looks so young and pretty.”
“She is young and pretty.”
I told my wife I was trying to polish my Spanish which I had learned as a second language in school. When I told Sheela about this she suppressed a laugh and asked me, “What is Spanish?”
Her home was well lit and cool. A pleasant smell hung about the house like an invisible jasmine plant. But what was most remarkable was the fragrance in her bathroom. It was a very strange one. So beautiful. Whenever I was in there, I took my time.
Once I asked her about it and she laughed mildly.
“It is a remnant of my ancestral home. I use it to keep that memory alive. I wasn’t born rich OK?That was all my father could afford.”
I thought she was only being sarcastic. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
Two weeks ago, on our way to Kodaikanal, my wife and I missed a connecting bus and had to find lodging at Vattilakundram, a very small town.
We found the best hotel there which was the worst one I had ever seen. As I was about to go out to buy something to eat, my wife asked me to tell the room service to clean the bathroom which was very dirty.
When I came back with the food, my wife had had a fight with the boy who had come to clean the bathroom.
She was very upset. She said the boy had used some cheap floor cleaner to clean the bathroom. She could not stand its stench. She explained to me that it was the cheapest and the stinkiest floor cleaner in the market.
It didn’t make sense to me. Somehow I thought of Sheela. I wondered why. Of course, Sheela would not have lost her temper like that.
But it took me a while to realize why I thought of Sheela.
A great fragrance was coming from our bathroom.
That night, long after my wife had gone to sleep, I sat on the balcony enjoying the creamy moonlight and the cold wet wind.
I had just realized how much I loved Sheela.
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.
BHAINSA THE LITTLE BUFFALO
Krupa Sagar Sahoo
Ho Ho Ho Ye...!
The loud call of the herder on the bank of the large marshy tank broke the silence of the still afternoon. The brown eagle drowsing on a Peepul tree branch stirred, let out a coarse cry Eww...Weer...Weer and flew skywards. The white-breasted water hen stirred and made a karr... karr quack... quack noise and flew to the other side of the water body. This noise was sufficient to wake up the heron and egrets standing on one leg as if performing sahajayoga. But all this had little impact on the herd of buffaloes wallowing inside the water.
The herder who had been lying under the peepul tree woke up and shouted, "Come out of the water, buffaloes and calf. You all have filled your stomach and are relaxing, but I am famished' He kept hitting the embankment with a lathi to goad them out.
The buffaloes had their fill of the grass, reeds, and algae in the tank and were feeling too drowsy to come out. Some were splashing inside the deep water to get relief from the scorching afternoon sun while some were cud chewing with eyes closed.
The buffalo calf, Bhainsa, the youngest of the lot was in no mood to come out. It was playing inside the water sometimes throwing water through its nostrils and some other time rolling in the swamp.
When he came to this water body, he felt like a philosopher. The water body full of its flora seemed like a green canvas with colouful water lilies and hyacinth drawn by an artist. The song of the water hen and the captivating Gotipua dance of the water crow on Lilly leaves were so captivating that he was in no mood to come out of the water.
The buffalo herder had left home at the break of dawn with some puffed rice tied to a towel to his waist. Hunger made him yell foul language at the buffaloes.
This herd had been with him for years and knew his ways too well. They could sense his poverty-stricken life to realise what these foul words meant.
The leader buffalo felt sympathetic for him and thought that this old man might collapse on this embankment and came out first and started calling others.
"Hamma... Come out all of you."
The calf too came out of the water and in his playful way started chasing the egrets making snorting sound with his wet nose scaring them away.
"No, don't play mischief," said the mother buffalo.
The herder too called out, "Come, little one."
He could understand that at this tender age the calf had so many dreams, would show defiance and would not be ready to fall in line. While others were busy munching leaves and grass, the little one would be busy playing with anthill and running after rabbits instead of following after the herd.
The herder never used his whiplash on the little one's back in spite of his unruly and playful behaviour. Lest he might go astray, he had tied a bamboo bell (a piece of bamboo tube with sticks to produce sound) around his neck.
The buffalo herd, finally out of the water, followed their leader and walked one behind the other on the embankment. Just then the shrill whistle of a train was heard. At this time of the day, Down narrow gauge train from Rajim to Raipur passes this way. The train line was quite close to the embankment. There was a passenger halt at a small station named Manikachoura and close to it was an unmanned level crossing. The animals used this passage to enter the village.
The signboard showing danger signal with the image of a steam engine was hoisted there to alert the railway driver, guard, and public. The hoarding also displayed alerts to look both sides before crossing. Such unmanned level crossings are often called killer cages as cases of accidents at such places were a daily occurrence. Of course, this gate till date never had such a mishap.
The herd was moving slowly looking to either side of the ridge walking one behind the other while the herder was howling, "Ho Ho Ye Ye, move fast, move fast."
Just then Sitaram the train Fireman leaned out of engine and alerted the Driver to blow a long whistle as a herd of buffaloes was quite close.
"Where is the herd?' Asked Driver Narahari Panda.
"Aare Panda Jee, look to the left, they are coming from the embankment towards the track. Change the power of your specs," said Sitaram.
Narahari had started his career as a Peon of a Rail Sahib from Mayurbhanj. He was promoted from Peon to Khalasi, to Fireman, to goods train Driver and finally to a passenger train Driver.
His days for retirement from service were close. Every day before going to work he would remember Lord Jagannath and pay his obeisance so that rest of his job period would pass smoothly. His hands would automatically fold to pay obeisance towards all temples on the way.
He had been living in Chhatisgarh for quite long and here his surname was pronounced Paandaa. After being promoted to Driver, he was respectfully referred as Panda Jee.
The herder was goading his herd to cross the gate fast. The calf was not paying any heed to this call. He was gaping at the smoke belching small engine blowing trumpet poon... poon.. And greatly amused seeing such a metal animal. "This will be no match for me," he thought.
"Stop, stop little one till the train passes." The calf paid no heed to this warning and jumped in front of the engine.
"Master, brake, brake" shouted Sitaram, Everything was so sudden that there was no time to pull the brake. Narahari closed his eyes in fear.
Wham! There was a sudden huge sound.
"This is a case of run over."
Even before hearing this, Narahari's hands were folded, offering prayer.
The mutilated blood drenched still body of the calf fell, hitting the cow catcher at the distance.
The loud cry of the herder and the fearful mooing of the herd reverberated the whole atmosphere.
The second Fireman Halim Khan threw the shovel and ran from the tender to footplate shouting "Master, what happened?"
Coming to know that a run over case had occurred, he along with Sitaram shouted, "Don't stop the train Master, villagers from Manikchoura may attack us and our life will be in danger."
All instructions on do's and don'ts in case of a run over, were written in detail in the Railway Accident Manual. Narahari at that moment was too shocked to remember any of these things. He sat down completely dumbstruck. Sitaram trying to control the situation took control of the engine throttle. The train moved speedily towards Avanpur.
Hearing the pathetic cry of the herd, the cranes flew there from the water body. A flock of crows came from the neighborhood and added to the crowd. The villagers hearing the deafening sound of the mishap left their games of cards, ludo, and chess and ran to this place.
The mother buffalo was busy licking the eyes, nose, mouth and the bamboo bell of her dead calf. Tears were rolling down her eyes. The other buffaloes were standing there in solidarity with their heads bowed down.
The villagers within no time gathered there and enquired with each other the cause of the accident.
"Who was responsible for this mishap?"
"What was the scoundrel herder doing?"
Some villagers started blaming the herder, while some blamed the railways and others the mischievous and restless calf.
The herder in order to save his life was hiding behind the Peepul tree. Ghanashyam Seth the herd owner pulled him out from his hiding with his towel. He was heard shouting, "It is because of you that the calf was killed, you scoundrel."
The herder with folded hands pleaded, "It was not my fault, the calf did not pay heed to my instructions and jumped in front of the moving train."
"What is the use of holding the lathi if you could not control them, you scoundrel?" Saying this he pushed him and the poor herder fell down.
Seeing his precarious condition, the village Mukhia Hazari Prasad intervened. He knew how to manage a crisis and said, "Please leave him, Mahajan, He is a poor man. Only one animal's life has been lost but if something happens to him, his family of five will be starving to death. Whatever is destined has happened. Maybe this was a way for the Almighty to save the villagers from some bigger mishap. Goddess Banadurga has been satiated by this offering. The villagers have been saved because of you."
Ghanashyam Seth somehow controlled his anger but the holy words of the Mukhia could not satisfy the youths present there.
"We will go for a Roil Roko. The Railways have to install a manned gate here or else such mishaps will occur again and again."
Saying this, they sat on the rail track.
Mukhia pacified them saying, " My children, the train has left. This is the only train running in this area, no Rail Babu is stationed here to hear your complaints. Let's go, we will look into it tomorrow."
The villagers returned home discussing loudly, displaying their dissatisfaction. The herd grumbling walked homewards in deep regret snorting their wet nose about how the four-¬legged animals were subject to wrongdoings without end by humans and machines.
The train reached Raipur. Narahari reached the driver quarters in the evening holding the line box in one hand and the goatskin water bottle in the other. He sat down near the jaffrey gate in the veranda gloomily. Anybody seeing him would know how pale he looked.
This was the first such mishap in his long career of twenty-five years. There had been cases of breakage of brake binding, hanging rod etc. but never had there been a mishap where a life was lost.
Barely three years were left for him to retire. Sitting in front of Lord Jagannath's idol with folded hands he prayed, "Oh Lord, help me out of this crisis." His wife seeing him this way asked, "What happened? Why are you sitting here instead of freshening up?
"Till date, I have not killed even a fly. But today because of me a life is gone."
"Aaaan..., what happened?" Exclaimed his wife shocked and the teacup fell from her hands.
"This Brahmin has committed a crime by taking a life. A buffalo calf was killed under my engine."
"Aaaamaa...,If you would have killed a cow people would have taken you around with a rope around your neck. Now tell me the whole incident in detail." Narahari drank the rest of the water from his water bottle and related the whole event.
“Oh, this is it. Why are you so tensed up?"
Sumitra felt relieved and said, "It is not your fault that an unruly calf came in front of the engine. You have not deliberately done a halaal like a Muslim. Come wash your hands, I will serve you food." She consoled him and went into the kitchen.
That night sleep eluded Narahari. The whole night he tossed and turned thinking about the mishap and its resultant consequence.
By midnight when the sound of cricket and stray dogs and the irritating dhan... dhan... noise of the shunting engine had ceased, Narahari in his subconscious mind, heard the cry of a mourning mother who had lost her son.
" My Koel like calf, (Colour of the calf was as black as a Koel bird) you are the pupil of my eyes. My days pass seeing your playful ways. Without you, the herd and the water body all seem empty; how will I live without you? You have never harmed even the tiniest of the creature, Why was providence so cruel to you?"
It is said that the heartbreaking cry of a mother who has lost her child can melt even a rock. The trees too seem to exhale deeply with sympathy. Narahari was wide awake. He drank water and lying still, looked at the asbestos ceiling.
Early morning when finally he fell asleep he had a fearful dream. He was tied to a bed and dragged by the messengers of Lord Yama to his abode the Yamapuri. Their leader was heard saying, " You have killed an innocent and dumb animal, Lord Yama will punish you. You will rot in hell."
Completely frightened Narahari looked at the hideous face, sharpened horns and blood red eyes, and the messenger of Yama looked like the buffalo calf, Bhainsa.
He got up from his bed with a start. He was sweating profusely. His wife too got up and asked, concerned, "What happened again?"
Narahari was sitting dumb stuck.
"Take this glass of water and drink,_ cajoled his wife.
After having water and feeling a bit composed, he narrated his dream. His wife smiled and said, "Getting frightened seeing a dream? Are you a bottle-fed baby? Can dreams ever be real?"
He could not sleep any more that night. The fear of hell made him feel restless. He could visualise the pain and torturous scenes of hell.
Next morning he decided not to go on duty and went to the railway station to report sick. He stood in folded hands in front of Loco Foreman in the driver booking room and said, “Sahib, I am not feeling well. I want to report sick."
The Loco Foreman was a huge looking Anglo Indian named Jacob with a tiger like moustache. He looked at Narahari with a fiery look and started shouting, "Are you mad? You are a Driver of a passenger train. It is not a goods train that cancellation of order does not really matter. If you report sick, where will I find a substitute in place of you? If you do not join your duty, I will book you off and send the report to DME. You will have to go back home with your bag and baggage for all times to come. Is that clear?"
Narahari stood speechless, head bowed like a signal pole.
"Go immediately and sign on" Jacob commanded sternly.
Sitaram and Halim Khan had already reported on duty. They were listening to this conversation.
Sitaram enquired, "Master, why do you want to report sick?"
Narahari retold his previous night dream. Hearing him, they both started laughing their wits out. Halim said, "Master, I have done halaal to so many buffalo calves when I was in the village that as per your dream's analysis, I would have been in hell in the form of tandoor or keema."
Saying this he laughed loudly.
Somehow controlling his laughter he assured Narahari, "How can it be your fault if this four-legged idiot committed suicide in front of your train?"
Sitaram added, "Master, you should not have worked in the Railways. You should have been in a temple sitting with sandalwood paste on your forehead holding a string of prayer beads. To work and survive in Railways, one needs to have a strong heart."
"There is no place for displaying emotions here," said Halim.
"Go and sign in the register. I will bring for you the line box from your home," Said Sitaram.
Narahari boarded Up Raipur - Dhamtari train but somehow sat silent and absentminded. He seemed to have lost all his cheerfulness. Like a robot, he repeated "Right, Right" absentmindedly to the signal of Sitaram.
The rural mountainous region through which the train traversed was considered the rice bowl of Chhatisgarh. It was filled with rivers, vast stretches of fields and forests, grassy slopes with grazing sheep and strains from the flute of cow herders. All this mesmerized him. It reminded him of his village and the narrow gauge Baripada - Bangiriposi train journey which he had traveled ticketless so often munching puffed rice.
But that day he was unusually quiet and paid no heed to the conversation between the fellow attendants.
"Would the villagers of Manikchoura be waiting to hackle us near the gate?" reminded Sitaram to Halim.
No, my brother, assured Halim Khan. It was a buffalo calf that was run over and not a human child. The villagers would be engrossed in their game of chess.
They were coming close to Manikchoura. The two of them held to the footplate rod and leaned out. They were relieved that no villagers were seen.
Assured, Sitaram suggested that they would offer coconut to Lord RajeebLochan on reaching Rajim.
By then dark clouds were gathering and the rumbling sound of thunder was heard at intervals. That day few passengers boarded at Manikchoura halt. Some vendors were selling guava and berries. A tea seller was running around with a tea kettle and coal stove.
There was no untoward incident experienced at the station as they had earlier feared.
Within no time the sky was filled with dark clouds accompanied by thunder and lightning flash.
Guilty mind leads to fear. Fear paralyzes one's mind and body. This is what happened to Narahari.
He felt as if the dark clouds were the army of Yamaraj advancing towards him. He could hear their horrific cry. He left the throttle and sat down. He put his hand below his khaki uniform and holding the sacred thread he was wearing started reciting the Mahamrutyunjay mantra (Great Death conquering mantra. According to Shiva Purana, when you have fear of an unknown event, this chant helps you to overcome the fear.)
Sitaram shouted, "What are you doing Master? The train is going on a downgradient and its speed is increasing. There is a sharp curve ahead. Apply brake, Apply brake."
Narahari had become paralyzed with fear. Sitaram jumped in and applied the emergency brake.
Now when the train was running in a down gradient in high speed and there is a sharp curve ahead, such a combination proves fatal. On top of this, if the sudden brake is applied, even God cannot save it from getting derailed. The train jumped out of its track.
The two associates with Narahari somehow stopped getting thrown out as they held to a rod. Narahari was thrown out on the track. The rail bogeys had toppled one over the other. Many passengers were injured as they collided with rods and the wall of the bogey. The uproar and cry of passengers reverberated the midsection between Manikchoura and Rajim.
This was an accident, rare of its kind. This rural part of Chhatisgarh was still far from civilization in the eighties. Trucks, buses were hardly visible here. Hardly one or two trains plied through this region. That was why Narahari who was seriously injured had to be carried to the hospital in a trolley belonging to the P.W.I of Avanpur.
The untimely rain, thunder, and lightning had stopped as suddenly as it had started. A rainbow was peeping from behind a mountain. Narahari in a semi-conscious state had a hallucination as if they were not trolley men but messengers of Yomaraj carrying him to Yamapuri.
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.
It was Monday morning. Prof. Mohanty, Head of the Department ENT (Ear Nose Throat) was in Out Patient Department (OPD) of VSS Medical College, Burla. As usual there was heavy rush, more so because of the name and fame of Prof. Mohanty. One Assistant Professor, one clinical tutor, two postgraduate students and two interns were present to assist him. OPD time was from 9am to 1pm. It was around 12 noon, OPD rush had begun to thin out. Prof.Mohanty was in a winding up mood, enjoying sips of hot coffee, PG students were anxiously waiting with eagle’s eyes and canine ears for a few pearls of wisdom to drop from the mouth of their Guru. Entered into the chamber Er Prasad, an old and intimate friend of Prof. Mohanty accompanied by his daughter Lipsa, a class X student. Smelling something confidential between the friends everyone in the chamber came out.
Prof. Mohanty and Er. Prasad were known to each other from their childhood, both were classmates - one opted for medical and the other for engineering. Er. Prasad was then Superintendent Engineer, Hirakud Dam project. Their families were also friends to each other.
Lipsa was the only child of her parents. From her birth which was through a difficult vaginal delivery, to pediatric care, till date Mr. Prasad never followed any advice without consulting his friend. That day when Lipsa was in class she had pain in her right ear. Mr Prasad thought of consulting his friend after the final bell of the school. In the chamber Prof. Mohanty arranged for Lipsa's examination. In between the two friends had some funny chat over a cup of tea. Lipsa enjoyed the banter thinking that both the old friends were behaving like two school kids even younger than her. Then following all medical methods, Prof completed his thorough clinical examination and declared that an impacted wax was troubling the loving child and the trouble maker should be removed then and there. Er. Prasad was reluctant. He requested that some first aid may be given to Lipsa to reduce the pain and in a second sitting the removal would be done. Moreover her mother would be by her side on that occasion and Lipsa will be more comfortable and confident.
"Why waste time and prolong the suffering, my friend, it will take just 5 to 10 minutes?" said Prof. Mohanty persuading his friend and almost forcing him to agree.
Er. Prasad couldn't say “No” to his friend. He sent the driver with his vehicle to fetch Mrs. Prasad from his residence. In no time Mrs. Prasad reached the hospital. Lipsa was tense but seeing her mother she became relaxed. Her mother consoled her, "Don't worry my dear! Doctor uncle is there. As soon as your wax removal is over we will go home and have our lunch together. Let us invite Dr. uncle for the lunch also. It will be great fun. I have kept everything ready on the dining table. All your favorite dishes have been prepared." “Thank you so much Mummy”, said Lipsa with a crushing hug to her mother.
At that time land phone was the only source of communication. Many a time you will find the phone only rings and rings without attracting the attention of the deaf ears of the recipients. Sometimes the phone would be in ICU or dead. In other times someone being sympathetic on the overwork of the phone, puts the receiver out to take some rest. Really what a noble gesture!
Knowing this very well Prof Mohanty deputed his senior postgraduate student to arrange the Operation Theater (OT). Rakesh, the student ran to the OT, conveyed the message of his professor to the OT sister in charge and stayed there to supervise the arrangement so that he would remain in the good books of the boss.
In the mean time both the friends and Mrs Prasad had a few minutes to relax and talk. Can a mother be relaxed? Lipsa was sitting by the side of her mother, sometimes putting her head on her mother's shoulder. Mrs. Prasad was tense, with thousands of questions invading her mind. Gathering courage she put a few queries to Prof. Mohanty.
1. How much time will the procedure take.? 2. How painful will it be? Can Lipsa tolerate the pain? 3. Can she eat something before she goes to OT, as she's feeling hungry? So on and so forth, queries were innumerable and endless. Mother’s queries are always endless.
To all her queries only one reply came from Prof. Mohanty, "All mothers' hearts are same. But sister! have faith on your doctor." In the meantime Rakesh came back with the message that OT was ready. Mrs Prasad's heart started beating fast, apprehending some unknown fear. Mr. Prasad became grave and told his wife not to be so silly and child like, hiding his emotions behind the veil of his gravity. Prof. Mohanty went to the washroom to wash and sanitizer his hands before going to OT. Then everybody proceeded to the OT. The staff sister in charge was waiting to receive the surgeon and the patient. When asked if everything was ready the sister replied in affirmative. Prof. Mohanty asked the sister to complete all the formalities and take Lipsa into the OT.
In the mean time Prof.Mohanty changed his dress and entered into the OT. While entering he asked his friend and his wife to wait in his chamber. He consoled them that it will take just five minutes. OT door was closed.
Prof.Mohanty said, "Lipsa! You just relax. If you feel pain or anything do tell me."
On examination it was found that the wax was a bit large and impacted. With little manipulation it was removed.
Like a victorious hero Prof. Mohanty called Lipsa, " Lipsa! see this is the naughty wax that was troubling you. Now you are free. We will go to have our lunch at your place."
To his surprise, there was no answer from Lipsa. Prof. Mohanty shook her, still no answer. Then he hook her violently, with the same result.
Pulse - not felt
"Bring a stethoscope," shouted Prof. Mohanty.
Heart beat not heard.
"Call the anesthesiologist ".
The postgraduate ran immediately as if he was running a hundred meter race.
In the mean time the OT sister had administered all necessary life saving drugs. The OT pharmacist had started cardiac resuscitation of Lipsa. Prof. Mohanty had become speechless, sweating from head to toe. Staff sister started an intravenous drip to Lipsa, pharmacist busy in resuscitation, the anesthesiologist, to everybody's good luck, arrived. He saw the condition of both the patient and the surgeon. He intubated the patient. On the other table Prof. Mohanty was administered an IV drip and injection medazolam, a tranquilizer. Prof. Ray the anesthesiologist had to take the responsibility of both the patients. At that time there was no monitoring system. Everything was done manually. The trainee student was monitoring his Guru and the anesthesiologist was doing the same for the risky patient Lipsa. After half an hour of trial and struggle, Lipsa's heart started beating. Everyone in OT gave a sigh of relief and continued praying to Lord Jagannath. By this time around one hour had passed.
Imagine the condition of the parents of Lipsa. Prof. Mohanty had told them that the procedure would last only 5 minutes and Lipsa would come walking from the OT. One hour had passed. Every passing minute was too difficult to bear as if a day had passed. No news from Prof. Mohanty nor from any of the staff of the OT about their daughter. They had become restless. Sitting, standing, moving around, coming out, going in, asking anyone and everyone coming out of OT about the condition of their daughter but nobody was giving any answer. Dark ghost clouds invading their mind, gaining speed and turbulence, nobody was there to show them light nor a ray of hope. Lot of movements and sounds of machines in OT were adding to their fear and creating a sense of panic in them. Tears had rolled and dried up, vocal cord had become motionless, body was trembling, heart was beating to the maximum, diaphragm was moving violently up and down disturbing anatomical position of
all organs. They were holding each other, lest they might fall, praying to Lord Jagannath and Maa Samaleswari to save them from the woods. In the mean time the OT door opened, came out Prof Ray, the anesthesiologist and the staff sister in full OT dress, hiding all apprehensions, adventures and skills behind their masks but their shining eyes showing some hope.
