Dialogue: A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Dialogue: A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation [XIX/ 2, Dec. 2023 ed.] 9788126938247

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Dialogue A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation (A Peer Reviewed & Refereed Journal) Volume XIX

Number 2

Indexed with Google Scholar, Crossref & PKP

Special Issue on Jayanta Mahapatra

Dec. 2023

ISSN 0974-5556

(A Peer Reviewed & Refereed Journal)

No 2

Volume XIX

Dec. 2023

Editor Sudheer C. Hajela Shri J.N.M.P.G. College Lucknow

Associate Editors H. S. Chandalia H. S. Randhawa J R N Vidhyapeeth, Udaipur, Rajasthan

D A V P G College Dehradun, Uttarakhand

Shubha Dwivedi ARSD College University of Delhi, New Delhi

Editorial Advisory Board

Review Editors of this Issue Kh. Kunjo Singh

Kapil Kapoor (New Delhi)

Dept of English Manipur University, Manipur

M.S. Kushwaha (Lucknow)

Manas Bakshi

Jasbir Jain (Jaipur) Rajnath (Allahabad) Mohan Ramanan (Hyderabad) Ragini Ramachandra (Bangalore) Krishna Sen (Kolkata) Shrawan K Sharma (Haridwar)

Eminent Poet & Critic, Kolkata

Md. Saquib Abrar Dept of English Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh

Ranjana Krishna Dept of English Awadh Girls' College, Lucknow

Kavita Arya Dept of English Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth Varanasi

Surabhi Mukherjee

Basavaraj Naikar (Dharwad)

Dept of English Atal Bihari Bajpai Nagar Nigam Degree College Lucknow

This issue of Dialogue is Dedicated to

Jayanta Mahapatra (22 Oct, 1928 - 27 Aug, 2023)

One of the Greatest Poets of India

Editorial Jayanta Mahapatra ,one of the doyens of contemporary Indian English Poetry descended from world's stage at the age of 95, leaving behind a legacy of poetry that has contemporary as well as universal values for all lovers of English poetry in India and abroad. The meaning of being Jayanta Mahapatra lies not only in his idiom of speech but also in his social commitments. Some of his poems like “Hunger”, “Indian Summer”, ”The Grandfather's House” and” A Rain of Rites” have, by now ,achieved a canonical status. Critics like Krishna Rayan, Vasant Shahane, Madhusudan Prasad and B K Das have explored his poetry intensively and found him at par with Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, A K Ramanujam and R Parthasarathy in craft and social vision. A scholar of English literature feels amazed the way he, a Prof of Physics, chooses his images and symbols and expresses his social concerns in an original linguistic medium, he is local with universal concerns. His poems take us a sojourn to the places ,temples and rivers of his home land Orissa ,but the poems transcend topicality and elevates him to the status of a poet of universal consciousness. To read him merely as a poet of Orissa will be an injustice to him .His poetry extols the love for the lands, rivers and temples which are the epitomes of our culture and traditions but he has a sharp eye on the vices which surround them, he is out and out for change with immense pity and compassion for the human sufferings in our vicinity. The present issue of Dialogue is a tribute to the memory of Jayanta Mahapatra. Thirteen authors have contributed nine research papers on various aspects of his poetry which open new vistas of understanding for the poetry of Mahapatra. Prof Alok Kumar passionately opines that we don't go to Mahapatra for topicality and contemporaneity but for the residual wisdom enshrined in his poetry. For him, Mahapatra may sound strange but it is the (forbidding) opaqueness of his poems that endears him to his readers. Dr Suresh Pande explores how through imagery and symbolism, Mahapatra has unravelled his thematic concerns of spiritual significance in his celebrated poetry collection like A Rain of Rites. Aisha Haleem and Mahima Gupta critically read Vijay Kant Dubey's poems on Jayanta Mahapatra and interestingly finds that Dubey's poems imbibe Mahapatra's poetic sensibility and simplicity. And Dubey's poems are conscious attempt of Mahapatra's appreciation in poetic form. Prof Jyoti Kala and Santosh Kumar in their paper read Mahapatra's Relationship to explore the subjective memory of Mahapatra and explicate how the varied facets of human life are reflected through his social introspection in his poetry. Dr Sonali Das's paper explores the concept of 'Homeland' in various poems of Mahapatra, and underlines his varied themes and Indian sensibility, it is the celebration of legends, myths and history associated with places like Puri, Konark, Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar in poetry, found nowhere in any other Indian English poet .Dr Andleeb Zahra probes how Mahapatra's poetry transcends geographical boundaries and delves deep into cultural diversities of India ,making him a poet of cultural assimilation. Dr Milind and Dr Neetu Sharma postulate in their paper on the 'whore image' in the poems of Mahapatra and highlight his serious concern for the plight of prostitutes, one of the marginalized sections of the society. Manu Joshi and Prof Sharmila read Mahapatra's various poems and emphasize his ironic vision and ethos of his Orissa landscapes and places. Ajeet Gupta in his paper explores the social realism in the poetry of Mahapatra. The Book Review by Dr Chandrima Sen brings to the fore the literary value of Pradip K Patra's book on different facets of the poetry of Prof Susheel K Sharma and Mr Hemant Sharma's review of Sapna Dogra's book on Indian Graphic Narratives opens new discourses on the genre. Hope the issue will add to a better understanding of the poetry of Mahapatra and promote new perspectives to the research of Mahapatra's oeuvre. Happy readings… Sudheer Chandra Hajela

ISSN 0974-5556

(A Peer Reviewed & Refereed Journal)

No 2

Volume XIX

Dec. 2023

Contents Editorial S C Hajela Alok Kumar How Not to Read Jayanta Mahapatra: A Tribute via A Whiteness of Bone

1

Suresh Chandra Pande Jayanta Mahapatra : A Silent Valediction

6

Aisha Haleem and Mahima Gupta 11 Harmonizing Horizons: Vijay Kant Dubey's Melodic Reflections on Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetic Symphony Jyoti Kala and Santosh Kumar 18 Social Introspection of Myth, Reality and Self in Jayanta Mahapatra's Epic Poem "Relationship" Sonali Das Re-creating Homeland in The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra

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Andleeb Zahra 29 Casting Shadows and Sunlight: Deconstructing the Cultural Kaleidoscope in the Select Poems of Jayanata Mahapatra Milind Raj Anand and Neetu Sharma 35 Depiction of the 'Whore Image' in the Poems of Jayant Mahapatra: A Critical Analysis of Select Poems

Manu Joshi and Sharmila Saxena Ethos of Orissa Landscape and Indian Sensibility In The Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra

40

Ajeet Kumar Gupta Navigating Social Realism in the Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra

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Book Reviews Chandrima Sen 48 Voices at the Door: Critical Responses to Susheel Kumar Sharma's The Door is Half Open. by Pradip Kumar Patra, Delhi: Upanayan, 2023, ISBN: 978-93-9146-00-5. Pages: 270. Hemant Sharma 50 Indian Graphic Narratives: Critical Responses edited by Sapna Dogra, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers (2024) ISBN 978-81-269-3824-7 | Pp. 107 | Rs. 450

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

How Not to Read Jayanta Mahapatra: A Tribute via A Whiteness of Bone

Prof. Alok Kumar Department of English, DDU University, Gorakhpur (UP)

Publication Info Article history : Received : 25.10.2023 Accepted : 26.11.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.1

Key words: Asceticism, Obscurity, Alchemy of words, Life-truths, Human predicament

ABSTRACT Jayanta Mahapatra straddled a whole generation of Indian English poetry as a colossus and continues to do so even after his death. He lived a full life and has left behind a legacy that is an antidote to our fevered and anguished cerebrations. Only now we are beginning to discover ways to unravel the magic of his lines, for we don't go to a Mahapatra for topicality and contemporaneity of themes, but for the residual wisdom that defies ratiocination. We go for the strange quiescence that his poetry bequeaths. This paper is a tribute to a poet who—strange as it may sound, given the forbidding opaqueness of his poems—instilled in me the taste for poetry. My poet lives with me… Here I watch my little craft spread its wings and hear my memory echo across its muteness. All night words of mine drift, nearing meaning but never finding it. (A Whiteness of Bone 40)

Corresponding author : [email protected]

It is a personal response to the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, and I am loath to stake arguments to prove my point. I shall try to illustrate my views with poems from one of his collections A Whiteness of Bone (hereafter, WB). The two collections that I hold dear are The False Start, and A Whiteness of Bone. I distinctly remember buying The False Start as a teenager because the title fascinated me, and having looked up its meaning, I had tried to use the fancy phrase in my conversations. However, the credit for introducing me to the deeper harmonies of Mahapatra's poetry goes to my teacher at the University of Allahabad, late Professor Madhusudan Prasad, whose study of Mahapatra's poetry (The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Some Critical Considerations, 2000) was one of the earliest studies of the poet. All writers of substance, in different measures, create their signature readership, and Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the few contemporary writers about whom it can be said with assured confidence. One doesn't take to him easily, and he on his part is not forthcoming with facetious consolations. Those of us who have doggedly followed Mahapatra from our student days through his eagerly awaited poetry collections, know the value and perils of being a diehard fan. There are a good number of people who believe that the essential Mahapatra can be culled from his much-anthologised pieces which make a statement or have explicit motifs. No doubt, thematic 'discussability' and 'relatability' are major factors for the popularity of a poet, and regular references to situations and crises which constitute our familiar social, public, and private world and with which we can identify, are the nodes which connect us to a poet. We, at different stages of our academic journey, have analysed poems like 'Hunger' and 'The Grandfather's House', and have been rewarded with grades. However, Jayanta Mahapatra, the

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poet tests our patience to its limits; and as we keep returning to his poems, they gradually begin to release their emotional and intellectual contexts. He is not a pulpit poet whose meanings are public. He unapologetically dramatizes his private, lonely wrestle with words and makes us realise that there is no easy truce between words and feelings. One moment he fondles and caresses the words and phrases and the very next moment, as if caught off-guard, he flings them stoically, withdrawing all affection, leaving them exposed to the rancour of the logical. No wonder, there are implacable variations of mood and colour in his poems. He was an ascetic who loved, as if it was the sole condition of all his being. This asceticism is the lifeblood of his life and philosophy and for me, his charm lies in this buffeting between an all-giving involvement and an equally resolute distancing. His poems are not jigsaw puzzles which settle into a pattern and lose their promise of meaning. The subtle shifts of emphasis and the almost wilful upheavals and reversals of the grain of meaning in the poems closely mimic the tortuous wrenching of a poet's mind to strike a balance between the searing dichotomies of the promise and the poverty of flesh. It is not the poetry of statement; the kind of engagement with life-truths that Mahapatra's poetry sanctions, does not endorse closure. These are all numerous overtures to truth, and the wisdom they provide is gradational. They are not born of cerebration but come flaming forth from the furnace of experience, and the experience doesn't just stumble upon words or fumble for words; they have an a priori necessity about their being, then and there. To go to Mahapatra's poems for final meanings is to violate their raison d'etre. They are so many tentative takes at meaning No conscious workmanship could achieve the sudden quiescent radiance of these Mahapatra lines, all from A Whiteness of Bone: It's we, the ignorant, who keep on seeing miracles. (WB:8) Because poetry doesn't have to raise its voice. (WB:9) Why wait to be free of history when you are now in it? (35) To wait for purpose is to be devoid of meaning. (35) These feelings I experience today have no plans for the future. (48) Listening to conscience is no performance. (53) The trouble is: the dead extend their hands, but the children are alarmed by the nude ghastly bones. (55) Life doesn't give us a day off. (42) This is a man who talks of pain as though it belonged to him alone maybe he has invented it himself and made a virtue of it. Maybe he is a poet.

Krishna Rayan quotes Mahapatra from a 1991 Sahitya Akademi seminar, where the poet expatiates on the nature of his work: It was apparent to me that I was not writing the kind of poems in which meaning was stated clearly, explicitly…in other words, this poetry had no flat statements. What I was perhaps trying to do was to put together images and symbols so that the reader would draw the implicit connections for himself…It could be that this approach to the writing of poetry goes to make the poems mysterious, even obscure… (Rayan 143)

Mahapatra was alive to the charges of obscurity against his poetry, but one reason that explains this kind of 'obscurity' is the fact that the poet wanted them to be like that. It was a poetry of a mature mind which had come to realise the vacuity and banality of “explicit meanings”, a mind too full of the dialectic of memory and desire to be lured into the facile

How Not to Read Jayanta Mahapatra: A Tribute via A Whiteness of Bone

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certainties of the poetry of statement. In this context Rayan makes an insightful observation: Mahapatra's poetry continued over the years to exhibit all the defining characteristics of suggestive writing: the dominance of the figurative to the total exclusion of the literal or referential; the loosening of the signifier-signified bond; the lack of logical coherence despite syntactic regularity; indeterminacies and discontinuities, absences and silences; and the evocation of a non-specific, though real enough, emotional response. (Rayan 144)

Again, as Mahapatra says about his creative process: “Because this alone is what we know: that they, the words, the makers of poetry, will forever remain beyond us” (Mahapatra 2001: 15). It doesn't for a moment mean that Mahapatra is casual about the alchemy of words, in fact it is just the opposite. He teases meanings and relevancies out of his words, and is so heavily invested in experience that words, all too happily, unsheathe themselves for him. It also connects directly to the deep sense of responsibility he prescribes for the poet: “A poet is first of all responsible to his or her conscience, otherwise he or she cannot be called a poet.” For Mahapatra, “the other factors necessary to the making of a god poet (the craft or the language) will only come later…as frills in a poem that is already full with feeling…the poem would have already done what it was meant to do; in other words, touch another human being.” (2001:17) This takes care of the complaints of the opacity of his poems, for I must testify to the utter bafflement in the face of many of his stanzas. I gradually realised that his poems resisted paraphrasing most precisely at those moments when the core of feelings—feelings attired as words—eludes us. Words comply only when we have come even with the feelings. Feelings, by definition, are nebulous, capricious, and personal. In Mahapatra's case they are also highly evolved and complex. When addressing public issues Mahapatra, as far as my reading goes, does not strike an activist note. His feelings are deliberately held back from becoming a war cry, and yet when the feeling sinks, it lacerates and mobilises our sympathies. There is no hectoring and cajoling, and the controlled and subdued tenor of his observations makes us willing recruits to the poet's cause. His poems state, without becoming statements. The essential Mahapatra, for me, is caught up in the web of time, and is searingly conscious of this inexorable human predicament. His poetic journey, in different ways, is the story of his engagement and negotiation with the nature of time as it impinges on our existence, and Niranjan Mohanty has made a detailed and excellent study of Mahapatra's continuous grappling with the enigma of time, fruitfully connecting it to the Hindu concept of time and the abstruse philosophical debates between the Nyaya-Vaisheshika and the Bhatta-Mimanshaka schools regarding the perceptibility of time. In this context, he quotes Mahapatra on the process of poem making: I never felt that time is linear; so, as you say there are sudden shifts from the present to the past and vice-versa. A poem emerges out of a summation of events in a period of time; and an instant of a poem only trips the feelings at that instant to other instants. Chaos, once again, is at the centre of all existence, of matter both organic and inorganic…As I start the poem with a particular instant of time, I am aware that the instant has ceased to be once I have put the feeling down… And as the poem proceeds, with the series of images helping to build up the matter of the poem, I realise with some measure of emotion, that he time of the poem is no more with me, and this is what has made the poem non-existent. (Mohanty 66-67)

And poetry speaks for the poet: “These feelings I experience today/ have no plans for the future. (WB 48) The poems became non-existent in the fleeting moment of their being made and the poet moves on to make sense of the chaos that is human existence, to salvage some workable order out of its relentless recursiveness, its paradoxical play of ritual familiarity and stark newness. These are the moments when we get a momentary peep into Mahapatra's world, and that is all that remains with us. His self-acknowledged immersion into the works of British

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and American poets has left visible recurring marks on his poetry, for who could have missed T. S. Eliot in “the pale malarial light/ where only tired women appear to answer each another, / to the wind's dark pull,” or W. B. Yeats in “meaningless as man's hatred” (62), and “their hearts consumed with purpose” (66). He writes of deep pain and loss and returns obsessively to these themes, but again he doesn't wallow in pain and despond for long. Despite the palpable pain being etched, the final impression is not that of desolation and gloom. It is rather one of wisdom; of having come through. The reason for this lies in a sense of playfulness that he brings to bear on the most profound human concerns. The helplessness before loss and time's havoc is only temporarily entertained, for hadn't W. B. Yeats said, “Man is in love and loves what vanishes”? As Mahapatra puts it: Whatever sorrow is, or loss it lets us pause on the edge of a word it is stranded like a poem which has never gone past its voice (33).

Mahapatra's words profess silence, they realise themselves in that silence at the heart of temporal cacophony. In the essay “Large Words, Small Silence”, Mahapatra keeps compulsively returning to the idea of silence, let us take a few samples of his understanding of silence: One experiences the sense of being pursued, perhaps hunted by the poems one has made. The poems act as surprises, … bringing the deeper, inner silence of a sentient being into focus. So perhaps the poem, with its words, triggers an inner silence and in the end shakes one (18). The poet chooses to live in a silent world of his own making, not wanting to share his creations…For such a silence is a fusion of understanding and indulgence, when the intelligence seems to transcend itself, attaining such heights that are above the thinking domain of a normal person. To such a poet who uses his silence as part of his living, it helps to discover and consecrate the events of his life (20). I can only confirm that one is faced, at one time or other, with the substance of silence. It is a silence which seems to save, to redeem…One must agree though, that only through words will one ever be able to find that silence. But to achieve that silence, a poet has to test every word and emotion to the breaking point (21). And I would say we are only faced with silence which words have ultimately brought us to: all the words we thought were grand exercises of imagination (22).

The poet has to strain and lumber towards that silence, has to resist the pull of words which tend to violate that silence by their denotative and connotative powers. Mahapatra makes it clear that the poet has to achieve that silence, has to come to terms with oneself, with the noise within. The still centre quivers with an illuminating silence, and words are rendered adventitious. Probe insistingly and deeper into the confident journey of the flesh, and you reach the silent core, the jaded, enduring whiteness of bone. This silence does not require the slotting of Jayant Mahapatra as an Oriya poet. When we love a poet, we have every right to disagree with him over ideas and issues, and Mahapatra's Oriya identity is one such issue. But the fact remains that Mahapatra is himself responsible for this state of affairs. In various writings and interviews he has underlined his Oriya past, insisting that he is an Oriya writing in English. But, if we collate his statements around this issue, it becomes amply clear that he was merely announcing, time and again, his connectedness to the Oriya past and landscape, owing in the main to the fact that throughout his long life he remained confined (or should we say tied) to Orissa, “the land where I was brought

How Not to Read Jayanta Mahapatra: A Tribute via A Whiteness of Bone

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up and have spent my life” (Satpathy 72). As he says elsewhere with his characteristic emphasis “Orissa still has a strong oral tradition. It has songs that are three hundred years old that are still being sung. All that is there in my psyche. I am a part of that tradition. I can't keep myself away from it” (Satpathy 28). In a large measure, it was a result of the critical requirement of establishing Mahapatra as the icon of rooted, local, rural, unalienated poetry; working in conscious opposition to the rootless, alienated, metropolitan poetry of the likes of Nissim Ezekiel. This facile distinction does incalculable harm to a proper understanding of Mahapatra's poetry, and I stand in adamant refusal to accept the judgement that, “to understand Mahapatra's poetry would require an understanding or appreciation of his regionalism” (Satpathy 72). I would be the last person to accept—on the evidence of his poems—that a conscious regionalism shaped his poetry. Yes, our daily familiarity with the local sights and scenes may enhance our enjoyment of individual poems, but that is that. Many times, he is coaxed into such confessions by the drift of questions thrown at him. But I insist, on a personal note, that for me his Oriya identity has never been a barrier to my understanding of his poetry, nor has it substantially augmented the impact. There is enough of India in his avowedly 'Orissa poems', perhaps more than in the socalled pan-India poems of other poets. Beyond that, it must be said with due emphasis that there is no trace of Oriya exceptionalism or chauvinism in Mahapatra. He is avowedly an “Oriya first”, but not consciously or exclusively an Oriya. He feels the pain of Orissa with acute sensitivity and seamlessly connects with the pain and suffering of larger humanity. In sum, we can say that Mahapatra leaves behind a unique and inimitable legacy of refined suggestiveness, mellow sensuousness, and humane soulfulness. Works Cited Mahapatra, Jayanta. A Whiteness of Bone: Selected Poems. Viking, 1992. ... “Large Words, A Small Silence” in Many Indias, Many Literatures: New Critical Essays, ed. Shormishtha Panja. Worldview Publications, 2001. Mohanty, Niranjan. “Time as Revelation: The Poetry of Jayant Mahapatra” in Modern Indian Poetry in English: Critical Studies, eds. Nila Shah, Pramod Nayar, Creative Books, 2000. Rayan, Krishna. The Lamp and the Jar: Exploration of New Horizons in Literary Criticism. Sahitya Akademi, 2002. Satpathy, Sumanyu. “Ezekiel's India and Mahapatra's: A Fresh Look at their Poetry” in Many Indias, Many Literatures: New Critical Essays, ed. Shormishtha Panja. Worldview Publications, 2001. ... “A Discussion with Jayanta Mahapatra” in Many Indias, Many Literatures: New Critical Essays, ed. Shormishtha Panja. Worldview Publications, 2001.

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

Jayanta Mahapatra : A Silent Valediction

Dr. Suresh Chandra Pande Tiwari House, Uttaranchal Colony Phase-2 P.O. Haripurnaik - 263139 Haldwani / Nainital, UK

Publication Info

ABSTRACT

Sahitya Akademy award winner Jayanta Mahapatra - a luminary of Indian English Poetry was born on October 22,1928 in cuttack-Odisha and died there Article history : on August 28,2023.He belonged to a lower-middle class Indian family and after Received : 2.11.2023 having gained Master's degree in Physics began teaching in different Accepted : 3.12.2023 Government colleges in and across Odisha from 1949 to 1986.Meanwhile he DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.2 authored 27 books of poems of which 7are in Odia and the rest in English. Best known for “Hunger” and “Indian Summer” Jayanta Mahapatra's “A Rain Of Rites” has an unusual enthrall and merit that I have attempted to interpret/ unravel briefly in my own culturally creative mode in this article besides Key words: commemorating his death. It is a book having imagery and symbolism as it's Rain, Salvation, Fertility, main thematic concern. The image of rain is used by the poet to symbolize Purification, Death, Indigenous, fertility, creative impulse and destuctive power-potency.The rain as metaphor at Cultural, Indianness, Psyche, various places never falls rather gets converted into light and then fails to Symbol. accomplish its objective. Moreover, the whole series of poems suggest a process of purification by means of –strange stillness, quietude, solitude, mud-built houses, rivers, hills, trees and a vast stretch of landscapes. The soul of the poet is Corresponding author : torn between good and evil, fair and foul and the ultimate judgement for [email protected] deliverance, Mukti or salvation. As a whole-Rain Of Rites is an exacting lyric of troubled soul and undefined unhappiness that has left a good legacy :a gift.

