Introduction
Poetry has been a cathartic means for me to purge myself of the various
imperfections of life
- Jayanta Mahapatra
Poetry is primarily concerned with human experiences. Poems are
made out of life; they belong to life, and exist for life. Poems are a kind of
revelations in which the poet expresses his willingness to come to terms with
himself as a human being and as a poet. Poems are records of experience to be
shared. Poets see, do, think or feel and they pass along their recorded
observations, actions, ideas and emotions to the readers. The prose writers
also do this, but the poets do this in a special way. The poetic form calls forth
emotional and intellectual responses in the fewest possible words.
Poets say a lot in little space. Poetry has the ability to communicate the
actual quality of experience with a subtlety and precision unapproachable by
any other means. The experiences which a poet expresses must have more
than a temporary or local interest; they must possess universality. Great
poetry is concerned with those feelings and thoughts which are innate and
unchanging in human nature. The poet has a keener eye and a keener
sensibility. The poet awakens the reader‟s sensibility and also quickens,
rouses and raises to dizzy heights of apprehension and leaves at last
becalmed, fulfilled and serene.
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Mahapatra‟s writing is a prized heritage of the humanity. He has
transcended the limitations of birth and place. It is not the poet‟s
responsibility to keep the world informed and advised to face the great
disaster and explained in terms of natural laws and immoral social practices
and irresponsible political decisions world - wide. One should not expect the
poet to write about these atrocities though the poet does not want to see them
all. But the immoral social practices and political aberrations around turn into
traumas which he cannot escape and which become the subject of his poems.
Whenever there are wrong happenings, the poet‟s conscience compels him to
write about it. The present study titled Individual and Social Reality in the
Select Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra is undertaken in order to analyse and
affirm whether or not the twin aspects of poetry, the inner and the outer forces
have influenced the proposed writer in the making of his poetic composition.
As the poet is an Indian the significance of Indian poetry in English needs to
be stated.
The Indo-Anglian poetry, the name assigned for the literature in India
written in English slowly sprang up as early as 1839. The Indo-Anglian
poetry, thus bloomed was dominated by poets, who were very much
influenced by the westernized culture-vultures. The growth and development
of Indo-Anglian poetry is one of tradition and experiment, imitation and
innovation. A tradition must have a beginning somewhere and continues
without end. Originally a great deal of Indian poetry had been imitative. But
during the course of time a drastic change has been observed in the realm of
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poetry. Indian poetry in English during the Post-Independence period
acquired its original voice and idiom in the true sense of the term.
Henry Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghosh and his contemporaries were
writers of the early 19th century who wrote with the inspiration derived from
the English poets. Their poetry reflected those of their English models but to a
certain extent remained within the framework of the tradition of English
poetry. Though their poetry was very much imitative, they made an earnest
attempt to express the personality of India. Derozio‟s patriotic verses,
Madhusudhan Dutt‟s English verses on the ancient legends of India, Sarojini
Naidu‟s romantic poems of Indian scenes and sounds corroborate this idea.
These poets laid the foundation of Indian English verse with their exceptional
poetic gifts and individual talents.
People profess different views about the achievement of Indian English
poetry before and after independence. Critics like K.R.S. Iyengar,
V.K.Gokak, C.D.Narasimhaiah and some others laud the poetry of Sri
Aurobindo and his contemporaries like Sarojini Naidu. According to
V.K.Gokak, there are two categories of Indian poets in English before
Independence. They are neo-symbolists and neo-modernists. The neosymbolists dive deep into mysticism and the neo-modernists express
humanism. C.D.Narasimhaiah speaks about Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu in
his book The swan and the eagle as pioneers in the field of Indian English
poetry. Narasimhaiah eloquently praises Sri Aurobindo that he has made the
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English language accommodate certain hitherto unknown (inconsistent) areas
of experience both through his prose work, Life Divine and through his epic
Savitri not to speak of the numerous translations from Sanskrit poetry and
drama as well as his other less known but important works. But
R.Parthasarathy has expressed a view that Indian verse in English “did not
seriously begin to exist till after the withdrawal of the British from India”(3)
Critics like P.Lal and Adil Jussawalla along with R.Parthasarathy denounced
the poetry of Sri Aurobindo and his contemporaries. K.R.S.Iyengar in his
article entitled Indian Poetry in English Yesterday - Today and Tomorrow
severely criticises R.Parthasarathy, Keki N Daruwalla and Adil Jussawalla for
criticising Sri Aurobindo and earlier poets in English for invalid reasons.