The anesthesiologist described to the parents the events which occurred in the OT during the removal of wax. Out of fear Lipsa had a vasovagal attack (a type of neurological shock), which could be diagnosed and taken care of. Then she was intubated, put under Oxygen, and cardiac support. Seeing the condition of Lipsa, Prof. Mohanty suffered a heart attack and has since been put under cardiac resuscitative measures. Both were recovering. They were stable but not yet out of danger. They needed observation for 48 hours. They are to stay in the hospital. Pray to God. Have patience and faith. We have called our Cardiologist; once he gives clearance we will transfer both to the special cabin (at that time concept of ICU was not there). Mr. and Mrs. Prasad with all humility and folded hands, thanked the anesthesiologist and all the staff of the OT for their noble effort.
For all my medical friends, this incidence teaches many things. I am not discussing the aftermath of this incidence. But for my students and doctor friends I must point out the LESSON we learnt from this issue. From my experience the first lesson learnt is to keep away emotions, feelings, relationships from medical practice. Once you are treating somebody that person is your patient and you are his physician. There stands nothing in between you and your patient except DOCTOR PATIENT RELATIONSHIP. In this case relationship overpowered all the professional ethics. In all cases without exception all the hospital protocols should be followed. But in this case there were many lapses. OPD registration and indoor hospitalization tickets were not done. It was not an emergency case, yet undue favor was shown. Overlooking all OT protocols like preparation of the patient, investigations for any surgical procedure, OT call duly signed by authorised medical officer and anesthesiologist call were neither done nor given. Most important of all, the consent form was not signed by the parents, as the patient was a minor. The whole procedure was totally done on good faith. Moreover, even if the parents had raised some apprehensions, the surgeon Prof Mohanty ignored those because of overconfidence. Fortunately Lipsa survived lest Prof. Mohanty would have been behind bars.
In my opinion the following ten commandments are to be followed while doing surgery.
TEN COMMANDMENTS OF SURGERY
- You may not do good, but do no harm.
- Never be over confident.
- Once you are treating somebody, the beneficiary is a patient and you are his treating physician.
- There is no place of heroism in medical profession.
- Follow all guidelines and protocols without showing any favor.
- Surgery is a team work. Let all team members be given their importance and let them play their roles rationally.
- Don't give any false assurance to the patient before the patient is successfully treated. It takes no time for a simple thing to become complicated.
- To err is human, it doesn't mean that errors are to be manufactured.
- Anticipate complications and be prepared for it.
10. Pray God before and after surgery.
Therefore I teach my students, "SURGERY IS NEITHER EASY NOR DIFFICULT, IT IS EITHER MADE EASY OR MADE DIFFICULT." In this case a simple thing was made difficult.
Prof. Mohanty and Lipsa were hospitalized for observation and recovery. I can’t recollect when exactly both were discharged. But this much I know the two friends and their families remained as thick friends as before. Their most important lunch was postponed to a later date.
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
It’s said that Time goes on and memory remains for times to come.
We doctors come in contact with innumerable persons in our day to day life. They are part of our life. Many a times these people leave unforgettable footprints in our mind. Some of the impressions may be sour and some may be sweet. But we learn to live with them, we are to bear with them and thus the show goes on.
After completion of post graduation in Pediatrics in the most prestigious institute of Odisha, the SCB Medical College, I joined the government service in Kalahandi, the most backward district of the state. But I was fortunate to work in Kesinga, the most developed town of Kalahandi district. I served there for a pretty long period i.e. 1979 to 1990. In 1990 there was change of Government, Congress party was defeated, Janata Dal under the mighty leadership of Late Biju Patnaik came to power in Odisha. New policy of transfer was made. Doctors serving in one place for six or more years were to be transferred to other places. Under that policy I was transferred as Specialist in Pediatrics to Ershama PHC of the then undivided Cuttack district.
Ershama was completely alien to me. Though I had visited Paradeep and Kujanga I had never visited Ershama. Before joining there I decided to visit the place and wanted to be aware of all the pros and cons. The general public of Kesinga was not in a mood to bid good bye to me; even one day strike was observed in Kesinga with closure of all establishments forcing the administration to cancel my transfer. But I respected the Government order and got myself relieved in August 1990 and returned to my native village Byree in the erstwhile Cuttack district. I boarded a bus from Cuttack to Ershama in the morning hours, reached there around 1pm and visited Dr Baral, the specialist in Pediatrics of Ershama PHC. He had also been transferred and I had to join in his place.
I had never dreamt that I would be placed in such a precarious situation. Observing the condition of the locality and the PHC, I was completely crestfallen. What an irony of fate! From a developed town to an underdeveloped rural place without basic amenities and good schools! My daughters were pursing their education in Saraswati Shishu Mandir in Kesinga. At Ershama they would be deprived of their education. I was a founder-member of Lions Club of Kesinga and at the time of my transfer I was the Deputy District Governor of Lions Clubs International Dist322C. At Ershama or nearby there was no Lions Club.
I was born and brought up in complete rural environment with muddy roads where till I finished high school I used to walk bare foot, attending to nature's call in open fields due to lack of residential toilets, getting drenched in the rain without an umbrella, roaming in the adjoining bushy forests plucking unknown flowers and nuts. But gone were those days. Way back in 1968, I left my village completing matriculation study and pursued my higher education in Cuttack City from 1968 to 1979 without any break i.e. two years in Ravenshaw College, six years of undergraduate study and three years of post graduate study in SCB Medical College. After this stint of eleven years, I served for eleven years in Kesinga, the premier town of Kalahandi. During this stint of twenty two years I had shed the outer covering of a rural rustic and was altogether transformed to a city person, completely accustomed to town life. My daughters were also born in towns and didn’t have a taste of rural life. To live in this natural rural setting is enjoyable for a few days but to pass few years here was unthinkable for me. I took lunch in the official residence of Dr Baral and thoroughly discussed the working condition with him, the available amenities, the transport, education of children etc. During my return journey in the local bus I evaluated the situation and decided not to join there. I appealed to the administration and with the help of our local MLA Mr Satapathy, I got the order cancelled and managed to be posted in Jajpur Road, a small town with Saraswati Shishu Mandir for education of my daughters and a Lions Club to pursue my social activities.
So I joined in Jajpur Road Hospital and commensed the second phase of my service career where I was completely unknown to everybody, although I was a man of this district and my native village was only 56 km from this place. I was the first Pediatrician of this hospital, the post having been created only a few months back. That, children should be treated by a Child Specialist and they belong to an exclusive separate category, was known to only a few in this area. I started a stormy journey because in spite of being an experienced child specialist for eleven years people at first could not repose their faith and confidence on an unknown pediatrician. I had to toil hard with dedication, sincerity and by profound unremitting perseverance I proved my mettle. I gradually established myself as the unchallenged child specialist, the savior of children.
Numerous occurrences of those days still haunt my mind and reverberate in my ear even after ten years of retirement from Government job. I was straight from Kalahandi, a malaria infested area and by treating innumerable cases of malaria patients, I had become an expert in diagnosing malaria patients from signs and symptoms only. The laboratory finding and detection of malaria parasite in the blood slide only confirmed my clinical diagnosis and assisted in treatment. Malaria in coastal areas was just spreading those days and the number of malaria infected children was very small. It was difficult for a physician who had never served in Western Odisha or in a malaria belt to suspect and diagnose a case of malaria in children.
One day, a few days after my joining, a boy aged eight years with history of fever and chill for three days was brought to me in the Out-patients Department for treatment. I examined the child and in no time diagnosed the disease to be Malaria, prescribed anti-malarial drug, advised blood test to confirm diagnosis to continue further treatment to prevent relapse of the disease in future. Malaria was such a disease that if not treated suitably, would relapse and occur again and again. The disease was new to the attendants of the patient and was like a bolt from the blue. They were not satisfied with the diagnosis, ridiculed me, made mockery of my diagnosis. They abused me in filthy language saying that to a person straight from Kalahandi all the diseases would look like Malaria and this person was not at all knowledgeable and had no right to be placed in such a responsible post and should be sent back to Kalahandi again to treat the tribal people. My friend Dr Satapathy, the OG Specialist of that hospital intervened and persuaded them to do the blood test as per my instruction so that the real picture would emerge. With much persuasion the test was conducted by the famous private practitioner pathologist of the locality whose capability was unquestionable and Malaria was detected. The attendants of the boy apologised to me, treatment continued and the boy was cured. After this fortuitous incident these people turned out to be my staunch supporters, vouched in my favor and persuaded others to bring their children to me for treatment. I bow my head before them, the initial critics and later my strongest supporters. Detractors became strong admirers.
Time rolled on; days became months and months turned to years. Although a Pediatrician, I had to attend to all types of cases while on emergency duty and to treat adult cases in the In-patients department as there was no provision of a Medicine Specialist at that point of time in the hospital. Peculiarly, many suicidal poisoning cases were brought to the hospital, some of them serious, but most of them trivial ones, which offered no challenge to life. Out of the serious ones some lose their life. Others get cured remaining in the hospital for a few days. I always organized a counseling session with such patients before discharge. The aim was to detect the root cause of poisoning and to counsel the victim and their family members either singly or in group as the situation required so that the victim would not attempt suicide poisoning in future again.
One such case of suicidal poisoning baffled me extremely. Sarita, a young woman of twenty two years and a mother of a four-month old infant on breastfeeding, was admitted with history of consuming two green oleander seeds. On examination it was found to be only a case of mild poisoning. She became alright within two days of hospital stay. Before discharge the one to one direct counselling session took place like this:
Doctor (Me): Hello Sarita! How are you now?
Patient: I am fine Doctor. I am extremely indebted to you for saving my life and providing a new lease of bright future. I am unable to express my heartfelt gratitude in words to the hospital staff for the service rendered by them during my illness.
D: It’s alright. It was our duty and we are extremely delighted to save your life. Will you mind answering some personal questions?
P: No! Not at all. I will try to answer all your queries to the best of my ability.
D: You are a mother of a four-month old son who is exclusively breastfed by you. Still you attempted suicide by consuming oleander seed? Did your conscience not bite you? Could you not think of the consequences? What would have been the fate of your beloved son if something untoward happened to you?
She burst into tears and in a gloomy tone answered;
“What could I have done? There was not any option left for me. My husband paid no attention to my request”.
D: What was your request? Was that so important?
P: I asked my husband to purchase Lactogen from the market for my son. But he was adamant and did not listen to me.
D: O, is that the case? But for heaven's sake please tell me why at all you need Lactogen for your kid. Wait! Wait! Let me clarify first. You are breast feeding the kid. Do you think that the amount of your breast milk is insufficient and does not fulfill the kid’s requirement?
P: Oh no! My breast milk is sufficient for my kid. He urinates more than six times in twenty four hours. He is enjoying two hours sound sleep after each feed. He is gaining weight perfectly also.
D: Then where is the need for Lactogen feeding? Do you think Lactogen feeding is more beneficial than your breast milk for your child?
P: I don’t think so. But I don’t have any alternate option. No one in the family is paying any importance to me. We are in a joint family. My husband is the younger one. He is a matriculate and looks after our agriculture fields and with improved farming he earns a lot for the family. The elder brother is serving as a teacher in a Government school. His wife, my elder sister-in-law, is also a mother of a five-month old daughter. The elder brother of my husband brought tins of Lactogen for his daughter though I am pretty well aware that her breast milk is also enough to meet the needs of her daughter. Why this partiality? Why this type of injustice meted out to me and my child? Though not employed, is not my husband earning a lot for the family with his hard labour? When Lactogen could be purchased for one kid in the family then why could it not be purchased for two kids? And why the tins purchased for the daughter could not be shared for my son? Am I a non-entity in the family? My voice has no value in the family? I could not bear any more injustice and was determined to take my life.
I was dumb-founded by her confession. Her dissatisfaction was deep rooted. I just could not imagine that mere jealousy could lead to such an unfortunate situation and compel a mother to attempt suicide for such a trivial cause of artificial feeding when actually it was not at all needed and the mother very well knew all the facts. After knowing all these facts, myself and my friend, the OG Specialist, discussed with all the family members and an amicable settlement was arrived.
But one thing always haunted my mind. I was confident that the woman was quite cunning and calculative. She must have known that consuming only two oleander seeds would pose no threat to her life but by enacting this scene she would definitely attract the attention of others. And Lo! She succeeded in her mission perfectly.
That was a lesson I learnt for the future!
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 Two Sisters Peak)
(Loosely based on a local KUVI folklore of KONDHA Tribe of Koraput on a British Period road)
Sukru had been walking behind his bullock for the last two hours through winding paths of Eastern Ghats mountain range. The narrow path was carved out from high walls of the mountain. On his right there was a deep gorge with jagged irregular shaped rocks protruding from the mountain face. A jungle stream at the bottom of the gorge was flowing with ferocious speed; the roar of leaping, gushing, swirling and frothing water could be heard by travellers on the path above. The road on the high walls and the stream below ran parallel for most of the 20 KM stretch. On the other side of the gorge, there was a series of rolling mountains with high cliffs, dotted with patches of dense forest and patches of stone sheets. Several waterfalls could be seen leaping from great height cutting, shearing through the rocky face to down below. The jungle that grew around the path of the water falls was greener and denser than the one away from the watery slide.
The name “Eastern Ghats” carried little meaning for people like Sukru. He was following his family’s traditional occupation of transporting salt bags from his village Tadi Valasa on the plains, to its destination, Pottangi which was high on the mountains, about 20KMs away. The salt came loaded on bullock cart from a sea side village and was offloaded in his village. Then it was packed into gunny bags. Two or four such bags were slung over back of bullocks for its onward passage to Pottangi through the mountainous road made by a British Agent of Jeypore estate “Turner Saheb”. The walkable path through the steep face of valleys was the only way to reach the highlands of Koraput. A line of bullocks and their owners made their perilous journey. They had been doing the two way rounds of carrying salt to sell in Pottangi and while coming back, loaded their animals with forest produce of Koraput. Sukru’s father had about five bullocks and he transported twenty bags of salt in one trip. One such trip took around a weeks’ time. Travelling in narrow jungle road was a challenging task. Apart from fear of wild animals and ever present danger of slipping and falling into the abyss, there was fear of the two sister’s peak.
Along this treacherous mountain road, there was a high cliff with one colossal stone jotting out as if trying to touch the sky. From a distance Sukru could see the dark profile of the stone, called the Two Sister’s Peak against backdrop of a brightly colored sky painted by the setting sun. He kept walking as his mind took him back to past years. As a young boy Sukru had heard about the untimely death of his father and this two sister’s peak was the reason behind it.
Sukru’s father was a brave man. He often made the trips carrying salt to highlands of Koraput. And he dared to do these journeys alone. Other men engaged in the trade always travelled in groups; scared of the two sister’s peak. But Sukru’s father was made of sterner stuff. His daredevilry and hard work paid off and in a few years time he had multiplied his bullocks from two to five. Other villagers looked at him in awe and disbelief. How could one man travel on the Tadivalasa-Pottangi path alone? They would ask each other. If not anything, there is always fear of the two sister's peak.
As Sukru remembered his father’s heroics, the thought of the two sister’s peak made him uneasy and he called out loudly at his friend, Damru, walking few bullocks ahead of him.
“Nonna!!! Where shall we stop for the night?” Sukru asked, referring to Damru as “nonna” a word of reverence for big brother.
“RI TAN’GI HO'RU, where else do you think”, answered Damru jokingly. He was referring to the two sister’s peak in their native Kuvi language as spoken by Kondh tribes of Koraput.
“Do not take the name of that cursed peak Nonna”, said Sukru.
“Ok, ok, brother, don't panic, we will stop at Raipadu village, like always. Lets walk faster else it would be dark before we reach” Said Damru.
Sukru let out a high pitched command at his bullocks to make them walk faster and went back to his thoughts again. Sukru’s father did not return one day from his trip to Pottangi though the five bullocks turned up at the village. After waiting for a day in vain, a search party set out and dead body of Sukru’s father was found on banks of the jungle stream near the Two Sister’s Peak. It appeared that he had slipped from the path above and fallen to the rocky bottom below to his death. It soon was talk of the entire village that the Two Sister’s peak had again found a new victim. People dared not to travel for next several months after evening hours along the route. It was many months before things became normal again.
Sukru shivered at the chilly wind blowing in the valley and could see the golden rays of sun reflecting on the stony cliff of two sister’s peak. The valley was filled with brightly red wild flowers and the roar of the jungle stream was drowned by cacophony from a thousand birds.
At last they reached Raipadu Village where they would stay for the night. Sukru lifted the gunny bags off the back of the bullocks and kept under the tree and let loose the bullocks to graze nearby till the last rays of sunlight lasted.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The local legend about the two sisters peak was that, long long ago, there were two sisters who loved each other. Once, they sat on edge of the high cliff. The elder one was combing the hair of the younger one and picking out lice, a familiar scene in villages. The younger one was playful, restless and was not obeying his elder sister’s commands to sit still. Provoked at such non-cooperation the elder sister unleashed a kick to the younger one. Did she know what would happen to the young girl? The young girl came hurtling down the cliff and was staring at imminent death. She cried out in terror, and in anguish of being let down by her elder sister. But it was too late. The elder sister looked helplessly at her younger sibling falling to sure death below on rocky bed of the jungle stream at bottom of the cliff. She too let out a scream. Sounds of the cries of the dying younger sister merged with screams from the older one. The sounds echoed from high hills around the valley. The jungle was witness to what had happened. The animals living in the jungle were witness too. The people of Raipadu village could do nothing to bring back the younger sister to life. It is said, the elder sister became so anguished at death of the younger sister that she too jumped off the cliff to end her life.
The soul, they say, never dies. Especially those souls, who have been wronged, always haunt the place where they met with their untimely end.
The younger sister became vengeful. People of Raipadu village say, often at dead of night, a cry can be heard reverberating through the valleys. The cry is often mixed with gusts of wind passing over their thatched roof, through the branches of Salap tree. People fear to come out of their homes when they hear this. Soon, travelers who passed along the path reported hearing a gut chilling, shrill cry coming from the peak and many even saw shadows resembling the young girl blocking their path. Once in a while a traveller weak in heart found the encounter with ghost of the younger sister too intimidating and fell to the gorge below putting a tragic end to his life. Sukru’s father was one such victim, it was believed.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The village sahukar of Raipadu made good business by selling provisions to passing travellers of Tadi Valasa-Pottangi route. Travelers made it a point to reach Raipadu before the sun set and put up a camp, cook their food and proceed at next day morning. The two sister’s ghost ensured that no one dared venture crossing the road at night. But, the sahukar was worried. He was worried because the news of an alternative road to Pottangi was making rounds. It was to be built by one Colonel Shankey who had already pitched a camp in middle of forest. Unlike the road made by Turner Saheb that passed through Raipadu and was now a haunted road, Shankey’s road would be a metal road where motor vehicles can run. The sahukar was apprehensive it would mean a loss of business for him. Who will wish to cross a haunted road surmounting so much troubles when one can travel, carry provisions on a motor vehicle?
The sahukar saw Sukru and his group of villagers approaching his shop and he greeted them with a smile. The group had to clear the outstanding amount against groceries they took on credit during the last trip and take fresh stock. An idea struck to the mind of the sahukar and his face lit up. While pouring rice into Sukru’s pot, the sahukar shared his concern at the difficulty and pain of the travellers.
“Sukru!!! I so often feel bad about what happened to your father, he was such a brave man. No one dared to walk the path near Two Sister’s Peak except your father. I wish we could do something to stop the two sisters from haunting the road” Sahukar said.
“But what can we do?” A member of Sukru’s group replied before Sukru could respond.
“We shall offer a puja to appease the soul of two sisters, especially the younger one” Sahukar said.
“If it can stop this curse on us, we should do it” Another in the group added.
No one can stop an idea whose time has come, they say. The idea of offering a puja to appease the wandering vengeful soul of the younger sister caught on and soon entire village sat down to plan for the event. The village priest set a date and declared that the puja shall be repeated every year and all villagers must attend it.
And, since then the villagers hold the puja as an annual festival that is attended by people from far and wide. There have not been any reports of hearing of the bone-chilling shrill cry of a dying young girl reverberating from the walls of the cliffs, no hearing of gusts of wind scrapping against thatched roof, or whizzing past branches of Salap tree ever since.
Sunil Kumar Biswal is a Chartered Engineer, Town Planner, Energy Auditor, Renewable Energy Consultant & Zero Defect Zero Effect Consultant for MSMEs. He is based in Sunabeda in Koraput District of Odisha and is an Entrepreneur. His other interests are HAM Radio (Callsign VU2MBS), Amateur Astronomy (he conducts sky watching programs for interested persons/groups), Photography and has a passion for writing on diverse topics including fiction (in both English & Odia). He loves communicating science to common man in simple language and often gives talks in Electronic media including All India Radio, Radio Koraput. He can be reached at sunilbiswal@hotmail.com and Cell No.7008580528
(Translated from Odia by Mrutyunjay Sarangi)
The dusky young girl working in Food Treat bakery appeared to many a bit slow and dull headed. But she was the main attraction that drew dozens to the shop. With a white blouse and a short skirt that barely came up to her knees, her smile stole the hearts of many. And a number of customers used to forget what to order when they looked at her long, bare legs and their stare remained fixed there. She didn't care. She used to speak to everyone as if they were her old friends.
Her name was Annie. She had a special smile for me. I was a regular visitor there. She would greet me and ask about my daughter's health. I would try to be brave and tell Annie that my daughter's condition remained unchanged, her cancer refused to go away. Annie's tender heart would melt, her eyes would brim with tears. She would draw a cross across her chest and send a prayer to Jesus.
Then one day I suddenly found Annie missing from her usual spot at the bakery. My heart skipped a beat and I asked the staff where was she gone. They pointed in the direction of the huge tree outside. I went there. The tree had shed its leaves and looked forlorn. Annie was sitting under it, morose and haggard.
I softly called, "Annie!"
She looked up, and quickly tried to hide her tears. A smile came up on her face, despite the sadness she must be feeling within. I asked her why she was not at the bakery, at her usual place. Annie looked down and shook her head. I persisted with my question. She slowly came out with her sad story. The owner of the bakery had thrown her out. I asked her, why? Because Annie's boyfriend ditched her and married the owner's sister.
I felt bad for Annie,
"So what are you going to do?"
Annie shook her head again,
"I don't know, my immediate worry is to get some bread and milk for my grandma. Her delicate stomach doesn't tolerate any other food.".