Jayanta Mahapatra—a doyen of Odia and IEP while penning/ scribbling poetry in his death-bed slipped away peacefully to heavenly abode on Sunday 27th August 2023, at the age of 95 from his earthly abode of Tinconia Bagicha, admitted as he was , for treatment of asthma/pneumonia at S C B Medical College : Cuttack. The painful news came from his homeland-- Odisha : a land of crowded people, more or less corroded by monsoon rains in which loll his roots, dreams, memories, tradition ,culture ,history ,mythology, architectute and ecology sprawling from the deity of Jagannath at Puri to the Sun temple at Konark and from the waters of Mahanadi, Chandrabhaga to escalating seashores that's what left his peers and cohorts speechless and aghast at least in a two minute silence.He was a person who silently revolutionized IEP. He was born on 22nd October 1928 at Cuttack in an ordinary middle class Odia Hindu/Christian family. His grandfather Chintamani Mahapatra enforced by famine, drought and consequent poverty consented conversion to Christianity while his parents Lemuel and Sudhansa Mahapatra's callous behaviour constrained him to lead a tough childhood. Anyhow Jayanta grew up to have his Master's degree in Physics and began his teaching career in 1949 till his retiement in 1986. He began his writing career in early sixtees -- initially rejected by several publishers till his invitation to participate in International writing programme at Iowa (USA) which gave him global exposure and coverage. By and by, Jayanta Mahapatra became major part of the trio that laid the foundation of IEP almost in equal proportion with A. K. Ramanujam and R. Parthasarathy. Soon, as an Indian English Poet Mahapatra not only carved a rare nitch in India but also grew to be a best known poet in the West. Composing English poetry in India then was not an easy task neither was it a comfortable proposition. Accordingly living in Indian ethos and ethnicities at that time seemed to have had a different linguistic terrain. The poet genially well-in-time doled

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out this dilemma by negotiating the tug of war between Daffodils and Rajnigandha, between Canterburry Church and Puri Temple and thus gave to his poetry a global habitation and a name that won for him national and international recognition, such as—first Sahitya Akademy award for English Poetry in 1981 . Padma Shri in 2009 which he returned in 2015 to protest against rising intolerance in India, Jacob Glatstein Memorial Award—Poetry : Chicago in 1975 , Allen Tate Poetry Prize for 2009 from The Sewanee Review. In 2009, he received the SAARC Literary award at New Delhi. Besides, a lot of national and international laurels, honors and awards have titivated/enhanced his literary legacy. I remember during 1980's, Jayanta Mahapatra in unusually luscious envelop sent for me, as a more or less known academic peer, his most engrossing book -- A Rain Of Rites {1}. It is published from University of Georgia Press : Athens, in verdure cover design extracted from Mrs. Albert Christ Janer's lithograph -- Seaform-69 and like strings of a garland weaves 49 beads all of unequal design different in theme and construct hidden under subtle strand of Mahapatra's supple, enjambed tranquility called--Subjectivity. These pieces of poems exude radiance and talk with candour about his career and life reverberating time against backdrop of the eternal—the present against the past, reality against dream and mundane against the metaphysical followed deftly by the flow of consciousness. The foremost poem in slight ascerbic diction evokes the past to enliven the present—“ a silence recalls companions lost”(1). The sentimental love with the land of birth, emotional bond between natives and the land they survive in, familiar landscapes all give resemblace to the aura of regional poetry –“The Peepul-tree silence on the bleak burning ground?/ beside the low mud walls of the hut ”(2). What is rooted in the soil is not substantially slime/grime but flawlessly sublime—“The Vermillion smeared whored stone”(3).The poem “Old Palaces”(4) consist six stanzas –-first four stanzas are arranged in quincunxes and remaining two are composed in six lines each.The theme of the poem intones both the humble and the lofty—“ The distance opens and closes the palm of my hands ”(4 ).There is ample of scope in the poem for ascertaining brevity of wit and philosophical /mystical musings. The liberated soul /Jeevan Mukta is a bird to carry away to the blue unknown the quintessence of truth freed from the commonplace evils ,ugliness and treacheries of life. In subtle concoction of fear and want the poet conspicuously cognizes the rising sense of insecurity, inner-woes/angst—“In the darkened room /a woman/cannot find her reflection in the mirror ”(7). Samsara (8) is a wonderful poem giving hints to familiar notion in Hinduism of worshipping the dead or the manes in ritualistic manner every year for the time period of a fortnight recurringly to appease the concept of Metempsychosis-- “ And a man begins to begin again/In the centre of this past/and sees no end of it ”(8). However, the poet cannot undermine, in spite of faith and efficacy of the tradition, the hard-realities of the mundane world—“ The air smells of sick, mortal children/Stone feels warm as a pillow. ”(9).At another farthest end the poet snear at the violence and social disparity—“These brick-batted roads of violence/Which go on breathing after dark/I can feel the air that wounds”(9). “Rain Of Rites” (10) being more subtle in its complex of sense and feeling has no immediate accessibility. The movement of rhythm is also as slow as the singularity of rain. The pain and anguish gasping underneath the sky -“ A malignant purpose in a nun's eye”(10) is indicative of the light reflecting the shape of human conscience and hypocracies of the mortal world .However, the poet airs to share an objective eye. While-- “A Rain ” (11) having four parts equally composed in couplet form sounds sense and meaning and feeling of good sense and clarity pervades. As a symbol of creative, regenerative force the rain sustaining the growth and vitality of earthly things moves ahead to create an impression of vastness and totality. Underneath the vast firmament lies a curious deal between levity and seriousness, between harmony and balance. So much so that the voice of rain ultimately succeeds in reducing the world to its basic sound-structure

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called Nada Brahma. What creates tangible concord is the rhythm, the ambiguity and the subtle journey of the soul concisely expressed to appear unobtrusively subjective . The obscurity of relationships from Grandfather to Grandson conspicuously comes to the fore in the poem—“The Exile” (12) against the backdrop of sublime landscapes , inconsequences of childhood,intensely personalising angst due to fear and guilt adeptly creates harshhumour—“The long-haired priest of Kali/Who still packs stolen jasmines” (12). Another poem—“Summer “(14) as if in meditation exquisitely adjusts three dimensions of time.The past is re-echoed by—“Under the mango tree/ the cold ash /of a deserted fire” (14). While the present vividly portray existential reality—“A ten year old girl/combs her mother's hair/where crows of rivalries/are quietly nesting.”(14).In the meantime the future beginning with--“Not yet” (14) marches forward to extend a questioning mode--“Who needs the future ?”(14) The poet not only creates a weird world of spirits behind nature's ubiquitousness but also fascinatingly intones the primeval sound: the cause of creation.The swooping of hawks or the chattering of the monkeys usually break the silence while the mortal-world abuzz in activities confer on readers the awareness of socio-cultural reality. A distinct flow of consciousness shapes the creative design and thematic relevance of the poem—“Ceremony ” (15). In tandem the serene landscape of poet's wakefulness deftly lug a multitude of riveting myths and symbols. The poem—“Main Temple Street , Puri” (16) echoes invariably a sensibility more or less steeped in religiocultural composition of beliefs. Two contraries : contradictory and complimentary at the same time prefigure ironically .The first is the magnificence and pervading silence of the temple and the second the urbane squalor and the humdrum of city life—“Children brown as earth continue to laugh/at cripples and mating mongrels/nobody ever bothers about them…/The temple points to unending rhythm.”(16)Comparatively long in conceptual and thematic texture—“ The Whore House In A Calcutta Street” (19) poignantly expounds the fallacy of man-woman relationship in poetic precision prefering intensity to clarify and density to justify.The poet like T.S.Eliot being aware of modern man's plight, his alienation and anguish fully succeeds in re-creating a mirror for mortal things in a rare mixture of elegance and sophistication.The idea of Indian Literature as a whole combines tradition ,culture, ritual, rites to represent and go back as far as to the Vedic era of Brahminism.The reality of life and death vividly yet ritualistically relates in alliterative syntax the dichotomy of existence through the poem—“Appearances”(21 ). Rambling in the mystery of creation the poet takes his readers into the world of mythology—“Some holy curse changed a woman to stone” (21).The total effect is gained by the kaleidoscopic rendering of the world either as a devious dream or the fading illusion. However, poet's varied interest in folklore, anthropology , structuralism and biculturalism appears seeping through the pores of the skin of the poem.The poem—“Myth”(22) sounds like a recurring prayer at the temple altar.Disciplined handling of English language and sharply etched crystallized images have ample scope for a separate and fullfledged study of Jayant Mahaparta's—“A Rain Of Rites ”.Divided into four separate stanzas—“Four Rain Poems” ( 23-24) talk about auspicious secret of creation in a rhythm/diction almost exalted.The rain symbol at once fuses the subtle and the gross ,the old and the new to glorify /clarify the notion of primeval chaos,sustenance and deluge.This poem truly has a dynamic force that raises poetry to the level of highest art.The ingenuity in inventing indigenous /native rhythm for delineating the illusion/ magic of rain is a rare ploy rarely seen elsewhere save the regional literatures.Look from any direction or angle you will find Mahapatra's poems fresh and vibrating. What we call in Sanskrit Vibhatsha is the ghastly element employed to meet the

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timely situation—“Endless crow noises/A skull on the holy sands”(28). There is another side of the land where hunger overshadows the holiness of death or cremation. Faith and austerity walk side by side and we see the poet recalling the great temple where—“ White-clad widowed women/Past the centres of their lives/are waiting to enter the Great Temple ”(28).The tone resonates subjectivity and the poem—“Dawn At Puri”(28) is so meticulously vivacious that even today it shimmers in freshness. It's wisdom and humour is timeless. “Listening To A Prayer”(29) as though,through a miracle conjures up a healing touch which cures as well as sustains.Moreover, the poem deals with the yearning of the soul having a pious wish to suffer the agony.Another poem—“On The Bank Of The Ganges ”(32) is not only a verse but also as Maharishi Aurobindo quips—“An illumined vision”{2}. The holy river Ganges ,as it is, used and misused by all and sundry not only cleanses and purify but also acts as a bridge between the here and the hereafter : an awareness of what we call in Indian lexicon-Parmarthabodh. It is the only poem that merits attention because it qualifies for grace by presenting a conjunction of feeling ,intellect ,emotion and intuition. The poem—“A Tree”(34) being larger part of ecology/environment communicates to men /people it's divinity as well as anxiety—“All day and all night/I moved by myself/Only the tree that is there/the axes of seasons in a derelict eye” (34). There are many other poetic pieces where tradition in a lively manner is dedicated using harsh-humour to the philosophical idea of death—“The good wife…/Dreaming still, unexhausted/by the deep roar of funeral pyres”(35).There lurks an unforeseen pain—an agony behind the mask of self-revelation—subjectivity to share for readers that most of us willingly do.It has a forceful redeeming effect, redeems not only the ignorant and the meek but also those who seek freedom from illusion to affirm the continuity of belief. That is why the phallic symbol-The Linga as central theme enlightens. Here is poetry in/as truth. Metaphors not only clarify , lend grace,illustrate and adorn but also carve a poised movement musical as well as rhythmic that carries the full load of feeling without letting it overflow. Social snobbery dyed in satire and irony creates a sacramental mode to extol the mood revealing purity and perspicuity of perception—“A man bathes at sunrise with passion/ Plucks some holy flowers/Sits down to worship/Motionless on a mat.”(42). “Hunger” (44) has four stanzas : first three in pentagonal shape and the remaining in sestet form thematically weaving a symbolic tale of an angler circling around hunger ,poverty and flesh .The texture is as strong as a citadel of iron-chains hard to penetrate. However behind and beyond the periphery lies a sense of intense search and wholeness which takes poetry to the realm of vision. However, reading the poem give us a sense of living vicariously the spiritual crisis of India's emerging Anglophone poet's life with two simultaneous lexes : endonym and exonym. Multiple images different in theme and construct are employed to siphon off excess thought.The poem neither abounds in neology nor in tautology but reels in scientology as an expression apt and chaste.There is one more poem bringing to light contemporary political chicanery—“The grafting goes on through my winters/Each season a stratagem for her smile”(49).Against this background the poet candidly avers—“Juices from my daughter's body/Are filling the noisy hives”(49). In order to devise the notion of spiritual erotica he dives -deep to construe the invisible source of creation .It is not an empty void, he surmises but a womb full of amniotic fluid—an ineffable light /radiance .Like a mature rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity the poet deftly designs a concise picture of his native inhabitants/residents rolling in deep-faith to enliven an age-old bicultural tradition —“The Shiva Linga/the rhythmic susurrus of chants on wrecks of petals/the cage suspended in every father's just eyes” (50).The faith is kept intact and the Karma seems to bind, heal and cure like a salve.

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In love as in music diverse notes blend together to make a perfect chord , likewise the poem stands still to include miscellaneous rhythms revolving/ evolving into absolute harmony and balance—“ and restore/ the breath the living holds”(51).The notion of metempsychosis like scattered pieces of gems can be seen here and there all over— A Rain Of Rites .The poet prefers to pick up appropriate situation to express himself—“free the guilt-ridden senses like an afterbirth of life”(51)The whole poem moves around the circle of life keeping the faith undamaged in its civilizational journey. While the poet seems to have groomed by multiple facets of Odisan/Indian culture as home-bound pilgrim. Amidst common gentry , familiar landcapes, proverbial imagery and tenor Mahapatra's innate quest lead him to reveal subjectivity as such and an intense search for roots—“Even my father's face is turned inside out.”(54). “The Tattooed Taste”(55) one of the longest poem opens in uncomplicated subjective manner—“Night heads downwards across the Indian ocean/In the cold main road of my rain smothered town” (55). Giving expression to human as well as humane vision the poet moves ahead to prove the immortality of the past, of ancient Indian tradition—“ doling out palmfuls of rice on holy Monday ”(55). “Now When We Think Of Compromise”(58) is the last poem in this consummate collection.The recurring use of symbols in turns creates a more subtle and complex sense of feeling.Poignancy and rapture side by side lend aristocracy to the poised movement while personal thought /anguish are adduced to the pleasure of a lively syntax—“At times the sunlight loses its fleeting habit /and with simple fingers touches my feet”(58)Thus Mahapatra's poetry purposefully gives vent to modern man, his predicament, despair and destiny hidden underneath the visible garment of creation.The poet penetrates to go across the mirage of molecules—the Maya, where invisible seamless matrix of infinite possibilities, creativities, of indefatigable perfectionism and abundance proliferates to magnify instant love guided by compassion. What Mahapatra left behind, as his legacy, the day he died , a couple of months back, is a zeal for unending life—“I am sure the world will be a witness to JM'S poetry which will resurrect after his ashes will melt and mingle the waters of Chandrabhaga . The river Chandrabhaga and his poetry magazine shall continue beyond the boarders.”{3} A towering personality in literature, JM'S other side of life, as acknowledged by Nabina Das—“ was mischievous—fun-loving and frolicsome”{4 }. The Holi celebration in March-2023, at his weed-overgrown garden-yard ,was in fact the last –Hurrah ! Poetry for JM was life and the life he lived with his wife Runu and with poet-friends proved to be poetry in reality. Works Cited Aurobindo, Maharishi. The Future Poetry-1953—Pondicherry : Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication. Das, Nabina. Legend To The World : JM To Me in Outlook (Weekender)—17th September 2023 : New Delhi, AB-10, Safdarjung Enclave. Mahapatra, Jayanta. A Rain Of Rites—1976 ,The University Of Georgia Press :Athens. All subsequent references/page numbers are to this edition cited within Parenthesis. Sarkar, Subodh. In Memory of Jayanta Mahapatra in Outlook (Weekender)—16th September 2023 : New Delhi, AB-10, Safdarjung Enclave.

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Harmonizing Horizons: Vijay Kant Dubey's Melodic Reflections on Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetic Symphony Aisha Haleem Research Scholar, Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow

Mahima Gupta Research Scholar, Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow

Publication Info Article history : Received : 29.10.2023 Accepted : 30.11.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.3

Key words: Imagism, myth, Odia identity picturesque, vernacular

Corresponding author : [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT Bijay Kant Dubey is the Head of the Department of English in Chandrakona Vidyasagar Mahavidyalaya, Mindrope. He is a gifted writer who has penned down a plethora of writings including poems, book reviews, articles etc. This paper aims to examine Bijay Kant Dubey's commentary on the great poet Jayanta Mahapatra through his six poems on the renowned poet. It will attempt to highlight not only the perspective of Dubey but will also put forth his writing style. It will help in adding depth to the understanding of Mahapatra's poetry so far. Being and enthusiast of Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry, the style of his writing have little similarity with that of Mahapatra's, such as simplicity with effective technique of intertextuality, use of slight touch of Indian rural spoken dialect in English language specially when he talks about the women of village and subaltern group of women. Dubey's poems are deliberate attempt of Mahapatra's appreciation in a poetic form. This paper aims at exploring Mahapatra's poetic sensibility and simplicity through the select poems of Bijay Kant Dubey which is written on and about Mahapatra.

Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry surely drew and continues to inspire a large number of creative authors and scholars to explore and discover something new. In his work “Jayanta Mahapatra: approach to poetry. In his paper titled, “A Critical Study of the Imaginative World in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry,” Soma Bandyopadhyay depicts Mahapatra's nature of adapting a native custom to the English language, whereas Md. Sajjad presents the poet's internalized experiences inspired ardent readers to solve the riddles surrounding his creative creations. Not only about poems, there are some researchers and writers who have written about his prose works also such as the present primary poet of this paper Bijay Kant Dubey presents the prosaic abilities of Mahapatra's writing through his select prose works in his paper named, “Door of Paper As A Masterpiece Prose-work of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Similarly, Srikanth Ganduri analysed the imaginary world in Jayanta Mahapatra's poems through his paper, “A Brief Study of the Imaginative World in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry.” As poetry is an art form of writing so Mahapatra is an artist, this might be the clear reason that Dr. A. G. Pakhmode title his research paper as “Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetic Art: A Brief Study.” Rock Pebbles: A Peer-Reviewed International Literary Journal devoted an entire special issue to Jayanta Mahapatra in the January-June 2011 edition, with Udayanath Majhi serving as the editor of this issue. Dr. K. R. Vijaya's study, “Poetry As A Social Commentary: A Study of Select Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra,” demonstrates cultural criticism and effect on poetry. Keeping in mind Mahapatra's indianness and vernacular way of telling tales with mythological references, Hemanta Rajbanshi, in collaboration with Dr. Bairagi Patra, wrote a paper titled, “Treatment of Indianness and Indian Lexical Items in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra.” As with this entire topic, many editors and authors have committed and are currently working on writing about Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet. One such writer is Bijay Kumar Das, who has authored four

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versions of a book titled, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, which was released in 2009 and Jayanta Mahapatra: the Poet of the Common Man in 1 January 2016 by Dr. Pawan Kumar Jha. Apart from these works “Echoes of a wounded presence”: Images of women in Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry,” published by Madhusudan Prasad, deals with the presence of women in his poetry. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih has written a personal account of meeting with Jayanta Mahapatra in online an article which is published on Scroll in 10 July 2022. After reviewing the literature we found that numerous research papers, books, blogs, articles are being written on Mahapatra's poems and by many researchers, critics and reviewers but this paper examines the poems composed about the Odia poet Jayanta Mahapatra by Bijay Kant Dubey. Jayanta Mahapatra (22 October 1928 – 27 August 2023) born in Cuttack, Odisha, to a lower middle-class family. Stewart School in Cuttack was where he received his early schooling. From 1949 to 1986, he taught at several government institutions in Odisha after earning a first-class Master's degree in Physics. Mahapatra wrote 18 volumes of poetry throughout his lifetime. He began writing poetry at the age of 38 and published his first poems in his early forties. His epic poem “Relationship” earned him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981, making him the first Indian English poet to get the accolade. Many prestigious poetry journals around the world have published Mahapatra's poems, including Boundary, Chicago Review, The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poetry International, Poetry (Chicago), The Sewanee Review, Georgia Review, and others (Mohanty). He received national and international acclaim and was regarded as one of the foremost Indian English poets. Jayanta Mahapatra has received several notable accolades for his literary works. He has received the Jacob Glatstein Memorial Award in 1975, the Allen Tate Prize in 2009, the SAARC Literary Award in 2009, and the Padma Shree Award in 2009. On May 2, the same year, he received an honorary doctorate from Ravenshaw University. In 1981, Jayanta Mahapatra became the first Indian English poet to be awarded the Sahitya Academi Award (Jayanta Mahapatra). His Odia poetry are exceptional. The line forms are virtually premodern, austere, and brief. Nonetheless, the sensibility is highmodernist—socially involved, politically conscious, and steadfastly standing with common people, oppressed, and marginalised long before it became trendy in Odia poetry to do so. Here is an English poet writing in Odia, English in tone, pitch, and emotive register, but Odia in rhythm and flow of the lines (Routray). Since 1986, Bijay Kant Dubey has been writing poetry. Initially, he focused mostly on poems that celebrated the relationship between the soul and the Supreme Soul, which he perceived as The Light Divine, The Divine Path, Songs of Soul, and Songs of Siva. However, he did not publish these poems, and over time, many of the manuscripts he wrote were destroyed (Bijay Kant Dubey). In the poem “Jayanta Mahapatra As An Odia Poet”, Bijay Kant Dubey pens down on how Orissa breathes and thrives in Mahapatra's heart and soul because he is born and brought up in the Orissan soil so he was an Odia at the core. Mahapatra used to patiently and keenly witness both the past and present time. He clicks pictures of the standing remains of the Indian rock temples. His inquisitiveness arises at the sight of those temples as if he basks in the “Architectural splendor and glory” (Dubey, line 8) of the monuments. In this way, his presence builds a bridge between the past and present period. He is a poet of not only Orissan landscape and beauty but he is observant of the Odia folk including the masons, pilgrims, devotees and even beggars. Standing amidst grand and timeless architecture his eyes keenly notices the nuances of the people who visit the temples-“In a prayerful tune of own”(Dubey, line-29) He meticulously marks the sculptures carved on the temple walls and arcs exhibiting the relationships of love and lust because of the fact that Mahapatra was a physicist he views Orissa through a prism of equilibrium-“Seeking salvation and pardon/The devotees queued/Many of them widows, poor daughters and sons/Held by faith and doubt.”(Dubey, lines 30-33)