Poetry of the Post-Independence era also never escaped the attacks of
certain skeptic critics. Beginning with Nissim Ezekiel, even the best of PostIndependence poetry was criticised as poor imitations of Keats, Tennyson,
Hardy and Eiot. Bijay Kumar Das believes that serious Indian English poetry
came to be written not immediately after Independence but in the nineteen
sixties and after. He evaluates that Post Independence Indian English poetry
has proved increasingly robust, varied, responsive to the times and enjoyable.
It is now very rarely either consciously indebted or consciously hostile to
Anglo American novels. It has acquired a distinct character and has
discovered its own voice. The voice is discovered by the poet‟s genius for
intimately registering the idiom of his own world.
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Modernity influenced the recent Indian English poetry which marked a
break with the past. This has displayed itself in three identifiable
manifestations: the first is a past-oriented vision which is associated with a
sense of loss and hopelessness which is a sort of cultural pessimism, the
second-a future-oriented vision, that arouses a desire to transform the world,
the third is the attitude towards the present times, ahistorical, amoral, neutral,
stoic, ironic, ambivalent, absurdist. This type of expression falls under two
kinds. The first mode of expression is subjective in which the poet looks
inward, the second mode of expression is objective, where the poet looks
around, observing the reality that prevails around him. These may be termed
as “voyage within” and “voyage without” respectively. In the hands of Nissim
Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, AK Ramanujan R.Parthasarathy, Arun Kolatkar
and Kamala Das the Indian English poetry is acquiring new dimensions.
They have acclimatised the English language to an indigenous tradition
and have written effective poetry. Indian English poetry of the Post
Independence period is sincerely and profoundly felt and is addressed to the
whole community. The poems are records of the objective and thought provoking observations of reality around us. The Indian English poetry has
risen above the Victorian taboos and Indian poets have broken new ground.
There is a pervasive presence of a conscious Indianness which is different
from the imitative mediocrity of poetry in the Pre Independence period.
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Much of modern poetry speaks about contemporary life and society.
Poems of today are short and compact. They deal with various aspects of
common life. Delicate feelings and personal notes are handled deftly. Creative
work in poetry is a discovery of oneself at a particular moment which just
happens and it does not follow a particular programme. Poetry is discovered,
not invented. It is a free and natural blooming that takes place in a language
rather than a planed composition meant to be accommodated in a framework.
already existing. The poet creates a new form which helps him know himself,
see himself, and analyse himself. It is like self-creation and self-realisation,
which reveal the beauty of poetry that flows from the heart of the poet.
Poets like Jayanta Mahapatra, Pritish Nandy, Arvind Krishna Mehroka,
Keki Daruwalla picture the live and vital nature of earth and society and the
themes of their poems bring forth and present the important places of Orissa,
Rajasthan, West Bengal, Kashmir, and Uthar Pradesh and embody the value
of survival, self-reliance and renewal. Their poems seem to emphasise the
need for an immediate order that stands in contrast to the disorder and pain of
human existence. On the other hand poets like Kamala Das and Shiv
K.Kumar focus on a world which is personal and social.
English Poetry in India, today makes the English language more
malleable to change with ease and naturalness. The poets draw their themes,
with conscious efforts, out of the glorious ancient Indian culture. The collage
of concrete images derived from the multi-dimensional learning of science,
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economy, geography, philosophy, psychology, ethics, scriptures and so on
vindicates the realistic trends that pervade modern poetry. It is in this context,
the researcher feels that a study has to be undertaken on Jayanta Mahapatra
who has carved a niche for himself in Indian poetry in English by merging the
inward and outward modes of expression.
Jayanta Mahapatra was born on 22nd October, 1928 in Cuttack, Orissa.
His father, Lamuel, was a sub-inspector of primary schools. He belongs to a
middle class Christian family. His grandfather, Chintamani, adopted
Christianity during the devastating famine in 1866 that shook Orissa which
drove him to the verge of death. He finally staggered into a mercy camp run
by the white missionaries in Cuttack. He was provided with food and shelter,
in return for which he was persuaded to adopt Christianity, to which
Chintamani yielded. Thus Jayanta Mahapatra was a Christian by inheritance
and upbringing though he imbibed much of Hindu culture.