I gave some money to her to buy the bread and milk and asked her,
"Annie, how far have you studied? Can you work as a librarian? I have a friend who runs a library. He was looking for a librarian. Should I ask him?"
I could see tears of gratitude in Annie's eyes. She nodded, yes, she will be happy to work as a librarian. I came home and called my friend. I told him about Annie and her recent loss of job. He agreed to hire her as a librarian.
xxxxxxx
That's how Annie started working as a librarian at Penguin Library, in the heart of the city. In no time she became popular, drawing a lot of readers to the library. Her ready smile and pleasant manners could win the hearts of many.
When I visited the library, I was filled with joy to see Annie so lively and happy. The short round cap she used to wear at the bakery was missing, but a thin-framed pair of glasses adorned her face, making her look very cute and dignified.
I met my friend in his office at the back of the library. He was full of praise for Annie,
"Do you know Annie is quite educated and full of high spirits? She even discusses Kafka, Camus, Tolstoy and Gorky with some of the visitors and guides many others on what book to pick up. She is just incredible!"
I felt very small. I had always thought Annie to be a half-educated, simple, dull headed girl. How wrong I was!
On my way out I looked for Annie. She was sitting behind a stack of books, cataloguing them. I went to her. Out of curiosity I asked her,
"Annie, you have a chance to read so many books now, in this library. Tell me, what is literature?"
She became serious.
"Literature is a flower tree of sorrow."
I was amazed at this strange reply,
"Why? Why do you say that?"
"Because every piece of great literature grows out of the foundation of a deep, sorrowful feeling "
She bent her head, immersed in her thought.
I left. I didn't want Annie to see the deep wounds in my heart. Annie's words kept ringing in my ears for hours. I wondered, if sorrow is the root of literature, then why I remained only a reader, why I could not be a writer - with so much sorrow spreading over the grey canvas of my life. After a long time I intensely felt the absence of my divorced wife. I went home and opened the pages of some old photo albums to revisit many happy moments of life spent in the company of my wife and our daughter. The pictures made me even sadder.
A surprise was waiting for me a few weeks later. On a hot, blazing afternoon in summer I opened the door to a knock and found Annie standing outside with a bouquet of flowers and a bundle of papers. She smiled at the look of surprise on my face. Without a word she went past me and entered the room where my fifteen year old daughter was lying on the bed looking vacantly at the ceiling. For a moment I was flustered. But soon I felt happy at the way Annie made it appear so casual, as if she was a part of our life.
I hurried to offer a glass of cold water to her. Later I got busy in making some soup and snacks for the three of us, while the two girls kept chatting like long lost friends. My daughter's giggles got louder by the minute, I had never seen her laughing so much in recent years. I felt as if the four walls of her room had come alive and were dancing in joy at her bubbling laughter.
When I entered my daughter's room after half an hour with a tray of soup and snacks, Annie was reading out some poems to her. They were all her own poems, most of them incomplete. I had not heard such poems for a long time, there was a strange sense of melancholy in them. I asked her, why were the poems so incomplete? She laughed, "Is life ever complete? It goes on, at its own pace, and suddenly one day it stops midway, at a point you even didn't know existed. My poems are like that....incomplete, waiting for the unknown..,"
Annie stayed with my daughter till very late into the evening. We had dinner together, prepared by me. Before leaving she took out a visiting card from her purse and gave to me. I looked at it. It was the address of a Mission hospital seven hundred kilometres away. Annie told me she knows the Father who runs that hospital and it specialised in treatment of cancer. Many patients had got cured there. She promised she would speak to the Father the next morning and request him to admit my daughter there.
I came out and offered to accompany her till her home. She asked me not to leave my daughter alone. I don't know why, but by a sudden impulse I asked her how was her boyfriend doing, was he happy? Annie stared at me for a moment, her face turned sad, like a dark cloud covering the moon. She looked down and said, "I don't know whether he is happy or not. We are not in touch. He may not remember me, but I can never forget him." I regretted causing her so much sadness by reminding her of the boyfriend. But somehow I also felt a stab of sadness in my heart, knowing about Annie's lingering love for her boyfriend of the past.
xxxxxxx
We left for the Mission hospital for a week. Annie came to say bye to us, praying to Jesus to cure my daughter. She had spoken to the Father and he took a special liking to my daughter. She responded well to the treatment. Annie used to call almost every week and enquired about the progress. She used speak to my daughter also. Then one day, suddenly her calls stopped. And everytime I called her number I got a response that it was not in use. My daughter also gradually lost the battle of life and after eight months of stay at the hospital, she passed away, leaving me in deep sorrow. I was devastated and didn't know how to face life again.
During the days she was at the hospital my daughter had knitted a scarf for Annie. She had finished it a few days before she left to be an angel at God's kingdom. I carried the scarf with me and returned to my home town hoping to somehow rebuild my life. The town looked familiar, yet in a way quite strange to me, without my daughter and Annie. I roamed around aimlessly, the scarf in my pocket, hoping to meet Annie at some unexpected corner of the town.
I met my friend at the Penguin Library, hoping that he would have kept some track of Annie. But he was as clueless as me. He told me that Annie had quit her job at the library a few days after her grand mother's death. He had heard that Annie had become a nun, although he didn't know for certain.
I was stunned. Annie! A nun! Somehow I felt a void in my heart. I realised, I had a soft corner for her and her nunhood might rob me of any chance of seeing her again.
xxxxxxxx
I lived life like a zombie. I wondered why waves of sorrow swept over me with a cruel regularity. I tried to draw a curtain over my memories and covered my mind with a thick, impenetrable skin. My tears turned to ice, I wanted them to stay frozen forever. My heart weighed down with loads of sorrow. Yet I was determined to find Annie and hand over to her the scarf knitted by my daughter. It was as if that little scarf tied me, my daughter and Annie in an invisible bond. It was the last symbol of love gifted by a dying girl to someone who had disappeared from our lives.
I kept wondering where could I find Annie. Was she in the same town or had she left for some other place to lead the life of a nun? Could I find her in any of the missionary institutions in my city? Suddenly I was seized with a fear! Would I be able to recognise her if she came across my path, dressed in her nun's robe, with a veil on her head? I almost sweated at the thought. Yet, I went and stood near the churches, the convents, with the scarf in my pocket. I almost went crazy, frustrated by the failure of my mission. I was losing hope, and I suspect, a part of my sanity.
And then, one day I found her. I found Annie! Just like that! She was not in a nun's robe. She was just a thin girl in a tee shirt and a short skirt running with a few urchins trying to catch the small crabs on the wet sands of Marina beach. I stood still for a moment. Was it really Annie! I called her name, loudly, louder than the waves, the roaring sea and loud enough to pierce the placid sky. She stopped and turned around.
I was not sure how exactly I felt. It was a mixture of relief, joy and yet an unfathomable sadness. So this was Annie! If she was not a nun, what was she? Where was she hiding all these days, these months, over this unbearable stretch of time? She recognised me. Like a small child flailing her arms she came running to me. I wish I had a camera to capture this picture for eternity!
She stopped short of me and started gasping for breath. The first thing she asked me was about my daughter, where was she? I had no answer to that. A deep sigh from me and a grief stricken look at the heaven above conveyed to her what I could not say in words. She understood and immediately drew a cross across her chest and prayed to Jesus to rest the departed soul in peace.
There was so much to tell Annie, so many questions to ask, yet the moment weighed heavily on my mind. I kept quiet for a few moments and took out the scarf from my pocket.
"My daughter had knitted this for you lying on her hospital bed. I have been carrying this with me ever since I returned to this town. Where were you Annie? How did you lose yourself in this town? Do you have any idea, how much I have searched for you?"
Annie took the scarf from me. She touched it to her cheeks and started sobbing loudly. This was the first time I saw Annie sobbing. My eyes filled with tears. Annie calmed herself in a few moments. She looked towards a corner of the beach and pointed to a man sitting on a wheel chair, looking at the setting sun. I asked her who was he?
"You remember my boyfriend who had left me and got married to the bakery owner's sister? It is him. He met with an accident a couple of months after you left for the Mission hospital. His legs were amputated and his wife and brother in law threw him out. He came to me. Now I am all that he has in the world. I have opened a tea stall near the Marina beach. He comes with me everyday and tries to help. We manage to earn a decent income."
I asked her,
"So, did you marry him?"
She smiled, not her usual captivating smile, but an enigmatic one that left me puzzled,
"Marry? No, I have become a nun."
I smiled back,
"Are you kidding me Annie? You don't look like a nun!"
Annie shook her head,
"Tell me who is a nun? A nun is one who has completely given herself to God. Look at the man who is sitting there on a wheel chair. When he was a normal person, with his legs intact, he was my boyfriend. When he lost his legs, and no one cared for him, I took him in as my god. From that day I became a nun, giving myself fully to him...I am a nun...."
I was stunned at Annie's argument. I knew it was meaningless to find a logic in what she was saying. But in life everything doesn't run on logic. I was not done with my questions. A final question troubled my mind,
"Annie, tell me why did you cut off all connection with me? You were not even available on phone!"
Annie could read the hurt in my question. She came close to me, quite close. I became aware of a rare fragrance coming out of an enchanting beauty, from the depth of a pure soul. She looked into my eyes and whispered,
"Nuns have no right to fall in love!"
Before I recovered, she took a step back and started running away.
I kept standing on the wet sand. Looking at her retreating form till she reached the wheel chair, I felt like writing something on the wet sand. I bent down and wrote "Annie".
A huge wave had formed in the sea at a distance. I knew the wave would be upon me to wash away the name before I even finish counting ten. Yet I waited for the wave and started counting one....two....three...
(Translator's note: I came across this lovely story quite by chance while browsing the Facebook. I am a very infrequent visitor to Facebook, but on that fateful evening a fortnight back, I was perhaps drawn to it by destiny. This piece of rare beauty simply overwhelmed me and I decided to translate it for LiteraryVibes. Ms. Chinmayee Barik, the talented writer, was kind enough to give her consent.
After reading this story in Odia I realised, good literature is like God who you get to experience only rarely. But when it happens, you are dazzled by an inner light, blessed by an everlasting bliss. I am proud to have come across this story and to present it to the readers of LiteraryVibes. Let us give a big ovation to Ms. Barik, its wonderful creator.)
Chinmayee Barik, a modernist writer in Odia literature is a popular and household name in contemporary literary circle of Odisha. Quest for solitude, love, loneliness, and irony against the stereotyped life are among the favorite themes of this master weaver of philosophical narratives. She loves to break the monotony of life by penetrating its harsh reality. She believes that everyone is alone in this world and her words are the ways to distract her from this existing world, leading her to her own world of melancholy and to give time a magical aesthetic. Her writings betray a sense of pessimism with counter-aesthetics, and she steadfastly refuses to put on the garb of a preacher of goodness and absolute beauty. Her philosophical expressions carry a distinct sign of symbolic annotations to metaphysical contents of life.
She has been in the bestseller list for her three outstanding story collections "Chinikam" , "Signature" and "December". Chinmayee has received many prestigious awards and recognition like Events Best-Selling Author's Award, "Antarang 31", Story Mirror Saraswat Sanmam", "Sarjan Award by Biswabharati", "Srujan Yuva Puraskar", and " Chandrabhaga Sahitya Samman".
Her book 'Chinikam' has been regarded as the most selling book of the decade. With her huge fan base and universal acceptability, she has set a new trend in contemporary storytelling. By profession chinmayee is a popular teacher and currently teaches in a school named " Name and Fame Public School" at Panikoili, a small town in Odisha. She can be contacted at her Email id - chinmayeebarik2010@gmail.com
The real teacher teaches beyond life!
40 days are gone...
Days filled with the fragrance of exquisite memories.
Days of reverence to remembrances evergreen.
Time and space do not matter in the case of certain people. They transcend both.
When they depart, they leave
their immortal footprints on the shores of time..
A radiance that illumines everything about them and around them..
Indelible trails that do not dwindle in distance..
Now that he is gone and never will return doesn’t make us grieved because he has not left us orphaned, but fortified with the invaluable inheritance of exemplary love, faith and conviction.
His life has been a relentless quest for excellence and elegance,
An exceptional legacy of untiring pursuit of truth and beauty,
A unique tryst with purity and perfection!
My father has been my real teacher, the best teacher in life. .. now beyond life..through eternity. He taught me to think differently, to speak, to write and to live differently. He was unique, always different and distinct in thought, word and deed. He lived true to himself. He stood out from the crowd with a voice, singular and loud, not allowing to lose itself in the cacophony, at the same time merging with the melodious symphonies. Never yielding to the thoughts and ways of the crowd and unmindful of what others thought.
I recall my childhood that was spent in the midst of varied hues and fragrances. Those days so distant in time …when nobody had any idea about landscaping and designing. But he was a man ahead of his times… in a class by himself and a brand by himself. An adorer of beauty who sought harmony and elegance in everything and who wanted his life to be truthful, graceful and splendid. 45 years ago, he designed and made a garden in front of our house planting each and every plant with his own hands. All of us used to help him carrying water from the pond in heavy pots, ploughing and manuring. It was a beautifully designed one with lawn, creepers and bushes. He nurtured them and pruned them in various shapes like that of peacock, arch, umbrella etc. which we had seen only in Subhash Park, Kochi in those days. He used to get seeds from Pocha seeds, Pune by post and got them sprouted and within no time, they bloomed in magnificence.. zinnia, dahlia, marigold, chrysanthemums…all in alluring colours. His memories are always in full bloom.
He aptly named our house, Fiesta.. For every visitor, it provided an aesthetic feast. My friends and cousins used to be excited like entering inside an art gallery. All loved his unique collections of antiques, books, photos, clocks, pens, cassettes, crockery and many other things, At a time, when nobody had any concept about interior designing, he decked the spaces inside our home with exquisite and unique themes and attractions, curios, lampshades, flowers, paintings, quotes, furnishings etc. He used to travel to the neighbouring cities seeing, searching and picking up rarities and exclusives in home décor. Like Prospero he lived in the magnificent empire of graces and elegances in the midst of music, art and literature. He often reminded me of Kubla Khan residing in the stately pleasure dome, the miracle of rare device.
When I read Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ for the first time, I identified Ulysses with him who had the ardent desire ‘to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought’. He was a voracious reader updated in history, culture and contemporary events and well versed in Classics. He had in-depth knowledge in and about English language and perfect mastery over it. He ‘’spoke the King’s English”, as he used to claim. He had learnt Latin Language and used to tell us about the etymology of each and every word borrowed from Latin. His pronunciation was superb and he was a follower of BBC. I remember his students telling me that he used to begin the class everyday differently and dramatically and will share the latest events in the news collected the previous day from BBC. He knew the seven seas and five continents by heart and would take them on a virtual de tour explaining the history, geography and culture of each country. One of his students, a post graduate in History told " I can’t draw even the map of India, but Francis Sir could draw the map of any country in the world on the black board".
Even before I started learning English alphabet in the fourth standard in my Malayalam medium school, I knew the famous quotes of Shakespeare and Wordsworth. My childhood memories are decked with his wonderful narration of literary classics. Holding to his fingers, I started my journey to the wonderlands of literature. He taught me the art of oratory. I still keep the speeches he had written for me while I was a child. He has told me -- never begin a speech in a plain manner. Like Mark Antony’s speech, it should start in a dramatic way, never giving a chance to the listener as to what we are driving at. He used to train me how to deliver the speech with variations in tone and pitch. He moulded me into a speaker. Hearing and reading him, I started writing. But whenever I start writing, I realize that I can never reach near his excellence. Whatever he writes had a unique touch… idioms, phrases, usages which are exclusively his own.. I often use them now in my writings and they remain strikingly new…revealing the perennial quality of his language and style which never go stale with the passage of time. And he identified that I have a talent in writing, especially in writing poems. When I started writing prose -poetry, he motivated and encouraged me. Others were doubtful about prose -poetry and prompted me to write in metre. But he stood with me and said, ‘’No need to write in the conventional way. You can write as you like’’. He was a man of future always.
He was also progressive and futuristic in everyday life, using the latest brands in everything.. technology, food, fashion and style. He used to feast us with butter and jam once a month which he used to purchase from Cochin city and used to carry it home in a blue coloured thermal container to keep it from melting. He used to buy and get stitched for us various kinds of dress in the latest fashion and style which he picks up from fashion magazines. Our albums are full of such snaps of me and my brother in western, eastern and fusion styles in different ages. When my cousins used to come in cool hairstyles and costumes, he was the first one to appreciate and applaud them unlike other elders. But he has used only pure white shirt and dhoti throughout his life.
Though he was a wonderful writer in English and Malayalam, he never wrote anything for posterity. He was disinterested in getting them published. He preferred to remain obscure. He used to quote often one of his most favourite lines of Thomas Gray “Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air”, and say, “I would always like to be such a flower”. If he had written down his thoughts, experiences and memories, that would have been a precious gift to posterity. He had given me a note book a few months ago. It contained some writings in his beautiful artistic handwriting and particularly the epitaph which he wanted for himself which he said, was the last lines written by Cervantes:
Farewell Graces
Farewell Elegances
Farewell Beloved Friends
that I depart dying
and wishing
to see you again soon
happy in the other life!
Writing invitations, ads, brochures etc. were his craze. Whenever a wedding happens in the family of his friends or relatives, he deemed it his right to prepare the invitation. And each of them came out unique. None of its kind will be seen again. Purely personalized and customized ones. .’Enter Milon into Marital Bliss’ - that’s how he started my wedding card. Each and every line was unique with Adam’s lines from “Paradise Lost” on the envelope. Last year one of my friends sent me in whatsapp this wedding card which he has cherished all these years saying that he has never come across a better card with better words in the last 21 years. My uncle was speaking yesterday about a caption that my father had written 30 years ago and said, “ I realized the value of this when I saw this caption in the ad of an international brand two months ago”. Surely he was a man born ahead of his times. He never wrote the way anyone else did. The imagery, idioms, phrases that were peculiar to him made all those pieces striking and innovative which can rival any other ads coming from a professional in the modern times. And he did it with uncompromising perfection taking up all the chores and struggles involved in it like proof reading, printing etc.
My house was like an athenaeum filled with all the leading periodicals in English and Malayalam. Readers Digest, The Illustrared Weekly, India Today, Frontline, Mathrubhumi, Kalakaumudy and many more. For us children, he used to subscribe Eureka, Balarama, Poombatta, Laluleela, Amar Chithrakatha and the like. He used to get for me world classics in Malayalam translation and famous works in Malayalam literarure from various libraries which I read passionately. When I grew up, I got immersed in serious journals and texts which refined my creative sensibility and critical thinking. The critical discussions he had with me on politics, history, culture, music etc. enriched and widened my perspectives. And he always treated me like a peer in intellectual discourses. He was so particular that I should never feel and come across gender disparity on my path towards success and he gave me the freedom and intellectual empowerment that couldn’t be dreamt of by a girls at that time. He allowed me to travel wherever I wanted, putting no restrictions and conditions. In those days, when there were no communication facilities, I was allowed to go to far away places and to attend literary camps, competitions, seminars, poets meet etc. He had perfect and unconditional faith in me and I could keep up and safeguard that faith.
He was a much admired and loved teacher. Till his last days, groups of students used to visit him and call him over the phone. He always focussed on unearthing ' the truth' behind the forged constructs of knowledge and history. The book which ends with his epitaph starts with his reflections about his career : " Like Galileo, I tried to speak out the truth that the earth is round. Majority didn't acknowledge. That has been the destiny of all who spoke the undesired truth. But I went on enlightening my students". He touched the lives of his students and remains evergreen in their minds as seen in the touching memories shared by his student, Dr. Varghese Chakkalakkal, Bishop of Calicut in the requiem mass offered for his soul. The Bishop spoke about his beautiful and superb mastery of language, the humaneness, humour sense, deep knowledge and concern for the students . He specifically spoke about his imaginative and creative charisma and his magical and dramatic method of teaching. He remembered the English classes in which his beloved teacher took the students aloft on the wings of creative imagination and awareness. In Social Studies classes, he kept them spellbound with the captivating ways of descriptions and explanations like Pearl Harbor attack and President Truman signing the order of bombing in Hiroshima and the fighter planes taking off from Tinian Island. He said, the students could visualize the fleet of ships at Pearl Harbour and the planes taking off from Tinian Island. He taught them to learn and unlearn the uncommon way, and to follow the untrodden paths and thus to create a difference in the world.
He was a talented singer too… A lyre made silent by some turn of destiny. We have heard him sing only occasionally. Our house was ever mellifluous with unending strains of music flowing from the transistor radio and cassette player. I remember how he cared and caressed the Murphy Radio with the cute, chubby baby, ‘Murphy Munna’ on its tagline which still remains in our house in its perennial glory. used He had a rare collection of cassettes of all songs of Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Kishore Kumar and of course Nazia Hassan, Abba, Boney M. And all the evergreen songs in Malayalam.
He was a poem
A Haiku..
written in a few words
with dignity, decorum and elegance
A song soft and sweet
Not heard by many
But captivating and alluring all those who gave ears.
And lingering long even after it is finished
A blooming and fragrant memory.
He lived in grace and elegance
And he lived for truth and beauty
He taught me to live the truthful way and the unconventional way.
and to stand alone fearlessly, not to compromise with the common and the mediocre.
To think, differently, speak differently and to live differently.
Dr. Milon Franz is a writer, teacher and speaker.She is working as Associate Professor and Research Guide in English at St. Xavier’s College for Women, Aluva.. She has contributed to teaching, research, writing, leadership and socio cultural activities. She writes poems and articles in English and Malayalam and has authored four books. She has also published many research articles in national and international academic journals. She has chaired several academic sessions, has been invited speaker/ resource person and has presented papers in national and international conferences. She has organized various national and international seminars. She is a member in various academic, cultural and professional organizations and a reviewer of many International Research Journals.
A STORY OF DREAM, STRUGGLE, AND ADAPTATION: MY MEMORIES IN RUSSIA\
BLR – DEL – SVO – SVX – SVO – DEL – BLR (Bengaluru- Delhi – Moscow – Yekaterinburg – Delhi- Bengaluru)
I joined an MNC in June 2019 with the excitement of working with such a renowned organization having a history of excellence stretching back more than 130 years and presence in over 100 countries.
Well, that was not the only thing to get excited, I also had another reason to smile about. In my interview Mr. Subramaniam who happened to be my Super Boss discussed about his plan where I need to travel to Sweden to manage the transition of activities to India. This would be my first international travel, although I had served international clients in my earlier roles but had not travelled abroad.
It had been more than one month since I joined and due to some reason, my travel was getting delayed. One day My Super Boss informed me that I need to travel to Spain instead of Sweden in a few days and I needed to submit my documents for visa process at the earliest. I was super excited as Spain is one of the most favoured places of tourists around the globe. I had just one thing in mind i.e; explore new places and have fun. Transition was secondary at that time as I was bit confident that I would manage to work.