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Dubey used imagism in another poem on Mahapatra. In “Jayant Mahapatra As A Poet Of Silence”, he described several images and has drawn comparisons to show the turbulence and the calmness inside Mahapatra. Beginning from the first stanza, he compares the Odia poet to the 'morning sea' which is quiet and serene. He pens down many images like the blooming lotus at dawn, awakening of the world from a deep slumber like the allusion of the Seven Sleeper's Den. He also draws nature imagery of the chirping birds, hot winds and dry leaves. The third stanza of the poem speaks about the silence in noon time surrounded by a strange gloominess set in due to the weather. Puzzled due to the uneasiness and weariness brought by the Sun and hot winds he remains silent. It paints a contradictory picture of inside and out. The last stanza is full of contrasting images to the first stanza of the poem. This stanza describes Sun soaked landscape full of sweat, scorching heat, hot winds and dry leaves. Poetry is the contrasting of the known and the unknown, the anticipated and the unexpected, and it frequently results from what Eliot refers to as a single sensibility. Mahapatra, without a doubt, is elevated to a lofty romantic status, imbuing common objects with what Wordsworth refers to as a peculiar colouring of fancy. In the poem “Jayanta Mahapatra And His Relationship”, Dubey explains his close relationship with his native land Orissa. This relationship is not a superficial one but actually it is deeply rooted in his spirit. It is beyond the mere physical attributes. He is intricately connected with the language, culture, myths and mysteries. In other words, the poem speaks about the relationship of oneness he shares with Orissa culminating all the pluralities as one which he had never forgotten. He mentioned numerous places like the coastal areas, rivers, hills, sea beaches, bird sanctuaries, tourist spots, lakes, orchards, forest reserves, temples etc to explain his immense attachment with the entire Orissa. Mahapatra has a soulful bond which is unforgettable. His mind and body both belongs to this place. In the last line Dubey writes“Moving around/ Cuttack, Bhubhneshwar and Puri.”(Dubey, lines 23-24) which clearly says that however he wanders and moves around many places of coastal Odisha but he will primarily remain an Odia first and an India at the second place. It shows his attachment and love for his land. In his another poem titled, “What is in Jayanta Mahapatra's Relationship” which is the continuation of his earlier mentioned poem, Dubey talks about Mahapatra's childhood and experiences in Odisa which seems a kind of short prelude of Mahapatra's life composed in a Babu English that everyone can read fluently and understand about Mahapatra's love for his native place. Dubey continues to write about his poetic style which is full of pictorial quality, lucid, easy language with deep meaning and the way he plays with puns, the way he is describing his poetic quality and easiness which seems he is influenced with the book named Jayanta Mahapatra: The Poet of the Common Man by Dr. Pawan Kumar Jha. Dubey says that the kind of picturised image Mahapatra uses in his poem to make it lively is immensely expressive and beyond appreciation as he says, “There is nothing as that to explain and paraphrase,” (Dubey, line 11), not only the positive but the surrealistic side of human world is also shown in Mahapatra's poetry as Dubey uses the phrase “Negative and Washed photographs” (Dubey, line 19) in his poem to describe the kind of writing which Mahapatra is famous for. The third stanza Dubey devoted to the praise of natural images and religious references which Mahapatra's poems contain and that create a sort of floating images in the mind and eyes of the readers, not only this but Mahapatra's poems are epitome of the historical references of Odisa art, cultures and struggle, with the word struggle Dubey perhaps taking the reference of one of the heart-wrenching poem of all times named, “Grandfather” where Mahapatra taken us back to the deadliest famine of 1866 in Odisa and portrayed the scariest situation of his grandfather through his yellow pages diary. In his last stanza poet establishes the comparison between Rupert Brook's poem “The Soldier” and “Relationship” by Jayanta Mahapatra. The poem “The Soldier” examines the relationship between British soldiers who is

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patriotic to his own country. The poem makes the implication that people are shaped by their upbringing and culture and that their nation is something they should sacrifice their lives for, as demonstrated by the soldier's impassioned description of his attachment to England. Mahapatra's masterpiece, “Relationship,” which earned him the esteemed Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981, is rooted in the ancient history of Orissa, the region he hails from. “Relationship” is a sort of an epic poem contains twelve parts just like Edmund Spencer's Shepherdes Calender contains twelve eclogues. It illustrates Mahapatra's link to history, rich cultural legacy, and how those things have evolved into the present over time. Long sentences, heightened language, and evocative, picturesque symbols and imagery all contribute to the sublime style's expression of the elevated subject matter. In the poem “Indian English Poetrywallah” where he uses a metaphor to compare vendors with poet and call them Poetrywallah, the first stanza is mostly resembles with the Haiku form of poetry. Just like any other vendor poetrywallah also sell, buy, eat and drink poetry, they take money to publish poetry and give money to buy poetry. Continuing the praises of the style of Mahapatra's poems, In his next poem, “Jayanta Mahapatra And His Poetic Base” Dubey focuses on the religious sites which he mentioned and composed about in his poems such Jagannath temple of Puri, the Lingaraj-temple, Udaygiri and Dhaulagiri, Khandagiri, and Konark Sun-temple. Further in the very first stanza Dubey depicts how skillfully Mahapatra made pictures and coloured his poems with historical, sociological, mythical, and regional features. In next two stanzas Dubey focuses on the natural images and the vivid picture of summer which usually there in Maharashtra's poems, such as Cuttack, Bhubasneswar, Balasore, beaches and how Mahapatra portrayed the characters of women seems like a women living under the lakshmanrekha with no liberty, perhaps Dubey talking about Mahapatra's own mother's description in his poem “Dawn at Puri” even in the summer mothers and daughters of village are sitting inside the houses waiting for rain to vanish their burning houses whereas men resting under the orchard of mango trees. These kinds of pictures without any hard language shows how women are subjugated and deprived from the very easily available properties of nature, and this also shows that on the one side poets are writing and composing about big thinks where Mahapatra take account of village women and taboo themes such as prostitution and sex. The description of the second stanza in Dubey's poem shows the influence of the poem, “Indian Summer” by Mahapatra. The poem has been widely anthologized in major poetry collections and is required reading in most Indian schools, colleges, and universities. The poem was originally included in his collection, A Rain of Rites. in the next stanza Dubey doesn't lose his grip of describing the way Mahapatra used to give vivid images of funerals and crying of people for their loved ones, in attempt to make it more sensuous Dubey uses such kind of words which can make readers hear the mourning noises as he says, “Funeral choric voices” (Dubey, line 61). In fifth and sixth stanza Dubey appreciates that Mahapatra never forget about his Indian past and historical facts which need to be mentioned when it comes to Inidia warriors, as Mahapatra composed poem on Kalinga War and Ashoka efectively in his poem called, “Dauli.” The poem is constructed around the renowned Kalinga conflict. The region of Kalinga was associated with modern-day Orissa and was additionally known as Utkala in certain chronicles. Chandragupta Maurya attempted to capture Kalinga as well, but was defeated. The monarchy of Kalinga threatened the Maurya Empire's marine trade and dominance in the East. Ashoka, the Maurya King, invaded Kalinga with the intent of subduing and annexing it to the Maurya realm. Jayanta Mahapatra describes the repercussions of the Kalinga conflict. The poet reconstructs the sight immediately following the fight, with the fields littered with slain dead and blood seeping from them, in the opening verse. The blood-splattered fields of Dhauli bore quiet witness to the unparalleled bloodletting. in last four stanzas Dubey carry on the same thoughts about Mahapatra's poems that without even being subjected to any name such as

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socialist, Marxists, and propagandist Mahapatra written about each and every part of society and phases of human life without being judged and judgmental about anything. When we consider the socio-political situation in post-independence India, we discover the portrayal of basically Indian issues in Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry. These are hunger, communalism, casteism, superstition, and political leaders' ignorance of the country's suffering. Mahapatra and others witnessed the countrymen's pre-independence ambitions and hardships, sacrifices and agonies, and were left disillusioned with shattered hopes. He writes about his experiences in poems such as “Heroism,” “The Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Republic: 1975,” “30th January 1982: A Story,” and “A Missing Person.” (Rajbanshi and Patra 29-30). Dubey goes on to mention that Mahapatra never failed to write about the deprived group of our society such as Devdasi, and nautch girl and also written about the highest ideological state apparatus group of people such as priest, and upper class. in order to give emphasis in his tone he uses anaphora with the words like ”the” and “still” that after being aware about these drawbacks in our society we as a reader of Mahapatra still witnessing these false practices of dowry, male domination, domestic benevolence and what not. the ability of composing poem on such a prolific persona with Babu English could be seen with the uses of figure of speeches every now and then in his poems, as he also uses refrain after asking rhetoric questions that how a society who is aware about the falsehood and problems in the society can be so quite about this, he says, “How can it be, / How can it be,” (Dubey, line 143). All the poems mentioned and discussed in the present paper throws light on Bijay Kant Dubey's brilliancy of writing poems on Mahapatra specifically. His poems are simple in structure and form yet profoundly deep and picturesque. The style of his poems is extremely simple, filled with intertextuality of Mahapatra's poems, and being a fan Bijay Kant Dubey follows simplistic attitude to play with the words in his compositions. The kind of rural vernacular and dialect, he uses in his poems is magically impressive and nostalgic as most rural Indian residents used to mispronounce words which contain “sha” and “za” in the same manner Dubey uses word “Asoka” instead of “Ashoka” in his poem “Jayanta Mahapatra and His Poetic Base.” In the poem, "Jayanta Mahapatra As A Poet Of Silence” he used vernacular when he wrote awaking instead of the standard English word awakening- “The world awaking from slumber/Arising and awaking from,”(Dubey, lines 8-9), apart from these features, traces of Babu English can be seen in some of his poems such as “Photographing, lightning and shading” (Dubey, line 17) in the poem “What Is In Jayanta Mahapatra's Relationship.” In the poem, “Jayanta Mahapatra As An Odia Poet” he writes, “The people coming and going” (Dubey, line-17) and “He taking/Visionary glides.” (Dubey, lines 19-20). He mostly uses enjambments in his poems. Poetry is about perspectives, ideas, feelings, and judgements. Examine them. Poetry is assertions, so make some. Poetry is thought as it is thought by you, by us, and by them. Poetry just expresses our opinions and feelings in moody words and concepts. It is about language and style—how you express yourself. Poetry exists in style. You impart writing etiquette. You immediately end the lines and introduce them. Pause and speak. It is pictures and images. Make you the picture. Take images, make drawings, portraits, and silhouettes; poetry is visuals. I'll give you the selfies. From the digicam, selfies. For your benefit, for your enjoyment, and for your own pleasure. It is nothing more than the skill of loving, observing nature—flowers blooming, birds hopping and dancing, and birds dancing. Dew-smeared little seuli blossoms laying fallen in the winter morning, the scented seulis, kursis, kaaminis, champas, and cchatims are there to fascinate you with their pleasant smell. Poetry represented by asters, poppies, calendulas, chrysanthemums, dahlias, pansies, and salvias. According to Bijay Kant Dubey These poems added to the understanding of Mahapatra's poetic sensibility and eco-centric quality of his poems.

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Works Cited Bandyopadhyay, Soma. “Study On The Poetry Of Jayanta Mahapatra: Poetry As Social Commentary.” International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Scientific Research, vol. 3, no. 12, 2020, pp. 26-36. https://doi.org/10.31426/ijamsr.2020.3.12.3953. Accessed 10 Nov. 2023. “Bijay Kant Dubey.” All Poetry, https://allpoetry.com/Bijay_Kant_Dubey. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. Das, Bijay Kumar. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. 4th ed., Atlantic, 2009. Dubey, Bijay Kant. “Door of Paper As A Masterpiece Prose-work of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Research Gate, Nov. 2022 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365202235_Door_of_Paper_As_A_Mast erpiece_Prose-work_of_Jayanta_Mahapatra. Accessed 6 Nov. 2023. ... “Indian English Poetrywallah.” Poem Hunter, 19 June 2014 https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/indian-english-poetrywallah/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. ... “Jayanta Mahapatra And His Poetic Base.”All Poerty, Sept. 2016 https://allpoetry.com/poem/12870978-Jayanta-Mahapatra-And-His-Poetic-Baseby-Bijay-Kant-Dubey. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. ... “Jayanta Mahapatra And His Relationship.” Poem Hunter, 30 Dec. 2014 https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/jayanta-mahapatra-and-his-relationship/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. ... “Jayanta Mahapatra As An Odia Poet.” Poem Hunter, 15 Dec. 2016 https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/jayanta-mahapatra-as-an-odia-poet-ii/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. ... “Jayanta Mahapatra As A Poet Of Silence.” Poem Hunter, 17 Sept. 2014 https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/jayanta-mahapatra-as-a-poet-of-silence/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. ... “What Is In Jayanta Mahapatra's Relationship?” Poem Hunter, 3 Apr. 2016 https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-is-in-jayanta-mahapatra-s-relationship/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. Ganduri, Srikanth. “A Brief Study of the Imaginative World in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry”. Contemporary Literary Review India, vol. 6, no. 1, Feb. 2019. https://literaryjournal.in/index.php/clri/article/view/225. Accessed 11 Nov. 2023. “Jayanta Mahapatra.” India Online https://www.indiaonline.in/about/personalities/writersandpoets/jayanta-mahapatra. Accessed 10 Nov. 2023. Jha, Dr. Pawan Kumar. Jayanta Mahapatra: the Poet of the Common Man. Manish Prakashan, 1 Jan. 2016. Padihari, Syamsundar. “Jayanta Mahapatra: The Poet of the Soil.” Indian Literature, vol. 51, no. 3 (239), 2007, pp. 168–76. JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/stable/23340468. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023. Pakhmode, Dr. A. G. “Jayant Mahapatra's Poetic Art: A Brief Study.” International Journal of

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Research Publication and Reviews, vol. 3, no. 8, Aug. 2022, pp. 299-301, https://www.ijrpr.com/archive.php?volume=3&issue=8. Accessed 8 Nov. 2023. Prasad, Madhusudan. '“Echoes of a Bruised Presence”: Images of Women in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra'. World Literature Written in English, vol. 28, no. 2, Sept. 1988, pp. 367–78, https://doi.org/10.1080/17449858808589074. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023. Rajbanshi. Hemanta, and Dr. Bairagi Patra. “Treatment of Indianness and Indian Lexical Items in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra.” International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature, vol. 8, no. 1, Jan. 2020, pp. 28-33, http://dx.doi.org/10.20431/2347-3134.0801004. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023. Routray, Sailen. “Jayanta Mahapatra: A master litterateur who created a language uniquely his own.” Frontline, 1 Sept. 2023. https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/obituary/tributejayanta-mahapatra-1928-2023-a-master-litterateur-who-created-a-languageuniquely-his-own/article67259140.ece. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023. Majhi, Udayanath, editor. “A Special Issue on Jayanta Mahapatra.” Rock Pebbles: A PeerReviewed International Literary Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan.-June 2011, pp. 1+, http://www.rockpebblesindia.in/Book24.html. Accessed 11 Nov. 2023. Mohanty, Sachidananda. “Jayanta Mahapatra (1928-2023): A luminary of Indian English poetry.” Frontline, 28 Aug. 2023. https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/obituary/tribute-to-poet-jayanta-mahapatraobituary/article67244617.ece. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023. Nongkynrih, Kynpham Sing. “Reflections on poetry and a 'quiet friendship' with the award winning poet Jayanta Mahapatra.” Scroll.in, 10 July 2022, https://scroll.in/article/1025801/reflections-on-poetry-and-a-quiet-friendship-withthe-award-winning-poet-jayanta-mahapatra. 8 Nov. 2023. Vijaya, Dr.K.R. “Poetry As A Social Commentary: A Study of Select Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Veda's Jouranal of English Language and Literature, vol. 3, no. 4, 2016, pp. 21-34. https://www.joell.in/vol-3-issue-4-2016/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2023.

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

Social Introspection of Myth, Reality and Self in Jayanta Mahapatra's Epic Poem "Relationship" Prof. Jyoti Kala Deptt. of English, B.S.N.V.P.G. College, Lucknow

Santosh Kumar Research Scholar, Deptt. of English and MEL, University of Lucknow, Lucknow

Publication Info Article history : Received : 2.11.2023 Accepted : 3.12.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.4

Key words: Myth, Reality, Self, Motherland, Oriya Culture, Relationship, History, and Tradition Corresponding author : [email protected]

ABSTRACT This paper explores the subjective memory of Jayant Mahapatra through his epic poem Relationship, in which his consciousness is subsumed into the question of how to express his love and gratitude for the motherland, the place of his nativity. His originality and authenticity of a major poetic voice have been precisely for the reason that despite the English language being his early creative writing medium, his sensibilities as a poet operate within the boundaries of his typically Oriya culture. He establishes a relationship between his lonely and rootless life and 'this temple in ruins, in a blaze of sun'. The poet seems engulfed in the tedious dualism and oscillating for rootedness between the faith of Christian and Hindu religions. He questions the validity of his relationship with his friends also who are in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance completing the journey of life, 'unsullied by guilt, and untouched by belief'. Mahapatra's response to the landscape, his sense of myth and history, tradition, and the culture of his birthplace gives him distinct identification. The history of Orissa is his subject and the culture of it is the space of his poetry. He considered poetry as a "craft" and used symbols, images, myths, metaphors, and similes to bring out rich and effective poetic vision. Jayant Mahapatra's Relationship presents the varied facets of human life poetically. However, this paper argues through the lens of social introspection of myth, reality, and self in Jayant Mahapartra's epic poem Relationship.

Jayanta Mahapatra (1928-2023) is the most prolific and the first poet to receive Sahitya Akademi Award in the Indian English Poetry. His originality and authenticity of a major poetic voice has been precisely for the reason that in spite of English language being his early creative writing medium, his sensibilities as a poet operate within the boundaries of his typically Oriya culture. His art is rooted in the soil with a strong awareness of his Indian heritage. The poet, pre-occupied with his personal memory and myth of Orissa, calls his epic poem "Relationship" the 'theme-song of my life'. In Relationship (1980) the memory and myth are inextricably woven together since they are both parts of a sensitive poet's intense experiences. About the poem Krishna Rayan makes a pertinent remark, “the journey from feeling of dispossession to feeling of rootedness, which is the “plot” of the poem” (215). It is a spiritual journey to recognize roots in the past. Throughout the twelve sections of six hundred and seventy-two lines of this epic poem, the poet engages with the Orissa's ancient culture, history, and myth. Mahapatra speaks volumes of significance of myth, temple and stone in his poetry as well as his own life. The soil, myth, culture, tradition, rootedness, sensibility and sufferings of Orissa are inundated in his poetry with a deep sign of introspection. Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry revolves around India and its culture. Being born and raised in Orissa his poetry is naturally affected by the landscapes and myths of the place. He reveals unbreakable and unwavering relation between himself and Konarka, the temple of the sun and its ruined stones. The attachment with the self and the society runs through Relationship. In the poem, the feeling of the past becomes acute and the experiences arouse in him the question who he was. Myths are the strong symbols and play a vital role as the old socio-cultural heritage of Orissa. They help man set his pursuits in a difficult world that endlessly warns man's reality.

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Relationship is not a poem about relationship of man to men in friendship, love, family or community. It is about a relationship of man to time, man to land and man to generations of men who have passed before him and who will come after him(Jayaprada 89).

Divided in twelve, each section tells a tale of its own perspective. The first rain of the year transports the poet into the past. The first section is endowed with myth and mysticism. Against the backdrop of the sea and its hazards, dark forests, the drift of time, and dark myths of creation, the opening lines of the poem express the poet's encounter with the soil of Orissa and its complex mythical phallus stone overshadowing it all: Once again one must sit back and bury the face On this earth of the forbidden myth, The phallus of the enormous stone (Relationship 9)

The poet attempts to evaluate the aesthetic, historical, physical as well as the spiritual past of Orissa juxtaposing it with the present. The individual emotion of the poetic self creates a sense of deep association of the self with the ecological setting, ritual and totality of life. It creates a sense of association between self and the other. He recreates the scene of the building of the Sun Temple in the eleventh century A. D. The temple is the embodiment of intermingled historical truths, myths and legends. The twelve hundred 'artisans of stone', who built the temple in long twelve years are like 'brown flowers in passion' 'and the aerial roots of centuries-old banyan tree'. He looks back at the historicity of the place where humans, the skilled and talented wonderful creation of almighty, succumbed to socio-political upheavals under the burden to earn bread and sustain existence. The artisans' shadowy appearance at present relates to man's futile existence in the passage of time. Today the ruins of the temple remind of the unrecognized artistic architectural contribution of the unknown inglorious lives who were the part and parcel of the historical past and the harbinger of the tradition to the next generation. “The Konark Temple stands on its ancient ground as a “messenger” of their death. They are involved with the history of the “cruelties / of the ruthless emperors” “groans and cries”, “smells of gunsmoke and smoldering flesh”, and of “tactics and strategy” (Relationship 9). The reference to unknown artisans reminds of the Grey's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard where the talent remained unexplored and unknown. Though there is testimony of the artisans' contribution in Relationship but in the both cases they, the living beings, are insignificant and forgotten. Mahapatra has realised the heart-beat of the deceased artist in the stone-carving art and statue of the temples in Orissa. He has also made a relation with stonecarving and inscriptions. It is an introspection of self and reality from the poet's socio-cultural perspectives and points towards the oblivion of the lineage and power-structure of historicity by the present day generation. As a poet he points out what it is in regional history and how have we kept our histories ignored. Just we hear others' versions of history and do not have our standpoint. Saroj Kumar Padhi significantly observes: The present generation's alienation from the archaeological, artistic and aesthetic past has distanced them (the artisans) too far beyond recognition. The war of Kalinga in 261 B.C. the inhuman atrocities of Ashok and the unaccountable suffering of the ancestors are peacefully forgotten in the passage of time. Today people visit Dhaulgiri, on the dead river Daya to see the rock-edicts that bear testimony to Ashok's change of heart. The poet thinks it is the cruelty of time to have rendered people callous to ancestors' glory as well as suffering. The names of the kings resound in our ears. We have forgotten names of the artisans, the names of the Oriya fighters in Kalingna war but remembered Narasingh Dev and Ashok (32).