As he was growing Mahapatra experienced the pull of both these
religions. He says in his autobiography:
As children we grew up between two worlds. The first was
home where we were subjected to a rigid Christian upbringing,
with rules my mother sternly imposed, the other was the vast
and dominant Hindu amphitheatre outside with preponderance
of rites and festivals which represented the way of life of our
own people. Two worlds then; and thinking I was at the centre
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of it all trying to communicate with both, and probably
becoming myself incommunicable as a result through the years.
(142)
Although Christian by birth, Mahapatra‟s creative self is primarily Hindu in
terms of myth, symbols, folklore and idiom. Though his grandfather became a
Christian he was totally a Hindu. Christianity is something Mahapatra learnt
at his mother‟s footsteps. There were evening prayers at home. He learnt to
revere Christ. But Hinduism is a part of him too. That is his inner self and his
inner self is totally Hindu.
Throughout his youth Mahapatra felt neglected and humiliated living
in a Hindu dominated society. Talking about his childhood in an interview,
Mahapatra says that he was the youngest in the class. His classmates being
physically stronger, he felt a sense of intimidation all the time. He used to sit
reading a book when they were playing around. He was subjected to much
bullying and ill-treatment while at school. Even today he says he would like
to remain in a corner and does not like to mingle with crowds and that is what
has made him sensitive to poetry. As a student at Patna University, Bihar, he
was afraid of being humiliated by his fellow students.
A sense of loneliness haunted Mahapatra always. He felt utterly lonely
on those first days at Patna. Besides the differences, he experienced a huge
cultural gap, he also realised painfully that he would have been subjected to
unnecessary ridicule from other students in those lodgings had they known
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that he was a Christian. This feeling of loneliness and sense of rejection
influence his poetry to a great extent.
Mahapatra felt a sense of insecurity during his childhood. He speaks
about his childhood, his house and his mother which were the causes of the
fear. His relationship with his mother was not so happy. He says, in his
autobiography
I have never been able to feel that affinity with mother
(Sudnasubala by name) as I have with my father. She was
erratic in her ways, and as I grew up, my conflict with her
increased… I was flushed with a constant tension. I didn‟t know
what was important to me anymore… I slipped into dream. I
kept more and more to myself. Mother did not appear to have
any trust in me. (139-40)
But Mahapatra‟s relationship with his father was a friendly and lasting one.
Mahapatra was appointed a lecturer in physics in Ravenshaw College,
Cuttack. Jayanta Mahapatra was a trained physicist. He was interested in
photography and short fiction and finally started writing poetry. Mahapatra
wrote poems in English, not in his mother tongue Oriya. Mahapatra expresses
the reasons,
I am in love with English. And then, my schooling was in
English - and I learnt my language from British school masters
and mainly from English novels; H. Rider Haggard and Edgar
Rice Burroughs and Ballantyne from whom I caught the first
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delight of words graphic with meaning. Further I feel I can
express myself better in English than in Oriya
(qtd in Raghavan, 59)
Mahapatra started writing poetry after he became forty years old. He
brought out his first volume of poems at the age of forty three. He started
writing and using English rather late in life and all those years had been spent
reading books in the English language, mostly fiction. His first poem
appeared in his fortieth year after he had developed a considerable feeling for
the language. We come to know by his poems that Mahapatra has proved his
excellence in the genre of poetry while his autobiography shows him as a
profuse prose writer. The poet has successfully published many volumes of
poetry from the year 1971 till now. His first book of verse, Close the Sky, Ten
by Ten was published in 1971 after his forties. But his other volumes followed
in quick succession. It includes Svayamvara and Other Poems in 1971. It
deals with the theme of love and the magnificence it renders to the lovers. The
poems celebrate not only passion, but consistently evoke a melancholic
atmosphere rent with absences, fears and sufferings.