After submission of documents for Visa Process I started preparing itinerary and started imagining that I was in Spain and visiting all those cool and superb, beautiful places. La Tomatino is a famous festival which occurs in the month of August which was on top of my TO DO list that time. I also had prepared the route chart and had done the budget for ticket booking and stay expenses there. I was imagining myself in the famous scene of “Zindegi Na Milegi Dobara” where this famous festival was captured.
Well, life had some different plans for me. Transition plan for Spain was postponed as per the decision by the leadership team. Hence my dream of visiting La Tomatino festival. ? (Chan se jo tute koi sapna Jag suna suna lage, Jag suna suna lage re)
Now I was doubtful if I would get the chance to travel or not. After couple of days they asked me to travel to Russia…I was confused now, whether I should be happy that I would be travelling to Russia or should I be worried, as this country is considered to be one of the coldest places on earth and Russians are not known to be very friendly in nature. The plan was, I needed to manage the Transitioning process in 2 different places i.e. Yekaterinburg and Moscow. Yekaterinburg is approx. 1800 km from the Capital of Russia, i.e; Moscow. Neither I had heard about this city nor I found anyone mentioning about this city in their travel. The more I browsed about this place the more I got disappointed. Travelling to Yekaterinburg became a part of Transition process for me now with zero excitement.
In the meanwhile I met Mr. Nrupesh who is the only person in my knowledge who had travelled to Yekaterinburg in his early career some 14 years back. He had given me a hope that it is a very nice and less explored place of Russia and I would certainly love my stay there. Probably that was the only positive view I collected about Yekaterinburg. Thanks to Him. ????
Visa arrived and finally I was set to fly on 15th September.
13th September, Friday
My tickets delivered by our travel team. My journey from Bangalore to Delhi, Delhi to Moscow and Moscow to Yekaterinburg was booked.
Travel team who are specialist in booking and responsible for making the journey plan smooth for employees made a mistake here, which fortunately I noticed in the last moment. Instead flight from Bengaluru to Delhi on 15th September morning he booked 14th September morning, a day earlier than planned. That means I was supposed to travel after 12 hours and was not prepared for it.
I dialled him and explained to him the mistake he had made, he tried to change the date through the airlines but no help. We had to rebook a new ticket for 15th September as my flight to Russia is already booked for the same day evening. Booking done correctly this time. If I had not checked the ticket after an hour that day then it would would have been a big chaos. Travel team were about to end their last working day of the week the moment I informed them regarding the wrong booking.
15th September 2019, Sunday
BLR to DEL plane to take off at 7:45AM and I reached around 6:00 AM at airport. Kempegowda airport is situated 45 kms away from my place of stay in Bengaluru. The time taken to reach airport is so much that often it creates an impression that Airport is situated in a different city than Bengaluru. I was in bit hurry to finish all the required formalities but as the saying goes wrong happens only at the wrong times. Two people in front of me were arguing with security personnel and other passengers were waiting for the clearance. Time was 6:30 AM. Five more people were waiting in front of me for their turn and I requested them if I can go early for clearance. God bless them, they agreed. In India our family gets more excited than us when we do something good. So is my family and extended family members. I almost attended 5 calls while reaching for security clearance and getting the suggestions of what to do and not to do in foreign countries. I was answering all calls as my numbers will be inactive for another 3 months and they may not get a chance to speak to me. It is their love and blessings that they were calling in the early hours. Although I was in a hurry to finish check-in formalities but still attending to their calls. Belt, laptop, mobile, jacket kept on the tray for scan. Time is 6:55 AM. While I was collecting my belongings my cell phone rang. Unknown number it is. For a second I thought not to pick the call as I was getting late and it was a unknown number also. Hello Mr. Pratyush (Sweet voice of a lady)
Yes speaking.. may I know who is this ( I replied)
Sir, I am calling from Go Air and this is to inform you that all our passengers have boarded the bus for the flight to Delhi and we are going to close the door now. May I know where are you and will you be able to come in 2 mins. We can’t wait more than that.
With the speed of Usain Bolt I sprinted and reached the Go Air Gate in 3 to 4 minutes. They were kind enough to wait for me although giving a weird look to me as I stepped into the bus. Better for me if I avoid eye contact with them, I thought.
Reached Delhi on time at 10:40 AM. Before my flight to Moscow, I met one of my old friends after a long time. Flight to Moscow was at night 1:25 AM. Learning from my morning experience reached airport at 7 PM. I was feeling bit calm now as I have sufficient time now and waited for the check-ins to start. In the meanwhile one of my colleagues also joined who was travelling on the same flight to Moscow. Check-ins started around 9PM. After completion of all the processes I was about to leave India for 3 months.
16th Sep. 2019, Sunday
Morning 5:30 AM, Flight landed, I AM in RUSSIA now. I need to travel to Yekaterinburg which is a connecting flight, I asked the airhostess how should I get the flight to Yekaterinburg and she asked to go out and check. The airhostess who were kind and caring enough during the flight, suddenly did not even bother to listen to what I am looking for. Their duty was over after the flight landed.
My flight to Yekaterinburg was at 6:45 AM from domestic terminal and I was in immigration counter of International Terminal. There were many travelers from different corners of world, also waiting along with me. I tried to ask some of them how to go catch the next flight and no body was aware.
A white, strong lady in uniform verified all my documents and observed for a while and stamped on passport. Handed over a small slip as well. I asked her by showing my ticket how to go to domestic terminal, and she replied something in her language which I did not understand but could imagine that she is not interested in answering me. It was one of the biggest/busiest airports of Europe and had 5 terminals. It was really vast and major challenge for me was that I was not getting any response from any personnel there. if you thought that English is a global language and spoken widely, well you are miserably wrong. Not all Russians can speak or understand English. All the information is in Russian and you will definitely have a hard time figuring things out.
My next flight was after 45 minutes and till now I was not aware where the hell I was. I was just running from one to another place asking people and trying to find the domestic terminal. After a lot of struggle I managed to know that I have to catch a underground train which will take me to domestic terminal and this will take just 5 to 7 minutes to reach.
6:15 AM, I jumped into the train as soon as the door opened. I am from India and I have the habit of catching a running train/bus. People gave a very weird look because of my act. I was less bothered as I did not want to miss any chance now and want to reach the terminal at the earliest. I reached to the check in counter and as the process goes removed belts, wallet,belts etc. for screening. The lady personnel showed me the gate and instructed me to go fast. I just took all my belongings and ran towards the counter. Did not waste the time to put my belt even.
Gate for SU 1410 Aeroflot flight is closed just few minutes before I reached, requested a lot to the ladies at the counter but they did not allow me to catch the bus which was about to leave for the flight. It is impossible to convince Russians sometime, No means NO. I was like a crying kid asking for chocolate and they were adamant like a strict mother. I was equally frustrated, angry and helpless at that time.
Strange people, unknown language, inactive Mobile connectivity, Flight Missed, unaware where my luggage is and the list goes on….Am I lost now?
Welcome to Russia.
I sat on a sofa near to the terminal for couple of minutes and planned what needs to be done. One major thing that came to mind was, there would be someone from office to receive me at the Airport of Yekaterinburg. My travel schedule was communicated to them so that I should not face any challenges. You can't be smarter than that. Now I am seeing only challenges around me. Upon landing of the Aeroflot flight in Yekaterinburg, they would not find me and will inform my Office. This is going to be big security issue as our organization takes employees safety as top priority. Lot of negative thoughts going on in my mind now. They may call to Moscow airline to check if I arrived there or they may inform to Embassy first as they will not be able to locate me or they will take some action against me as I may be the reason for all the chaos. One thing was for sure this matter will be escalated…
First thing first.
I need to find where my luggage is, I should inform the airline to keep safely my luggage at Yekaterinburg which I will collect once I reach. Not sure if I will reach on the same day or next day. I went straight to the airline office, took some time to find but this was not a big challenge compared to my last 24 hours experience. Having a fear in mind about missing luggage as I heard sometime people don’t even get their luggage in domestic travel if it was misplaced and if this happens to me then I will be left with my hand bag only i.e. Laptop only ? I approached the Aeroflot Counter and a beautiful typical Russian lady greeted me. “Good Morning, How can I help you”.
I am happy to say Russian ladies are most beautiful on earth. I explained her my problem and may be it was too much English for her at one go. She looked puzzled. I sensed the alarm. I took a long breath and explained to her slowly, step by step starting from my departure from Delhi and how I landed into this memorable situation. This worked and she checked about the status.
After a while she returned to me and informed that as I have not boarded flight so my luggage they have not loaded to Aeroflot flight and I can collect it now. Such a sense of relief. My heartbeat came to normal now after a long time. She also guided me how to check the next flight to Yekaterinburg and I should get the flight rescheduled without any cost. I felt like this lady is an angel who solved all my problems. This was one of the happiest and relieving moments for me.
Time to deal with my next issue i.e. need to inform my Business Controller at Yekaterinburg about this unfortunate situation so that she should not be surprised on my non-arrival as per schedule.
I had taken an international roaming sim from Delhi Airport which would work as soon as I insert this on my arrival at Russia. Without delaying I followed the procedure but guess what, I don’t find any Bar on top left side of my mobile. That mean the sim is not yet activated. This is not at all a good sign.
I tried connecting free wifi of airport but no use. I became my own guide and asked myself to calm down and think alternative channels. We Indians generally are comfortable reaching out to strangers and asking for help if required. This was my only hope now. I should ask someone to know where I can get a new sim for mobile. Now, if you think that English is a global language and spoken widely, well you are miserably wrong. Very few Russians can speak or understand English. People gave weird look when I was reaching out to them for help. It was obvious as there were many foreigners from other countries as well who are cautious to extend their help to unknown people and who ever were local found it very hard time figuring what exactly I was looking for.
Telephone, Sim open 10 AM. A person used sign language along with this much English to inform me that Shop will be opened at 10 AM and it is on the other side of the airport. Kind help it is.
I thanked him and used some sort of sign language to ask if I can use his mobile to make a call. I should have improved my communication through sign language, he gave a strange look and walked away. Russians generally don’t smile at strangers, this is one of the cultural shock I experienced. The shop will be opened after one and half hour from now and I should inform about this.
After trying my luck with 4 to 5 more people, there was a Mexican who agreed to allow one phone call.
Hello Maria. I said
Privet… Maria Replied
I am Pratyush from India.
Ohh Hello good morning Pratyush.
I missed my flight to Yekatrinburg and trying to book next flight to reach.
Ok, Got it. Please let me know your arrival timing and I will arrange your drop to hotel.
Sure Maria, I will update. Thank you
Happy Flying, she replied.
I hung up.
Now I deserve a treat as I have handled two most important situations successfully. In the meanwhile I checked, the next flight is at 3 o' clock. There was enough time to roam around in the airport and see all the nicely decorated stores, looking at people rushing to get their flight, children playing at designated play area in the airport. Everything was new, fresh to me and I was enjoying every bit of it. Taking pictures as well. This was the only use of my mobile that time without having an active SIM.
(To be continued)
Pratyush , MBA graduate in finance & marketing as well as certified in Business Analytics from IIM Bangalore. He currently works with ABB Hitachi in finance domain. He is a sports enthusiast keeping up his passion for Cycling, Marathon events & Cricket. He found the trail for writing inspired from his travel experiences & now keenly stepping into writer mode.
MY VISIT TO LAKSHMI PURAM (A VILLAGE IN INDIA)
It’s a small village named ‘Lakshmi Puram’ where five hundred families live together, depending on agriculture. While travelling by car, I could see fertile lands one side and the barren fields on the other. My neighbour, Dr. Smith and his daughter’s family accompanied me as it’s the place where Dr. Smith happily lived with his two daughters, son, and relatives for forty years. I always loved visiting villages and observed cattle moving freely, green fields, coconut trees, farmers with their wives while traveling.
I could see happiness in Dr. Smith’s eyes, while he was showing me his 40 acres of land where he yielded good crops in the past. He acquired the land from his father that became his livelihood. His daughter Reetu with her husband Manish explained how happy when they were living together.
Dr.Smith, started living in a city alone and he loved living happily away from his daughters and son’s family, as his wife, Suneeta died due to cancer three years ago. He told me several times that his wife was very affectionate to him, and they both together was a happy couple. His elder daughter, Sheela lost her husband a few years ago. Her daughter married to an engineer and began her married life in a metropolitan city.
Dr. smith, an 80-year-old man is generous and caring who shared his land equally with his son and two daughters to make them happy. But, due to jealousy, all the three used to fight for the property, land issues, repairs etc. Sheela, with the help of farmers, started irrigating the land which is fertile. After her husband’s death, she built a big house, thinking that her father would come and stay with her. But Dr. Smith never wanted to stay with anyone, as he didn’t have peaceful life in Lakshmi Puram.
His only son, Raja met with an accident and died at the age of 35, leaving his wife, son, and daughter. Dr. Smith left his newly built house for them to live a comfortable life. He took care of his grandchildren too in their studies. Raja’s son, Suresh and Saritha completed engineering. They’re close to their grandpa, but Raja’s wife, Lalitha, changed their mind towards owning property. She was more concerned for having wealth more than caring her father-in-law, Dr. Smith.
Dr. Smith wisely owned 12 acres of land and some cash after distributing his property to his children. He wished to be away from people who are malicious and diplomatic in mind. He realized that his own daughters and daughter in law behaved as if they were strangers to him. Leaving a huge villa, he loved living in a rented flat where he found peace in living alone. He didn’t compromise in having rich food, facilities, and luxurious life like before. By God’s grace, he gained good health and mental strength to face challenges in life. He’s the man of qualities, and simplicity.
Sheela’s land was fertile and suitable for digging a well. So, Dr. Smith got the well dug in her field four years ago and the water was being used by Raja’s family and Sheela. Raja’s son, Suresh was quite happy as he could get sufficient water for his fields from his aunt’s filed. But, Sheela filed a case on her father, as he allowed Suresh to use water without any payment. Besides, she thought that her father was partial and didn’t show any concern for her. It created disputes and quarrels between the family members.
Dr. Smith asked, “See Sheela! I shared the land equally among all of you and Raja’s land is not suitable for digging a well. Why are you so fussy about it? What’s the problem, if Suresh uses water from this well?”
Sheela said, “It’s my land and the well which was dug is mine. Suresh is being benefitted out of this. Why should I allow him? I don’t want him to.”
Dr. Smith was astonished to see her fighting with Suresh in this regard. He tried to stop both but failed to avoid their quarrel. He thought money became priority to them, not the relationship. He remembered his wife’s words suddenly and felt gloomy.
She said, “Give away my jewelry to Reetu and the fertile land to Sheela as she could depend on it”
Dr. Smith lived a happy life with his wife who was generous, understanding, loving and affectionate. She was so cooperative with him too. She played her dual role as a mother and wife very well. She took care of her husband and children. Ups and downs were common in everyone’s life. Similarly, Dr. Smith had to sell his property to fulfill the needs of his children, get treated his wife and son. He valued relationship and togetherness more than money. At the same time, he was very disciplined, economical, and caring person.
I was amazed to see him healthy even at 80’s and managing his own household chores efficiently. He was always proud of his management skills in holding the family together and friendly nature which made him a great personality. He was working as the head of the ‘Gram Panchayat’ and mingled with different types of people. He gained name and fame in his village due to his attitude, but not wealth. He tried to teach ethics and moral values to his children, though they didn’t try to know their value.
After spending the whole day, we returned home. While returning, Dr. Smith expressed his feelings with me. He said that he would never return to Lakshmi Puram as he didn’t find peaceful atmosphere. He mentioned that the situations will not change that easily and the fight for wealth would continue. I listened to him silently. When we reached home in the evening, he thanked me for visiting his village, and understanding his issues.
“Money and property are essential, but they can’t purchase peace.” I thought to myself.
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
NEW YORK – FROM A TOURIST’S PERSPECTIVE
Gourang Charan Roul
My imagination was always stirred by quotes from classic literature. Nick says in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world”. My imagination about New York till now had been driven solely by Hollywood’s presentation of it. I was about to see for myself how far off my imagination was from the reality of it!
As our Virgin Atlantic flight was circling for landing at the JFK Airport, we were amazed to see a large number of planes hovering over the New York skyline looking like a bazaar of falcons. Since our arrival in the JFK International airport, we had already been fascinated by the grandeur of the city. We had barely seen its landmarks of historical importance, countless attractions, and superlative entertainment venues than our cab exited into the I -95, Interstate Highway, passing through –New York (North-East), New Haven (Connecticut), Providence (Rhode Island) en route to Boston. Throughout the 215 miles drive, while enjoying the picturesque landscape and much talked about roadways, I was constantly reminded of the grandeur of the city that never sleeps. Sensing our curiosity about the dream destination, my daughter and son-in-law chalked out an itinerary for one of the most important cities in the contemporary world, The Big Apple! A two-day trip was finalized for the last leg of winter in the fourth weekend of March. As per plan, we left Boston early Saturday morning by road for New York. There are so many incredible neighborhoods across river Hudson with their vibes and attractions offering budget accommodation for overnight stay and easy commute to the city of New York. We reached our waterfront hotel along the shore of the Hudson River by 10 AM. After refreshment, in the hotel, we headed for the nearby metro station and availed the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) - a rapid transit system that connects the two states of New York and New Jersey, and after 25 minutes, came out at World Trade Center Station - a terminal station, within the W.T.C Complex in the financial district of Manhattan, New York City.
FREEDOM TOWER
After exiting from the underground metro, we came across ground zero of the 9/11 collapse of WTC, by the fanatical Islamic terrorists in which 2977 hapless people were killed in the dastardly attack on the twin towers. We could see the memorial park built as a stirring tribute and remembrance to all men, women, and children who lost their lives on that horrible forenoon. Beside the memorial park, we could see on the ground zero, a 104 storied imposing building of 1776 feet height that has come up, which is symbolic of the declaration of Independence. It is a post 9/11 construction, and the foundation stone was laid on 27.4.2005. The building is designed by an internationally famous architect, David Childs, who designed Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Freedom Tower is also known as One World Trade Center. The amazing thing in the Freedom Tower is that you can climb up to the famous observation deck, and from a highest point in the city of sky scrapers to amuse yourself with the panorama of New York City. It is learnt that there are more than 6000 high rise buildings in New York City. Unlike other cities, the city of New York expands vertically.
New Amsterdam to New York: Name Change
New York City, formerly known as New Amsterdam, offers so many historical land marks, architectural marvels from many different periods from the Dutch era in the first half of seventieth century to the modern times. New Amsterdam was a 17th century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The colonial Dutch established a fort naming it Fort Amsterdam in 1625 on the southern tip of Manhattan, the confluence of the Hudson and East rivers to protect their trading activities of fur trade operations and participation in the Atlantic Slave trade, in Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. In 1664 the British colonial power of the neighbouring New England took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York after the Duke of York, brother of British King Charles II. What was once New Amsterdam became New York City’s downtown. The colonist Dutch had constructed a wall on the Northern side of their settlement in the lower Manhattan for protection from the British and Pirates. The fort was in use (1626-1788) during the Anglo-Dutch wars and the American War of Independence. After the fort’s demolition, Government house was constructed on the strategic site as a possible house for the President of the United State of America. The site is now occupied by the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House which also houses the National Museum of American Indian.
New York City means freedom - the freedom to walk anywhere at any time of the day. There’s always something new to discover on every street. Seeing lots of pedestrians on the streets and less vehicular traffic, feeling inspired and energetic, we decided to walk through the Wall Street areas up to Brooklyn Bridge. New York City offers so many historical landmarks, architecture from different periods, incessant cultural events, countless attractions, and vibrant nightlife until the wee hours of the morning. Therefore, New York City for the first timer is as baffling and as challenging as to which iconic places to be visited among hundreds of popular sites to savor the uniqueness of the Megapolis for real understanding of how interesting and diverse this city really is. Considering our one-day program for New York City and second day reserved for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island visits, we proposed to visit few of the iconic and historical sites.
CHARGING BULL
The most visited place, in the wall street, is the iconic charging Bull in front of the New York stock exchange, founded in 1792; 229 years ago, at 11 wall street, Lower Manhattan. It is world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalisation of its companies at US dollars 30.1 trillion as of February 2018. The Charging Bull, sometimes referred to as the Bull of Wall Street, is a bronze sculpture that stands on Broadway just north of Bowling Green in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The 7100-pound bronze sculpture, standing 11 feet tall and measuring 16 feet long, depicts a bull, the symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity. Charging Bull is a popular tourist destination that draws thousands of people a day, symbolising Wall Street and the Financial District. As usual, plenty of tourists were crowding around the statue of the Charging Bull for a picture and we waited our turn for a picture with the world famous bull.
FEDERAL HALL
After taking a snap with the iconic Charging Bull, the next attraction was a nearby historic building at 26 Wall Street in the financial district of New York City. A tall and imposing statue of George Washington installed at the entrance of the federal style building signifying its importance, beckoned us to pay a visit. This building, served as the city’s first Town Hall, was completed in 1703. It was the site where the colonial Stamp Act Congress met to draft its message to king George III claiming entitlement to the same rights as the residents of Britain and protesting “taxation without representation”. After the American Revolution, in 1785, the building served as the meeting place for the Congress of the Confederation, the nation’s first central government under the Articles of Confederation. With the establishment of United States federal government in 1789, it was renamed Federal Hall, as it hosted the 1st Congress and was the place where George Washington was sworn in as the nation’s first president.
TRINITY CHURCH
Trinity Church is a historic parish church at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway located at 75-Broadway in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. After walking through the financial district, Trinity Church is like a breath of fresh air. Squeezed snugly among the dominating high rises at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, Trinity Church has been holding its own in the bustling city since 1697. Trinity Church is a popular tourist attraction, and it’s also a church that is still very much in use today. While strolling in the adjacent cemetery we could locate the grave of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United State of America, killed in a duel with the then U.S vice president Aaron Burr in 1804.
TRUMP TOWER
Trump Tower, in the 5th avenue at 721-725, Midtown Manhattan, is a mix use sky scraper. Trump Tower serves as the headquarters of Trump Organisations. Additionally, it houses the penthouse condominium residence of the building's namesake and developer who served as the 45th American president. We have taken a photograph, keeping the iconic 58 floor building standing at a height of 664 feet.
BROOKLYN BRIDGE
The Brooklyn Bridge is less than 1.5 Miles from lower Manhattan and taking a right turn we approached the bridge from the west end. Brooklyn Bridge stands as an Engineering Marvel over the East River connecting Manhattan Island and Brooklyn. It is a two tire bridge, the lower six lane tire is for vehicular traffic and the upper tier is for the pedestrians and bicycles. This bridge has become an icon of New York City since its opening. Over the years, the bridge has been used as the location of various stunt and performances, as well as several crimes and attacks. The bridge has been shown in films such as Annie Hall, Gangs of New York, I am Legend, The Avenger, and Godzilla. This bridge also features in Shahrukh Khan starrer Hindi movies like Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. As we enjoyed a walk towards the Brooklyn borough in mid-afternoon, the slanting sun ray was ideal for a photo shoot. While walking across the bridge we enjoyed the city skyline in front of us. After crossing the bridge leisurely to the East end Brooklyn, we hired a cab to reach the U.N Headquarters before sun set. Fortunately the cab driver was a Sindhi from Pakistan who talked in fluent Hindi and we had a pleasurable time with a man from our subcontinent. Before dropping at the UN Plaza, he wished us all the best. We availed of the opportunity to take some pictures of the 40 Storied UNO office complex, an International Territory.