In the second autobiographical section, the poet ruminates over the passage of time leaving imprints on his psyche by mentioning the grave of his mother. The poet feels the spark

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of feelings of the whispers of solitude that encircle him. His becomes deeply serious on the sight of his mother now, transformed in appearance. He ponders how reminiscences keep connected to the ungraspable past and the images of life experiences keep shifting like the sands of time. “These personal reminiscences are also mixed with the memories of history, of war and peace, of the 'swords of forgotten kings [which] rust slowly in the museum of our guilt” (Shahane 173).Then the poet remembers his old father, daughter and his old village. The third section starts with the first rains washing the lands and stones but can it wash away the sin and bloodshed that happened on the banks of the Daya river when armies of Kalinga and Ashoka fought the fierce battle turning the water of the Daya river blood-red. The imagery resonates to one of The Waste Land and The Rime of The Ancient Mariner 'when we think of the skeleton remains, bodies cleansed of rotting flesh'. He preaches that the gospel of peace be carved on the famous rock edicts for posterity to learn the message of peace and nonviolence. Now the poet turns towards his personal life and remembers his few friends who sometimes get affected by doubts and envy. He feels the pangs of being lonely, devoid of deep anchoring bond of relationships. In the fourth section, the poet is finally up against the 'emptiness of his destiny. He wishes to offer a prayer and recalls the scene of the rain and sunshine, the source of joy and solace, to bestow upon him peace and reconciliation. The section five is an ode to sleep offering the opportunity of dream dreamt with the help of imagery, reflections, remembrance and nostalgia. Sleep may be soothing but does it lead to any destination. His dream world is a probing into the 'miracle of living'. He finds his country full of contradictions where there are fabulous marriage processions and also lies and betrayals. The sixth section recapitulates the nightmares of the Ganga kings who now seem to be watching the ruins of their bloody battles and ravages of wars, and grieving on the devastation caused due to the storm of the historical power tactics. The poet anticipates only a miracle can save mankind from such outrageous storms. In the seventh section there is a parallelism between the poet's personal dark world of subconscious psyche troubled with insomnia, nightmares, clash of past and present, innocence and guilt, faith and doubt, and ceaseless invasions of the enemies into the motherland disturbing and destroying its culture, tradition, heritage, lineage and roots. Subsequently, in the eight section, he establishes a relationship between his lonely and rootless life and 'this temple in ruins, in a blaze of sun'. The poet questions the stone lions standing near the steps of the Sun Temple, 'Whose return to life are you waiting for?' Just their waiting continues like that of Samuel Beckett's tramps in Waiting for Godot., not sure of whether Godot will turn up or not. The poet questions the meaning of man's existence and also the message of the Sun Temple at Konarka. “Would meaning remain in merely that a thing exits on a simple plane? Or does it lie in the multiplicity of levels of mind derived from the multiplicity of things? Things as they are, or things as they are not?”…He seems to yearn for a kind of Yeatsian quest, of the second coming of a sailing to (a new) byzantium, and of the world being born again” (Shahane 175) He asks: How would I hold the linga in the eye Until the world is made all over again? (Relationship 23) In the ninth section, the poet attempts to unfold the 'myth of happiness' and also of the souls 'that survive the myth and are entangled in the web of ideas- ideas which seem to stand like brooms on their unsteady heads.' The poet envisions his dead grandfather, close to a burning pyre, floating on the water. His grandfather converted to Christianity under the

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influence of missionaries. The poet seems engulfed in the tedious dualism and oscillating for rootedness between the faith of Christian and Hindu religions. He questions the validity of his relationship with his friends also who in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance completing the journey of life, 'unsullied by guilt, and untouched by belief'. “The poet is confronted with the myth of sleep and action, the desire to know 'the deepening nature of all things', the desire for 'perfection', the wish to love…all fellow men….The poet feels that the myth was perhaps like a journey or the spirit in which he might lose himself altogether. Or, was it merely a step in the march towards a predetermined future?” (Shahane 176). In the tenth section, the poet seems to be confronted with meaninglessness, purposelessness, and silence in the atmosphere around himself, and tries to explore his relationship with Cuttack where he was born and out of whose clay images of sacred goddesses are made, and also how did he become a willing inheritor of the 'mysterious inheritance': mysterious inheritance in which roots stick out here and there from the dung, of broken empire and of vanquished dynasties, and of ahimsa's whimpers: for before I go to sleep or go into the unknown in me this house of blind windows built inside, doesn't the fear it provides accelerates our happiness? (Relationship 28)

'Ahimsa's whimpers' allude to king Ashok, the Kalinga war, and subsequent appeal for universal peace through the raised stupas, the 'dutiful monuments' celebrating the victory of humiliating darkness over light. The poet is subsumed into all happening underneath the consciousness layers of his heart. He waits for the cry of hope by the creative artists and poets who are confronting the past and could express their creative response to their intense appeal. The section eleven deals with the 'enduring' relationship between past and present. The poet seems optimistic here and apprehends that humankind that can endure the atrocities of this unkind world can also rise from the gloomy and dark surroundings, and envision a world of peace, beauty and kindness. The poet's journey started with uncertainty and pessimism among the ruined stone Sun Temple: and yet my existence lies in the stone which carry my footsteps from one day into another down to the infinite distances (Relationship 10).

But now, continuing his quest for 'an essence divine', the poet seems to be believing in the graceful relationship among human, between man and god, and art and artist: For lofty as they are on their twenty-four blue spells, my walks along the tremblings of the stone seems loftier still (Relationship 29).

In the twelfth and the last section of the poem the poet attempts at securing release from his inscrutable sense of guilt. The make-believe dream sequence of the last lines of the poem take us to a different level. The poet's inquisitiveness ponders if there 'Is anything beyond me that I cannot catch up, or cope with?' His poetic self is inspired to speak to the beautiful figures carved in stone: Tell me your names, dark daughters Hold me to your spaces (Relationship 31).

Who are these dark daughters? Are these the sculptures of the apsaras, dancers and drummers

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proclaiming the advent of the day, rising of the sun, or are these the poor daughters of India whose tales of pity and pathos we often hear? Are these the dark daughters of the temples working as devadasis or yoginis? Can we detach ourselves from our bare social realities, historicity and earthly connections? Can we remain oblivious of the trouble and tribulation of the common masses? This section “acclimatizes the persona's dream of total merger with the Sun Temple. The self of the persona is seen to be shedding down all personal problems – sin, guilt, fear of death and ageing – with which he had been occupied and obsessed” (Mohanty 4456). The poet is in eternal harmony with himself as well as others. He owes his new birth in the silence dance of these beautiful daughters. he sees the erotic sculptures carved on the outer temple-walls telling of man-woman relationship, telling of the dharma, artha, kama and moksha motif and the yoga-yoginis. and there he got the dark daughters of his Relationship. “Thus, memory becomes a pervasive mode of comprehending relationships- between personal self and society, the creative self and the arts, sculpture and architecture, which in turn embody the meeting point between life-giving impulses and the poet's quest for comprehending different levels of relationship between art and life” (Shahane 178).A.N. Dwivedi observes: Indubitably it is a great work which explores with remarkable symphonic effects his unbreakable relationship with rich religion, culture, rituals, traditions and myths of Orissa and, above all, with the primordial shaping influences that Konarka has exercised on him, unfolding the various stages of his own individuality. Resolved into twelve sections, this long poem, a significant corollary of his critical piety and his commendable capacity to confront and interrogate the challenges and deficiencies of all the traditions, rituals and myths that have shaped his psyche, engendering in him a terrible sense of deprivation and defencelessness in the face of the overwhelming presence of the past, is indisputably his profoundly serious attempt at experimental meditation on his origin and his sacred ties with Orissa (Web source).

To conclude, it may be said that Mahapatra as a modern writer tries to lay emphasis on subjective memory and inversely tries to connect man with his contemporary world. His poetry makes the reader look inwards and question himself about life. The depiction of human condition in the context of historicity forms an essential part of his poetry His consciousness is subsumed into the question of how to express his love and gratitude for the motherland, the place of his nativity. Mahapatra's response to the landscape, his sense of myth and history, tradition and culture of his birthplace gives him distinct identification. The history of Orissa is his subject and the culture of it the space of his poetry. He considered poetry as “craft” and uses symbols, images, myths, metaphor and similes to bring out rich and effective poetic vision. Vasant Shahane observes “Relationship shows the poet's endeavour to connect not merely the past with the present, but also to explore the connecting links between one art and another, between sculpture and poetry between music and poetry and this is indeed fascinating” (Shahane 179). His poetry is essentially 'poetry of self-exploration' and the process of writing for him is the process of discovery of self. Works Cited Jayaprada, C.L.L. “Jayanta Mahapatra, The Poet” Indian Literature Today. Vol.II: Poetry and Fiction. Dhawan, R.K. (Ed.) New Delhi: Prestige Books,1994. Mahapatra, Jayanta, Relationship, New York: The Greenfield Review Press, 1980. Mohanty, Niranjan. Patterns of Awareness : A Study in 'Relationship', Litt crit, Vol.15, No. 1 and 2. Padhi, Saroj Kumar. Jayanta Mahapatra's Relationship: A Critical Study. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot,1997. Rayan, Krishna. “The Tendril and the Root: A Study of Jayanta Mahapatra's Relationship” in East West Poetics at Work. C.D. Narasimhaiah (Ed.) New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1994.

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Shahane, Vasant A. Relationship: A Study in Myth, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, A Critical Study, ed. Madhusudan Prasad, Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1986. https://www.indoanglianpoetry.in/2022/12/mahapatra-poem-relationship-criticalanalysis.html

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

Re-creating Homeland in The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra

Dr. Sonali Das Associate Professor of English, PG Department of Language and Literature Fakir Mohan University, Balasore.

Publication Info Article history : Received : 2.11.2023 Accepted : 3.12.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.5

Key words: Homeland, Landscape, History, Myth, Indian sensibility, contemporary reality.

Corresponding author : [email protected]

ABSTRACT One of the most widely known and celebrated poets of India is Jayanta Mahapatra. He has been an influence on a number of contemporary Indian English poets and brought recognition to this new genre by being the first ever recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award for poetry in 1981 for his book of verse, Relationship. Relationship is set in Odisha where Mahapatra has glorified the rich landscape and culture of the eastern coast. The sun and the soil of Odisha, his homeland, shine in the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. Puri, Konark, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar form a quadrangle in Mahapatra's poetry. Legends, myths and history associated with these places form the core of his poetry. Poems such as “Indian Summer Poem”, “Evening in an Orissa Village”, “The Orissa Poems”, “The Indian Poems” and “The Indian Way” reveal his Indian sensibility. The themes of his poetry are varied – love, sex, death, tradition, rituals and contemporary reality. My paper makes a humble attempt to explore the concept of 'Homeland' explored in the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra.

Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the first Indian English poets to be honoured both at home and abroad. Though he started writing poetry after reaching forty, his volumes of work made him a recognised face world over. His first book of verse, Close the Sky Ten by Ten was published in 1971. His other volumes of verse include Svayamvara and Other Poems (1971), A Father's Hours (1976), A Rain of Rites (1976), Waiting (1979), The False Start (1980), Relationship (1980), Life Signs (1983), Dispossessed Nests (1986), Selected Poems (1987), Burden of Waves and Fruit (1988), Temple (1989), A Whiteness of Bone (1992), Shadow Space (1997), Bare Face (2000) and Random Descent (2005). According to K Ayyappa Paniker, the recurring images in Mahapatra's poems reveal that he is an Oriya to the core. Mahapatra is a poet of the soil. The eastern coast of India is glorified in his poems. Mahapatra has chosen for his themes various subjects beginning from landscape of the country to international problems. A poet's response to his landscape, his tradition and culture of his birthplace go to form his identity. To quote Judith Wright: Before one's country can become an accepted background against which the poet's and novelist's imagination can move unhindered, it must first be observed, understood, described as it were, absorbed. The writer must be at peace with his landscape before he can confidently turn to its human figures (qtd in Kohli “Landscape and Poetry”). Jayanta Mahapatra's poems reverberates with the landscape of his home state, Orissa. In his two poems titled, “Dawn at Puri” and “Main Temple Street, Puri”, Mahapatra talks about the importance of Puri and what it means to Hindus in our country. Widows believe dying at Puri will lead them to salvation. To quote from “Dawn at Puri”:

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her last wish to be cremated here twisting uncertainly like light on the shifting sands. In another poem, “The Temple Road, Puri”, Mahapatra describes the sea of common place who go to visit Lord Jagannath Temple at Puri and form of their prayer. The poet describes: Later, as the shrine's skeins of light slowly close their eyes, something reaching into them from that place they learn to bear the lame lamp post to the huge temple door, the sacred beads in their hands gaping at the human ground. Not only Puri, but also Konark, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack occupy important places in Mahapatra's poetry as they symbolise the tradition of ancient Orissa and her heroic past. Poems like “Indian Summer”, “Evening in an Orissa Village”, “The Orissa Poems”, “The Indian Poems”, “The Indian Way” are some of the poems of Mahapatra which display his Indian sensibility. Mahapatra's love for his homeland is reflected in his Sahitya Akademi Award receiving speech: To Orissa, to this land in which my roots lie and lies my past and in which lies my beginning and my end, where the wind knees over the grief of the River Daya and where the waves of Bay of Bengal fail to reach out today to the twilight soul of Konark, I acknowledge my debt and my relationship. A search for one's root is a trend seen not only in the works of Jayanta Mahapatra, but also other modern Indian English poets like A.K Ramanujan and R Parthasarathy. His Sahitya Akademi Award winning book of verse, Relationship is Mahapatra's quest for his root: For the poet, the Orissan landscape is the objective setting of his mental evolution, the phases of which get mixed up with the lyrical vocabulary of a humanist creed. The poem being set in Orissa embodies the myth and history of the land. As the conflicting principles of man and nature, history and autobiography and faith and suffering interact against the vast panorama of Orissan landscape, the poem shows a dialectical progression where every synthesis in further analysis turns into a thesis. (Das 40). The poet's heart throbs for his homeland and he feels a part of the heroic tradition of his land. Cuttack, his home city, has a great historical past, but for the poet, it is now a symbol of 'vanquished dynasties'. The poet is overwhelmed by this and in an emotional voice says: Now I stand among these ruins waiting for the cry of a night bird from the river's far side to drift through my weariness.... (Relationship) In the first section of Relationship, references are made to River Mahanadi, Konark Temple, the ancient harbours of Chilika and Chandipur. There are references to the Kalinga War of 261 B.C. in which the great emperor Ashoka massacred thousands of Oriyas at Dhauli, near River Daya. The emperor had a change of heart and turned into a deeply religious man

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when he saw the Daya River turned red with the blood of the vanquished. In quite a few poems, Mahapatra turns to his family history to establish his link with the past. Like Kamala Das's grandmother, Mahapatra's grandfather had a huge influence on him. In a poem called, “Grandfather”, Mahapatra dives deep into his family history and reflects the basic issues of life including change of religion. During the Orissa famine of 1866, his grandfather, Chintamani Mahapatra embraced Christianity driven by hunger. This was a calamity suffered by our people in the past and the turn their lives took as a result of this. The poet feels it is important to know the factors which forced them to change their faith instead of blaming them: We wish we knew you more, we wish we knew what it was to be, against dying, to know the dignity. (Grandfather) Mahapatra also writes about the contemporary life and situation, and does not mince words in describing socio-political scene that affects humanity. In a poem titled, “Afternoon” (published in HIMAL 12/8 August 1999), Mahapatra expresses his aversion and agony at the rape incidents frequently reported in the newspapers. He writes: The harsh afternoon skin of the summer sky lies in flakes on the dry river bed. There, the raped and dismembered body of another thirteen-year old girl, stilled, beyond the trembling of the sands. (Afternoon) Gandhi has become a symbol of justice and honesty and an apostle of peace. He has become a major subject of post-colonial literature. Mahapatra tried to create a contemporary myth out of Gandhi. In the poem “Requiem”, Section XII begins with a statement: You became the red earth that a perfect, constant gravity achieved through the aeons. Mahapatra talks about love and sex in an uninhibited way in his poems. His poem, “Hunger” depicts a situation where a hungry father is forced to pimp his daughter to a sexhungry tourist. Here, the word 'hunger' has both literal and symbolic meaning. Deeply rooted in the traditions of Orissa, Mahapatra makes use of religious imagery and symbols in his poetry. 'Rain' is an important symbol in Mahapatra's poetry. In his poem, “Rains in Orissa”, the poet describes the rainy season in Orissa, his homeland, in an artistic way: The sky's face expressionless. An oriole call echoes away in the sullen grayness, the book of earth throbs with the light of things A pond heron floats wearily in a rainpool. (Rains in Orissa) 'Rain' is an old symbol used in our ancient literatures for fertility, life and sometimes for separation in Mahapatra's poetry. It is also a metaphor of life for Mahapatra. To quote the poet: In the end I come back to the day and to the rain.

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(In the Fields of Desolate Rice) Apart from the symbols, myths too form an important part of Mahapatra's poetry. He has employed the myth of his native land, i.e 'the golden deer' of the epic, The Ramayana in Temple to explain the concept of 'Laxmanrekha' (the limits beyond which one should not go.). Mahapatra's poetry is enriched with thought provoking images and dynamic symbols that change with the times. To quote Bruce King: While Mahapatra's world is filled with personal pain, guilt, remorse, hunger, desire and moments of renewal, his environment is filled with symbols of belief by the ordinary lives of the people of Cuttack, the temples, the Hindu festivals, the ancient monuments. The poems are varied attempts to bridge an epistemological, phenomenological gap to know, be part of enclose, experience, with the world and the other, whether it be a woman, temple stones, a Hindu priest. (King 206) Mahapatra recognises the importance of imagery in his poetry. His poetry is both thoughtoriented like Ezekiel's and image-oriented like Ramanujan's. Hence, one has to take both the connotative and denotative meanings of the words in order to understand his poetry. That's why Mahapatra's poetry appear to be difficult, multifarious and ambiguous. Mahapatra views the world objectively and portrays the issues without camouflaging them. With the help of symbols in his poetry, Mahapatra tries to evoke the native tradition and myths of his land. He writes poetry 'keeping India in his bones' (Das, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra 42). Mahapatra tries to integrate his personal life with the contemporary situation. He uses the coloniser's language (i.e English) to convey his indigenous tradition. Some other poets who emphasised their locales were Whitman (nineteenth century New York), Robert Frost (New England), W.B Yeats (Sligo) and Nissim Ezekiel (Bombay). In a similar vein, Mahapatra glorified his locale – the golden triangle (Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri). Mahapatra was a bilingual poet and wrote in his native language, Odia too. His autobiography, Bhor Motira Kanaphoola was published in Odia language, chronicling the myriad experiences in his life that shaped his career as a poet of international standing. Mahapatra's poetry derives its strength from the juxtaposition of the concrete and the abstract. One gets a feel of 'a unified sensibility' in his poetry. Mahapatra's poetry takes the past into its range, inculcates it with the present and looks forward to the future. History, myth and a vision for the future – all are embodied in his poetry. Hence, the poetry of Mahapatra can be called as both 'Modern' and 'Post-Modern' for it is imbued with the features of both. Like his fellow post-colonial poets A. K. Ramanujan and Shiv K Kumar, Jayanta Mahapatra is a translator too. Some of his translated works include Song of Kubja and Other Poems (1981), Verticals of Life: Poems (1996), Tapaswini: a Poem (1998) and A Time of Rising (Poems) (2003). He was the Editor of the trailblazer magazine, Chandrabhaga, which was devoted to poetry, and was one of its kind in the country. As Mahapatra advanced in years, he felt more for the suffering humanity. In a poem titled, 'Defeat', Mahapatra speaks of child labour and the plight of a boy who worked in the blacksmith's shop. In a tone full of pathos, Mahapatra says: The blacksmith's shop is gone now and childhood sits in shadow like an eye in a face that is dead so the door was opened to hunger and suffering, outside, the thick and strange movement

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of human life. (Shadow Space 37) Mahapatra's desire to write about his indigenous tradition and culture in the language of the coloniser, and yet create an independent identity, puts him on the front position of post-colonial poets in our country. To borrow a word from Raymond Williams, the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra is largely 'indicative', which talk about the issues of the contemporary society. The bitter realities of life force the poet to voyage inwards to seek his own self and meaning in life. This helped him to relocate himself. Mahapatra found this trait in Tagore. In this context, he draws our attention to Edwin Muir statement in the following lines: Our minds are possessed by three mysteries: where we came from, where we are going ... how we should live with one another. (qtd. in Door of Paper 71) Mahapatra left for the heavenly abode on August 27, 2023. His last wish was to burn his body in Khan Nagar electric crematorium, which is meant for the Hindus, and not bury his body in a coffin. The reason he stated in his last wish was that he would feel suffocated inside a coffin. This shows the childlike innocence of the great poet and his secular nature. His ashes might have mingled in the waters of Chandrabhaga, but his oeuvre will keep him immortal in the hearts of the readers. Odisha will always remain proud of this 'Son of the Soil'. Works Cited Das, Bijay Kumar. Critical Perspectives on 'Relationship' and 'Latter-day Psalms. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1986. ... The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributors (P) Ltd, Fourth Revised and Enlarged Edition, 2022. King, Bruce. Modern Indian Poetry in English. Delhi: OUP, 1987. Kohli, Devindra. “Landscape and Poetry”. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol. 13, No. 3, April 1979. Mahapatra, Jayanta. Door of Paper: Essays and Memoirs. Delhi: Authors Press, 2007. ... “The Decline of Indian English Poetry”. The Journal of Indian Writing in English. Vol. 28, No. 1, January 2000. ... Shadow Space. Kottayam: D. C. Books, 1997. Williams, Raymond. “Form of Fiction in 1848”. Literature, Politics and Theory. Eds. Francis Baker et al. London, 1986.

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

Casting Shadows and Sunlight: Deconstructing the Cultural Kaleidoscope in the Select Poems of Jayanata Mahapatra Dr. Andleeb Zahra Assistant Professor, Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Info Article history : Received : 28.10.2023 Accepted : 29.11.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.6

Key words: Identity, cultural assimilation landscape, regionalism.

ABSTRACT Jayanta Mahapatra, an eminent Indian poet writer in English language, captures the essence of cultural variations through the prism of his verse. His poetry transcends geographical boundaries, delving into the intricacies of identity, landscape and human experience. This paper explores the thematic motifs of cultural diversities and the interplay of regional identities in Mahapatra's poetry, revealing how he intricately weaves the complexities of cultural landscapes into his verses. In essence, Mahapatra's poetry serves as a reflection of the rich and varied cultural variations prevalent in India. His ability to encapsulate the essence of diverse cultural landscapes through his verse contributes significantly to the discourse on identity and regionalism making his works a significance contribution to the world of literature.