The next volume of verse is A Fathers Hours (1976). In the same year,
yet another volume appeared, A Rain of Rites (1976). There had been a
succession of several volumes rapidly. They include Waiting (1979), The
False Start (1980) and Relationship (1980). The long narrative poem,
Relationship is set in Orissa and it embodies the myth and the history of the
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land. Mahapatra published series of verse collection in succession. Life Signs
(1982), Dispossessed Nests (1988), Temple (1989) and A Whiteness of Bone
(1992) were published to the delight of poetry loving public. Mahapatra
published his first collection of short stories The Green Gardener in 1995. He
has considerable reputation as a short story writer and the stories in this
collection have been published in various journals previously. It is discerned
that his training as a scientist has enabled him to use the language vividly and
precisely in prose and verse creations. Succeeding this there came out two
volumes of verses namely Shadow Space (1997) and Bare Face (2001). The
more recent volume of his poetry Random Descent appeared in the year 2005,
which is a distinct testimony of poetic vision, impassioned by its depth of
feeling and poignancy of expression. In 2013 Mahapatra has brought out a
volume of poems entitled Land. Lakshmi Kannan says: “These poems evoke
an answering ache and a shock of recognition in a reader” (5).
The dark recesses of the poet‟s mind embody themselves in
Mahapatra‟s poetry, for which the poet profusely uses private symbols and
images and deviates from the regular syntax in order to add profoundity to his
poems. Mahapatra himself has admitted on several occasions that he has
attempted to mould the English language to his „private needs‟. Some of his
critics comment that his poetry is written not in quite standard English, but it
is fascinating and moving. To the question of Sachidananada Mohanty about
the elements of mysticism in his poetry, Mahapatra replies: “I am fascinated
by the unknown in the external universe and that is why physics appealed to
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me… so I suppose I am a believer in that sense”. The element of subjectivity
is noticed in the poems of Mahapatra in which the poet makes an inward
journey and relates himself with his milieu and his native surroundings. There
is novelty and delicacy in how Mahapatra blends subjectivity with the native
landscape. In this way Mahapatra‟s poetry is extraordinary and outstanding.
Anxiety, inadequacies, unhappiness and such things could lead one to
writing. Perhaps the poet is talking to himself as he writes. One cannot do
away with the element of struggle in the making of a poem or in the process
of scientific research. The scientific training of the poet has taught him a kind
of discipline which he has used effectively in the making of the poem. Poetry
is a kind of science, a science of the heart‟s affections. On the other hand,
science is also poetry, but poetry of the mind. The poet expresses that he uses
his intellect for science but when he writes poetry, his heart runs ahead of his
intellect.
Mahapatra says that he never wanted to be a poet, because he never
read any poetry. He was initially interested in fiction. He had not ever thought
of reading Tagore or Eliot or Neruda. They never mattered to him at all. But
he was into poems. He was looking around the world and into himself. When
he started writing poetry, he thought he was the center of the universe, but he
was absolutely wrong. His early poems were exercises in a way, written
mainly to please himself. These poems were fused in themselves and they
appeared to be abstract. His mind was more to him than his heart which is not
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right when it comes to poetry. The poet did not see favourable response from
the critics initially. Hence he began reading contemporary poetry mainly, the
European and Latin American poets whom he considered to be the great ones.
He realised that he should write simple understandable poems in order to cater
to the readers and critics which he found to be difficult. The English language
which he was very familiar with and his own reading over forty years were of
great help to him in writing poetry.
When Mahapatra began writing poems he spoke about himself and the
people around him. It was his pain, his love, his relationship which mattered.
It took time to see things, feel them; it took time to bring out in his poetry the
myths that shaped him, from the chaos of history and tradition that always
energised his land, Orissa. He had been aware of all this very much but to
incorporate them into his poetry and make them contribute to the power of his
poetry were not easy for Mahapatra. The poet had not read much poetry and
did not know how to write. There was nobody to help him. He found writing
all by himself in his small town very difficult. But he persisted and continued
writing. Some poems were satisfactory to the poet but many were not. He did
not give up. He wrote a number of poems which he had not revised or
rewritten or sent for publication.
All these poems are rooted in the land where he lives and chooses to
live. It is strange that the poet is able to write when he is in Orissa, nowhere
else. Poets like AK.Ramanujan, R.Parthasarathy, Meena Alexander stayed
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behind in the USA; even Dilip Chitre was there for several years. But the
affluence of the West never tempted or hypnotised Mahapatra. He seems to be
happy when he touches the shoulder of his rickshaw puller or his dentist friend. Only these things matter to him. He wants to be believed and the
honesty of his poems should also be believed. He does not feel comfortable
sitting in a glass house and talk about the plight of the people in Kandhamal;
the poet wants to be there and see and touch them. After visiting the remote
villages in Thuamulmampur in Kalahandi and Barakamura in Mayurbhanj, he
realises that the opulence in which he lives tortures his waking hours.