TIMES SQUARE
Formerly known as Longacre Square, Times Square was named in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the then newly erected Times Building. Times Square functions as a town square, but is not geometrically a square; it is closer in shape to a bowtie, with two triangles emanating roughly north and south from 45th street, where Seventh Avenue intersects Broadway. Time Square is a busy intersection of art and commerce, where scores of advertisements-electric, neon and illumined signs and ‘Zipper’ news crawls-view for viewers’ attention. For the first timer, Times Square can be a magical place of blinking lights and dazzling displays. The major avenues running through the Square have been closed to traffic and turned into pedestrian zone for tourists to slowly walk along, or sit at tables while eating overpriced snacks, but the excitement of dining in Times Square convinces some people to splurge. At the center of the square to the left side of a MacDonald’s departmental outlet on 42nd Street, Madame Tussauds New York, is a much visited museum since its opening on November 15, 2000. As we had e-booked our entry, we availed of the late evening in the multi-storied museum seeing the wax models of world-famous notable figures – Leaders, Actors, Musicians, Athletes, Icons and Characters. It was heartening to find the models of Mahatma Gandhi, Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan amongst renowned personalities of world fame. After watching a 3D Comic Movie in the museum, when we exited, it was 10 PM and we headed for the nearby TS-42 street metro station to avail tube train to Jersey Town, nearer to our hotel.
New York City is all about the hustle and bustle, whether people are travelling for pleasure or business; the history, opportunity and energy of the megapolis is unparalleled. The exhilarating sightseeing in a free atmosphere infuses energy and positive vibes, and the marathon walking is never tiring. Though we had undertaken a hectic journey for about 12 hours, we never experienced boredom or felt exhausted; but as soon as we reached our hotel room, we lapsed into deep slumber after finishing our dinner.
STATUE OF LIBERTY
Next morning, we got ready early for the much awaited visit to the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. We drove in our SUV up to the ferry pier and availed of the first cruise to the Liberty Island via Ellis Island. After a 15 minute cruise in a Statue Cruise ferry, we arrived at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. Ellis Island served as an immigration inspection station in between 1892-1954 for millions of immigrants arriving into U.S.A. Nearly 20 million immigrants were processed at Ellis Land center. According to an estimate by the History Chanel about 40 percent of U.S population can trace their ancestry to the immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island. We could see some photographs of the immigrants in their folk costumes in display in the Ellis Island National Museum. After an educative visit to the Ellis Island, our cruise sailed placidly to the Liberty Island, the seat of statue of Liberty. We enjoyed the panoramic view of Manhattan from the deck of the cruise.
Statue of Liberty is a much visited colossal neoclassical iconic monument on Liberty Island. Its height, foundation to tip of the torch, is 305 feet. Though lift facility is up to the pedestal level, we ventured to climb the narrow 354 steps up to the crown of the statue without much difficulty. The lady guard in the crown was very kind to take our pictures on our request. The copper statue designed by Fedrerick Bartoldi, a French sculptor, was built by Gustave Eiffel and dedicated on 28th October 1886. It was a gift to the U.S.A, from people of France. In the afternoon we returned to our hotel and enjoyed our dinner and took a nap. Our date with the biggest metropolis came to an end in the evening when we left for Boston. The return journey was quiet, and sober, ideal for recapitulating the thrilling walks through the iconic city of New York.
The city of New York, considered as the banking center of the world, overtaking the city of London, since the Suez crisis in 1956, has been a hub that influences the world we live in. I have been fortunate to visit the city 4 times during my stay in United States, and now feel that the city has left everlasting memories with nostalgic ways to reckon with its pace and vibrancy. This is the place where the best of the best come to chase and achieve their dreams. Or as Fitzgerald writes, “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all. . . .’ Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.”.
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.
It was some time after school reopening, I remember. On one of those Sundays when all six children were captives inside the old sprawling bungalow. The south west monsoon threw a wet blanket on our plans of playing SAT. The creaky doors were safely latched and we were getting restless playing with Ammini the cat and her four kittens. Chitra and Sheela, my cousins, were busy making pink and blue paperboats but the boats lay anchored on the cement floor as the doors remained shut. We looked wistfully through the barred windows at the beautiful big puddles and tiny streams flowing across the courtyard.
Grandma was doing a spring cleaning. Her focus was the prayer room.
“Anyone ready to help me? She called out.
I ran to her. She was getting ready to welcome Karkidakom(Aashaad), the Ramayana month.
From the sanctum sanctorum of the puja room Grandma fished out an old picture of SrI Ram and Sitadevi with Lakshman. All three had crowns adorning their heads. Ram and Lakshman had bows and arrows in their hands. Ram was blue skinned, The brothers were both bare-chested and the difference stood him out. Sitadevi’s face was delicate like a white lily and Laxman looked the epitome of devotion. Grandma took out the picture, cleaned it reverentially and placed it at the centre near the brass lamp.
“Grandma, why is Ram’s body blue and Lakshman’s white?”
She gave me a surprised look.
Neel saroj komalam ruchim Ramam bhaje shyamalam.
Out popped from her lips, a Sanskrit shloka.
“ He is a blue lotus. His eyes are like soft blue petals. Rama and Krishna are Vishnu avatars. Lakshman is not.” For the time being, that satisfied me.
At lunch time ,we had a visitor. A petite, middle aged lady – Rugmini Teacher, my mother’s friend. She was dusky, with curly tresses falling all over her face.
She wore a pair of stone studded gold bangles on one hand and a big dialed men’s watch on the other. In her jerry bordered cream cotton sari and long, gold beaded chain with rudraksham she looked like Goddess Saraswathi to me , minus the veena. Her voice more than made up for the missing veena. It was soft like silk and honey sweet. The big red vermillion bindi and the sandal paste tikka above it , the tulsi leaves in her hair - there was an aura about her, and a faint fragrance around her, As though you were in the temple interiors. Grandma explained the scent as that of the sandalpaste prasadam of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, she put on her forehead.
Rugmini was a Sanskrit scholar who worked as music teacher in a Government school. Born in an affluent family she was the eldest of seven children four of them girls. Her father was a wellknown Ayurvedic physician. She inherited his dark skin and divinity. Her siblings were all fair like their mother and led prosperous ordinary lives - sisters married to business families and brothers in legal and medical professions. Her dark eyes had a faraway look as though searching for someone in the distant horizon. Her diamond studded nose ring and studs lit up her face when she spoke.
Rugmini chose to remain single. But she loved children. Teaching them songs and entertaining them with stories was her passion. This time she regaled us with the escapades of the young Krishna . How Krishna stole butter from homes and how he was caught and questioned by the village women.
Is butter that tasty? And how does it float atop a pot of buttermilk? We assailed her with doubts.
Grandma came to our rescue. The story of Krishna taking the butter from a pot hung from the ceiling was going to be enacted. A few leaves cut from the coconut trees were lying near the well and Grandma squatted in the courtyard pulling up her white mundu ( dhoti) to make a uri ( pot hanger) out of the moistened leaves. It was an intricate job, folding the leaves to resemble a leafy mat and pinning them skillfully in the shape of a hanger .The job done, she hoisted the uri onto the hook on the ceiling overlooking the ammikallu (grinding stone) in the kitchen, making it easy for Krishna to scramble up. She then told us to wait till the butter was ready. I couldn’t resist the temptation to discover how the butter was made. I was amazed at the way Grandma was beating the curd with a wooden rod with a flower shaped bottom.
Quietly I asked her “ From where will you get the butter? I can see only liquid here.”
She smiled and said “It is hiding inside the buttermilk..”
“Who has put it there?”
“Who else but God..”
“Ït means God wanted us children to take it .Is n’t it so? No wonder Krishna took it all.”
She gave me a big smile. I watched as she deftly removed the butter and put it in a clay bowl half filled with water. She then ransacked the storeroom and came up with a small mudpot, the butter holder. Transferring the butter into the pot, she told Bayiamma, the housemaid to climb on the kitchen stool and place the pot on the uri. There it was dangling, gently moving like the pendulum . She was saving it for tomorrow morning.
Lunch time over and Grandma was lying down for her siesta .I lay down by her side.
“Ammumma, what is Teacher’s problem?”I asked quietly. I was her favourite and I knew she could n’t keep secrets from me.
“Oh, that! She is facing health issues. She wants her horoscope written. The old one is lost. She knows her date of birth but no one knows the time. Poor thing, she is the eldest and her mother died when she was young. Her star should be either Pooyam or Punartham from what she says. Who knows for sure? Even astrologers don’t know.”
What difference does it make? You need a star to be named as yours. Wasn’t that enough? Some day in the year to celebrate as birthday accompanied by temple visit and special puja? Why worry so much over it?
My nap was broken by a loud sound from the kitchen. Bayiamma shouting “Ayyo Kunje”(Oh! Dear!) and other voices all speaking together .I scooted towards the kitchen.
It was a perfect disaster scene. Appu had put the stool on the grinding stone and tried to climb on it in his attempt to steal Grandma’s butter, living up to the role of Krishna. Not being a God, he fell down when the stool toppled and the mudpot with butter crashed , the buttermilk spilling all over his curly hair and face.
“Appuchettan Krishnan aayi”( Appu has become Krishna) hailed the little ones, clapping their hands.
There was a small wound below his right knee where the edge of the stool hit him and it was bleeding. In between wails he pointed fingers at his accomplices accusing them. With a handy first aid box Amma managed to control the scene, ably assisted by Rugmini teacher.
“Ammummayum kure pillarum”(Grandma and her kids!) she muttered under her breath.
The evening was uneventful, thunder and lightning accompanying the rain. I slept in my usual place, next to Grandma. The raindrops clattering on the rooftop of the tiled house sang a lullaby and I drifted off to slumber. But I was awake, prancing about in a silky frock picking jasmine buds from a beautiful garden..There were wild flowers all around me and I could hear birds singing.
“Which is this place?’ I could hear myself wondering aloud.
And then I saw her.
Rugmini Teacher sitting on the steps leading to a pond., her face crumpled in sorrow and eyes focused faraway.
Why is she here? I wondered. I got the answer soon.
I didn’t see him coming. Was he hiding? Did he just drop from above?
I first saw his silhouette. Then, as he turned to embrace Rugmini teacher, I saw the mesmerizing eyes - like the soft petals of the blue lotus - the garland on his bare chest, the acquiline nose, wide forehead- and the gem studded crown over his head . And then I saw his face. I was stunned. It was blue. As if to confirm my guess, he gently moved aside and I saw the bow and arrow he held in his hand. Oh God! . Lord Sri Ram. I thought I saw him smile and then he was gone!
I woke up late and the rain had stopped. Rugmini Teacher was nowhere in sight. Had she left?
I found Grandma in her vegetable garden. “Where is Teacher?”
“She has gone to Padmanabhaswamy temple.Why?”
“I saw Sree Ram coming down to embrace her”
“W w whaat? ‘ Her voice and the astonishment in her eyes jolted me.
She listened intently to my story. Then sat down and pulled me to her lap and kissed me on the head.
“Makkale,(child!) you have the answer for Rugmini. God heard her prayers. Rama.. Rama!”
***
The birthstar of Sriram, as per scriptures, is PUNARVASU or PUNARTHAM.
G K Maya took to writing after she retired as General Manager of Canara Bank. She has done her Masters in English Literature from University College Trivandrum. Her passion for books and interest in people led her on and she ended up as a writer by accident.
Many of us might be knowing that if flowers are plucked an evening before, then not to make it "Baasi" i.e. unfit for Pooja, we are asked to put 2 leaves of Tulsi (Basil). Well, the scientific facts are lost behind this practice and reduced to a superstition. I'd been intrigued by all our so-called superstitions, because most of the practices were suggested by very learned Vedacharyas or Ayurvedic experts, but with time they have lost their original intention.
Now coming back to Tulsi, being a researcher in Biochemistry and most of my research works hovering around Oxidative stress and antioxidants, I was attracted towards this superstition. Most of us are aware that Tulsi is a very good antioxidant, but how many of us know that Tulsi plant gives out oxygen day in and day out! Not just Tulsi but Peepal plant that is usually married to a banyan tree also gives out oxygen 24x7.
Usually plants do photosynthesis during daytime and take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen but at night they too transpire like us.
Since I came to know about this fact about Tulsi, not 2 leaves but a generous twig I took out and kept with the flowers. On the top I sprinkled little water and closed the polythene loosely. Usually the Tagar flowers wilt within 6-7 hours but they stayed fresh for more than 24 hours!!
I didn't extend the experiment further because this lesser mortal is also afraid of God's wrath...Kahin ye bolke shraap naa de de ki, ek evening allow kiya toh Tulsi daal ke 3 din se same flowers diye ja rahi hai???? (Since I allowed for one evening this lady is going on offering me old flowers).
Jokes apart, Botanist may take benefit out of this small experiment.
Regarding Banyan and Peepal marriage ....next post
This is my view on ripped jeans...sorry progressive women, I can't agree with you that one can wear anything since it is our own body. Had we been in a society where one can roam around in nude or in any kind of dresses with absolute freedom, then such a question would not have arisen.
I ask all of you, why the girls have to behave so silly? Do they really have to flaunt their assets? Are they not befooling themselves in the name of gender equality and freedom?
Where is the gender equality? Are the men accepted well, when they unbutton top of their shirts? Do they challenge to come in "shorts" to college? do they roam around keeping their pants unzipped? Are they not asked to wear formals to work and educational institutions?
Why a girl has to flaunt or attract the other gender when we have a poor Male to female ratio already? In all other animal species, the beauty attributes are given to the male counterparts e.g., mane of lion, feathers of a peacock and so on. Then why in human race alone, girls are trying to grab attention thus?
Ripped jeans don't look good on anybody male or female, to be frank enough. It gives a sign of negativity and poverty at first glance. In the name of fashion, aren't we inviting negative vibes?
Moreover, your careless behaviour may not harm you but may actually harm another sister of yours indirectly tempted by your half-clad body. The victims of rape and molestation are usually the meek ones, the decently dressed ones, the poor and unprotected ones, from the common mass. You may hop into your large sedan in your ripped jeans but somewhere you have ignited the fire of lust in the mind of some spectator which satiates on a weakling.
What attracts us more…..when a veil flies off a well-clad face of a young lady or an unclad face?
Similar is the case of ripped jeans in which parts of the body jots out which should have been under cover and maybe that is more alluring than a short pant.
And dear girls, you all are queens. Groom yourself as one.
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.
She is one of the major deities in Hinduism and Historians trace the earliest depiction of her to the seals of Indus Valley Civilization. There are several hints of her in the early vedic texts.Her mention in Hindu mythology appears only in the post Gupta period 1500 years ago. Earliest images as we know are from Ajanta and Ellie's caves in Maharashtra. According to the legends she was created by the Gods to defeat the demon Mahishashura, who could be killed only by a female.
"Durga" a sanskrit word that means a "Fort"that is protected and difficult to reach.
She is seen as a motherly figure, riding a tiger, the Goddess of Preservation, Power, Energy, Strength and Protection. She is worshipped in the eastern and the northern parts of India with much fervour and enthusiasm.
This festival exemplifies the victory of good over evil.
In the northern parts... "Navratri " literally meaning nine nights, in which the nine forms of Ma Durga.. "NavaDurga"are celebrated.People observe fast and offer prayers. On the last day an effigy of Ravana is burnt stuffed with fireworks,symbolising victory of good over evil.
She symbolises the divine force,positive energy used against the negative energies of evil and wickedness.
Ma Durga protects her devotees who worship her with full faith and devotion. It is also believed that she is the combined form of powers of Goddess::Lakshmi, Kali and Saraswati. She has eight hands carrying weapons ----chakra, conch, sword, bow , arrow, lotus flower, trishul,club,forgiveness and Blessings. She rides the tiger indicating the unlimited power.
The nine forms of Ma Durga are :::::::
- Shailputri...... hibiscus flowers are offered
- Brahmacharini...... chrysanthemums are offered
- Chandraghanta.... lotus flowers are offered
- Kushmanda..... jasmine flowers are offered
- Sakandmata.... yellow rose flowers are offered
- Katyayani Devi...... marigold flowers are offered
- Kalaratri..... red passion flowers are offered
- Mahagauri...... arabian jasmine flowers are offered
- Siddhidatri.... champa flowers are offered
Ma Durga adorns a red sari and Red colour hibiscus is loved by her and also others such as Lotus, Aparajita or Shankhpushpa, Red Kaner, Kadamba tree. Aparajita means the one whom no one can defeat. Flowers are an integral part of daily worship routine for Hindus. Offering flowers at the feet of the deity symbolizes the act of offering your purest feeling.
Mahalaya heralds the advent of Goddess Durga to Earth. It is observed on the amavasaya day in the Hindu month of ashwin. She is the ultimate power.. "Shakti".Also known as "Triyambake"which means she has three eyes.... Agni, Surya, Chandra. The mode or vahana that she uses for her arrival and departure indicates how the year will unfold. If she comes on an elephant means peace and prosperity. If she comes on a horse means destruction, if she comes on the palanquin indicates plague.
Sindoor khela is observed by Bengalis on the day of the visarjan. Women are dressed in white sarees with red border, symbolising the power of womanhood that will bring good luck. They perform "Devi Baran"and bid farewell. Perform Aarti and apply sindoor on the forehead and feet of the Goddess and then on each other.
Women get tearful on the day of the visarjan(the idols are submerged in water) as she leaves and her devotees awaiting for her arrival the following year .
"Sarva mangal mangalye
Shive sarvath sadhike
Saranye triyambike gauri
Narayani namastute "!!
"Namastasye Namastate Namoh Namah"!!
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
THE LITERACY BRIDGE - IN NEED OF REPAIR
Literacy for a human-centred recovery - narrowing the digital divide.
The current global literacy rate is 86.3%. It is decent, keeping in mind the fact that some unprivileged groups are unable to provide for the education of their children. But, is this number going to improve any time soon? Will India ever reach the 90% literacy rate goal, which seemed to linger in our reach before it plummeted back into the unforeseeable shadow of the Novel Corona Virus? The latter may seem quite far-fetched at the moment, so let's begin with the first one.
Wouldn't it be tragic, seeing a close friend of yours whisked away -- or rather yanked away from the opportunity to pursue higher education. This is the exact story of my grandmother, who was almost as old as me when she got married. But, most women in those times didn't feel crushed or suffocated, nor did they embrace the fact that they didn't need to follow their dreams. All they did was adapt. Adapt to a world where their voices were merely whispers, unheard and often ignored. Some of you may now be wondering why linger on the past when the present is definitely much better? Trust me, it isn't.
This extreme discrimination is making a comeback in the 21st century. A digitised world, where all lives have equal opportunities. A digitised world, where classes have shifted online to salvage the dipping literacy rate. A digitised world, where those who don't have access to gadgets are left behind. Left behind so much so that, they resort to their ancient damage-control method of having their barely teenage daughters married off. Because they are not able to afford the new necessities for online classes.
A laptop for each child is putting so much pressure on families who are now mortgaging their homes to pay for it. And on the other hand, there are the other families, who set up a marriage alliance to keep their economic status from nose diving any more into the depths. This digital divide has become more of an issue during covid and has just begun to make the literacy rate worldwide plunge ever so slightly that we may never be able to foresee the collapse of our dreams for a 90% literacy rate.
But all hopes are not gone. There are governments and NGOs who are striving hard to provide families with technological devices. And this has been a huge help to many households who received laptops and tablets to smoothen the transition into the online stream of learning. All that is needed of people is that they shouldn't give up hope, hope for a better tomorrow for their daughters; hope for a post-covid world, where the economy and the literacy are still intact and hope for a truly digitised world, where no one is left behind.
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.
Hello, I am Shruti Sarma. I am 19 years old and I am from Guwahati, Assam. Surrounded by hills, thick forests, tea gardens and sparkling Brahmaputra river, it is one of the most picturesque states of India.
Currently, I am doing MBBS from IMS and SUM hospital, Bhubaneswar Odisha. Although ‘Dr.’ is the title with which I am going to be addressed with in future, my first identity is that of a Shri Krishna devotee. From the mere age of five, I accepted Shri Krishna as my ideal and started worshipping him. I also used to imitate his childhood activities like that of stealing butter by carrying an empty pot in my hand and a peacock feathers tucked in my ponytail. Whenever there was a family function, I would dress up like this and used to say “Look! I am Krishna, I have stolen butter and now I am going to relish it with great delight." One of my cousins used to call me Meera Bai whenever she came to visit us.
Years passed by and it was my 12th birthday. I received four copies of Shrimad Bhagvad Gita belonging to different publications from my relatives. I loved them all but my favourite one had a bright yellow cover page with the illustration of Shri Krishna bestowing the divine knowledge of Gita to Arjun. The slokas were written in both Sanskrit and English and the explanation was in English. I always used to keep it with me.
With the passage of time, I became seventeen and was preparing for my CBSE 12th board exams. I opted for science stream and my subjects were English, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physical Education and Mathematics. I was then a student of Sai Vikash Junior College. I found Physics a bit tough and so I gave more time to that subject. I practised with previous years' questions, sample papers, reference books etc.
Finally the fateful day arrived. It was 5th March 2019, when CBSE was going to conduct Physics exam for class 12. I was quite well prepared for the exam and arrived at the examination center at around 9:45 a.m. The exam was scheduled from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. a duration of 3 hours. The question paper was distributed at 10:15 a. m. 15 minutes were given for reading the paper. The question paper consisted of 4 sections, A, B, C and D. Section A had 5 questions of 1 mark each, B consisted of 7 questions of 2 marks each, C had 12 questions of 3 marks each and D consisted of 3 questions of 5 marks each. I read the questions thoroughly and to my surprise, I knew the answers to all of them. That year the format had changed. In the previous years, the questions were mostly direct and theoretical but this time, it was more application based. So I started solving them one by one. I solved the questions of sections A and B easily but section C had witty and time consuming questions. Although I knew how to solve each one of them but the questions comprised of very long numericals which consumed a lot of time. The tables turned and I realized that I would not be able to complete the paper on time. It was already 1:15 and the exam would get over in the next 15 minutes. Sadly, I had to leave all the 3 questions unattempted. It was really painful for me for I knew how to solve them but had to leave them unattempted due to lack of time. I submitted my incomplete answer sheet and left the classroom. My legs were too tired to walk due to the shock. I somehow dragged myself out of the classroom and started to walk out. One of my friends asked how the exam was but I simply ignored her and kept walking. Everything in front of me was blurry, for my eyes were filled with tears. It was the first time I couldn’t complete a question paper. And that too when it was one of the most important exams of an Indian student's life! The fact that I could not complete the paper on time gave me a painful shock. I exited the school campus and sat inside my car. My driver drove me home and my mom asked me how the exam was. “Fine” I said, with a fake smile on my face. That evening when I sat down to study for my next paper, I simply couldn’t concentrate, the horrors of the day kept flashing in my mind. I felt choked and had a vomiting sensation out of anxiety and fear. The events that happened that day was killing me from inside and I was also not able to share what was going on within me.