Corresponding author : [email protected]

One of the earliest Indian English poets to receive recognition both domestically and internationally is Jayanta Mahapatra. He is a very active poet. Even though he started writing poetry rather late—he hadn't had any poems published until turning forty—he hasn't turned back since the publication of his debut poetry book, Close the Sky Ten by Ten, in 1971. His subsequent books were published quickly after, A Father's Hours (1976), Relationship (1980), A Whiteness of Bone (1992), A Rain of Rites (1976), Dispossessed Nests (1986), Waiting (1979), Shadow Space (1997), Bare Face (2000), Descent (2005). Mahapatra, who was born in Cuttack on October 22, 1928, began working as a teacher in 1949 and held positions at many government institutions in Odisha before he retired in 1986. At 38, he started composing poetry, and he is regarded as one of the three pioneers of Indian English poetry, together with Nissim Ezekiel and AK Ramanujan. The renowned Indian poet Jayanta Mahapatra explored human psychology in his moving poetry. His writings on existential contemplation and societal injustice have an impact that goes beyond awards. His legacy is one of deep reflection and sympathetic understanding, which will always be felt (Express View on Jayanta Mahapatra; Srivastava; Satpathy; With Jayanta Mahapatra; Zaman and Ahmed). Jayanta Mahapatra undoubtedly attracted and still inspiring a great number of creative writers and researchers to experiment and find something new in his poems. Syamsundar Padihari in his paper, “Jayanta Mahapatra: The Poet of the Soil” he examines Mahapatra's subjective and open ended approach of poems, Soma Bandyopadhyay in, “Study On The Poetry Of Jayanta Mahapatra: Poetry As Social Commentary” depicts Mahapatra's nature of adapting a native custom to the English language, opposite to these Md. Sajjad presents the poet's internalised experiences inspired ardent readers to solve the riddles surrounding his creative creations in his paper titled, “A Critical Study of the Imaginative World in Jayanta

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Mahapatra's Poetry.” Similarly Srikanth Ganduri described the imaginative world in Mahapatra's Poems, and the name of his paper is, “A Brief Study of the Imaginative World in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry.” Rock Pebbles: A Peer-Reviewed International Literary Journal dedicated a special issue for Jayanta Mahapatra in January- June 2011 issue, the editor of that issue was Udayanath Majhi. Cultural commentary and influence on poetic is shown by Dr. K. R.Vijaya in her paper, “Poetry As A Social Commentary: A Study of Select Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Sibasis Jana explores the themes of trauma and voiceless in the poems like, “Hunger”, “A Missing Person”, “Random Descent”, and “Land” through the paper titled, “Exploring Trauma and Representing the Voiceless: A Critical Study of the Selected Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Just like this whole issue there are many editors and writers who dedicated and still in process to write about Jayanta Mahapatra as a poet, pone such writer is Bijay Kumar Das who have written four editions of a book named, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, published in 2009. Apart from these Dr. Manjusri Mishra worked on the identity crisis in the poems of Mahapatra through her paper published as, “The search for Identity: A study of the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Monalisha Mondal in her paper, “Odia Identity in Jayanta Mahapatra's Selected Poems” describes Odia influences on his poetry. “Echoes of a bruised presence”: Images of women in the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra” published in Taylor & Francis under World Literature Written in English issue by Madhusudan Prasad dealing with the presence of women in his poetry. A paper “Silence as a Mode of Transcendence in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra” by D. R. Pattanaik published in Sage journal unveiled the silence in the poems of Mahapatra. After reviewing the literature the present paper examines the cultural reflection and thematic analysis of Mahapatra's select poems. Jayanta Mahapatra is a renowned Indian Poet whose works are deeply rooted in the exploration of nature and culture. His poetry reflects a profound connection between these two facets of human existence, often juxtaposing them to highlight their intricate interplay. In this essay, we will delve into Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry to analyze how he portrays nature and culture, with textual references illustrating his themes and techniques. Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry is characterized by a keen observation of the natural world. His verses often depict the beauty and mystique of nature, drawing inspiration from the landscapes and elements that surrounds him. One of his notable poems that exemplify this aspect is “Hawk.” In this poem, Mahapatra skilfully describes the majestic flight of a hawk: Its shadow moves across a challenging area, as if everything in this vast area were alive, from the talons' grip to the dirt, where a conflict is being fought in silence. They each battled the ups and downs of the conflict with a steely eye closed against the pitch-black darkness, here Mahapatra uses vivid imagery to convey the intensity and grace of the hawk's flight. The poem's opening line, “Its shadow crosses a difficult space,” immediately draws the reader's attention to the bird's movement, setting the stage for a contemplation of nature's intricate beauty. Nature, in Mahapatra's poetry, is not just a backdrop but a force that interacts with human emotions and experiences. In “A Rain of Rites,” he explores the connection between nature and culture by evoking the monsoon season in India: As of right now, it has been pouring nonstop, and tomorrow it is expected to continue. It is predicted to rain continuously today. As the evening draws to an end, Mahapatra personifies the rain in this paragraph, giving it a feeling of continuity and delight. I will sit in the garden and rejoice uncontrollably as I listen to the water from the red broken pipe splatter on the earth. In the setting of India, where the monsoons are not merely meteorological occurrences but also have great cultural importance, the rain takes on symbolic meaning. A recurrent topic in Mahapatra's poetry is the union of nature and culture. Furthermore, Mahapatra often explores the duality of nature, portraying its serene beauty alongside its harsh, unforgiving aspects. In “The Glass,” he considers the transience of existence while viewing a hunting scene: Here, the moon is invisible, leaving just the silhouettes of its shadows on the chilly, level sky, here, Mahapatra juxtaposes the beauty of the moon's reflecion with the inherent violence of the chase, highlighting the dual nature of existence. This poem encapsulates his ability to capture

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the intricacies of nature while exploring the cultural and philosophical dimensions of human life. In addition to nature, Mahapatra's poetry is deeply rooted in culture, particularly the cultural landscape of India. He often delves into the rituals, traditions, and social structures that define Indian society. A poet's identity is defined by his instant and spontaneous reactions to the landscape of his nation, his experiences with the culture and customs of his home, and a variety of other factors. A poet must absorb the land, its spirit, culture, and pulse of its tradition before using history as a springboard for his imagination. Only then can the truth of his heart ignite his flight (Ganduri 49). “Holi” is a prime example of his exploration of cultural themes: "the colours in our house have no name. No power can contain them; nothing can take their extreme power." In this excerpt, Mahapatra emphasizes the vibrancy and uncontainable nature of the Holi festival, a culturally significant event in India. The use of colours as a metaphor for cultural diversity and richness is a recurring motif in his poetry. Furthermore, Mahapatra's poems frequently delve into the complexities of cultural identity and the clash between tradition and modernity, In “Dawn at Puri,” he reflects on the changing landscape of a sacred Indian town: And as I open my eyes into the yellow sand in the morning, I notice the enormous sculptures that resemble the remains of a monolith, together with domes and spires, here, Mahapatra portrays the conflict between the ancient, sacred architecture of Puri and the encroachment of modernity. In addition to being a modern poet who draws inspiration from physics, where ideas about light and dark and the universe's beginnings will undoubtedly find a way, he is also a highly difficult and laborious poet since pictures are never readily described. Numerous qualities and features exist in Jayanta. He is a contemporary, modernist, postmodern, psychological, sociological, and historical image-maker, myth-weaver, dreamer, and visionary. He is also a realist, surrealist, and feminist. He is both a national and international poet, having been an Oriya poet initially. Typically, Puri, Bhubaneshwar, and Cuttack serve as the centre of his poetry's magnificent display (Vijaya 23). The “fossil of a monolith” symbolizes the preservation of tradition in the face of rapid change, a recurring theme in his work. Furthermore, Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry often explores the intersection of nature and culture in a deeply philosophical manner. In “Life in the Old Man's Beard,” he contemplates the transient nature of existence: "Life with its pompous beards, its refuse of the long night's traffic that is all we know." The reference to "beards" here can be interpreted as both the physical manifestations of life and as a metaphor for culture and tradition. Mahapatra suggests that life and culture are intertwined, shaped by the passage of time and the accumulation of experiences. Moreover, Mahapatra's use of language and imagery adds depth to his exploration of nature and culture. He employs vivid and sensory-rich descriptions, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the landscapes and cultural experiences he portrays. In "Dawn at Puri," he writes: "It is Puri. Dawn is at my window, as it should be, a poem of colour. “The use of a poem of colour" conveys the idea that nature and culture are intertwined narratives that inspire the poet's verses. Mahapatra's language itself becomes a bridge between the two realms. In conclusion, Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry is a captivating exploration of the intricate relationship between nature and culture. Through vivid imagery, philosophical reflections, and a deep connection to his Indian heritage, he weaves together these two facets of human existence. His poems, such as "Hawk," "Dawn at puri," and "Life in the Old man's Beard," exemplify his ability to depict the beauty and complexity of nature while exploring the cultural landscape of India. In Mahapatra's poetry, nature and culture are not separate entities but intertwined threads that shape our understanding of the world and our place within it. The title of the collection of poems, A Rain of Rites, describes a peculiar quiet, solitude, and stillness that are uncommon to find in other places. The scene is Indian country, with mud-built houses strewn over a large area, rivers, hills, and trees, all set against a backdrop of mythological past. A state by the sea where rituals and rain fall upon it; it has its own story to tell, explain, and annotate. Seeing his verses unadorned is preferable to deciphering them via

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analysis. The poems possess an unearthly tranquilly that is noticeable (Prasad 370). Mahapatra's poem "Temple" satisfies a duty that falls upon all Indian poets: to convey the suffering and mystique of the Indian lady, an autumn of yearning, as she moves slowly and in reverse in her solitary, a puzzle on her pedestal. And he does it with great effect, giving lengthy respect. In his poetry, Jayanta Mahapatra expresses the suffering of contemporary man by using a calculated rejection of the outside world as a springboard for introspection and purging. Poems such as “Hunger,” “A Missing Person,” “Land,” “Random Descent,” and “A Rain of Rites,” among others, depicts the horrific realities of the marginalised group in society (Jana 86). The intricate interaction between environment and culture was a recurring theme in the works of Jayanta Mahapatra (1928-2014), a towering figure in contemporary Indian poetry. His poetry, which are frequently marked by striking imagery and deep reflection, explore the connections between nature and the human experience, obfuscating distinctions and emphasizing their significant influence on one another. With an emphasis on the concepts of interconnection, metamorphosis, and the search for meaning, this essay will examine the numerous ways that Mahapatra depicts the interaction between nature and culture. Poetry of Mahapatra often shows nature and culture as being mutually dependent and influential. "The sunflower, rooted to the ground, / Turns its face to the sun, / Absorbing its light, its warmth, / Like a man turning to his god," (The Vase) is how Mahapatra depicts the flower, not just as a stunning natural thing but also as a representation of human resiliency and hope. This visual highlights our mutual need for nourishment: just as humans depend on nature for their own life, sunflowers depend on the sun for growth. Mahapatra similarly depicts the sea in "Fisherman's Dream," where he says, "The sea is our mother, the giver of life, / But also the taker, the destroyer," illustrating how the sea can be both a source of livelihood and a potent force that influences the lives of coastal people. In this poem, the sea is not just a backdrop but also an active player in the life of the fisherman, highlighting the connections between the natural world and human culture. Mahapatra frequently considers the intricacies of human existence through the imagery of environmental change. In the poem "Metamorphosis," he utilized the metaphor of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly to represent the capacity for significant personal development and change: "The green tomb breaks, / The butterfly emerges, / Painted wings take flight, / Leaving behind the chrysalis" "Metamorphosis"). This poem makes the argument that, like nature, humans are capable of continuous change and can rise above their constraints. In "The Remembered Village," Mahapatra also presents the natural environment as a witness to the passage of time and the changes that have occurred to human settlements: "The village I remember / Is no more. / The river has changed its course, / The fields are overgrown" (Mahapatra, "The Remembered Village"). The poem emphasizes how both the natural world and human civilization are dynamic, undergoing continuous change and rejuvenation. Mahapatra's poetry frequently present nature as a comfort and a direction for those seeking purpose in life. In Mahapatra's "Earth," he finds comfort in the natural world's enduring presence: "The earth endures, / Patient and strong, / Witness to our fleeting lives." The premise of this poem is that, in spite of its ongoing transformations, nature provides a sense of permanence and stability that people often long for in their lives. Mahapatra similarly employs the imagery of rain in "Rain" to represent the purifying influence of nature and its capacity to revitalize the human soul: "The rain washes away the dust, / The grime of the city, / Leaving behind a clean slate" (Mahapatra, "Rain"). This poem makes the case that getting back in touch with nature can help people regain their inner peace and pave the route to self-discovery. The poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra provides a thorough examination of the relationship between culture and environment. He portrays the natural world as a source of nourishment,

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transformation, and significance for human existence through striking imagery and perceptive insights. His writings are a potent reminder of how much nature affects our lives and how crucial it is to cultivate a peaceful relationship with it. Works Cited Bandyopadhyay, Soma. “Study On The Poetry Of Jayanta Mahapatra: Poetry As Social Commentary.” International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Scientific Research, vol. 3, no. 12, 2020, pp. 26-36. https://doi.org/10.31426/ijamsr.2020.3.12.3953. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023. Das, Bijay Kumar. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. 4th ed., Atlantic, 2009. “Express View on Jayanta Mahapatra: The Poet's Humanism.” The Indian Express. 29 Aug. 2023. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/express-view-on-jayantamahapatra-the-poets-humanism-8913782/. Accessed 10 Nov. 2023. Ganduri, Srikanth. “A Brief Study of the Imaginative World in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry”. Contemporary Literary Review India, vol. 6, no. 1, Feb. 2019, pp. 44-58, https://literaryjournal.in/index.php/clri/article/view/225. Accessed 4 Nov. 2023. Jana, Sibasis. “Exploring Trauma and Representing the Voiceless: A Critical Study of the Selected Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Writers Editors Critics, vol. 6, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 86-93. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7NMEGVMjX2mcVpHUnNPbW01ak0/view? resourcekey=0-rRzjYFJKKAiAxvZsS5T3fQ. Accessed 10 Nov. 2023. Mahapatra, Jayanta. “A Rain of Rites.” A Rain of Rites, U. Of Georgia P., 1976, p. 10. ..., “Dawn at Puri.” A Rain of Rites, U. Of Georgia P., 1976, p. 28. ..., “Temple.” Poem Hunter, 5 July 2015, Mahapatra, Jayanta. "Earth." Eating Pomegranate: Selected Poems, Penguin Books India, 2009. ---. "Fisherman's Dream." Eating Pomegranate: Selected Poems, Penguin Books India, 2009. ---. "Metamorphosis." Eating Pomegranate: Selected Poems, Penguin Books India, 2009. ---. "The Remembered Village." Eating Pomegranate: Selected Poems, Penguin Books India, 2009. ---. "The Sunflower." Eating Pomegranate: Selected Poems, Penguin Books India, 2009. https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/temple-by-jayanta-mahapatra/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023. Majhi, Udayanath, editor. “A Special Issue on Jayanta Mahapatra.” Rock Pebbles: A PeerReviewed International Literary Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan.-June 2011, pp. 1+, http://www.rockpebblesindia.in/Book24.html. Accessed 11 Nov. 2023. Mishra, Dr. Manjusri. “The search for Identity: A study of the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra.” P r a t i d h w a n i t h e E c h o , v o l . 6 , n o . 4 , A p r. 2 0 1 8 , p p . 3 5 8 - 6 3 , https://www.thecho.in/volume-vi,-issue-iv,-april-2018.html. PDF download. Mondal, Monalisha. “Odia Identity in Jayanta Mahapatra's Selected Poems.” International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research, vol. 12, no. 1(2), Jan. 2023, pp.

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65-69, http://ijmer.in.doi./2023/01.01.34. PDF download. Padihari, Syamsundar. “Jayanta Mahapatra: The Poet of the Soil.” Indian Literature, vol. 51, no. 3 (239), 2007, pp. 168–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23340468. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023. Pattanaik, D. R. “Silence as a Mode of Transcendence in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 26, no. 1, Mar. 1991, pp. 117–26, https://doi.org/10.1177/002198949102600109. Accessed 8 Nov. 2023. Prasad, Madhusudan. '“Echoes of a Bruised Presence”: Images of Women in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra'. World Literature Written in English, vol. 28, no. 2, Sept. 1988, pp. 367–78, https://doi.org/10.1080/17449858808589074. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023. Sajjad, Md. “A Critical Study of the Imaginative World in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry.” The Expression: An International Multidisciplinary e-Journal, vol. 5, no. 6, 2019, pp. 3641. https://www.expressionjournal.com/issues.php?cat_id=30. Accessed 30 Oct. 2023. Satpathy, Sumanyu. “'Old Things to Talk Over': A Tribute to Jayanta Mahapatra.” The Wire, 6 Sept. 2023, https://thewire.in/books/tribute-to-jayanta-mahapatra-odisha-poet. Accessed 8 Nov. 2023. Srivastava, K. K. “Remembering Jayanta Mahapatra A poet of depth and humanity.” The Pioneer, 1 Oct. 2023, https://www.dailypioneer.com/2023/sundayedition/remembering-jayanta-mahapatra---a-poet-of-depth-and-humanity.html. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023. “The Glass” Pinterest, 1976, https://in.pinterest.com/pin/glass-by-jayanta-mahapatra-552183604323982585/. Accessed 22 Dec. 2023. Vijaya, Dr.K.R. “Poetry As A Social Commentary: A Study of Select Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra.” Veda's Jouranal of English Language and Literature, vol. 3, no. 4, 2016, pp. 21-34. https://www.joell.in/vol-3-issue-4-2016/. PDF download. “With Jayanta Mahapatra, a poetic era passes.” The New Indian Express. 28 Aug. 2023. https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2023/aug/28/with-jayanta-mahapatra-apoetic-era-passes-2609285.html. Accessed 10 Nov. 2023. Zaman, Shah Sufiyan, and Ashraf Ali Ahmed. “Jayanta Mahapatra the Confessional Man and the Poet.” Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, vol. 5, no. 2, Feb. 2018, pp. 11-16, https://www.jetir.org/view?paper=JETIR1802306. Accessed 3 Nov. 2023.

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

Depiction of the 'Whore Image' in the Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra: A Critical Analysis of Select Poems Dr. Milind Raj Anand Faculty of English, Department of Law, School of Legal Studies Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University) Lucknow

Dr. Neetu Sharma Faculty of English, Department of English, Bappa Sri Narain Vocational P.G College (KKV) , Lucknow

Publication Info Article history : Received : 18.11.2023 Accepted : 20.12.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.7

Key words: Whore image, objectification, patriarchy, prostitution, sexual gratification. Corresponding author : [email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT The present research paper has been written with the primary objective to investigate Jayant Mahapatra's numerous poems that throws light on the dark side of the society. He keeps a critical eye on the whore image through his works. His works focuses on the depictions of the abject and pitiable circumstances of such women who have been objectified for sexual gratification. Such women are forced to such pathetic and horrendous condition without having another option for their survival. This paper focuses on the real life experience and the treatment they receive from this patriarchal society which is sexually perverted and seeks physical pleasure and mental relief among the prostitutes. He has focused on the intimate desires of the male sex and laid bare the cruelty of it over the female prostitute with distinct picturization of the receiver's anatomy and the act in itself without letting it slip into the erotic realm of the literary creation. He refers his female characters in third person. Very rare they have been addressed by their names. They exist without any name which exhibits the unnoticed, unappreciated and insufficient existence in the society. They have been viewed through male centered lens and suffer sexual, physical objectification. The dark and dull moment of the life of prostitutes has been documented. The prostitution business has been filled with the plight of women where they have been trapped in the trade of sexual gratification in sexually perverted society. He used his literary craft in sensitizing the well-to-do world of the plight of the destitute and desperately worked to bring a positive change through his writings.

Jayanta Mahapatra, a well known and widely acclaimed name in the literary circles of English poetry has penned down varied poems which mostly have focused upon the life of common human being's plight. However, he has very sensitively touched upon and empathetically written about the plight of women, especially the downtrodden women, the destitute and the prostitutes. He has focused on the intimate desires of the male sex and laid bare the cruelty of it over the female prostitute with distinct picturization of the receiver's anatomy and the act in itself without letting it slip into the erotic realm of the literary creation. His poems reveal the real life experience and self realization of the plight of the women and the treatment they receive from the society in contrast. This paper focuses upon the representation of the pathetic conditions of such women who have been objectified by the men for their sexual gratification and have been forced to such a pitiable condition or who had no other options left except to submit for the cohabitation for survival. Jayanta Mahapatra wrote and made his medium of writing in English, he made his space in the English literary world with his choice of the subjects. His poems were vivid but reflect an obscurity in the slant meaning they held which further fires the curiosity of the reader and ultimately lays him with a gratifying impression. Capturing the times which have been mired with the struggle for survival for the most and many who have been in the desolation for ages would not have been without its due challenges. However Mahapatra fared well and mostly outstanding in sensitizing its readers over the representation of the crises of those times. He barely laid the ultimately reality of human relations, its society, the male and female psychology and fierceful dominance of one over the other in the contemporary times.