From this point Mahapatr‟s poetry has taken a turn that he has started
writing poems from the experiences he had. So long he had been writing
about himself and his Orissa, but now he feels a sense of despair in what he
sees around him. He is not able to sleep when he thinks about his fellow men
living in remote villages, who are starving, are inadequately clad and are
without a roof over there head. Besides this the poet also notices the new
violence that is prevalent everywhere around. The poet unburdens that pain he
is experiencing, through writing poems.
Though the poet has a strong social commitment, he is not a social
person. But this kind of immune set back has made things a little worse. He
always prefers to sit thirteen rows behind when he is at a meeting, and can
only answer the questions which others might put to him. However he tries to
participate in many poetry readings. He was at Delhi on 8th May 2011 reading
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his poems on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Rabindaranath Tagore.
He always has the urge to express his thoughts. He says that he feels the need
to write because the new violence bothers him though he feels safe within the
confines of home.
Mahapatra‟s Relationship brought him the prestigious 1981 Central
Sahitya Academy Award in India. He also won the Gangadhar Tiher National
Award for poetry (1995) and Vaikom Mohammed Basheer Award (1997) All
this fame and critical acclaim won by Mahapatra are not an accidental one, for
he has emerged from a literary tradition that has deep root in the soil.
When the poet won an award for the first time, he felt extremely happy
and felt that he had to write more and write better. He wrote poems and sent
them out to very prestigious journals in USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
Awards and honours kept coming in. He sent a manuscript of poems to the
University of Georgia Press, USA. It was a winning manuscript which was
later published in 1996 under the title A Rain of Rites in which all the poems
dealt with Orissa, his land. Twice in his writing career, once in the USA,
when he was reading his poems to an international gathering, a girl who was a
Brazilian simply wept and left the hall hurriedly. Then again at the
international ACALS conference in Hyderabad, the same thing happened
when a Canadian poet rushed out of the hall with tears in her eyes as he was
reading his poems. These two separate incidents made him feel in a way he
never experienced before. There was both delight and despair, and the poet
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considers these two moments to hold more weight than any awards he had got
for poetry. The poignancy hit him still, it came out of the words he used in his
poems, and that was more than enough. But the awards do not mean much to
the poet. As a matter of fact, they do not affect him at all, Not even the
Padmashree award. The poet says whatever he has done in the field of poetry
he has done himself without taking anyone‟s help.
In the early stages of Mahapatra‟s poetic career, the poet has made
copious references to his childhood experiences as well as the fairy tales of
Oriya, the myths, legends and the great Indian epics. In his poetry, the readers
come across the well-knit family life, the rites and rituals associated with
cyclic agricultural seasons and the rich tradition of arts and crafts of Indian
life. As Mahapatra sets forth to find out the relationship of his innerself with
his locale, he gradually becomes aware of self identity. The poems in the first
few volumes represent the feeling of hurt and silence, the temporality and
falseness of the world. CB cox, in his review of The False Start observes
that, Mahapatra‟s poetry “reflects a form of quietism, a sense of inevitability
which is peculiarly Indian… In poems like these the process of creating a
proper unity, a truly Indian English, takes a significant step ahead”(478).
Mahapatra speaks in an essay titled “The Door” that the door “served both as
a refuge from the terrors of the outside world which mutely went on to lock
me in, offering me no escape. It became both a heaven and a prison and my
mind positioned itself both inside out… There is always something very final,
very secretive about door” (1991:191). In the early stages of Mahapatra‟s
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poetic career he makes a “journey within” and presents the realities
experienced by his individual self.