At that time, a sloka from Shrimad Bhagvad Gita ran through my mind
“Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana
Ma Karmaphalaheturburma te sangoshtvokarmani”
Meaning : You have the right to work but never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive nor let your attachment be the cause of inaction.
And then another sloka ran through my mind
“ Dukheshvanudvignamanah sukheshu vigata sprihah
Vitraag bhaykrodh sthitadhir muniruchyate”
Meaning: He whose mind is unaffected by misery or pleasure and is free from all bonds and attachments, fear and anger, he is a man of steady wisdom and decisive intellect.
Suddenly a boost of power spread inside me. I was not feeling weak anymore. This time with double determination, I sat on my chair to prepare for my upcoming papers. With new found strength and hope, I was determined to overcome my fear. The war of Mahabharat had still not ended, I realized. Everyone is battling their own challenges in life. I too was fighting my own battle but my charioteer was Shri Krishna, that’s where the difference was. The Arjun inside me was awakened and I studied with much more dedication. I dedicated each and every word that I read to Krishna. I studied day and night. I was not aware of sunrise and sunset. My only goal was to earn all the knowledge in the books. My parents and teachers had a lot of expectations from me and I couldn’t let them down. But most importantly, I couldn’t let myself down.
In the upcoming days, I wrote my papers confidently and completed all of them. During those days, an online petition was signed by students across India which stated that the physics paper was the toughest in the ten years history of CBSE and demanded a retest. Many students also committed suicide in India due the physics test.
Finally it was the result day. We were not informed before hand. CBSE declared the results suddenly without any prior notice. When I got to know that the results had been announced, I was terrified, not for other subjects but for physics. I was really very nervous. The results were announced in online mode. I entered the necessary details on the window displayed on my laptop screen and started praying. The results were displayed. To my satisfaction, I had scored a very good percentage. That day my mom's phone was ringing continously with friends and relatives calling, each one of whom she answered with a wide smile on her face. Next day, I got to know that I scored the highest in the entire school campus and was the campus topper. I looked at the Shri Krishna statue in my room and thanked him with a smile on my face, for he was my dear friend who stood with me, who helped me to get up and fight back when I was feeling weak. Another sloka ran through my mind:
“Yatra yogeshvarah Krishna yatra partho dhanurdharah
Tatra shrir vijayi bhutir dhruva nitir matirmama”
Meaning : Wherever there is Shri Krishna, the Lord of all Yoga and wherever there is Arjun, the supreme archer, there will also certainly be unending opulence, victory and righteousness. Of this I am certain.
Shruti Sarma is currently an MBBS student of IMS and SUM hospital, Bhubaneswar. She is from Guwahati, Assam and is also an artist, a Sattriya dancer and a writer. She completed her schooling from Delhi Public School, Guwahati and her higher secondary studies from Sai Vikash Junior college, Guwahati. She has also been awarded the Mofizuddin Ahmed Hazarika Literary Award in 2016 for the best junior Assamese author.
It was a wintry Sunday morning. At 8 AM mists were still reigning the sky hindering the glazing sunlight to scatter all around. A coziness and langour suffused everything. Sunanda pulled her blanket up to cover her face and linger for some more time on the bed and enjoy the charm exuded by the cool December morning. But luck was not with her. She heard somebody calling her name very close to her bed. She threw off the blanket and tried to find out what was happening. She was bewildered to see Shantanu standing near her bed with a steaming cup of tea in his hands. During their 35yrs of togetherness she had never seen him serving a cup of tea to her. Is everything alright with him? She rubbed her bleary eyes and looked towards the window.The foggy dawning light was trying to seep into her room through the slit in the curtain. Melodius birds' song was drifting in. She could not notice anything different in nature today. So what made Shantanu to act like this?
Shantanu noticed Sunanda's puzzled face and offered the cup of tea he brought for her. She was a bit hesitant as she was not accustomed to bed tea but could not avoid the nostalgia of hot tea in the morning. "Where is yours"; she asked. Shantanu replied that he had already taken it and this cup he has made solely for her. Though she was exhilareted by these words she didn't express it and silently started sipping the tea. She was more obsessed with the hot tea than with Shantanu. Very often she felt the need of somebody to make tea for her in morning and she would relaxedly enjoy the pleasing taste of it to her hearts content. But nothing of this sort ever happened.
Tides of thoughts flooded her mind. Sunanda and Shantanu were the only members residing in the house. The children after finishing studies had joined in their job and settled with their family in different cities. Shantanu was a different type of person. He was a dedicated govt servant during his service career. He was such an workoholic that he had no time to chit and chat a bit or sit for sometime and share some feelings with his wife Sunanda.
.After his retirement there was a little bit change in his daily routine. Very early morning he goes out for a walk. After returning he sits down to read the news paper. Sunanda used to make tea for both. But Shantanu was engrossed so deeply in news paper that he could hardly find time to have the tea. Sunanda becomes fed up after warming the cold tea two three times. She raises her voice and tells Shantanu that if the tea becomes cold again, he will have to make it himself and should not call her. Shantanu does not react a bit and silently finishes it. But his full concentration is focussed on news paper.
When children were with them he had shouldered all their responsibilities. In addition to his own official duty he had never neglected his household works .From morning to night he was engaged in marketing, taking children to tuition, school, looked after their study with equal attention to his job. Sunanda after a whole day's tiresome work waited for him to spend time with him, to share her feelings with him about different aspects of day's happenings, the trivial problems that Sunanda wanted to discuss with him and relax her mind. But Shantanu had no free time for Sunanda.
So many years have passed. Even at this mature age also Sunanda feels a void in some corner of her heart when she thinks about Shantanu's behaviour towards her. She has never noticed any interest on his part to come and give her company at tea time or to spend sometime with his life partner leisurely. Like other housewives she wants to smile with him on the pleasurable moments in their day to day life and she wants to lighten her heart if she is hurt by some incidents. But after finishing his dinner Shantanu would again be busy with his mobile and tv. He tries to convince Sunanda that after a whole day’s hard work he needs badly some relaxation of mind before sleep. Sunanda becomes frustrated with this type of indifference of Shantanu towards her. Is she not overpressured with household work? The emotional bonding between a husband and wife is something different, above all the busy life and hard work. Why Shantanu does not understand it. Is it unusual to expect to spend some quality time with her husband beyond the humdrum existence of daily life?
Sunanda can't deny that she had immense freedom on managing the house, spending money as per her wish in shopping and other activities. Shantanu had never imposed any financial restraint on Sunanda. Her friends call her lucky to have a husband like Shantanu in her life. Is she really lucky? Sunanda feels a tinge of melancholy echoing somewhere in her heart out of such shallow comments of her friends.
Sunanda tries to contemplate. In true sense what more a woman wants. A non-interfering husband, freedom to spend your life according to your own accord, to shop, to move and to enjoy the life fully. Is it all that a woman needs? Her heart does not give a nod to it.
Sunanda is beautiful. It is natural for a woman to expect her husband to praise her glamour and admire her when she dresses up with beautiful clad and jewellery. Her heart craves for such small happy moments. A few words of appreciation and a fascinating look to her beauty by her man enraptures the heart of a woman. Many times Sunanda has given subtle hints of the matter that niggles at her mind but Shantanu is not heedful . His philosophy is "Love is divine. It should not be expressed in words. It should be felt in your inner heart". Will Shantanu ever realise, how much thrilling it would have been if Shantanu would himself show his interest in buying something for her; it may be a mediocre gift. Sunanda remains silent. Sense of self respect precludes her from raising such issues any more.Time flew so quickly...Glamour, thrill everything has declined. Appreciation, fascination and romance does not mean anything at this age. It has become a normal situation in her life and Sunanda tries to remain composed in every situation.
But what made Shantanu change like this all of a sudden? Of course since some days Shantanu was a bit thoughtful and absent minded, but she didn't like to disturb him. Sunanda had finished her tea but sat dumbfounded with the empty cup in her hand. She came to her sense when she heard Shantanu saying "Sunanda do you remember Prasant? I met him a few days back during my morning walk". "Who is Prasant?" asked Sunanda. Shantanu with a tone of despair told her "How can you forget Prasant? He was my classmate and so close to me. He used to come to our house few years back at my previous place of posting so frequently. Of course many years have passed and we have no contact with each other since long, but how could you forget?" Sunanda was not interested at all to listen about anybody at this hour. Shantanu continued. "Prasant was very upset. He cried like a child when he met me that day. He had a serious accident some months back. He lost his wife and he himself was seriously injured. After a long hospital stay he has recovered and discharged from hospital recently. He broke down before me while narrating the incident.
Oh! So this is the fact that made her beloved husband's attitude and behaviour to change like this. The lady who was for him a taken it for granted person for so long, has become important for him overnight. The dreadful thought of losing the life partner perhaps has perplexed him. Sunanda looked towards Shantanu intensely in a penetrating gaze. Soul deep sorrow had filled his face and a feeling of guilt was spinning in his heart. All of a sudden he had realised how important Sunanda was for him. A sense of repentance was clearly visible on his countenance.
Shantanu put his arms on her shoulder and said in caressing voice, "Sunanda! What are you thinking? Will you agree to what I say today?" What he will tell her? Sunanda was enthusiastic. She heard him say, "Today is Sunday. We will go for a long drive. I remember how you were crazy to go out on such winter mornings and enjoy the mesmerising bracing air and warmth of thin sunray. I have asked the driver to come". Shantanu remembers about her passion? It was hard to believe. "What about our breakfast?" asked Sunanda. Shantanu said "We will have our breakfast in a restaurant on the way. One more thing. Please don't wear the dull brown saree that you always use to wear. I have brought for you a blue silk saree. In blue colour you look so charming. I will be happy if you wear that."
Lo! Why the spring in her life appeared so late? She looked through her window towards the old deciduous Banyan tree outside her boundary. It appeared to her more pitiable today. Is it a day dream she is having? Is this behaviour a true transformation of his heart? How long he will be able to sustain such feeling in him? Thousands of such questions threw her mind into a whirlpool of hallucination. She could not think beyond it. At this age there is no meaning to think over it. Isn't she happy to hear what she had longed since decades from Shantanu?.
Sunanda broke into a smile, and got ready, wearing the blue silk saree, to accompany Shantanu for a drive. The winter morning looked so serene, so soothing to her!
Dr.Radharani Nanda completed MBBS from SCB Medical college, Cuttack and post graduation in Ophthalmology from MKCG Medical College, Berhampur. She joined in service under state govt and worked as Eye specialist in different DHQ hospitals and SDH. She retired as Director from Health and Family Welfare Department Govt of Odisha. During her service career she has conducted many eye camps and operated cataract surgery on lakhs of blind people in remote districts as well as costal districts of Odisha. She is the life member of AIOS and SOS. She writes short stories and poems in English and Odia. At present she works as Specialist in govt hospitals under NUHM.
The Principal advised the girl to forget her boy friend. In the process he didn't forget to mention that the boy was not only a cheat, but a rascal of first water also. To prove his point to the girl he told to her, "see, how his uncle is also telling the same thing." Both the boy and the girl were standing beside the big table of the principal with their heads drooping down. The boy's mother and uncle were sitting on a sofa in front of the table.
Slightly away from the scene I was on a sofa kept in a corner. Beside me was sitting the father of the boy. Almost all the lecturers, both male & female, of the college were crowded into the room that summer afternoon. I also repeated an allegation against the boy. The girl stared into the eyes of the boy and asked, "why did you do that?"The boy answered, "for you."
The principal again continued with his persuasion,"see, my child, he is a loafer, don't trust him, he'll destroy you. Don't keep any relation with him." Sobbing unstoppably the girl replied, "no, Sir, he's not like that Sir. And if at all he's a rascal and/or a loafer, I can n't live without a glimpse of him. I'll die. But, I still love him, Sir."
The roarings of father only accelerated the speed of her weeping. Looking at her mother the girl pleaded,"0h, mother, see how papa is angry with me. Threatening me to strike my name and take me back to home. My sweet mother, please allow me one hour daily to talk to him over phone. I cann't live without talking to him."
One of our lady colleague who had great faith in the human mind, the seat of many a fleeting thoughts pronounced her unsolicited verdict,"0h God, the girl is not in her senses. Otherwise, how could she give more importance to a relationship of seven months compared to that of 17 years?"
Anyway, keeping everything in so called rational balance, especially not to tarnish the image of the college, that evening, much to the eerie joy of the crowd of his collegues the principal asked the parents of the boy to take the TC and leave the college.
The girl told the principal,"Sir, before they leave, I'll talk to the boy." The principal agreed. Both of them went to a nearby room. I also accompanied them. Both of them sat close to each other. The boy wiped the tears of the girl with her dupatta. Like a snake charmer hypnotising a snake, the girl stopped sobbing.
Both of them pleaded before me,"Sir, if you want, we both can stay in the college." I told that is not possible now. The crime of spending a hour or two with the girl, without permission in the park, last evening had closed all openings. I could not do much. Still I asked, "suppose one of you had to leave the college, who would volunteer first?"The girl told, "l". And, the boy told,"I". Both of them were prepared to sacrifice for the other. I was a bit perplexed. Who were right, we or them?
We three came to the room of the principal. The crowd had already dispersed. The "teacher-juries" had already left for their homes by throwing the baggage of conscience in the room of the principal.
The evening was just making ground for the night to descend. The boy's uncle was advising his sister-in-law, the boy's mother to complete the formalities as soon as possible. They had to go to a distant village and in case of delay they might not be able to catch the last bus. Suddenly, the unread, middle-aged village woman started crying pressing the head of her son tightly into her bosom. I could, for the time being saw my mother in her and me in that boy! What was there in the tears of that evening which even wetted the eyes of my experience-hardened principal. He was also weeping. But, what could he do? Poor man, caught in the dilemma of administration & emotion. As if, each one of us is imprisoned for ever in an imagery of, either this or that!
The sudden retort of the uncle brought all of us to the earth. I heard him telling his sister-in-law to go. With a much subdued sobbing still lingering in her face the woman told the principal,"Sir, with such great hope I had left this boy in this prestigious college to read and to build a good career for him. He spoilt everything. As if I were taking a corpse with me. At least, allow him to appear the examination this year. I would take him next year."
But, I thought I would not be able to stand the answer of the principal to this heart-wrenching querry of a mother. So, I hurriedly left for my home with the burden of many an unresolved questions.
Prof. Nachieketa K Sharma teaches Physics in Siksha O Anusandhan University. He also holds the positions of Director, University Outreach Programmes, Director,International Relation & Admission, Programme Coordinator, National Service Scheme. He writes both in Odia & English. A columnist, panelist, science popularizer, Public Speaker Prof. Sharma has poetic sensibilities galore. A mystic by heart he loves to dwell on esoteric topics. An acclaimed translator that he is, his contribution to Unnati Aap under Atal Mission has been appreciated by NITI Aayog. He is also doing a translation project of National Translation Mission.
TOO BUSY TO SAY SORRY
Satish Pashine
My older brother and I are married to two sisters. Our common father-in-law had purchased a piece of land long back in Dalli- Rajhara which is a mining town in Chhattisgarh under the jurisdiction of the collector of Balod. As per my brother, father-in-law had later sold that land to him. At that time some Government officials had suggested that if he gifts the land to his grandson ( my brother’s son), then the registration fee wouldn’t be levied. Like everybody my brother wanted to avoid paying money if it could be helped. Accordingly, a gift deed was made and the name in the land records was also changed with the help of concerned officials. The whole thing was forgotten in the due course, and twenty years went by. No notices of the irregular transactions were received from the Government. In the meanwhile, the transferrer ( father-in-law) and his wife both died.
In 2019, my brother needed money and hence negotiated and agreed to sell that land to someone in the town. The advance was received as normally happens in such cases pending actual transfer of ownership. But when they went to the sub-registrar office, they were told that since the registration fee had not been paid at the time of gift deed the deed is null & void and that the land belonged to our late father-in-law till date and since he was no more to his legal heirs.
An Appeal was made to Balod collector pleading that as the name in the land record had already been changed by concerned officials and since the defendant was not at fault for being ignorant of the rules the collector may allow payment of registration amount with interests and fines and regularise the gift deed to facilitate sell of land at present. Collector madam of Balod rejected the appeal. My brother’s lawyer appealed to the Commissioner who finally resolved that the collector of Balod may call all legal heirs to her office and take an undertaking from them in favour of the grandson whom the land had originally been gifted. He can then sell the land as he wished. The process had already gone on for months with my elderly brother running around what with his bad knees.
After the commissioner’s order, the collector’s office issued letters to all legal heirs of the deceased to present themselves in the collectorate Balod on 11-2-2020. My wife is one of the legal heirs. I accompanied her to Balod. We travelled by train to Raipur. Stayed in a hotel there and the next morning hired a taxi and went to the collector’s office at the appointed time. Balod is about 800 km from Bhubaneshwar and we were quite tired by the train journey and had also incurred expenses. But it was ok as we were helping a brother in need. The environment in the Collectorate office gave us an uneasy feeling. The silence was cold and stony. We were the only people. All the legal heir met with a babu one by one and after giving their credential copies signed in a register. The next process step as told us was to go in the presence of the collector. The collector was absent. Nobody knew when she may come. All of us kept waiting. We were advised to be present all the time as madam may come any time and then go away quickly. If we weren’t there, then it was our fault.
We kept waiting for the collector madam from appointed 11 AM to till 4 PM. My brother contacted his lawyer who advised that the collector may not come or come very late and give us another date and disappear again. He advised us as a pre-emptive step to go to the district & sessions court and make individual affidavits giving up our legal rights on the land and get the affidavits notarized within office hours. It was already4 PM. My brother a 76 years old man was very tense, hassled and almost in tears. We ran to the court. Affidavits were drafted. Our intern lawyer read out the drafts to his senior advocate over the phone for ratification while we kept waiting in the mosquito-infested court on the bench huddled together in front of a large number of shabbily seated advocates in search of clients. The notary must have been suitably taken care of as he kept waiting after office hours to sign the documents.
We came back to the collector’s office at around 6-10 PM. She had come and gone behind the closed doors into her office. Her PA came out and told us that madam is very busy and that she has given us another date which is 17th April. She didn’t talk to us herself. We didn’t see her face even. We were told she is very young and has a baby. I wanted to knock at her door and meet her. I thought we owed an apology from her for keeping us waiting hungry and thirsty without as much as some certain information. But my brother who has always lived as a subject of the collector and likes told me not to utter as much as a word for it might upset the madam. He said collectors are too busy even to say sorry. They are at the mercy of the ministers. Our work is but a very insignificant part of their schedule. I did not understand, but, contained my anger and indignation least it harmed his interests.
Later, we heard that some minister’s mother had died and so the collector had to be there the whole day in minister’s service- this our lawyer told us is the unwritten protocol. Our IAS collector who is supposed to be a public servant was serving the minister who we have elected to make our life easy. We were very tired and hungry. I was then 68 years. My brother was 76. We would have appreciated it if at least this IAS officer had just come out for a minute and apologised for keeping us waiting. But that was not to be. I had imagined that the whole work would be done before lunch and had planned to see two of my friends in Bhilai on the way back to Raipur. This did not happen. My friend said and I quote,” Man proposes, God disposes”. I corrected him with a wry smile- no my friend collector disposes of. Somebody quipped in the car no BHAI, in India minister disposes of.
.
SATTU GOES TO THE BIG SCHOOL!
Satish Pashine
Sattu woke up inside his mosquito net as the harsh morning sun of May shone brightly into his eyes. Everybody was already up and there was this usual morning noise at the well in the walled courtyard of the ancient house. Today it was his turn to roll all the beds, keep them away on the high bench in the chhappar inside and put away the mosquito nets. After that he had to put away the coir netted cots as well. There were six of them. He was just 9 and the work was a little beyond him or at least he thought so. But he was the last to wake up it was his punishment. At 6 in the morning, his father was the first one to get up. He would call out to everyone to wake up saying, “Utho Pau Fati” (get up its morning). There was just one toilet for adults and one for the kids in that sprawling brick and mud house. The toilets were of old type serviced by scavengers. There were forty members in that joint family of four brothers including 2 full-time relative residents and 2 servants.
It was summer vacation now and the schools wouldn't open till July. Sattu had topped the class-4, exam and this year would go to the middle school. His tuition teacher was to come home today. He was to bring his mark list and transfer certificate for the next school. Sattu was super excited but none others cared. He went to the grown-up’s toilet which was much used by now and smelled bad. Back from the toilet, he cleaned teeth by “Bytco black dant-manjan” which had salt in it and smelled of eucalyptus. After that, he went to the kitchen for his breakfast of tea and roti which was his usual daily fare at this time. Some days it would be khichadi with ghee and papad. As he ate, he reflected upon the two years he had spent in Nagpur where he studied standards-I & II. No nursery and KG then. If your right arm reached the left ear over the head, then you were old enough to go to school. His parents were in Nagpur because 3-4 boys from the family were living there for their college education and weren’t doing well. Hotel food was stated as a reason for not doing well. So, they had moved there to take care of these boys. They all lived there in a 2-bedroom flat in a relative doctor’s 4-floor nursing home. He wasn’t a bright student and stood at 27th rank in a class of 40. He was very shy and a simpleton. A dhobi’s son Maiku often made fool of him. Maiku thought that Sattu was the doctor’s son as he lived in the nursing home. He would often force him to get a mixture from the compounder. Sattu could never say NO. He would go to the doctor relative and would tell him that he had a stomach upset or ache which Maiku’s mother often had and would get a prescription for the compounder. The compounder had 4 types of ready mixtures which covered most of the common seasonal ailments. He would give the prescribed one in a glass bottle with the dose label pasted. Sattu's stream of thoughts was broken by his mother’s scolding. Where are you? I am asking you if you need more roti and you are staring into nothingness! “No, I don’t want more- my tuition guruji(master) will come anytime now and was just thinking about that”, he said.
He came out and opened the room which was used for tuitions. It had a queen-size bed, a two sitter and two single mahogany sofa chairs. It also had a narrow black table and two tin chairs used for studies. The room served as the drawing room and extra bedroom also. He adjusted the things in that room to give it a tidy appearance and sat on one of the tin chairs waiting for Paliwal guruji. The room had no fan. It had a criss-cross grating window and a front door crafted similarly. The blue-painted window had no shutters and the door had no curtains. This allowed natural light and neem scented air from the Neem tree when it flowered. Sattu was a thinking type of boy who was often lost in his thoughts. He always wanted to know how things were made. His father was a serial entrepreneur with a string of failed businesses. Ramachandra was his adviser who brought him various ideas. Sattu was sure that Ramachandra was a crook but his father fell prey to his sweet talks. Once Sattu thought of a business idea. There were some loose tea shops in the town selling dust to leaf varieties of teas of different flavours. Leaf tea didn’t produce a strong liquor but some people purchased it for flavour. Dust produced strong liquor. He thought that they can buy both and premix them to produce their brand and sell as a different product. He gave this idea to his father in the presence of Ramachandra. He simply smiled and told the father, “your boy will do business someday”. Father patted his cheeks and told him to go to the kitchen to bring some tea for the two of them. The idea thus died.