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The remarkability of Jayanta Mahapatra has been the unabashed and forceful representation of the issues with a constructive vision of the future. The anxieties of the people in desperate times especially the marginalized women who had minimal options to survive and demand than what the men had, if at all the marginalized men had, has been contrasted in various poems of Mahapatra who has pitifully penned down the alienation they suffered. The existential crisis of the desolate women has been very effectively shaped by Mahapatra in his evocative poetry. He has keen eye for the psychological state of the populace and he bestows enough power in his pen to reverberate the philosophical yet real narration. His panoramic vision over the plight of the people and the resounding hollowness which troubles the character and the reader equally with the horrors of life, the gloominess of the future and the grey vision one has for the present. Jayanta Mahapatra through his numerous poems has thrown light on the dark side of the society which is sexually perverted and seeks physical pleasure and mental relief among the prostitutes. On one side Mahapatra has brought to light the male attitude against the sexual gratification through immoral deeds and on the other side he has also laid focus on the dead moral values of the prostitutes too who do not bother to explore other options of livelihood, rather they choose an easy way out even though they have had their troubled pasts and suffered the criminalities related to it. Mahapatra does not criminalize sex, rather he is worried over the sexual perversion the society is degenerating into and he considers its wide impact on the generations to come. He too considers the piousness of the physical relation but considers the momentary gratification through flesh trade to be infectious and decaying for the society at large. This ultimately leads to social and moral disillusionment. The crises in the lives of women and their bleak future has been encapsulated by various poems of Jayanta Mahapatra among which the prominent poems which have introduced the whore image are "Absence"; "The Twenty fifth Anniversary of a Republic: 1975"; "The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street"; "Slum"; "Man of his Nights"; "Morning Signs"; "The Lost Children of America"; "The Bride"; "After the Rain"; "Something Spreading Itself"; "Summer's End"; "The Vase"; etc.'. Mahapatra keeps a critical eye on the whore image. If it is evaluated from the perspective of the pleasure seeker then Mahapatra seems to be agonically unsympathetic towards the prostitutes who sell their bodies for a set duration and have no feelings towards their customers either divine or spiritual. It is dealt as matter of mere utilization of the services and the product they offer which can be analogically correlated to the use of a hotel room which remains vacant for the next customer when the earlier one is done with it. There is no room for emotional bonding of any sense or of respectability for oneself as one is pathetically used to such a situation and life. The prostitutes seem to be free of the traumatic guilt which they would have had when they were forcibly initiated into such a trade. This has lead to the further deep rooting of the social malaise where one does not ever try to escape such a life and the trade persists and grows. An analysis of the celebrated poem “The whorehouse in a Calcutta street” which was written at a later stage of his poetic career, the image of the whore is drawn bolder and laden with the commercialization of the trade. The prostitute has grown rather powerful and unemotional with the brutal objectification of her body without any heed to the emotional connect which a man as a client would even desire or deserve. In this poem Mahapatra paints the sheer frustration of the client through the revelation of his softer side and the quest to find some more learning about the woman and to relieve oneself through some communicative exchange which gets debunked and nullified by the stony, parched, barren side of the habituated woman's nature which got eroded off with the emotional quotient she could ever be naturally assumed with. Mahapatra writes,

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You fall back against her in the dumb light, trying to learn something more about women — while she does what she thinks proper to please you, the sweet, the little things, the imagined; until the statue of the man within you've believed in throughout the years comes back to you, a disobeying toy… When, like a door, her words close behind: “Hurry, will you? Let me go,” and her lonely breath thrashed against your kind. (Prasad 223) The unemotional host-client relationship is reflected through the hurried expression of the naturalized whore reflected through the expression, “Hurry, will you? Let me go.” She wants to cash in the opportunity she has with the maximum number of clients she could encounter on the given day so as to make as much money as is possible as it the only source of her income and livelihood. The time however little she saves with each client gives her the maximum opportunity for increased income. Similar is the expression in another poem which depicts the commercial mindset the prostitutes adopt without any attachment to the customer they serve. In the poem titled 'Man of his Nights', Mahapatra remarks, “The plump whore he has just left has brazenly gone to work on a new customer.” Similarly, Mahapatra picturizes another whore image of a girl who is wanted and appreciated by many and men eager to her companionship. He writes in the poem 'Dusk' thus, A girl's wanton laugh Suddenly shatters the silence. A flame of evenings. “Smell here,” she says, Lifting up her arms to her companion, “the strong scent the man used. (224) In another magnum opus writing he produced was the poem Hunger which was widely discussed and debated. Here he portrays the extreme poverty and hunger which has been one of the major factors behind the menace of prostitution. This poem highlights the realist image of the contemporary poverty ridden India where a father offers his daughter to flesh trade sighting no other option for his and his daughter's survival. The disillusionment and despair of the duo has been very emotively carved out in the poem Hunger. He says, It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back. The fisherman said: will you have her, carelessly… I heard him say; my daughter, she's just turned fifteen… Feel her. I'll be back soon; your bus leaves at nine. (46) On one hand this poem signifies the hunger for sexual gratification but on the other side it stands in contrasts with the hunger for food. The helplessness of the father has been contrasted against the lust of the man seeking favours. Balachandran remarks, “Poverty and their social status destroy the holiness of relationship between the members of a family and a father does what he should not have done.” (Balachandran 6) Mahapatra also throws light over the law keeping machinery which carries out their routine work in the name of duty to curb the business, though those who run it are smarter and habituated by the tricks of the trade and are successfully able to skip the clutches of the

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administration. I the poem 'The Twentyfifth Anniversary of a Republic' he writes, The prostitutes are younger this year: At the police station they're careless to give reasons For being what they are And the older women careful enough not to show their years. (Prasad 225) Very rarely Mahapatra names female characters in the poems and mostly they are referred to in the third person. They normally exist without any name which is another reflection on their meager and unappreciated existence in the society and are generally viewed through the male centered lens and suffer androgenous objectification. However in this poem 'The Twentyfifth Anniversary of the Republic: 1975' whore 'Kamala' has been simplistically portrayed as “the three-rupee-whore” who is unhesitatingly dreamt by the first person narrator who reveals “In my dreams when I fondle Kamala's brazen breasts/ my hands encounter the blind flowers at a desecrated tomb.” Yet in another poem 'Slum' Mahapatra characterizes the sexual hunger of the powerful men who prey on poor slum dwelling women given their helpless and pathetic situation, indefensive for themselves. He writes, The familiar old whore on the road Splits open in the sugary dusk, Her tired breasts trailing me everywhere: Where jackals find the rotting carcass And I turn around To avoid my fiery eyes in the glass; there stands Only a lonely girl, beaten in battle, all mine, Sadly licking the blood from my crazed smile. (224) Mahapatra has documented each and every moment of the life of the prostitutes, be it the buzzing business at the dusk or the lull at the dawn. He is tormented with the dark and dull life of the prostitution business and the pain through which the young girls and old women engaged in it undergo. In the poem 'Morning Signs' he reflects, Voices of girls travelled with wind and rain, Reach my ears and arouse a dormant hurt: The smell of damp sheets and semen here, Haggling for nearness beginning again In a familiar room. (225) Mahapatra in the poem 'The Lost Children of America' has satirically equated the whores with the 'corrupt politicians' who trade in their realms by making use of common spaces which are equally frequented by the whores and politicians for their business. Both run their business on the squalor and filth of the society and survive. He satirizes, Here in the dusty malarial lanes of Cuttack where years have slowly lost their secrets they wander in these lanes nicked by intrigue and rain and the unseen hands of gods in front of a garish temple of the simian Hanuman Along river banks splattered with excreta and dung In the crowded market square among rotting tomatoes

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fish-scales and the moist warm odour of bananas and piss passing by the big-breasted, hard eyed young whores who frequent the empty silent space behind the local cinema by the Town Hall where corrupt politicians still go on delivering their pre-election speeches. (225) Madhusudan Prasad analyses the poems of Mahapatra and comments, “These images of women which constitute a vital part of Mahapatra's poetry underscore his overriding obsession with loss, absence, silence, hollowness, grief, death, time and sexuality and serve as an occasional ironical, though muted, commentaries on contemporary religious, social and political milieu, echoing through the stagnant silence pervading his poetry a dirge of rage and frustration, powerlessness and helplessness. (221) With an analysis of few of the select poems we get a clear image of not only the contemporary times through which modern making of the Indian civilization underwent but also we could study and come close to the thoughtful, sensitive, deeply pained Jayant Mahapatra who had a secure and carefully etched empathy for the plight of the common people especially the women. The whore image painted by Mahapatra has sensitively evoked the plight of such women who have been trapped in the trade and has at the same time unraveled mostly the cruel fanatasies of the male dominance which has kept the trade alive for their sexual gratification. He used his literary craft in sensitizing the well-to-do world of the plight of the destitute and desperately worked to bring a positive change through his writings. Works Cited Balachandran, K.. “Socio-cultural Problems in Indian Poetry in English”. Recent Indian Literature in English: A Critical Perspective. 1st Ed. 1999:03-08. Das, B.K. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers and Distributions, 2009. Iyenger, K.R.S. Indian Writing in English. New Delhi: Sterling Publishing House, 1964. Mahapatra, Jayanta. “The Twentyfifth anniversary of a Republic:1975”. Indian Poetry in English. Ed. Makarand Paranjape. Macmillan India Ltd.: Madras, 1993:192. ... “The Stranger Within: Coming to Terms Through Poetry”, The Dalhousie Review, Volume 63, November 3, Autumn, 1983. ... A Rain of Rites. Athens: The University of Georgia Press,1976. ... “The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street”. A Rain of Rites. Uni. Of Georgia Press. 1976. ... “Literary Criticism. Vol. No.1, 1980. Naik, M.K. A Hisory of Indian English Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1992. Prasad, Madhusudhan, editor. “The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra A critical Study”. Sterling Publishers Privated Limited, New Delhi.1986. ... “Caught in the Currents of Time: A Study in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra's Studies om Conremporary Indo English Verse, ed. A.N Dwivedi. Bareilly, Prakash Book Depot, 1983. Ramakrishna. E.V. “Landscape as Destiny: Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry' s Contemporary Indo-Englsih Poetry (ed.) Bijay Kumar Das, Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1986. War, Shickna John. “Themes and Techniques of Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry”. Ed. Udayanath Majhi. Rock Pebbles. 2011.

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

Ethos of Orissa Landscape and Indian Sensibility In The Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra Manu Joshi Research Scholar, Kumaun University, Uttarakhand.

Prof. Sharmila Saxena Govt. Degree College, Gadarpur, Uttarakhand.

Publication Info Article history : Received : 30.10.2023 Accepted : 30.11.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.8

Key words:

ABSTRACT Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the rising stars on the firmament of this species of Indian poetry. His works is of such intrinsic worth that he has already come to be regarded as the forth great poet in India. His ironic treatment with superb use of imagery with reference- to some of the more representative poems in the perspective of his commitment to a personal vision embedded in the materials practices, values of Oriya culture and rituals to some people of India. This paper attempts at the study of socio-political ethos of his native place, the images of locale, the social injustices that embodies the Oriya consciousness.

Oriya Culture, IndianGendered Sensibility, Patriarchal Control, Religion, Realities, Psyche, Identity,Poverty, Indian Human The enormous contribution to the growth of Indian poetry in English , Relationships, Social Injustices. Literature, Indian Writings in although he sporadically ventured in the realms of fiction; he will be Translation, Women's Writings remembered primarily for his poetry, his use of irony, imagery on love,

sex, rituals and human misery voicing democratic mode. Corresponding author : [email protected] [email protected]

Mahapatra is a celebrated poet in the post- Independence Indian English poetry. He was an eminent Indian English poet who began writing poems at the age of forty. Born in Cuttack in 1928, he was educated at Ravenshaw College, Patna and also taught there as a professor of Physics later. Like Shiva K. Kumar, he was "a late bloomer in poetry." In the words of K. N. Daruwalla, "Tradition, a mythic consciousness and the Orissa landscape play a large part in his poetry. There is an abundance of local details like shrines, temples, women prostrating themselves to the day's last sun, homebound cattle and rickshaw-pullers abound…the local touches form an essential part of a wider and more complex poetic fabric." Mahapatra was an original poet, he hadn't read much poetry, nor was he hugely inspired by any other poet. He even admits this very fact, "You can see, I haven't read much poetry in my life. As a matter of fact, I haven't read any poetry until I started writing myself. No, not even poets like Whitman or Tagore. I was trained to be a physicist but I have veered away from physics in a way." Mahapatra's poetry is remarkable for depth of feelings and true poetic imagination which embraces a wide variety of themes--- Orissa landscape representing India's cultural and religious past running into present, rootlessness and emptiness in modern existence, love, sex, relationships and with superb craftmanship. Here are some of the finest features of his poetry. Jayanta Mahapatra's poetic sensibility is typically Indian. He is intensely aware of his environment and vividly portrays the variegated Orissa sceneries throbbing with religious fervour. It also explores human psyche and the intricacies our relationships. Orissa, specifically Puri and Konark looming large has a dominant presence in his poetry as Waverley in the novels

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of Scott and Wessex in those of Hardy. The physical landscape reflects the deeper levels of Indian consciousness and psyche which have been shaped by age old traditions and culture. In Dawn at Puri he depicts with a touch of subtle irony and pathos, the incongruities in the religious landscape of India. White-clad widowed women past the centres of their lives, are waiting to enter the great temple their austere eyes, star like those caught in a net, hanging at dawn's shining strands of faith. (Paniker 110) Religion can give no solace to the poor and the destitute as Mahapatra says in the following lines: Stones cut deep… touched by the pain of countless people Across the temple square the wind That settles on my shoulders has Nowhere to go, neither a silence, nor an answer. (Rain of Rites 20) In some of his famous poems Mahapatra deals with contemporary social and political realities in India. 'One cannot just sit back and shut his eyes and write in his escape module. The Tattooed Taste is a bitter sarcastic commentary of the hollowness of modern existence. The astral chariot shines in the neons Of empty faced women, climbing, Children slumped open, loitering past where they were born, starring out of their fairy-tale windows where the wizened wind, sweeping in spins high hopes to the ground in silence… (Selected Poems 30) It exposes the economic disparity and the utter apathy of the politicians to public welfare. In his famous poem, The Secret of Heroism, he brings to light the lamentable state of India, that lives under the massive burden of her ancient glory and heritage. Perhaps all of India is not awake at this hour Submerged in her immensity, I know I cannot get away Like a patient crocodile…she leaves her prey to rot into Softness fastened beneath the roots of some bold Banyan of our heritage that overhangs the river (Paniker 17) Prostitution and sexual exploitation results from economic disparity and gross social injustice. The Whorehouse in Calcutta Street is a precise, realistic and highly communicative account of the evil of prostitution. Love yields place to commerce and the message becomes quite clear. Hunger is more poignant, more moving. The extreme poverty of the fishermanfather compels him to let his 15 years old daughter to resort to prostitution. She is just turned fifteen. Feel her, here, there… She opens her wormy legs wide, I felt Hunger there, the other one, the fish Slithering turning inside (Selected Poems 19) Mahapatra's poems are known for their melancholic tone. He is concerned with contemporary situations prevalent in India and day-to-day problems encountered by common native people. His poetic world is filled with various images of wives, beloveds, whores, seductress, village

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women, city women and adolescent girls having deeply significant metaphoric evocations and spotlighting his tragic vision of life to which he is essentially committed. Mahapatra has a great reverence and veneration for women who are ancient symbols of suffering and sacrifice. Our minds were tied to the myths That womanhood was pure, one With The repose of the gods (Temple 12) Mahapatra has developed a genuine voice which is of great interest to diverse Indian and foreign audiences. He belongs to his experience with the world and identifies himself with his roots and realises the meaninglessness in the life of modern man. By and large he gives his voice for the deprived and he is undoubtedly the poet for the people. Works Cited Das, B.K. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. New Delhi: Atlantic Publisher. 2009. Print. Mahapatra, Jayanta. A Rain of Rites, Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press, 1976. Print. Mahapatra, Jayanta. Relationship, Greenfield, New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1980. Print. Mahapatra, Jayanta. Temple, Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1989. Print. Mahapatra, Jayanta. Selected Poems, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. Paniker, Ayyappa K. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra. Osmania Journal of English Studies:13: 1: 1977.

Dialogue : A Journal Devoted to Literary Appreciation Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

Navigating Social Realism in the Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra

Ajeet Kumar Gupta Research Scholar, Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow

Publication Info Article history : Received : 30.10.2023 Accepted : 30.11.2023 DOI : 10.30949/dajdtla.v19i2.9

Key words: Indian English poetry, Patriarchal Control, Gendered Realities, Identity,poverty, Indian marginalisation, Literature, Indian Writings in starvation. Translation, Women's Writings Corresponding author : [email protected]

ABSTRACT Jayanta Mahapatra, one of the most distinguished poets of India who believed poetry as the best medium for the expression of experiences of reallife. He has made enormous contributions to contemporary Indian literature. He was one of the three prominent figures in the arena of Indian poetry in English, who are regarded as the founding fathers of Indian poetry in English, together with A.K. Ramanujan and R.K. Narayan. The subject matter of his poetry is always inspired by the realities of the society what he himself was a witness. He attends to the anguish and suffering of people at the back of the queue. The marginalised and downtrodden people are the characters of his poems. Extreme poverty, starvation, prostitution, patriarchy etc. are the major focuses of his poems. He is a poet born and brought up in the temple town of Cuttack, he tries to comprehend the reality of human nature. He attempts to start a dialogue between religious ceremonies and daily life problems of common folk. In order to gain a deeper understanding of society, Mahapatra's poetry serves to reveal socioeconomic facts. Its goal is to depict its members' true sociopolitical and sociocultural characteristics. He begins with his capacity to create new connections and weave new meanings that cause his heart to resonate emotionally.

The melancholy and dismal tone of Mahapatra's poetry stems from his understanding of the poverty and suffering of the Indian people, as well as the condition of women under male dominance. Such human miseries are visible in his most celebrated poems, like, “Hunger,” “The Whorehouse of Calcutta Street,” and “A Missing Person.” The poem “Hunger” is based on a real- life experience of Mahapatra when a poor fisherman offers his daughter for the sexual gratification. The poem echoes two kinds of hungers; one for food another lust. In his poem “Life Signs,” he addresses socioeconomic circumstances more specifically in his speech. He documents the misery that rituals, extreme poverty, hunger, droughts, and immorality inflict on humanity. He even talks of the misery and devastation caused to the humanity because of wars in his poem, “Dhauli,” which describes the bloodshed resulted from war of Kalinga. He as a poet of the land, is conscious about human values and human dignity. The present attempts to explore the undercurrent of idea of social realism in Mahapatra's poetry. India is a very diverse country with a wide range of geographies, ethnicities, languages, and religious beliefs and a society which believes in coexistence. It has a glorious past and a rich cultural legacy which has suffered from invasions and colonization, which has had a significant impact on the dynamics of society and the economy. Mahapatra has been very to the sociopolitical transformation of our country, especially in the state of Odisha, and their impact of these developments on the lives of the common people. Mahapatra's poetry illuminated the social conditions of his own region in the modern era. Despite its wide range of faiths, India has always been able to maintain its cultural cohesion and respect for all religions. Modern Indian poetry has emerged as a crucial component of Indian literature's post-

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independence age, offering an honest and transparent approach to portraying the societal realities of modern-day India. It demonstrates that poetry can be the most effective medium for expressing a person's deepest feelings and portraying every social injustice that exists in society. In addition to joy and happiness, there are also strong emotions associated with terrible situations like starvation, poverty, estrangement, and anguish that result in a critical situation for the community. Mahapatra's poetry places a great deal of importance on these kinds of sensations and emotions, which serve as the poem's primary theme source. In the poem Hunger, he uses insightful lyrical imagery to examine the problem of hunger and starvation from a variety of perspectives and highlights the facts of this societal catastrophe. It deals with a number of subjects that have been exposed by his views, and because it is based on an actual event, it highlights the social realities of the society. He is extremely worried about the issues of poverty and malnutrition in his community. She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there, the other one, fish slithering turning, turning inside. (Hunger, The World Poetry Archive 20 )

Through his other poems, The Whorehouse in Calcutta Street and Man of His Night, which address the difficult subject of male prostitution and the abuse of women, the dark side of a significant issue in contemporary society is brought to light. Mahapatra employed poetry as a means of expressing the painful reality of famine, which caused the hardship for the majority of his contemporary time period. It highlights the hardships and struggles that women actually face in a world that is controlled by men. In his writings, women are portrayed as goddesses, but the same figures are also shown to have other faces and to be sex workers in order to feed their appetites. Despite their pessimistic viewpoint, the issue the poet addresses in his poetry highlights how important it is to recognize the pains of women. Indian literature lacked this theme for a considerable amount of time. Mahapatra used the imagery technique to visualize it in his poems, particularly in The Whorehouse on a Calcutta Street. In the same poem, masculine morality is ridiculed through the imagery of sea weed, which grows after enormous tidal surges overflow its loud bounds. the sweet, the little things, the imagined, …comes back to you, … (qtd. Sharma and Talwar 185)

In Mahapatra's other poem, A Country, the main socioeconomic problems of hunger and poverty are attempted to be visualized, not only in India but also in other Asian nations like Turkey and Colombia. This poem exposes the socio-political and socio-economic contexts that give rise to social divisions between the affluent and the destitute, as well as between the ordinary and the spectacular. One group is silenced in a society where voices are heard, crushed beneath the power of another. In this poem, A Country, the poet addresses societal challenges of the day where he tries to bring the reality of Marxism and Naxalism. …graceful Naxal girl who appeared nowhere that winter holding a knife as old as history. (qtd. in Sarangi & Jha 105)

One of the main themes of Mahapatra's poetry is the portrayal of the woman in a world where men rule. The truth is that men don't give a damn about a woman's feelings or emotions; to them, she is just a sexual object meant to satiate their physical needs. Mahapatra writes in his poem Idyll, Woman's eyes tempt confessions for her husband … As they stretch out to sleep (Idyll, Mahapatra)

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Mahapatra discusses women's identities in patriarchal Indian society, in his poem A Missing Person. In the poem, he portrays an image of a woman standing in darkness in front a mirror, holding a lamp in her hand. The woman is unable to find herself in the mirror. This imagery is the representation of the place of a woman. She doesn't find a meaning on her own. The mirror is the symbol of the day- to- day life of a woman in the society dominated by men. in her hands she holds the oil lamp whose drunken yellow flames know where her lonely body hides (A Missing Person, The World Poetry Archive 6)

The key socio-economic concerns facing modern Indian society are symbolized by the poet's combination of poetic craftmanship and cerebral imaging approach. Today is a poem by Mahapatra that appears in his collection False Start, where he employs temporal symbols that have emerged. The image of flag is a metaphor for certain dark symptoms of life and the poet's imagination that are flickering. In another poem, Ash, he talks about the death, which is the ultimate truth of life on earth, where the image of birds opening their wings and soaring across the sky is used to represent death. The birds flutter towards rest around tree, …….. floating away like ash. (Ash, Mahapatra 9) Mahapatra conveys a profound feeling of personal experiences in most of his lyrical volumes, whereby he shares his own struggles and sorrows. The majority of Indian English literary poets have drawn on their own lives to highlight the socioeconomic realities of the society. Mahapatra also takes into account the scenery of his native Odisha and his own early recollections. He has been paying close attention to how people in Odisha think. He discovers that they are firmly entrenched in their superstitions and religious rites. The superstition among the populace around solar eclipses is connected to temple priests and is represented by crocodile imagery. Secure by shadowy layers of sleep, So out of date, in the alleviative belief … by a rabid civilization. (qtd. in Prasad 288) Conclusion Through the imagery in his poetry, Jayanta Mahapatra argues about the powerlessness of the people and exposes its socioeconomic realities in the society. Mahapatra's use of pictures to illustrate both the positive and negative sides of society in all of his poems is a commendable aspect of his poetic style. He highlights the pitiful conditions that exist in society, including deprivation, famine, prostitution, patriarchy, political unrest, loneliness, and naive religious convictions. Thus, it can be observed that he has masterfully employed powerful imagery to depict the social realities of contemporary India. Works Cited Das, B.K. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra, New Delhi: Atlantic Publication, 1998 Mahapatra, Jayanta. Selected Poems, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989

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Mahapatra, Jayanta. About “Hunger” and “Myself”. Door of Paper: Essays and Memoirs. Delhi: Authors Press, 2007. Prasad, Madhusudan, editor. The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Some Critical Considerations. B.R. Publishing Corporation, 2000. Sarangi, Jaydeep, and Gauri Shankar Jha. The Indian Imagination of Jayanta Mahapatra. Sarup & Sons, 2006. Sharma, Radhe Shyam, and Sashi Bala Talwar, editors. Studies in Contemporary Literature : Critical Insights into Five Indian English Authors. Indian Association for Studies in Contemporary Literature, 2000.