During the course of evolution of Mahapatra‟s poetic career it is
observed that in the mid nineteen eighties there was a shift in location from
Orissa to Punjab and Bhopal. The volume titled Dispossessed Nests contains
poems that speak about the Khalistan issue and the Bhopal gas tragedy that
resulted in innumerable deaths, disfigurement and mutilation. In Temple
(1989) the poet sublimates death. Life is elevated even in its most miserable
condition. Mahapatra highlights women as the subject of endless human
sufferings and points out possible redemption. The poet illustrates this by
means of many myths. In A Whiteness of Bone (1992) the poet raises the
theme of his poem to the level of National importance. He speaks effectively
on Mahatma Gandhi, his principles and his sacrifice. In later volumes like
Shadow Space (1997), Bare Face (2000) and Random Descent (2005)
Mahapatra speaks about contemporary problems, the suffering of women, the
burning of the Australian missionary and his two sons. The slim volume titled
Land 2013 has poems in which social themes are recurrent. The poet‟s heart
simply refuses to accept heart-rending happenings with a taken-for-granted
attitude. Thus as the poet matured in his career he started looking around his
own self. He makes a “journey without” that drives him to the present the
social realities. Every human being should account for something good in
between birth and death and the artist or the creative person should throw
light on those areas of moral or social diseases and defects so that the
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individual would be able to address those issues. The study aims at this. The
difference between Mahapatra and most of his contemporaries are: his lower
middle class family background, commitment to poetry at the age of forty,
many volumes of his poems despite his physical ailment, the first one in
Indian English poetry to grab Sahithya Academy Award, publication of his
poems in reputed journals of the world, a man of science but with great fervor
and vivacity for poetry and his unique poetic images. All these factors
differentiate him from the rest of the twentieth century poets. Mahapatra‟s
profoundity, prolification and poignancy of expressions distinguish him from
other Indo Anglian poets.
The present study is divided into five chapters devoting the first and
the last chapters to introduction and conclusion respectively. The
methodology of the study consists of psychological, sociological, archetypal,
historical, political, cultural and feministic perspectives. The study of select
poems has been presented in the core chapters under the titles „The Inner
World‟, „Response to Reality‟ and „Poetic Devices‟ respectively. At the
beginning of each of the three main chapters, the chosen concept has been
explained in general, followed by a thorough investigation of the poet‟s select
poems to exemplify the concept.
The Introduction defines and states generally about poetry and poets. A
poem is born out of the experience of the poet. It reveals the thoughts that
haunt and illumine the poet and present them in the limelight. Poems cleanse
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the poet‟s heart of its pains and purge his tormented soul. Mahapatra
successfully portrays the tradition of India in an alien language. Having taken
English as a medium of instruction from the primary classes of school, he has
found writing in English rather more comfortable than writing in Oriya his
mother tongue. It has been observed by many, that Indian writers in English
of the nineteen sixties have been freed from the tensions of global anxiety and
have become more conscious of personal experience and requirements of
poetic craftsmanship.
Poets like Nissim Ezekiel, Shiv. K.Kumar, R.Parthasarathy, Kamala
Das, Keki Daruwalla and Jayanta Mahapatra published a number of
collections of poems during this time. Mahaptra‟s poems are regarded as the
most sustained, rigorous and carefully defined exploration of the land, people
and lifestyle of India. The evolution of Mahapatra‟s poetry in his „voyage
within‟ and „voyage without‟ shows a gradual and progressive growth and
development leading to a higher degree of achievement.
In the core chapter titled „The Inner World‟, the researcher has taken
for analysis some poems which present the poet‟s „voyage within‟. In many
poems the poet turns inward, recalls his boyhood experience with his mother
and father and thus establishes a link with the past. His grandfather and his
conversion to Christianity are recurrent theme in Mahapatra‟s poetry. Many
of his poems reveal his consciousness of the heroic tradition of the land of his
birth which kindles a sense of belonging that relates him to the important
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places of Orissa. There prevails a conflict between the poet now being a
Christian due to his grandfather‟s conversion to Christianity and the racial
Hindu consciousness that is still awake in him.
The poet in many poems poignantly speaks about his relationship with
his father and mother. Landscape which was his childhood haunt plays a
pivotal role in Mahapatra‟s personal poems. The poet always associated
himself with the past which enables him to portray his inner reality. He
searches his own self in order to understand the world in its proper
perspective. The poet, being firmly rooted in Orissan soil, the legends, history
and the myth associated with Orissa, makes them an integral part of his
poetry. The search for roots is the trend in modern Indian poetry. Mahapatra
searches for his roots in the volume Relationship which fetched him the
central Sahitya Akademi Award. This poem embodies the myth and history of
Orissa. The poet acknowledges his indebtedness to Orissa where his roots lie.
The poet‟s attachment to his birth place is very strong which is the outcome of
his quest for identity and roots. The poet, in the poems where he looks inward
describes his encounters with all the significant aspects of his private life and
relatedness to his native land.