As he sat lost in his thoughts he heard the cycle bells of Paliwal Guruji who rode into the compound through the big gate and stopped just near the room. He may have been about 35. Always wore a white Pyjama and poplin shirt with sleeves rolled over the wrists to show his steel case watch. Below the collars, he would tug a hankie to save the collar inside from grime and grease. Pyjama was secured at the ankles with a kind of steel ring to prevent it from getting stuck into the cycle chain. That day he looked very happy. He came into the room and lifted Sattu into his arms. “ Bhidu you did it,” he said. This word “Bhidu” he used for the first time with Sattu. Sattu asked him Guruji what is the meaning of Bhidu? He said it implies a friend. Later when in the Big school he told everybody about this incident and they changed “Bhidu” to” Bhadu “ and that stuck with him for a long time. Sattu looked into the Hindi dictionary and found none of the two words.
Paliwal guruji gave him the mark list and transfer certificate and told him to go to the high school the next day with his older brother taking two rupees for the admission. Sattu went to the kitchen and asked the kitchen helper Kaushlya to make some tea for Guruji with 3 spoons of sugar which Guruji drank over the plate with slurping noise with great apparent relish. Sattu’s father came in to meet him and thank him for taking his son from 27th position to topping in the town with 99%. He also paid him his that month’s tuition fee of Rs 15 or 20. Paliwal Guruji went away happily. That whole day Sattu was very excited at the prospect of going to the Bada (big) school with real benches and desks. His municipal primary school had on the floor sitting with slightly raised wooden taborets for writing. He was excited because he will use a fountain pen and could borrow books from the library. He went to his elder brother to tell him that he will have to take him to the Big school the next day. Brother says,” there is a lot of time before schools reopen. I will take you after a few days.” Sattu wanted to go the very next day -he couldn’t wait.
The next day morning he woke up early and was ready to go to the new school at 7 AM. His primary school used to be in the morning shift and so he thought that 7 AM is a good time as walking 2-3 km to the school would also have taken time. He went to his mother for two rupees. Mother had a five rupee note. She told him to keep it carefully and not to forget to take back three rupees. Those were the days when 40 kg bag of charcoal could be purchased for less than ten rupees and middle school teachers used to get 100-115 rupees only as salary. Three rupees meant a neat sum for which one could buy 4 Cadbury five stars chocolates. The mother also told him to wait till 9 AM. But, Sattu wouldn’t listen to her. He went to his brother and asked him,” are you coming with me”. NO, he said and Sattu started for the school alone with his mark list and transfer certificate in the bush shirt patch pocket. He held the five rupee note in his hand. In his excitement, he almost ran to the school. Spring was in his feet and his joy knew no bound. Fortunately, the school office was open due to summer and there was a clerk there wearing pyjama and a shirt which was quite a popular outfit those days with teachers and office workers. Raju Babu (the clerk)took his documents and filled up a register and asked him to sign at one place. Sattu had never signed before and he told so to the Babu. Babu says, “never mind just write your name”. Sattu wrote his name using the pen which was on the table. Babu asked for the money. Sattu didn’t find his five rupee note anywhere. He had lost it somewhere on the road in his excitement. Babu was very angry. He told,” Come tomorrow and give me the money. I am paying for you today as you are a bright boy. You will also get a scholarship of Rs 12 per month till class VIII and Rs 20 per month from class IX to XI.” Sattu walked back slowly looking for his lost five rupee note carefully but couldn’t find it. He told his mother all about it. She was neither angry nor upset. She said, “you have spoken the truth and that is more important. She gave him a two rupee note immediately and said go back to the school and payback that nice man.”
Sattu’s mother was illiterate. She didn’t know to read and write and could count only up to 20. But, she was a hygiene freak and kept a good home. His father had read up to class IX only and then involved himself in anti-British activities. In his youth, he was once arrested and was released on his father’s guarantee that he will never mix with those hoodlums. He kept that promise but started to go to Akhara (Indian style gym) and built a very good body. Father told Sattu, “next month you will go to middle school and will learn English. I want you to start learning now so that you will have an edge over those boys.” He fixed a time in the evening for his English tuition to Sattu and they kept at it religiously. In one month Sattu learned all alphabets, many small words and most of all spelling construction for any Hindi words. He mastered this and could spell almost any Hindi word in common usage including the names of all the 40 inmates of that joint family. Sattu’s 4 cousin sisters were two classes ahead of him and in the evening the father would collect 5 of them for a kind of spell bee competition for Hindi words to be spelt in English which Sattu always won and was rewarded with an Oxford dictionary and book of idioms and phrases from Hindi to English.
Rains came early that year in the middle of June and by 1st July when the schools opened it was already a regular thing. All the umbrellas in the house were fished out. A repairman was called to repair the broken ones and a few new ones were purchased. All old school books were taken out and distributed. The ones for which there were no candidates were kept for second-hand sale. The responsibility was given to older boys. The money was to be used for buying new books. Exercise books called copies were to be purchased after the announcement by teachers and class timetables. Sattu was lucky as there were no class V books so he would get new ones as class V old books were never available in good conditions being used by careless kids. Sattu got a repaired small umbrella, an old shoulder bag, a copy and a writer pen which cost less than a rupee then.
On first July all the kids-boys and girls of the home went to school. It was like a small procession. Neighbours would say,” there goes Naya Paisa to Rupaya- they can make a complete cricket team with the extra player too.” It was all in good fun and Sattu even felt proud of the entourage. All the teachers and students in the school seemed to know this group coming from one home and were even scared to bully anyone in this group as the older boys took out their waist belts at the slightest disrespect to any of their clans. At the school, there was a lot of commotion with everybody looking at the notice boards. Class wise student lists and timetables were on the display except for class V. Sattu was lost and on the verge of crying confused at this melee. His cousin Kalpa understood this and took him aside. “Sattu you sit here on this bench and I will find out where all class V students will assemble.” She found out that they were to go and sit in the function hall for induction and class distribution. Sattu was put into class V-C. He wanted section A or B and so wasn’t happy. In municipal school also he was in section C. That day there were no classes. But students met each other and made a lot of noise and played in the Garden.
Sattu’s Big school innings started thus!
?
Shri Satish Pashine is a Metallurgical Engineer. Founder and Principal Consultant, Q-Tech Consultancy, he lives in Bhubaneswar and loves to dabble in literature.
A LEAF FROM RECENT HISTORY: ONE FAMILY, ONE NATION AND ONE COUNTRY.
Nitish Nivedan Barik
The title of this story may sound funny and strange. “Principality of Hutt River” if searched in Google, will show it to be a self-proclaimed tiny sovereign state, but not recognized by any, attracting many tourists from all over the world till the other day. It has cut international attention for about half a century.
Only 75 square kilometer in area, it is a micro-nation inside the Australian continent and is approximately 500 km from Perth. Visa was needed to visit the small picturesque country, which was however available on arrival for a price of just 4 dollars on production of your valid passport at their government office–cum-reception. Somebody from their so-called royal family was certainly there to welcome and show you courtesy while stamping visa and narrating the history and geography of the special State.
Leonard Casley who gave himself the title of a Prince and declared himself as Sovereign of this land was the founder of this country in 1970. Well, one can be a sovereign with a prefix of Prince to one’s name, the current glaring example being that of Prince Mohammed bin Salman ,the modernizing visionary young ruler of Saudi Arabia and supremo of that monarchical system.
The background to this mini nation of a single family was like this. The Government of Australia had passed a Bill which led to a lot of problems for Leonard, then just a farm owner on that property of 75 sq km. Wheat Quota Bill 1969 was passed by Western Australia Government which provided that any farmer can sell produce of his land but not more than that of 99 acres. The Casley family had thousand hectares (9990) of wheat to their credit ready to harvest but the law forbade them the sale of this huge quantity except the quantity allowed under the 1969 law.
Leonard tried to discuss the matter with the Government but it was to no avail. So he finally thought of making a country of his own so that his land didn’t follow Australian government diktat, particularly on the wheat Quota Bill. The Bill had 2 things: no compensation, no appeal. So if any farmer had any problem with this Bill they could not demand relief nor make an appeal. So Leonard read international laws and thought about how he could make his land a separate entity.
Eventually the country was made in 1970 to escape a law considered by one man to be unjust. Named as ‘Principality of Hutt River’, Leonard declared himself as the Prince Leonard and the country became a hereditary Monarchy starting with him. Australia, earlier ruled by the British continues to be a Dominion. UK's Queen is Australia's Queen too. Being in part of the Australian territory, Leonard didn't want to hurt the sentiments of the Queen. So he didn't declare himself the king of that country, rather chose to settle with the title of ‘Prince’. Perhaps on a strategic move, he invited the Queen of England to be the Head of his country to which of course the Queen politely declined. However, the country formation was done on the birth date of the Queen i.e. 21 April (Queen Elizabeth was born on this date in 1926). The Queen is said to have written letters to the Prince (Leonard) on anniversaries. Queen had a good relationship with the Prince. Prince had a problem with the Australian Government not with the Queen.
In February 2017, at the age of 91 and after ruling for 45 years, Casley abdicated the throne in favour of his youngest son, Prince Graeme. Prince Leonard died two years after this abdication on 13 February 2019 at the ripe age of 93. After his demise his son Prince Graeme continued his legacy as the de-facto ruler of the Principality. Their family had given up the citizenship of Australia as they lived in a separate state – the Principality of Hutt River- according to their claim. They didn't have an Australian passport.
Leonard's son says many people in the past 50 years had asked his dad if they could start their own country to which Leonard had said ‘No’. You really have to know the laws and rules or else you can land up in jail. This was a unique and special case. A country by one man and one family, not on the basis of force, but on the basis of Law.
The country had its own flag, its own currency, its own passport, and its own stamp and own visa. A country is recognized as a country when other countries recognize it. Australia said this country was only made to save taxes. They only had a letter from Queen Elizabeth where the Queen had congratulated the Prince on the anniversary. The family of Leonard only stays there and did not enjoy the benefits the Australian citizens get. It is compulsory for all Australian citizens to vote. These people did not vote in Australian elections.
The principality as pointed out was not officially recognized by the Australian government, or by any other country. But it acted like an independent nation. Its government granted visas and driver's licenses, issued passports and currency, produced its own stamps, flew its own flag and reportedly operated 13 foreign offices in 10 different countries, including the US and France.
Leonard had justified his declaration of independence and secession from Australia on the basis of his personal interpretation of ,what is said to be some obscure English common laws (part of the basis of Australian law) and international laws that he strongly believed allowed him to form what he termed an independent “Self Preservation Government”. Soon thereafter, he styled himself ‘His Royal Highness Prince Leonard I of Hutt’ and handing out regal titles to his family and supporters (who would hardly number 30), while defiantly continuing to sell wheat across their newly founded state’s international border.
Revenue to this mini-state was earned from fees on Visa stamping and sale of Souvenirs (normally priced at 10 Dollar each).
(Courtesy : https://www.watoday.com.au/national/end-of-an-empire-hutt-river-to-rejoin-australia-after-50-years-20200803-p55i1u.html)
At the time of his ascendance,Leonard’s most ambitious plan was to establish a permanent community of citizens within the limits of the 'nation'. His long range plan was to get some sort of letter of understanding from the Australian Government so the Principality could exist without interruptions and control by the Australian government. But it did not happen.
Pandemic Covid19 has brought about many unanticipated changes all over the world .It played spoilsport with the micro nation – Principality of Hutt River too. Its tourism revenue stopped all of a sudden. In December 2019 the principality announced that it would close its borders and cease its external government services as of 31 January 2020, until further notice. On 3 August 2020 the Principality was formally dissolved. But its website (http://www.principality-hutt-river.com/) remains, tough nonfunctional, as a memoir of History. The Principality is said to have surrendered to Australia and the property was notified to be on sale. Though the Principality is gone, the History continues and it would certainly continue attracting more and more tourists in times to come once the normalcy is restored. Prince Graeme hoped the story of Australia's oldest micronation would be remembered."That's the history, and you can't unwrite it," he had said. One of its officials wrote: While PHR is gone it will not be forgotten."
At the end, it may not be out of place to say that the Principality of Hutt River was never able to convince an Australian court that it did not have to pay tax. As Justice Rene Le Miere of the WA Supreme Court noted in 2017, “Anyone can declare themselves a sovereign in their own home but they cannot ignore the laws of Australia or not pay tax.”
Principality of Hutt River was comparable in size to Hong Kong, though it is larger in physical size than many countries such as Vatican, San Marino, Monaco, and Nauru to name but a few.
Mr Nitish Nivedan Barik,who hails from Cuttack,Odisha is a young IT professional working as a Senior Developer with Accenture at Bangalore
BABA'S FILTER COFFEE
Mrutyunjay Sarangi
Siddharth looked at his father over the cup of coffee. Baba was looking haggard. It was quite unlike him. The face was dark with a few days' stubble crowding the cheeks and his eyes had lost a bit of their trademark lustre. Siddharth had always been captivated by the way Baba's entire face lighted up when he broke into a smile. Especially, the eyes would twinkle as if they were about to let out some secret hidden inside them. But today, the eyes were lustreless, the face sad and worried.
"Baba, why are you looking so haggard? What has happened to you? Is anything wrong? Is your health alright?"
Baba smiled, a faint shadow of his usual broad glow of a smile, which was always like a streak of lightning that has made up its mind to stay.
"Nothing, Beta, just a sudden loss of interest in everything. I feel as if I don't have any desire for anything anymore. Want to sit down somewhere and wait for the unknown to come with stealthy steps and envelop me like a dense fog," he said.
Siddharth was shocked,
"Why Baba, are you missing Mama?"
Baba shook his head; no, not particularly, not more than the way he has missed her since she suddenly passed away after a brief struggle with pneumonia three years back. He sat up, and gazed intently at his son,
"A strange inertia has gripped me. I have lost interest in everything. I switch on the TV to watch a movie, keep looking at it, but nothing registers in my mind. I try to listen to my favourite old songs, but switch off the CD player in a few minutes. Sometimes I feel like cooking my favourite dish of noodles, but after chopping a couple of vegetables, I give up. It's like I commence short journeys, but abandon them. I try to return but I don't know where I should return to. I wonder if my home would be the same when I return to it, I am not sure."
Baba paused for a moment; his eyes had a dreamy look, like he was visiting a land far away.
"When you were just a new-born, a few days old, I never wanted to leave you for a minute, I thought you were the one who was ticking in my heart beats. So I would leave for the office in the morning. Half way to the office, my mind would become restless, I would feel like returning home to again play with you, to grab your small fingers, hold you close to my heart and make you smile."
Baba's face brightened at the memory, he looked at his son, trying to rediscover the tiny toddler in him. Siddharth felt shy, Baba got back a bit of his verve for a moment. It lasted a few seconds. The morose look was back in no time,
"These days, it's almost the same feeling, I start on different roads, a movie here on TV, a song there, a Murakami novel in hand, but I break the journey and return, though I am not sure where I am returning. The mind gets restless."
Siddharth felt bad for Baba, his heart ached for him. He wished he could ask him to come home, but he knew, it was not possible. Baba continued,
"Tell me, do you think of me as normal, or like many others you also think I am a useless talker, giving advice all the time to everyone, till no one comes near me anymore."
Siddharth squirmed in his seat,
"No Baba, I never think of you as a useless talker. You are my Baba, every word you say is like a command from God for me."
Baba straightened up and chuckled, it looked pathetic on his worry-worn face,
"See, this is what I was telling you. You are my son, so I am dear to you. Does anyone else ever remember me? Does...."
xxxxxxxxxx
Siddharth put his hand over Baba's to signal him to stop. He knew what Baba was about to say. It was one of the darkest chapters of Siddharth's life. Three years back when his mother died, he knew Baba would feel lonely. He had no office to go to, having retired five years before. And he would miss Mama badly. So Siddharth arranged a transfer to Bhubaneswar from Mumbai. His wife, Reema, was against it. When you live in Mumbai for five years it grows upon you and embraces you like an old, dear friend. But Siddharth insisted upon it. Any way he was due for a transfer. In his banking job five years' stay at Mumbai was an exception. Baba locked up his apartment and settled down to a happy life with his son, daughter-in- law and grandson. But Reema got increasingly suffocated. In Baba's regime everything had to happen with clock-like precision. Meals must be taken exactly at the same hour everyday. A five minutes' deviation would invite caustic comments. Tea must be served at a certain temperature, all lights must be switched off at ten, a little noise would disturb his sleep, drawing a yell from him. Lights and fans must be switched off when leaving a room. Pintu, the grandson must play for one hour in the evening and then recite his evening prayers without fail.
Reema started taking out her anger on Siddharth the moment he returned from office. She was upset about something or the other; the frustration kept mounting. Baba could sense the palpable tension at home. One evening he told his son and daughter in law,
"Sunu, it looks like my stay here is disturbing your peace at home. Let me go back to my apartment. I will manage, you don't have to worry. I want you and Bahu to be happy".
Siddharth would have nothing of it,
"Baba, I took a transfer from Mumbai only to be with you . How can you think of going away from us?"
Reema pounced on the idea,
"If Baba thinks he will be more comfortable in an apartment, let him go. He must be facing some problem here. It's not possible that everything can be done with a clock like regularity. You are not able to sense it because you are away at office the whole day."
Siddharth glared at her. Before he could say anything more, Baba left for his room.
That night Siddharth had a big fight with Reema,
"How heartless can you be, Reema? You want my seventy year old Baba to go and stay alone in an apartment? Would you have done it if it were your father? What kind of sanskar has your family given you?"
Each of these words was like a sword driven into Reema's heart. She lost her cool and hissed,
"How dare you! How dare you compare my father with your Baba? My father is a balanced person, not a mental case like Baba. My father never criticises anyone, nor does he enforce rules like a Hitler. Even when he admonishes some one, there is a smile on his face. And your Baba? Only a machine can live with him, not a human being. Lunch at eleven, tea at three, dinner at seven, not a minute early, not a minute late! And sanskar? You are you talking of sanskar? What sanskar is it to pull up your daughter in law at every step? If you know what is good for us, go and drop him at his apartment. And since you have insulted my father, take it from me, I won't forgive you if you even go and visit Baba. If you ever enter into his apartment and I come to know of it, you will see my dead body hanging from the fan! I am swearing it on my son's head"
Siddharth could not believe his ears! He was stunned. Why was Reema so insistent? And the harsh condition? Why had she laid a condition on him? That too swearing on their son's head! O my God! Had she gone crazy? He left for the drawing room and spent the night there.
Next Sunday Baba shifted to his apartment. The maid and cook who used to work there earlier resumed their duty. Siddharth took a look at everything before he left. He knew he wouldn't be entering the apartment again. Instead he made arrangements with Baba to meet every Friday evening at Cafe Coffee Day just about a hundred metres from his apartment. He would order Baba's favourite filter coffee for both. And they would chat for a couple of hours. He would hand over to Baba packets of chowmein and momos he would have bought from Baba's favourite Chinese restaurant on the way from office..
xxxxxxxxxxx
Siddharth returned to the present. Baba was in a pensive mood, he asked,
"Does Reema remember me? Does she ever ask you about me?"
Siddharth looked at Baba, his vision blurred by tears. He shook his head and looked outside. The busy town had got busier with the evening traffic returning home. Was there a magician somewhere among them who could restore his Baba to him and his family? Baba looked even sadder,
"How about Pintu? Does he ever ask about his Grandpa? Does he remember me?"
"Yes, he loves you and misses you, Baba, despite all the discipline you had imposed on him. He is waiting for your stories, gets animated when he speaks about you. I have been telling him that I would bring you home one day, but I know it is not possible with Reema watching all of us like a hawk. She gives a hard stare to Pintu and the poor boy runs away."
Baba sighed like a wounded dove,
"I know, I have become an alien for almost everyone, an unwanted person impinging on their peaceful, placid existence. Do you know how people snub me these days? There are at least a hundred people I must have helped when I was in service, gave a job to some, sanctioned grants for their children's education, cleared medical bills without asking a question, but today no one has time for me, nobody calls to ask how I am doing. The most ungrateful are the big officers. There are so any of them I recommended for high positions or gave out of turn promotions to. Today when I try to speak to them over phone, their P.A.s always say they are in a meeting and cannot be disturbed. And none of them return my call."
Siddharth was pained to see the sad smile and the vacant look on his Baba's face. He knew Baba was lonely, yet he couldn't do anything about it.
They fell silent, each immersed in his own thoughts.
Suddenly Baba smiled,
"But Sunu, I have my dreams also. Some of them are happy ones and keep my spirit up for a long time. I don't know if you remember when you were ten years or so we had gone on a long trip to Balasore - you, Mama and I. I was driving the car. We stopped at Bhadrak at a road side stall to have some snacks and tea. There was a boy serving us, he was probably your age, but looked famished and emaciated. There were a few other customers. The owner of the stall was shouting at the boy all the time, using abusive words and threatening to give him a slap or two. A deep feeling of sadness was buried in the eyes of the small boy, although he kept flashing small smiles at the customers. Even those smiles looked so intensely tragic, like the smile of a ghost defeated in the struggle of life. Your Mama wiped a tear or two just looking at him. Do you remember?"
Siddharth nodded, the memory made him feel sad,
"Yes, I remember. After we finished you paid and told the owner of the stall to pack some snacks and sweets. You asked him to send the boy to deliver the packet at the car. When he came you gave away the packet to him and some money also. I don't remember how much."
"Hundred rupees. That used to be a big sum those days. The boy burst into tears and touched my feet and kept on saying, 'My mother will bless you for many years, Babu. You are a God to us.' You know Sunu, I don't know what the boy looks like now, but I have had this dream at least three times in the past one week and heard the boy say, 'My mother will bless you for many years, Babu. You are a God to us.' Every time I have that dream I wake up with a warm feeling."
"That's good Baba. You should feel happy about it"
Baba nodded,
"There is another one which comes frequently to me. You know, a couple of years before my retirement, once I had gone to Delhi on some official work. In the morning I was out on my morning walk when I saw an old lady sitting under a bus shelter with a big gunny bag full of vegetables. A city bus came and stopped for a few seconds. She was the only passenger waiting to get in. She tried her best to lift the bag but failed. The bus started moving. I shouted at the driver to stop, crossed the road and put the gunny bag inside. The old lady in a tattered sari smiled. Her face broke into a soft glow and before climbing onto the bus she put her hand on my head and said 'Ishwar tera bhala karey Beta!' My son, that blessing overwhelmed me. Many times during the day I felt as if she was somewhere close by and saying 'Ishwar tera bhala karey Beta!' And these days she often comes in my dream, smiles at me and blesses me like she did on that autumn morning in Delhi."