Book Reviews Pradip Kumar Patra. Voices at the Door: Critical Responses to Susheel Kumar Sharma's “The Door is Half Open”. Delhi: Upanayan, 2023, ISBN: 978-93-9146-00-5. Pages: 270. The present volume titled as Voices at the Door: Critical Responses to Susheel Kumar Sharma's “The Door is Half Open” edited by Pradip Kumar Patra and published by Upanayan Publishers, Delhi in 2023 sets to look at Sharma's poetry collection “The Door is Half Open” through different lenses. The book begins with a Preface followed by an Introduction. It brings together a collage of fifty-seven reviews of Sharma and the most striking aspects of his poetry. The most significant aspect of the book lies in the way it ends. The conclusion is earmarked by a conversation between Pradip Patra and Susheel Sharma. In the Preface, Patra introduces Sharma as a poet. Patra appreciates his skilled craftsmanship in practicing poetry. Patra names the Introduction as 'Poetry as a means of cleansing consciousness' and comments on the conglomeration between Sharma as an individual and his poetic art. He refers to Sharma's poetry as a voyage from reality to realization. He compares the poet with T.S. Eliot from the perspective of portraying the countered ethical and religious upsurge. He refers to poems like “Ganga Mata- A Prayer” where Sharma shows his spiritual quest to discover his evolution as a Hindu devotee. In the poem, Sharma intends to glorify his Indian sensibility and origin. In poems like Spineless- II”, “Dilemna” and “Inquisitivemess” Sharma talks about life and identity, morals and values, myth and spirituality and so on. As Patra assesses , Sharma's poetry pertains to the manner of nature and culture, truth and knowledge, search and satisfaction, motion and matter, self and nation, youth and manhood, expression and sensibility and so on. The first review is named 'Falling Brick by Brick' by Abha Iyengar and it intends to situate Sharma as a poet who talks about the binary between time and change. She sees Sharma as an Indian and as a spiritual thinker. She talks about poems like “Nithari and Beyond”, “Granny”, “Routine” and many more that refers to the private self of the poet. Ann Rogers' 'Sympathetic Understanding of a Sensitive Journey' and Ashok Kumar Sinha's 'Recreation of Modern Man's Thoughts' posit the socio-cultural aspect in Sharma's poetic world. Both of them try to look at the inclusive nature of Sharma's poetry and its myriad discourses and discursive prospects. Rogers also touches upon the stylistic innovation of starting a sentence with 'and' and 'but'. Awadhesh Kumar Sinha, Barbara Wuhr, Carol Abrahms and G.L. Gautam talk about the visionary aspect of Susheel Kumar Sharma's poetry and its cosmic effect on the readers. Sinha concentrates on the glocal influences and life happenings that contributes to a large extent in making Sharma a poet. He appreciates the use of universal issues in Sharma's poetry collection. He talks about life and eternity, faith and religion and birth and death. He also refers to the sacred water of Triveni, the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the invisible Saraswati that contribute to the earthly existence of the poet. Wuhr begins with a poem that celebrates the freedom of being a poet and writing poetry. She reads Sharma's poems from the perspective of a woman. She emphasizes the significance of a contemplative life that is moulded by treasured love and valued understanding. Religion is a key concept in her eyes in his poetry. She very boldly declines to believe in meditation. She tries to understand Sharma and his Indian roots and his way of life. Abrahms' conception of Sharma is that of a storyteller. He tries to unravel the underlying religious discourses in his poetry. Gautam tries to unravel the Marxist aspect of religion and religiosity in Sharma's poems like “Ganga Mata- A Prayer” and “Liberation at Varanasi”. He insists on analyzing the use of different images and symbols in his poem. The image of 'boat', 'sick' and 'maya' clarify a sustainable endeavour for the poet and his poetic panorama. Gagana B Purohit, Gavniel Navarro, Geotgia Eva Xanthopoulos, Garrapu Damodar, H.C. Gupta, Jai Shankar Jha, Jasvinder Singh and Jordan Clary posit an idea of postcoloniality,

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realism, enlightenment, revivalism, autobiographical elements, Indian ethos, poetic assertion, religious sanctity and universalism respectively in Sharma's sublime thought process. The authors try to cast Sharma's poetic imagination and its subtle ramifications. His powerful feelings, emotional outbursts and creative potential mark him as a poetic genius. Further, Jyotsna Prabhakar, K Balachandran, K.K. Mishra, K. Rajamouly, Kamala K, Kenneth Lumpkin and Krishna Gopal Srivastava strive to uncover his creative upbringing and psychological counterpart where imagination plays a crucial role in reshaping his preliminary knowledge and responsiveness. His play of Sanskrit Shlokas, the reverberation of river water and the dream sequence captivate the mind of the readers. Moreover, the aspects of democracy and dictatorship, time and mortality, birth and life, dream and reality, mankind and nature, poverty and power satisfy his urge as a reformist. Rajamouly talks about the reformative skill in Sharma's use of words and phrases that pacify God's grandeur. The aspect of continuity gets codified by Kamala K. The Ganges seems to be the existential element in his poetry collection. To him, it is the Mother and the Goddess. Lumpkin considers Sharma as a magician and his poetic language as magical. He refers to his first collection of poetry “From the Core Within” where the poet talks about his psychic self. According to him Sharma glorifies his past and thinks about the present-day world. He sets Sharma's way of portraying Indian mythical beliefs and its beauty. Srivastava insists on unveiling Sharma's inspiration from the Wordsworthian theory of poetry and other Western and Eastern philosophies. He validates Sharma's responsiveness in different phases of one's life. Sharma's use of Sanskrit and Hindi words arouses a true Indian feeling among the audience. He praises the individuality of Sharma as an erudite scholar. The subjective aspect of his poems situates his objective strategy. He believes that Sharma begins with the particular and ends with the universals. Kulwant Singh Gill, Leela Kanal, M.R. Joshi, Madhumita Ghosh, Mary Mohanty, Mithilesh Kumar Pandey and Shankhadeep Chattopadhyay, Maxim Demchenko, Mohan Patnaik and N.N. Monachari specifically talk about the traditional and cultural embodiments that codify Sharma's invocation to the holy Ganges. The sublimity of his soul, the Indian essence, the spiritual venture, the aspect of self-realization, his philosophical and religious ideas, self-exploration and upheaval, his concept of the divine, the consciousness within himself, emotional narrativity create a wholesome effect in the minds of the people. Further, reviewers like N.S. Sahu, Neerja Arun, Nikunj Kishor Das, P.C.K Prem, Patricia Prime, Pragya Mishra, Prakash Chandra Pradhan, Pritam Bhattacharyya, Rabindra Kumar Verma, Radhika P Menon contribute to the aspect of poetic delight and creative expression in Sharma's poetry collection. All of these reviewers instil a number of mythological concerns, personal belongingness, ecological terrain and humanist approach in “The Door is Half Open”. According to them, his poems reflect the rhetoric of the self, the aesthetic being, his enchanted memories, his earthly existence, his poetic sensibility, the abstract nature of his poetry and so on which subscribe to the form and content of his poetic style. His poetry seems to be rational and unconventional at the same time. The editor of the book also writes a review with the title being 'Intense and Pure Poetry' that casts Sharma as a man of primitive insight and contemporary aesthetics. He regards Sharma to be the representative of India. Sharma's celebration of his country and his motherland make him a nationalist. His inclination towards divinity defines him more as an individual with a self-conscious identity. Rashmi Jain, Reena Sanasam, Ritika Singh, Roy Rebert De Vos. Sandeep Kumar Gupta, Shamanaz Bano, Shanti Rajaraman, Shubha Dwivedi, Stuti Khare, Sudhir K Arora, Suresh Chandra, Suresh Chandra Dubey, Suresh Chandra Dwivedi, Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi, T.S. Chandra Mouli mark the usage of conventional themes like the element of nostalgia, the working of the conscience, the issue of land and liberation, sense of righteousness, ethical

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identity of the nation, the incentive of self-realization and self-discovery. Whereas, Stuti Khare, Arora, Suresh Chandra and Dubey testify to the reflexive mood of the poet in redeeming the society in India. His way of unmasking his Bhakti stratifies to the enchanted way of sustaining Indian heritage. As Dubey says Sharma's poetry is people's poetry. He writes for the common people so that they can attain eternal peace and solitude. S.C. Dwivedi, Abidi and Mouli specify Sharma's quest for knowledge, erudition and attainment of salvation. Patra here attempts to cast the mythical discourses in Sharma's poetry. His poetic diction subscribe to the understanding of sudden charm and immediate pleasure that one acquires from a poesy. The different domains in Sharma's poetry define his individual and psychic self. He as a modern poet who paves a path for idiosyncratic assessments and interpretation. His poetry anthology "The Door is Half Open" deals with evocation, orality, allegory and decisiveness. His poetic world appears to be a saga of existence and survival. According to Patra, he seems to correlate human life with different anecdotes. His poetry touches upon every phase of human corporeality. It reflects a panoramic view of human life and living. Sharma appears to be an all-encompassing poet. His poems symbolize perfection, solidarity, affliction, inclusiveness, accomplishment, revelation and comprehensiveness. In this edited book the poem that appears to be most discussed is "Ganga Mata- A Prayer". This poem dwells with eternity and peace, acceptance and affinity towards the Ganges. The last lines contribute to the poetic persona and testify to the understanding of his assertion of being a true Indian. The most astound artefact lies in the last part of the book. Here, the editor seems to be curious and inquisitive about the poet and his art of composing poems of such dignity and decorum. Patra questions him on the future prospect of writing poetry, the influential part of his poetic self, his belief in Indian ethos, his usage of memories and so on. Patra asserts that Sharma's poetry carries the power to transform the world. Dr. Chandrima Sen Department of English, Bodoland University, Kokrajhar, Assam - 783370

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“Indian Graphic Narratives: Critical Responses” edited by Sapna Dogra Literary Criticism | New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers (2024) ISBN 978-81-269-3824-7 | Pp. 107 | Rs. 450

Academic circles worldwide are currently delving deeply into the dynamic field of graphic narratives, which is a rapidly growing area of scholarly inquiry. Indian Graphic Narratives: Critical Responses by Sapna Dogra is an insightful examination of modern Indian graphic narratives that provides essential resources for learning about these captivating works of art. This book critically examines several significant Indian graphic novels, including Amruta Patil's Kari, Sarnath Banerjee's Corridor, Pratheek Thomas's Hush, and Naseer Ahmed's Kashmir Pending. The volume addresses many issues and themes that are relevant to contemporary Indian graphic narratives, including the use of animals as visual metaphors, gender and violence, and the pedagogical potential of graphic narratives. This book is an invaluable resource for research scholars and graduate and undergraduate students alike because it delves into these intricate aspects and provides fresh insights and viewpoints. The introduction by Prof. Dogra is a good read about the foundational Indian graphic texts. The introduction refers to Stephen E. Tabachnick's The Cambridge Companion to The Graphic Novel (2017) and Pramod K Nayar's Indian Graphic Novel: Nation, History and Critique (2016) and offers a brief history of Indian graphic novels. The first chapter “The Graphic Deterritorialization: A Socio-Analytic Study of Amruta Patil's Kari” by Dr Ambika Sharma draws upon the philosophy of Deleuze behind Kari (2008) by Amruta Patil, in which the protagonist is a deterritorialized version of themselves in terms of both culture and geography. Themes like identity crises, self-estrangement and social isolation are discussed in the paper. Sharma argues that “Self-estrangement is an alternate form of alienation that is commonly associated with post-modern society. In this novel, Kari is being estranged with special forms of social isolation. She often feels lonely. She feels marginalised even in the place where she is living. What follows is a Geographical deterritorialization..” (p. 6-7). Nidhi argues that in Kari Amruta Patil examines the challenges faced by queer women, particularly their division between normative and non-normative belief systems and their sense of self. Sandhya Nayak's second chapter “Gender and Violence in Graphic Narratives” examines the representation of gender-based violence in current Indian graphic narratives. She draws a

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comparison between Amrta Patil's Kari (2008) and Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back (2015), an anthology of graphic narratives edited by Priya Kurian, Larissa Bertonasco, and Ludmilla Bartscht. Sandhya claims that both texts show strong, self-reliant women who are ready to overcome the obstacles and challenges that society places in their path. The third chapter, “The Impact of Social Paradigms and its Resonance on the Characters of Sarnath Banerjee's Corridor” by Smita Dabi, looks at how paradigms apply to the lives of the characters in the book Corridor in order to assess and determine the significance of society's expectations regarding a certain category of behaviour from individuals. Nidhi Sharma's “Cityscapes and Real-Imagined Spatiality: Locating Topophrenia in Amruta Patil's Kari”, examines the issue of spatiality and literary cartography. According to Nidhi, “Reading the text to locate features of topophrenia has to find its beginning points in the varied ways of seeing the vast array of the unrepresentable reality and dark texture of it conveyed through sewage, toxicity and smog and visually articulated in the cityscapes but still offering the readers the real-imagined spaces produced in the textual readings as epistemological devices to understand the present and imagine a different space for the future”. (p.37) Pratheek Thomas's wordless graphic novel Hush is examined in the fifth chapter of S. Sri Sakuntala' “Psychological Trauma Through Efficacious Visualisation: A Study of Hush”. The only means of communication in this graphic novel are pictures. The text does an excellent job of giving voice to the voiceless victim of sexual abuse because pictures really do speak louder than words. Sexual violence has wide-ranging impacts that go well beyond bodily harm, regardless of age or gender. A person's life can be drastically changed by the trauma of sexual assault or rape, which can leave the victim feeling alone, terrified, and ashamed. The concept of gender as performative is examined in the sixth chapter “Amruta Patil's Kari: Marginalised Non-Heterosexual in Normalised Heterosexual Metropolitan City” by M. Sri Varshni and Dr. V. Sunitha. The seventh and eights chapters “Graphic Narratives: An Innovative Tool to Educate and Inspire” by Darakhshan Niyaz and “Graphic Narratives: An Emerging Source of Education for Learners” by Dr Ritu Pareek make an effort to talk about the instructional possibilities of graphic novels. Prof. Dogra examines anthropocentrism as a literary device in graphic narratives from around the world in the ninth chapter, “Animals as Visual Metaphors in Graphic Narratives”. She draws a comparison between Arts Spiegelman's Holocaust graphic novel, Maus I, A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (1986) which recounted the tale of Spiegelman's father, Vladek Spiegelman, an Auschwitz survivor and Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir (2015) by Malik Sajad that presents the Kashmiris as the critically endangered Hangul deer (or Kashmiri stag). The last chapter “Violence and Manipulation in Kashmir Pending” by Prof. Dogra looks at the military's use of violence to establish its dominance. Indian graphic narratives represent a fascinating new field of study. This book aims to prepare academic researchers to read and interact with Indian graphic texts in new and creative ways. Hemant Sharma An independent Scholar and translator

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Books and Journals Received Ragini Ramachandra (Photographs by S Ramachandra), Canada Calling! (a travelogue), Dhvanyaloka Publication, Mysore, 2023. C N Srinath, Waves of Memory Anecdotes and Reflections, Emerald Publishers, Chennai, 2022. Basavaraj Naikar, The Warrior Queen of Keladi, (A Historical Epic Novel), Emerald Publishers, Chennai, 2022. Basavaraj Naikar, Fall of Kalyana,(A Historical and Religious Play),Basava Samithi,Bangalore, 2023. Basavaraj Naikar, The Frolic Play of the Lord,(Prabhulinga Lile by Camarasa),Basava Samithi,Bangalore, 2023. Basavaraj Naikar, Mystic Warbles of Akkamahadevi, Authors Press, New Delhi, 2023. Basavaraj Naikar(Tr), Ecstatic Wonder of Allamaprabhu Select Vacanas : Translation with Critique, Authors Press, New Delhi, 2023. Basavaraj Naikar, Paradise Lost And Regained A Modern Prose Translation, Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi, 2023. Pulkita Anand, we were not born to be erased (An eco poetry collection) ,Authospress, New Delhi, 2023. Manas Bakshi, Soliloquy of a Sailor A Long Poem, Authors Press, New Delhi, 2020. C N Srinath (Ed.) The Literary Criterion, Platinum Jubilee Year Special Issue on Contemporary Kashmiri Literature, Dhavanyaloka, Mysore. 2022. C N Srinath (Ed.), The Literary Criterion, Special Number on Translation, Dhvanyaloka, Mysore, 2023. Bijay Kumar Das (Ed), The Critical Endeavour, The Researchers' Association, Odissa, Jan, 2023. Tapati Talukdar (Ed.) Critical and Creative Wings, Prof Sankar Chatterjee Memorial Volume, Vol.7, Issue 1and 2, March 2020 and Sept. 2020. Bijay Kumar Das (Ed.) The Critical Endeavour, Vol. 29, Jan. 2023 Dedicated to the memory of Professor G S Balarama Gupta, The Researchers Association, Odisha. Maleyur Guruswami (Ed.) Prasada, Bi-monthly Kannada Magazine, Vol. 38, Issue No's 2, 3.4, 5, Feb-May, 2023 ... 'Prasada' monthly vol. 38, Issue No 9, Sept. 2023, Publication Division, JSS Mahavidyapeetha, Mysuru. ... 'Sharana Patha' A Half-yearly journal, vol. 25, Issue No 2, July-Dec. 2023, Publication Division, JSS Mahavidyapeetha, Mysuru

DISCLAIMER Articles in this journal do not reflect the views or policies of the Editors or the Publishers. Respective authors are responsible for the originality of their views/opinions expressed in their articles - Editors

The Previous Issues of Dialogue The following issues of Dialogue are available for sale, please contact: The Editor, Dialogue, 15, Khasbagh, Opp. Aishbagh Railway Station, Moti Nagar, Lucknow - 226004, U. P., India. E-mail : [email protected], M - 9839314411

Volume I No I June 2005 Special Issue on Indian Writing in English, dedicated to Nissim Ezekiel CONTENTS Editor’s Note; Niranjan Mohanty:English Studies in India: Challenges and Future Directions; Charu Sheel Singh: Text As Scriptural Gesture: Critical Ambience and Methodological Options;Man Mohan Lal Goswami:The Fabric Of Imagio- Kinesis in Literature;Randhir Pratap Singh:Nissim Ezekiel:A Poet of Indian Life;Krishna Mohan Pandey:The Poetics of Displacement:A Study of Sindhi Partition Poetry; H.S.Chandalia:Subaltern Voices in Indo-Anglian Fiction with special reference to the writings of Khwaja Ahmad Abbas;Banibrata Mahanta:Of Coats, Names and Identities: Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake;Preeti Verma :Sign to Symbol:A Study of Mystical Manifold in Nissim Ezekiel’s Philosophy;Poonam Srivastava:A Study of Psychopathic Sexual Relationship Shobha De’s Strange Obsession and Simone DeBeauvoir’s The Second Sex ;R.K. Mishra:Human Destiny in RK Narayan’s later Novels; Aditya N. Agnihotry:Integration through Literature. Book Reviews by C.S Singh and R.B Sharma. Volume I No II December 2005 Special Issue on Literary Theory Today, dedicated to Prof. C.D. Narasimhaiah CONTENTS Prabhat K. Singh: In Memory Of C.D Narasimhaiah(poem);D.K. Singh: Critic and Crusader: A Note on C.D Narasimhaiah; M.S Kushwaha:Indian English Criticism and Indian Academics:Some Reflections;Niranjan Mohanty: Between Indigeneity and Hybridity: The Poetics of Identity in Indian Literatutre; Rajnath: Poetry,Personality and Impersonality:Philosophical and Linguistic Perspective;Kusum Srivastava: A Psychoanalytic Study of Estha,The Male Protagonist in Arundhati Roy’s Novel The God of Small Things ;S. Robert Gnanamony: Issues of Coloniality and Postcoloniality in Tagore’s Gora R.L Sharma: J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace :A Post- Apartheid Perspective; Ramanuj Konar: Hegemony and the Maintenance of the Margin in George Orwell’s Animal Farm; M. Mani Meitei: Reading Margaret Atwood’s Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer: A Post-colonial Critique; Antara Mukherjee: Negotiating the Real with the Surreal: Rowling’s Narrative Strategies in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Book Reviews by P Radhika and Shiv Govind Puri.