The second core chapter titled “Response to Reality” records the
researcher‟s observations, after a very close reading of the select poems of
Mahapatra and how the poet looks at broad issues of national history through
the experience of personal life. This chapter also deals with the poet‟s concern
21
over certain political and social issues and his obligations as a member of the
civil society. The poet‟s engagement with the social issues is a means of
exercising his citizenship in the modern world. Emperor Asoka has found an
indelible and honourable place in history for the edicts he carved on rocks and
for the message of peace he sent throughout the world. But according to
Mahapatra the memory of the brutality that preceded his transformation is
overwhelming and that cannot be erased from the images of our land.
Mahapatra views history from the angle of a humanitarian and finds fault with
the political dynamics of power mongers.
Similarly, the first and third sections of Relationship reveal the burden
of Mahapatra‟s racial memory. In two other poems the poet records his
observation after visiting the forts of Shivaji and Tippu Sultan which are now
reduced to ruins. The poet feels heavy at heart that nothing is left behind to
speak of these times or the courage of Shivaji who fought for the cause of
justice against the invader. In “Of Independence Day” (A Whiteness of Bone)
the poet affirms his stand point that the horror we witness in the present is
worse than any episode in our colonical or medieval history. In most of his
poems Mahaptra tries to point out that the reality we experience today show
that the quality of people has not changed and history relentlessly seems to
repeat itself. The enemy of the past came from outside the country, now the
extortionists come from within the country in the form of the country‟s
inefficient political and administrative system.
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Mahapatra has devoted several poems to Mahatma Gandhi. He
expresses his wonder in one such poem that, if Gandhi had lived would he
have had the strength to witness the abusive happenings that take place in the
Post-Independent India. The only time when people lived in real peace is the
sixth century BC when Buddha lived and preached his message of peace and
equality. The poet writes about it in the fifteenth section of “Requiem”. But
Gandhi now is dead and Buddhism too disappeared as did peace and nonviolence. The poet‟s heart is full of empathy for the topography and the
people of Orissa. The dirt and filth found everywhere around the cities of Puri
and Cuttack pain the heart of the poet. The plight of women and children, the
victimised weaklings, become the subject of many of his poems. One of his
poems speaks about how a fisherman subjects his daughter to prostitution due
to poverty. As Mahapatra attains maturity in poetic career, his themes
transcend his local obsession and native cultural preoccupation. The poet
expresses the agony he experiences over the Bhopal Gas tragedy, Khalistan
issue, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and so on in various poems which
would be discussed in the core chapters.
Mahapatra has now ascertained that the poet is much remembered not
on account of his adherence to subjective experiences but on account of his
ability to transfer the immediate present into moments with a hopeful note
that „though much is taken, much abides” and the art of poetry encourages us
to feel that the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.
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Poems like “A Missing Person”, “Hunger”, “The whorehouse in a
Calcutta Steet”, 30th January 1982: A story” and “The Twenty fifth
Anniversary of a Republic: 1975” link the individual‟s social commitment to
social reality. They express the poet‟s conflicting concerns over the modern
life. Mahapatra depicts the predicament of human life. He dwells on hunger,
violence and terrorism. The poet identifies himself with the complex
problems of the society as a humanist. He judges social and political issues
with a humanist‟s eye.
The first and the second core chapters titled “Inner World” and
“Response to Reality” respectively would deal with the content of the select
poems. The socio-psychological factors of a male-dominated world, Orissa in
this context, have never accepted the fact that a woman is man‟s counterpart.
Every woman does have a “bruised presence” (Prasad 68) as she is not
considered as a human being. In every orthodox society a woman finds it
difficult to have her socio-cultural identity. Mahapatra revolts against women
being treated as an object of sexual gratification.
He also focuses on the agonies of prostitutes who suffer in their
everyday life while facing the pseudo cultured society. He wants those
prostitutes to be accepted as a part of the civic society because prostitutes
have been treated as ostracised individuals. The poet in his poem “The
whorehouse in a Calcutta Street” raises a cry for their social space and
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recognition though those women take their plight as granted. Mahapatra
speaks in favour of such helpless women.
His themes range from sex to nature from religion to superstition, from
the metaphysical to the physical, from the personal to the impersonal. In all
his poems, whatever the themes may be, there seems to be a meditative and
reflective quality. The authenticity and the universality of the poem “Hunger”
come from the very fact that it presents a down-to-earth world out of the
imagined one. It shows a severe indictment of a social reality where hunger
for food forces one to subjugate oneself to another‟s hunger for carnal
pleasures.