Siddharth felt good for his Baba, but the haggard look troubled him.
"Baba, all this should make you happy. But why are you looking so glum?
Baba kept mum. He looked outside through the glass panes, something was weighing on his mind.
"Five days back I had another dream. Want to hear about it?"
"Of course Baba, why are you asking this so seriously?"
"That dream has not left me even for a minute ever since I saw it. It's about you and me. You are a small child of five or six years and we have gone to a park. It has many big trees and lush green lawns. You are running and I am chasing you. After a while I get close to you and manage to catch you. When you turn, I get a shock. It's not you but your son Pintu. He looks at me and say, 'Daddy, you finally caught me! Let's play again.' I stand still. Why is Pintu calling me Daddy, he should address me as Jeje, the way he normally does. Then I realise that I am not me, but you. I desperately look around, searching for me. I find a person looking like me hiding behind a big tree and looking longingly at you and Pintu. I run to him and touch him. What I find sends shivers through me. The man standing there is cold like ice, his eyes are frozen like a dead fish's eyes. When I touch him, he tumbles over and sprawls on the muddy ground. I woke up with a scream. O my God! What kind of dream is this? Is it a portender of my death? Do I want to die so early? Am I done with all my desire to live? Sunu, this conflict has been eating away my soul for the past five days. I feel restless, utterly devoid of a direction in life. I don't know what to do, I have lost interest in everything. It's a strange feeling, as if I want to do everything that will take me away from all the mundane existence of life, yet I want to cling to life with the greed of a shark."
Baba fell silent. Siddharth sat there stunned, words failed him. He understood why Baba was looking so haggard, so dejected, as if in the big gamble of life he had put everything as a stake and by a cruel quirk of fate lost everything.
Their reverie was broken by the young waitress asking them if they would like to have some more coffee. Siddharth ordered one more round of filter coffee. They silently sipped it.
Suddenly Siddharth caught hold of Baba's hand. Ah, so loving, so reassuring were Baba's hands, he told himself,
"Baba, don't be so upset by a dream. Dreams are just that - strange shadows of nonexistent substance. Will you do something I suggest? First promise me, then I will tell you."
Baba nodded, his gaze fixed on this handsome son of his. What is he going to suggest? Baba was curious.
"Look Baba, right since my childhood I have heard so much about your good deeds, your philanthropy, the way you have inspired so many people. All those experiences are essentially your signatures in life, no one else can do it the way you did it. Someone may do something better, nobler or grander, but what you have done is yours and yours alone. I remember your telling me in my childhood how you had gone to Daringibadi and found a tiny tribal girl crying and pleading with her mother to let her go to school. You not only put her in school but bore all her expenses till she passed her nursing course. What was her name Baba?"
Baba smiled, a genuine, million dollar smile that spread over his face and brought a glow all over,
"Gowri. Your Mama and I attended her wedding also."
"And Baba, the man, Narahari, who used to work as your driver, when he died in service, everyone washed their hands off, you fought your way with the head of the office to get a job for his son. You also arranged for them to retain the same government quarters where they used to live earlier. I remember Narahari's wife touching your feet and breaking into sobs sobbing out of sheer gratitude. But the struggle you had to go through to get this concession was stupendous. I don't think anybody else would have done so much for another person."
Baba nodded in memory of Narahari and his desperate family,
"I only did my duty."
"No Baba, you always went beyond the call of duty. Remember the old man who fell down from his bicycle on a street in Berhampur when you had gone there on a tour and taking a morning walk? You lifted him, took him to the hospital in an autorickshaw, and stayed with him for three hours till his family was located and they came to take charge of the old man."
Siddharth was happy to see a bright smile lighting up Baba's face.
"Yes, so many good memories, a few bad ones also. My life has been eventful."
Siddharth chuckled,
"I know. I remember the boss who was jealous of you because you wrote better English than him in the files. He insisted that you should go and stand at the gate of his daughter's wedding reception party and receive the guests. You refused to do it and the next week he shouted at you in the office. There was an open fight. The association took up your cause and got you transferred to another office. I was so proud of you at the time for standing up to fight for your dignity."
Baba grimaced at the memory of the mean boss. And he had met a few bad specimens like that in his career. The most rotten among them was a middle aged debauch who kept calling a young girl from Baba's section to his room and kept her sitting there pretending to explain some work. He would keep ogling at her, drooling from the mouth. The girl used to feel as if he were a python waiting to pounce on her and gobble her up. Baba sensed her discomfort and went to the chamber of the boss and threatened to get the girl to file a case of harassment at work place. Baba promised that he would be the prime witness and make sure the officer's career was finished.
He had not told this story to Siddharth, as also many other stories which he had shared only with his wife.
Siddharth kept looking at his Baba, enjoying the way he was turning the pages of his memory and smiling to himself.
"Baba, let me suggest something to you. There are so many experiences which have made your life worth celebrating. Unless you share them with others, those stories will die with you in a few years. No one will know about them. What you do is, tonight you start writing down those memories. Your English is so good, I am sure you can make brilliant stories out of these, small nuggets which will fill the readers' mind with joy. Next Friday when we meet here over coffee you can read out those stories to me. Once we have a few dozen stories I will publish a book. O, I have just coined a title for your book, won't you like to hear it?"
Baba's face broke into a wide grin, the first time in the evening Siddharth felt Baba was returning to his cheerful self,
"Achha, tell me what name you have given to my non-existent book?"
"See Baba, the stories will all be brewed from your experiences and filtered from your memory. They will have the aroma and flavour of good, splendid coffee. So we will name your book "Baba's Filter Coffee",
Baba let out a wild, loud laugh, making others turn their head.
Siddharth knew Baba was getting into the mood of a good raconteur. He paid the bill and they came out. The evening was at its brightest, merriest and liveliest form.
Siddharth opened the door of the car and asked his Baba to get in,
"Come Baba, I will drop you at your apartment."
Baba waved him away, he preferred to walk. Inspired by his one in a million son he started walking to a new world, waiting with a great promise - the promise of an absolutely incredible aroma of filter coffee.
(I had sent this story for comments from a friend, who wrote back that the daughter in law's behaviour in the story is too drastic, particularly the ban on the son from visiting his father. Unbelievable as it may sound, we know an exactly similar case that happened a few months back. The parents both aged 80+ were thrown out from the home they had built and the son is not allowed to visit them.)
Dr. Mrutyunjay Sarangi is a retired civil servant and a former Judge in a Tribunal. Currently his time is divided between writing poems, short stories and editing the eMagazine LiteraryVibes . 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. He lives in Bhubaneswar.
REVIEWS:
AN OVERVIEW – Fourteen Poems from 108th Issue, Literary Vibes:
At the outset, like earlier times, I say that this critique is out and out a poetry lover’s views that he gathered during his reading of the poems, and relishing the poetry in them. For obvious reasons I don’t discuss my own poem, ‘HAUNTED’ on this page.
(1) CONNING – Haraprasad Das
‘CONNING’, is an age-defying poem with sharp satire by Haraprasad Das, written more than two and half decade ago, but sounds absolutely contemporary in its flavour. The thought ingrained there reflects the mind of the ever-miserable people who thrive on the promises made to them by the people in power, the promises that are hardly fulfilled. The people, on the verge of despair are again given new hopes with new promises, and the story passes down the generations. The poem’s daring title is a metaphor in itself. Let me share a few lines of telltale satire from the poem – “Finally, the conmen, like bombers, / done with their targets, / would fly away to their safe haven; / but not before the last sleight of hand - // kind of finishing our last savings, / asking us to sow the last stock / of grain as seeds on fallow land, / promising a bumper harvest.”
(2) Creating History -Dilip Mohaptra
Dilip Mohapatra has crafted a landscape of fantasy, a phantasmagorical spread of a feast of words. Let me adopt select words and phrases from Dilip’s poem to create a concrete idea for you, my co-readers – “Let me drift ..on my…coracle…till I reach….a(n) uninhabited island…with no history, … no footprints, no fossils….of (no) deceit, deceptions and betrayals… no tombstones….Then I would sit down to start afresh…” but finally, “.. at the end how to build a memorial in my honour and even prompt an epitaph to be engraved on my grave…. turn around….and look for my paddles.” A fantastic idea. The poet wishes to reach a land without a past, without any history, myth or fossilized memory; and fantasizes to create everything from the scratch, even dictate his own future epitaph like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt who made pyramids, their own future post-death resting places, or like Shah Jahan’s Taj Mahal, a mausoleum, inside whose sanctum sanctorum he was finally laid by the side of his beloved Mumtaj Mahal in eternal rest. But what is the poet’s final thought? His coracle and the paddles, those two lifesaving-implements, dominate his mind like a conventional dish of dessert at the end of culinary fanciful experiments. He desires to paddle back to reality. A landmark poem of Dilip Mohapatra, rich with freshness and the magic of creation.
(3) Words, Be with Me – Sreekumar K.
It is one of his best poetic works. He has built a private world of his own around the word with four letters, I mean the ‘Word’, the most ordinary word in the English language, but the language does not move without it. The poem builds up and tells us what’s all the ‘word’ has done for him – it has put words into his mouth, narratives to his pen, silences when it was needless to be loud, hyphenated the modest hiatus when his love was passing the difficult phase of hesitation from ‘a crush’ to ‘an affair’. It has enriched his imaginations, and smothered his loss and sorrows. It has kept nights of vigil with the poet persona, tickled him to think anew, and also prompted his tongue-tied shy self into a lover’s adoring eloquence to regale his beloved. Most poets have a poem in adoration of the word “Word”. Even I have one. But when I come across a new hymn to the humble yet powerful four letter “WORD” with fresh imagery, it captures my fancy. This poem is a reader’s delight, in those quarters, so, it was my delight to read it. If you allow me to regale you with a few lovely lines from Sreekumar K.’s poem, I quote – “You stayed up with me/On nights when sleep had periods” and “You were the go between/After I had crushes/And before I had affairs”.
(4) Bhishma, Waiting for His Death – Bibhu Padhi
Though the poet has taken a well-known page from the epic Mahabharat, but in his inimitable style, he has woven a tapestry of mythical-cum-modern analysis, using the modern thought as the weft across the warp of the ancient landscape of Mahabharat, showing the undercurrents more candidly and vividly. The poem reflects the mindset of the grand old man Bhishma on his painful deathbed created on the sharp points of arrows by the astute archer Arjun. It brings to the fore his affection for Arjun, his grandson from an extended family concept, though his adversary in the battle of Mahabharat; and his praise for the adversary archer’s valour and prowess, vis-à-vis his own pride and resilience not to suffer ignominy of surrendering to death caused by someone else’s will and weapon. Bhishma wishes to set up his own writ of dying, at his own volition, choosing the method and the time of his own last breath. The valour of Bhishma, though of epic proportion, yet condensed into the hours of his glorious death throes. An excellent mingling of the myth with the modern logic, turning death qualms into an exhibition of pride and confidence.
(5) Breath of Life – Bijay Ketan Patnaik
The poem resonates with the angst of the poor and dispossessed. The pain of exchanging his abode, land, forest, heritage, family silver, conscience and fond memories for dreams shown to them by the dream-merchants, the people in power and the people with pelf. They are brainwashed to accept the propaganda, the fake news, falsehood as the Gospel truth. They are made to believe that the values of life are based only on the rupee-value. Though this poem was penned more than a decade ago, it stands valid in the present scenario. An ever-green poem in its power to give wakeup calls to people whose bits of land are being snatched away from under his feet in the broad daylight. It is a wakeup call to rise from the induced soporific sleep. I can’t desist myself from quoting two lines of this star-level satire – “Your bargaining power is par excellence, Sir; / an astute trader encrypted into your DNA.”
(6) The Unfinished Story – Bichitra Kumar Behura
“With pouring monsoon rain, / Feel like weaving / My unresolved story. / Don’t know where to begin, / Let things happen / Without my intervening.” sings the poet’s musing and yearning heart in this thought-provoking poem. Everyone has his or her unfinished story stuck away in some secret corner of the heart’s library; it can be about a friend, father, mother, life-partner, or lover. Monsoon is a time when old memories from these hidden alcoves rise like apparitions to haunt, buttressed by the smell of humus, murmur of the rain, green-washed vegetation outside windows and the swishing of cool wind, the elements that bring longing for things, distant and unachievable.
(7) SHACKLED – Viyatprajna Acharya
In this challenging and daring poem ‘SHACKLED’, the poet proclaims that the freedom that has come to us is no freedom at all unless we are free of poverty, sexual harassment, oppression perpetrated by the dominant forces. Her poem is a clarion call to liberate oneself and all, rise from the somnolence of subjugation. Her style is raw and bleeding like many Dalit poets, direct and embattled. She sings in her beleaguered voice, “We lost our freedom /…. / Scratched mother earth’s bosom /… / We buckled before / The craving of two-inched muscle, /…”, a cry from the heart, that the Nirbhayaas of our society would relish the most.
(8) Imperfectly Perfect Utopia – Ayana Routray
Ayana Routray has a perfectionist’s pen in inking her ‘THE IMPERFECTLY PERFECT UTOPIA’, a little poem but reaching far in its scope and meaning. The poet is looking for utopia in a world of dystopic profusion. She finds it within herself, rather in a world of her own making. This poem and Dilip Mohapatra’s Creating History, resonate with each other through a remote connection. She builds her perfect world within imperfections, and Dilip creates everything afresh after arriving by his coracle on a fantasy-clean-slate-island, as did the legendary Robinson Crusoe. Hers is a mixed collage, no aesthetics in her world exists without interlacing imperfection into perfection, as in Wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy of accepting transience and defects as a world view of aesthetics. It is a poem with its own Wabi-sabi style.
(9) Duel of the Duals – S. Ritika
S. Ritika’s ‘DUEL OF THE DUALS’ is a little quarrel and blame game between a husband and wife, though the humorous disclaimer at the foot of the poem dubs it as the conflict between a pressure cooker and its steam release device. Originally my impression was that she was shying away from these sweet nothings between wives and their husbands, though the marriage counsellors hold that these little frictions increase the fizz and jest of the conjugal relationship. But a more erudite lover and critique of poetic works had the opinion that S. Ritika would use surprise element like a husband-wife pair to keep readers guessing, but the real quarrel could be between the two inanimate things of her footnote, a a lookalike of a transferred epithet. So, let other readers keep guessing, but my mind still keeps debating.
(10) MANALI – Runu Mohanty
Manali is a landscape poem, a rare reading from Runu Mohanty’s work, she being a poet writing on the sensual-cum-spiritual aspects of relationships. The landscape poem also is transformed in her unique technique into a poem of mixed flavour, an interplay of sensuality with spiritual aesthetics. In her poem Manali, the hill station transforms into a sentient nayika in her drama in poetry. Manali, the nayika, collects wild berries, dances with the streams, flies with clouds, chirrups with birds, worships her village deity and finally spreads her gross sensuality before the tourists and visitors. The poet concludes her resounding adoration of Manali, the hill station, the epitome of beauty and loveliness, as – “And the lovely ever-young princes, Manali, / reposes in her languorous hillside, / making her home the pride of her land.”
(11) Withered Soul! Winning All - Umasree Raghunath
This is essentially the story of a withered bud resisting wind, blizzard, rain and all the adverse elements. It remains unconquered and finally blooms into a flower. A song of resilience and hope to snatch the victory from the jaws of defeat. The poem I like for the spirit behind the pen, ‘hope’, the indomitable hope. Lines like – “Every time, I was ripped / I shouted aloud for help / Every time, I was killed / I found resurrection” There are typos and slips that nibble at the elegance, no doubt, like the first word of the poem, ‘raising’, I feel, should be ‘rising’ and some other inaccessible words either not fitting her plot or not connecting the reader in carrying forward the poet’s spirit.
(12) A Sail - Chandan Chowdhury
A poem of novelty, a poem less read than looked at and felt, a feast for the eyes. It is pictorial, every few lines are interspersed and supported by a photograph of a colourful painting or a sketch in grey, and the pictures are more evocative than the words before or after. There are ancient sail-ships, mostly in stormy seas, except one that looks like a modern oil-rig. The text is mostly in prose and there has been no attempt to make them sound lyrical or musical, rather spoken with a prose-like monotone. As no credit is given to any one, I presume, the sketches and paintings are of Chandan Chowdhury. They are packed with poetic vision.
(13) IRIDESCENCE – Pradeep Rath
A satire based on the tragic plight of Afghans. The mighty and the rich, after loafing around with them for decades in the name of founding the bedrock of democracy in Afghanistan, have suddenly left them in a lurch, and gone. They are left to find their own tryst with the Taliban, the apparent bugbears of death and terror. Also, the other fair-weather friends who talk big but do little to alleviate their misery except making promises. The third lot of fence-sitters, the preachers of ‘wait and watch’, who surprise the poet for their empty sloganeering from the haloed ramparts like that of the Red Fort. A well-orchestrated satire, speaks volumes in a few words, a poet with a contemporary world view. As a reader, I would like to read ‘morning’ in the place of ‘morn’, ‘climate’ for ‘clime’ etc. in a poem on a contemporary issue; and ‘pall of gloom’ may read better in the place of ‘pale of gloom’. Further in the line ‘seek refuse in sly corners’, the ‘corners’ cry out foul, ‘please don’t call us sly corners, rather call us safe havens or secret hideouts, or something keeping with our dignity and spirit of saving the souls of the miserable mass, please’.
(14) Everything in Between – Mrutyunjay Sarangi
It is an excellent poem, one of his best ones of his poetic works that I have chanced upon to read. The poem is themed to rhyme with most hearts, of poets as well as the non-poets. My first impression that it could be a love poem changed as I progressed ahead. It revealed to be a poem of loss and frustration. It could be anyone who has lost a goal, a beloved, a loved one, or a thing that remained unsaid and undone. The lines like “The urn will wait for the dead hopes, / the ashes will pour in, / fill it to the brim.” speak it all. The sad mood is palpable, thick, viscous like a gluey gum. The frustration is stark and visceral in the concluding lines of philosophy “the end is but a ghost of the beginning / and everything in between, a sad chimera.”
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.
WHERE DOES POETRY COME FROM
Sreekumar K
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Brook)
Clearly Tennyson was writing his own preface to his own Lyrical Ballads using the brook as a symbol. Even before Freud, people would have observed that dreams are the result of our unfulfilled desires. This is plain common sense. Freud made this idea systematic without bothering to make it scientific. He resorted to speculations.
Art and literature, especially poetry, seem to have the same origin as dreams when we considers the similarities in their form and content. We all have our instincts, mostly biological in nature. But our sense of self, the ego and our sensitivity to the world, the super ego, suppresses our instincts.
Finding no way to materialize, our instincts go for the second options, they ideate as dreams in our sleep when our guard is down, and when we are watchful as daydreams or art or poetry, good poetry that is. In dreams art and poetry our instincts go for two kind of disguises, condensation in which several instincts are all fused into one and displacement in which instead of hitting the bull’s eye we hit something else.
Translated into poetry these disguises become metaphor and metonymy, two basic ways of symbolism. Metaphor which we also seen in homonyms and other figures of speech and metonymy as we see in sublimation. These are only convenient examples.
Freud calls this wish fulfillment which is not the same as materializing our real instinctual desire. Needless to say it is not as good as the real, second best. So, when it comes to poetry, like a child who over decorates a toy house, we embellish the second best to more satisfactory for us and more enjoyable for others.
For example, one may wish to have children but has only Dorothy as a companion. No chance there. The sexual instinct is here suppressed by the ego and super ego, and rightly so. This leads to an ideation of the instinct into an incestuous dream about the sister (more direct) day dream about a solitary reaper (less direct) or a poem on daffodils (symbol of fertility, disguised or indirect)
We don’t have access to Wordsworth’s dream but his two poems are there for us. In Solitary Reaper we see several of the instincts fused into the form of a reaping girl, enjoyment, fertility, (“Reaping and singing by herself”) Thus the girl becomes a metaphor or the poet’s (and everyone else’s) biological instincts.
In Daffodils, it is not only that the flowers being symbol of fertility is again a metaphor, it is also a sight the poet has often enjoyed watching with his sister as they went for long walks in Lake District. Perhaps, more than the symbolism, it is their association with his sister which prompted the poet. The lines,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
say a lot.
Nevertheless, researchers have uncovered suggestive correlations between synesthesia and creativity, at least as defined by psychological testing. In 2016, Charlotte Chun and Jean-Michel Hupe at the University of Toulouse, compared a selected group of 29 artistic synesthetes to 36 controls. Testing for aspects of creativity and related abilities such as mental imagery showed higher scores for the synesthetes, but with smaller differences than in earlier studies. These outcomes and other research results point to qualities that synesthetes consistently display, which may explain their creative tendencies: cognitive traits such as a disposition to think in images and sensitivity to color; and the psychological personality trait called “openness to experience,” exemplified by intellectual curiosity and an active imagination.
From Mrutyunjay Sarangi :
Mr. SreeKumar, your discourse on Poetry is profound. Essentially a poem is a song of the heart wrapped in lyrical sublimity. Last two and half years I have seen around 1500 poems. Only those poems have touched me which contain within them a poetic sense. A poem must move your inner core. It may talk of many complex things, it may paint the moon, the stars, the sky or blood, the dark soul or raw passion, but ultimately it must sound like a sublime music being played in the inner recesses of your mind.
To give this to the reader Poetry must come from deep inside the heart, pouring out like fragrance from a lovely flower, or bubbles from a sparkling bottle of Champagne. It should give the same kind of joy. Poetry is a lyrical message transmitted from the heart of the poet to the heart of the reader.
Great expectations, no doubt, but I won't trade it with any false sense of assumed greatness. A halo without the inner glow is just hollow.
I will be happy if other members of our group give their views on Where Does Poetry Come From.
MS
From Ritika S :
Great thoughts. I may only give my personal experience to how poetry comes to me. I feel everything around me has a story to tell. I can visualise inanimate things behaving in humane ways.... As SK rightly pointed out, again I might be painting 'their' stories depending on my state of mind. Because the same thing can kindle different emotions/thoughts in me at different point of time.... I feel my poem is good if I read it after years and I appreciate it as a reader when I have forgotten the emotions I wrote it for. ????
From Dilip Mohapatra :
Here’s a little mnemonics on the topic:
POETRY
Private yet Public
Oblique yet Outspoken
Exacting yet Exuberant
Transparent yet Turbid
Reflective yet Riveting
Yin yet Yang
- yours acronymically ????
From Prof. GeethaNair :
I think psychoanalytic interpretation of literature is almost always absurd; a load of false "findings". The findings about "The Daffodils" is an example.
Let the heart, that modest hard-working pump, continue its work. ????
I would like to say with simplicity (with MS and Co. ) that MOST poems are inspired by an emotion. His imagination and verbal power gives the emotion freshness and beauty.
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.
Viewers Comments