The evil of prostitution finds a space in Mahapatra‟s poetry.
Prostitution occurs on account of social injustice and economic disparity.
Shiv. K. Kumar, Pratish Nandy and Kamaladas have treated love and sex in
their poems. But Mahapatra never arouses ignoble instincts while he talks
about love and sex. He is rather delicate, but obviously unsentimental and
realistic. He is restrained in his expressions.
The poetic technique which contributes to the excellence of poetry
enriches the meaning of the poem. The third core chapter under the caption
“Poetic Devices” would explicate the nuances of poetic techniques adopted by
the poet. Jayanta Mahapatra says that “the capacity or power of conducting
the essential experience of the poem will primarily depend upon the poem
itself-on the poem‟s design”(10). Hence, it becomes essential for the
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researcher to devote a chapter exclusively to the poetic techniques the poet
has adopted in his poems. Jayanta Mahapatra‟s poems abound in symbols,
imagery and allusions to encompass the human condition. Mahapatra seems
to have been influenced by the imagist movement especially by Eliot and Ezra
Pound. The poet, being rooted in the traditions of Orissa, introduces so many
religious images and symbols in his poems. Rain is used as a symbol of
wisdom and innocence. His images are subtle, controlled, apt and moving,
strengthening the significance of the meaning of the poem.
In his Relationship, the long poem, there are shadows of W.B. Yeats
and T.S.Eliot. The images, phantom darkness, half light of rain, resemble
Eliot‟s imagery in “The Hollowmen” and that of Yeats in “Sailing to
Byzantium”. Mahapatra is also influenced by Whitman‟s imagery. Most of
Mahapatra‟s symbols are personal symbols used for specific purposes. The
imagery and thought content are proportionately integrated. Like most of the
Indian English poets, Mahapatra writes in free verse and avoids the rigorous
metrical verse. He presents irregular stanzas in elliptical style with no
rhyming scheme. The tone is equivalent to colloquial and conversational.
Mahapatra tries to evoke the Indian tradition without sentimentalising the
past. There is a detatchment in the way Mahapatra views the world and
comprehends the reality which results in total objectivity in presentation.
The last chapter is the summing up of all the observations of the
researcher on Mahapatra‟s poetry. Mahapatra is a very talented Indian English
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poet of our time who has inspired a number of budding poets and has
provoked the curiosity of many poetic critics. Mahapatra‟s vision and
obsessive search for meaning in the human condition of the present days is
characteristic of postmodern writing. Cuttack, a city of historical importance
which had the great Barabati Fort is now a symbol of broken empires and
vanquished dynasties. In Relationship, the poet speaks about the Kalinga war
that transformed Emperor Asoka the great. Mahapatra never takes pride in the
glories of the past. He rather contrasts it with the deplorable present day
conditions. His poetry deconstructs the pride over the glorious past by
presenting it in juxtaposition with the gruesome and grim reality of the
present. Mahapatra speaks in his poetry about the materialistic, povertystricken, violence-infested, self-centered, gas-polluting, power-craving, and
women-abusing society of today.
Mahapatra who refuses to romanticise a questionable mundane reality
through his nerve-wrecking poetry about men and manners, has created an
awareness that one should take socially productive efforts to set right the
head-over-heels world so that lasting progress and peace would become
possible. The study under the title Individual and Social Reality in the Select
Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra is meant to awaken human sensibility which in
turn would attempt to cleanse the world of the wrongs that are being
committed. Mahapatra‟s invocation to moral and social consciousness could
be compared with other socially committed writers of all nations.
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The poet as a single man cannot recreate the society by his poetic
composition. Being more sensitive than other men he can only sense the
impending predicament. The poet, through his complex poetic medium,
cautions the people as a prophet that all is not right with the world. Poetry can
at times be useful in providing answers or responses to questions which the
self asks. Poetry is a meeting place of the inward and the outward. It can be
extremely intimate too, and the thoughts, when they come into a poem do not
want to be alone in them. Whether these provide an answer is difficult to say
but the urge to confess, and unburden oneself can tie the poet‟s impulses to
the community and contribute to a sharing of human voice. The present study
is a humble attempt to examine how poetry serves Mahapatra as a launching
pad to express his self through which he is able to see a wider world around of
which he is only a speck.