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Volume II No I June 2006 Special Issue on Indian Literature in Translation, dedicated to Sisir Kumar Das and Sujit Mukherjee CONTENTS Jasbir Jain: The Subtexts in the Novels of Gurudial Singh ; C.N. Ramachandran : Space and Form: A Reading of Girish Karnad’s Tale-danda; Banibrata Mahanta: The Subal tern as Subject: Reading Mahasweta Devi’s After Kurukshetra; Shrawan K. Sharma and Manoj Kumar: Samskar: A Rite For a Dead Man: A Rite for Birth of a New Person; S. John Peter Joseph :Freom Static to Dynamic: A Critical Study of M.M Kalburgi’s Fall of Kalyana ; V.P Singh:The Crisis of the Girl Child: A Study of Selected Indian Short Stories In English Translation;R.B Sharma: Translation, Deconstruction and the Poetics of Silence in Tagore’s Gitanjali . Book Reviews by S. John Peter Joseph, Neeta Sashidharan and Shalini Volume II No II December 2006 Special Issue on Asian Literature, dedicated to Prof Meenakshi Mukherjee CONTENTS S C Hajela: The Identity of Asian Literature:Some Reflections;Niranjan Mohanty:Cultural Memory and Globalization:Indian Poetry in English Today;Gwee Li Sui: Boey kim Cheng’s Singapore;S S Kanade:The Emotive Vortex:A Study of Kazuyosi Ikeda’s Rainbows & Flowers;Kusum Srivastava:Selling the Literature of the Subcontinent:Culture and History in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-CandyMan;Satish Kumar Harit:Tragic Flight of the Female Protagonists in Manju Kapoor’s Novels;Alka Saxena:The Burning Garden in Jean Arasanayagam’sShort Stories;Gyan P Mishra:Writing as a Debunking Gesture:A Reading Of Khushwant Singh’s Select Works .Book Reviews by M S Kushwaha,O P Mathur,Krishna Singh,Anita Singh,Mrityunjay Rath,P Radhika and Somdev Banik Volume III No I June 2007 Special Issue on Indian Critics in English, dedicated to Krishna Rayan CONTENTS Editorial; G S Balarama Gupta:Indian English Literary Criticism: Some Random Reflections;Rajnath:Nation and Indian Criticism in English; Niranjan Mohanty:Rabindranath Tagore:A Critic with aDifference;C N Ramachandran:C D Narasimhaiah and the Formulation of ‘Indian Sensibility’;Chetan Sonawane:Bhalchandra Nemade:A Nativist Critic;Shaleen Kumar Singh:Sri Aurobindo:The Pioneer Indian English Critic;Deepak Kumar Singh:Homi Bhabha as a Postcolonial Critic;B B Mohanty:Said’s Focauldian Connections:A Response to Aijaz Ahmad’s Observations on Orientalism;Sujata Vijayaraghavan:The Contribution of Tejaswini Niranjana to Postcolonial Translation Studies .Book Reviews by Banibrata Mahanta,S John Peter Joseph, S Sulochana

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Rengachari,Sarfaraz Nawaz,Shivshankar Jha,Sudhir k Arora,K M Pandey and Anuradha Singh Volume III No II December 2007 Special Issue on Indian Critics in English, dedicated to Prof. M K Naik CONTENTS Editorial; M S Kushwaha: The Unheard Voice: An Apology for Indian Literary Criticism in English; Ragini Ramachandra: Contemporary Indian Literary Criticism in English:A Crisis of Identity?; Basavaraj Naikar: Need for Adaptation of Sanskrit Aesthetics to Modern Criticism; Sharda V Bhat: C D Narasimhaiah: A Critic with a Difference; Anita Singh: Gayatri C Spivak as a Third World Feminist Theorist; Lakshmi Raj Sharma: The Critical Achievement of Rajnath; Satish k Gupta: Canonizing Indianness and Indianising Canons of English Studies: Literary Theory and Criticism of Charu Sheel Singh; S Sulochana Rengachari : Harmonising Indian Feminism, Translation and Interpretation: A Study of C.T Indra’s Works; B.S. Bini:Intellectual and Creative Criticism: A Reading of The Critical Works of Ayyapa Paniker; Kaushik Bhattacharjee: Locating Culture: Analyzing Bhabha’s Theoretical Contribution. Book Reviews by Charu Sheel Singh and Rajni Singh . Volume IV

No I Dedicated to Kamala Das

June 2008

CONTENTS Nandini Sahu : Translation as Power; Rajeshwar Mittapalli and V. Rajashekhar: Eco Feminism in Adrienne Rich’s Poetry; Liss Marie Das: Voicing the Voiceless:A Comparitive Study of El Saadawi’s Women at Point Zero and Durrani’s Blasphemy; Shaily Mudgal: Environment and Native Literature: Maracle’s Daughters Are Forever; Stuti Khare: Jacques Lacan’s Theoryof Self and Literary Hermeneutics; Rajni Singh: Pranava Retroflex: The Poetry of Charu Sheel Singh; Krishna Singh: Representation of India in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss; Satendra Kumar: Indian Culture and Landscape in Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra; Anurag Mohanty: Auden’s Elegies: An Existentialist Critique; Book Reviews by Sanjay Kumar Misra and S. K. Khare. Volume IV No II December 2008 Special Issue on World Drama in English, dedicated to Prof Niranjan Mohanty CONTENTS Dhishna P:World Theatre as Cultural Discourse;Asim Kumar Mukherjee: The Bard’s Battered Chilhood Days(Sixteen Years of Shakespeare’s Childhood); Stephen Gill: George Bernard Shaw’s Goals and Means;T Sarada: The DermatoPsychological Conditions of the Female Protagonist In the Plays of Adrienne Kennedy And Ntozake Shange;K Balachandran:Challenges of Diversity in Ryga’s Indian;Anju Bala Agrawal:August Wilson And His Search for Black Identity;P

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Edwinsingh Jeyachandra:Between the Abo and the Gubbo:A Critique of Robert Merritt’sThe Cake Man;K Naveen Kumar:Social Problems and Conflicts in Kongi’s Harvest;Devender Kumar:Crisis of Human Relationships in D H Lawrence’s Play A Collier’s Friday Night;Shyam Babu:Brechtian Aesthetics of Epic Theatre and Bharti’s Andha Yug; Sangeeta Jain:Karnad’s Bali: The Sacrifice & Three Hallmarks of Jainism;Basavaraj Nailar:The Legend of Nandan: A Tragedy of Gullibility. Book Reviews by Basavaraj Naikar,Rajni Singh, E Nageswara Rao and Alok Kumar. Volume V No I June 2009 Special Issue on Culture Studies in English Lit.,dedicated to Habib Tanvir CONTENTS Editorial; Charu Sheel Singh:Archives or Aporias?Culturing Cultures; C N Ramachandran: Cultural Hegemony and the ‘Construct’ called Indian Poetics; Nina Caldeira: Interrogating the Diasporic Sensibility in Culture Studies: Narratives of Abraham Moses Klein; Fewzia Bedjaoui: Woman,Gender and Identity in Indian Woman Writing; Hamida Nayeem: Politics and Mystical Literature; E Nageswara Rao: Violence as a Leitmotiv in Meena Alexande’s Work; Tanya Mander and Gulshan R Kataria: Dialectics of Order and Anarchy in John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance; T Sasikanth Reddy: A Study of Girish Karnad’s Nagamandala with Special Reference to Myth and Folklore Elements;VibhaBhoot: Their Eyes Were Watching God: Oral Legacy of Post Slavery Black Autonomous Self; Suchitra Awasthi: Subversion of the Mother India Myth in Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh; Masoumeh Yasae: If have Only One life, Let Me Live It as a Blind ! A Study of Narcissism in Margaret Drabble’s The Needle’s Eye; Kumar Gautam Anand: Muted Culture Discourse and Despande’s The Dark Holds No TerrorsI. Book Reviews by S John Peter Joseph, P Radhika, Nilanshu k Agrawal, Somdev Banik, Anil Thakur, Sovan Chakraborty. Volume V No II December 2009 Special Issue on New Indian English Poets, dedicated to Shiv K Kumar CONTENTS Basavraj Naikar: The Satirical Poetry of TR Rajasekharaiah; Rakesh Desai:"The Cure of Quiet": Quest as a Paradigm in Gerson da Cunha's Poetry; Sudhir K Arora: Deciphering Life: Niranjan Mohanty's Muse; Riju Parwar: Poetic Sensibility in RC Shukla's My Poems Laugh; Alka Saxena: Thematic Concerns in the Poetry of Smita Agarwal; Rajni Singh:The Epic Genre in Contrast: Maha Nand Sharma’s A Spiritual Warrior : The Poetical Saga of the Exploits of Bhisma and CS Singh's The Indian Hero; Anju Bala Agarwal:The Poetic Vision of Kulbhushan Kushal; Naveen K Mehta:Voices of Marginalized in the Select Poems of Meena Kandasamy:A Critique; Shubhra Rajput:Prabhat K Singh's Poetry:An Attempt to Translate Philosophy of Modern Men in Verse; T Sasikanth Reddy:Dalit Literature in India and New Dalit Poets; Hameeda Bano:Shafi Shauq:A Brief Introduction to his Life and Poetry. Book

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Reviews by S John Peter Joseph, Nidhish Kumar Singh, Ashok K Rao, Anuradha Singh, Koushik Bhattacharjee, Stuti Khare, Anuradha Sharma, Rajesh B Sharma. Volume VI No I June 2010 Special Issue on Comparative Literature, dedicated to Amiya Dev CONTENTS Editorial; Hemang A Desai: Re-negotiating the Dialectic of Identity: Siting Indian Literature(s) on the Substratum of Translations; Binu Zachariah: Fictional Portrayals of Christ: A Comparative Socio-Cultural Study; Amarjeet Nayak: The Market-driven Binary in Indian Literary Scene: Indian Writing in English Vs. Regional Language Literature; Basavaraj Naikar: Max Muller in Biography and Autobiography: A Comparative Study; Paromita Deb: A Study of ‘The Body’ As an Omnipotent Concept Across Social, Cultural, Historical and Generic Barriers; Pratima Chaitanya: Influence of Sanskrit and Folk Theatrical Conventions on Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana and Naga-Mandala; Sovan Chakraborty: Revisiting the Nature of Indian Secularism through the Pir Cult of Bengal; Nazneen Khan: Defiant Militant Heroines: A Study of Ngugi wa Thiong‘o’s The Trail of Dedan Kimathi and Mahashweta Devi’s “Draupdi”; Lata Mishra: Unmaking History: A Comparative Study of Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Line and Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man; P Kalaichelvi: Subjugation to Subversion: A Reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Bama’s Karukku; M Rosary Royar and P Niranjana MA: Arriving Home: A View of Derek Walcott’s “Midsummer VII” and David Dadydeen’s “Coolie Odyssey”; Asima Ranjan Parhi: Pedagogy and Indian Poetics: The case of Michael Henchard. Book Reviews by M.S. Kushwaha, Guru Charan Behera, R.S. Chulki, S John Peter Joseph, Vinita Prakash and Harinath Bharti. Volume VI No II December 2010 Special Issue on Literature of the Marginals, dedicated to P Lal CONTENTS Editorial; CN Srinath : Gabriel Okara’s The Voice : An Indian Response; Kailash Nath and Madhumita Pati : Could Displaced Marginals Co-Exist with Hungry Tigers Some Postmodern Reflections on The Hungry Tide’s Sundarban; CN Ramachandran: ‘Journey’ And Not ‘Destination’ : A Note on Female Texts; James Tar Tsaaior : Contesting (In) Visibility in Public Spaces : Poetics, Politics and Women in Africa; Basavaraj Naikar: The Subaltern Vision in The Edge of Time; MA Kanaka Malini: Savaged Tribes and Ravaged Souls; ND Dani : Queering the Marginalized : Perceptions about Hijras; Archana V: Wordlessness to Words: Joy Kogawa’s Obasan; S John Peter Joseph: From Subjugation to Liberation : A Critical Study of Bama’s Karukku; R Sheela Banu: Feminist Fire in Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain; Shubha Tiwari : The Female Face of God : Some Thoughts Inspired From Paulo Coelho; HS Chandalia: Margins versus the Mainstream : Eco-Consciousness in the Oral Literature of Rajasthan; Suja Kurup PL : Crossing Invisible Boundaries :

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Historical and Political Perspectives on Casteism in A.N. Sattanathan’s Plain Speaking : A Sudra’s Story; Rooble Verma and Manoj Verma : Maach :An Exploratory Study of the Folk Theatre Form of Malwa Region; Archana Rai : Issues of Feminist Discourse and Dattani’s Tara; Swati Samantaray : The Marginal Poet Bhima Bhoi : A Study of the Mystical Elements in his Poetry; Book Reviews by T Sarada, S. John Peter Joseph, Sanjay Kumar and Sudhir K. Arora Volume VII

No I Special Issue on Indian Poetics and Western Thought, dedicated to Anand K Coomaraswamy

June 2011

CONTENTS Editorial; Bhanumati Mishra : Indian Poetics and Western Thought; AK Awasthi: Art, Aesthetics and Rasa; Sankirtan Badhei: Reflections on Indian Stretegic Perspective Towards the Theory of Post Modernism in Critical Discourse : A MetaAnalysis; Ragini Ramachandra : Rasa-Dhvani and British Formalism: Some Random Thoughts; Subhra Prakash Das : Aucitya in Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry; Apeksha : Comparative Politics: An Exercise in Multilateral Influence Building; Stuti Khare : Dhvani Theory and the Poetics of Poststruturalism; Shrawan K Sharma : Indian and Western Aesthetic Thinking: A Comparative Study; Khandakar Shahin Ahmed & Mridula Kashyap : The Idea of Decorum in Indian and Western Poetics; Abhinandan Malas : The Rasa Theory, Modern Western Literary Theories and Mahesh Dattani's Play Final Solutions: A Study; Rajnath : A Rejoinder : Sanskrit Poetics and Literary Criticism in English; Book Reviews by Prakash Chandra Pradhan, Asim Kumar Mukherjee, S John Peter Joseph & Charu Sheel Singh Volume VII No II December 2011 Special Issue on Children Literature dedicated to Ruskin Bond CONTENTS Editorial; Vineet Kaul : Children’s Literature; Marli Merker Moreira: Der Struwwelpeter : A Story in The Context of Civilizing; Muralikrishnan T R : Children’s Literature : Delineating an Eternal Mindscape; Rakesh Desai : Contesting the Adult Discourse : A Reading of Swami and Friends as Children’s Literature; Adway Chowdhuri & Malini Bhattacharya : Deconstructing Sukumar Ray : Non-Sense, or Strong Sense ?; D Edina Cordelia : The Use of the Christian Allegory in C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia : The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; Saurabh Kumar Singh : Fairy-tales and Fantasy as the Upholder of Values in Children’s Literature : A Visit to the Winged Horse : Fairy-tales from Bengal; Debadrita Bose : A Journey from Epic Saga to Post Modernism : Reading J. K. Rowling; Jaysukh Dhirubhai Hirpara : Ngugi wa Thiong’o ‘s Children’s Literature in Kenya; K Narasimha Rao : Writing Death as a Fantasy : A Study of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies; Manjishta Basu : The Puer Aeternus : Representation of the Child in Tolkien’s Legendarium; Nandita Mohapatra : The Realistic Animal Story in Canadian Children’s Literature, Pragyan Prabartika Das : Nature’s Children in the Fictional World of Manoj Das, S Kumaran :

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An Ecocritical Analysis of Ruskin Bond’s “Angry River”, Debadrita Chakraborty : Subverting Women : Disney’s use of Scopophila in “The Little Mermaid” Book Reviews by Mohan Ramanan, Chandrashekharaish, Sarfaraz Nawaz, Mamta Dixit, B L Tripathy. Volume VIII No I June 2012 Special Issue on Contemporary Indian Literature in English Translation dedicated to Prof. Avadhesh Kumar Singh CONTENTS Editorial; Charu Sheel Singh : Cooked Twice But Raw Again Mediating Translation, Translator and the Translated An Outsider’s View; Subhra Prakash Das: The Problematics of Translating a Minority Culture in Gopinath Mohanty’s Paraja; B T Seetha : Bama’s Dialogue with Self and Other; N D Dani : Disempowering Through Empowerment: The Politics of Patriarchy in The Man from Chinnamasta; Megha Katoria : Marriage and Domesticity : Female Identity in Selected Short Stories of Ismat Chughtai; Pratyush Vatsala & Rama Garung : Translation as a Strategy of Unifying Polyphonic Views A Study of Bama’s Sangati and Narayan’s Kocharethi; Rajesh Kumar Mishra : Resistance Within the Boundaries of Silence : Deconstructing Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi; Nirban Manna : Badal Sircar’s Evam Indrajit: A Paradigmatic Illustration of Metaphysical Rebellion; Sanjiv Kumar : Language and Culture in Translation; Abhinandan Malas : Translating the Meaning : A Study of the Human Psychology, Myths and Intertextual References in Girish Karnad’s Plays in Translation.; Pinak Sankar Bhattacharya : Reality of Violence in the Mahabharata : Reading Bharati’s Andha Yug; Book Reviews by H S Randhawa, Stuti Khare, Rajesh Babu Sharma, Sudheer Chandra Hajela. Volume VIII No II December 2012 Special Issue on African Literature dedicated to Ngugi wa Thiong’o CONTENTS Editorial ; Syed Mahmudur Rahman : Interplay of Loss and Gain in the Realm of African Poetry : S Ambika : Sin and Repentance: A Study Of Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant and JM Coetzee’s Disgrace ; Meenakshi Pawha : Talking Drums: Music as Second Language in Contemporary African Women Playwrights ; Rohit Phutela : “Cultural Bomb” and the African Literature: Historicization of Colonial Hegemony in Ngugi wa Thiong’o ; Charu Mathur : Decolonisation and the Concept of Nationhood: Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun ; A Linda Primlyn : African Female Experience in Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish ; Shikoh Mohsin Mirza : Unveling the Revolution: The Fiction of Assia Djebar ; Lata Mishra : The Female Perspective and Feminism in Bessie Head’s Maru and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood ; Basavaraj Naikar : Crime and Punishment in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace ; Rituparna Saharay : The Burdens of Motherhood: A Study of Yvonne Vera’s Without a Name and Butterfly Burning ; Karunakaran Shaji : J M Coetzee’s Foe: A Postmodern Re-reading

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of Defoe ; Mridula Kashyap : Interrogating Madness in Bessie Head’s A Question Of Power ; Book Reviews by MS Kushwaha and OP Mathur. Seminar Report of RASE (2012) by Saiket Bannerjee. Volume IX No I June 2013 Special Issue on Indian Short Story in English dedicated to R K Narayan CONTENTS Editorial ; Christopher Rollason : Tale as Useful Artefact : Basavaraj Naikar’s The Thief of Nagarahalli and Other Stories; H S Randhawa : Ao’s and Iralu’s Short Stories : Portrayal of Crisis in Naga Identity; H S Chandalia & Showkat Hussain Ittoo : Kashmiri Short Stories : Tales of Anguish and Alienation; Awanish Rai : Locating the Displaced : Indian English Short Story and Partition; Vibha Bhoot : Strengthening of Self through Language : Breast Stories by Mahasweta Devi; Sonu Shiva : An Expansion from ‘Self’ to ‘Other’ : Jhumpa Lahiri’s Short Story “When Mr Pirzada Came to Dine”; Jindagi Kumari : Portrait of Childhood in Indian English Short Stories by Women ; Saikat Banerjee : Khuswant Singh’s Black Jasmine and other Stories : Strains of Modernity; Patil Sangita Sharnappa : Voicing the Devoiced : A Study of Tamsula Ao’s Short Stories; Shyamshree Basu : Landscapes Real and Imaginary : A Comparative Study of the Short Fiction of R K Narayan and Ruskin Bond; Jaya Sharma : Indian Beliefs in Short Fiction of Nargis Dalal; Kalyani Dixit : Therapeutic Influence of Fables, Parables and Bizarre Story - World in Gita Hariharan’s The Ghost of Vasu Master; Book Reviews by B S Naikar, D K Singh, Navratan Singh. Seminar Report of National Seminar on Postcolonial Subaltern Studies and Tribal Literature (27-28 Feb 2013) : Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, Amarkantak (MP) by Krishna Singh. Volume IX No II December 2013 Special Issue on Life Narratives dedicated to Khushwant Singh CONTENTS Editorial ; Archana Gupta : Autobiography : Concepts and Connotations; Patil Sangita Sharnappa : Paradigm shift: An Exploration of Indira Goswami’s An Unfinished Autobiography; Hari Priya Pathak & Asmita Bajaj : Agatha Christie : A Life Narrative; Nandita Mohapatra : Metaphor of Self : Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom; Chetan Sonawane : Mahasweta Devi’s Titu Mir : A Story of Subaltern Solidarity; Monalisa Nayak Jash & V Rama Devi : Memoir - A Cherishable Diary of A P J Abdul Kalam; Shyamshree Basu :Bone Black : The Black life Narrative As Feminist Protest; Vinod Kumar : Mapping Nirad C Chaudhuri’s Ideological Position : A Critical Analysis of The Continent of Circe; Raghul V Rajan : Geographics of Identity in Faultlines; Manjeshwari Vyas : Narrating the life of a Bengali : A Reading of the Select Works of Jhumpa Lahiri. Book Reviews by Vikram Chopra, A. P. Dani and Gulshan Rai Kataria. Seminar Report of 10th Annual Conference of Rajasthan Association for Studies in English on Traditions and Transformations in Travel Literature (15-16 Dec. 2013), at Bhilwara (Rajesthan) by H S Chandalia.

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Volume X No I June 2014 Special Issue on SAARC Literature dedicated to U. R. Ananthamurthy CONTENTS Editorial ; Rajnath : What is in Literature ?; Tulika Kakkar : Unveiling the Chiaroscuro- Interrogating the Power Politics in Michael Ondaatje’s ‘Anil’s Ghost’; Sanjoy Saksena : Anita Desai’s “The Farewell Party” and Small Town India; Abhilasha : Presenting Her Self : Deconstructing the Politics of Presentation; Huma Yaqub : River of Fire : Celebrating Plurality and Chronicling Histories; Rohit Phutela : The Problematic of Class Relations and Gender in Bhutan: Situating Marxo-Feminist Praxis in Kunzang Choden’s The Circle of Karma; S John Peter Joseph : Voice of the Oppressed: A Study of Bama’s Sangati from a Dalit Feminist Perspective; Sadaf Jamal & Rajni Singh : Mixing Memories with Desire: Women in Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron; Arun Babu : Dissociating Traumatic Self : A Psychoanalytic Reading of Ondaatje’s The English Patient; Jaya Singh : Tehmina Durrani’s Autobiography My Feudal Lord: Unmasking Politicization of Religion and Relation; Book Reviews by Shamenaz Bano, Waseem Majid & Deepak Kumar Singh Volume X No II December 2014 Special Issue on Literature and Films dedicated to Satyajit Ray CONTENTS Editorial ; S Ramaswamy : American Literary Classics and Hollywood Films; Mohammad Tariq : Cinema, Literature and Literary Adaptation; Nidhi Singh : Heathcliff in the Post-Racial World: A Transformation of Filmic Identity; Rakesh Desai : Framing the Black Experience: The Film Version of Toni Morrison’s Beloved; K B S Krishna : How Does the Baskervilles’ Hound Look?: Adaptation as Critique; Shyamsree Basu : Satyajit Ray’s Pratidwandi (The Adversary): A Re-interpretation of Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Pratidwandi; Ashok Sachdeva : Haider : Textualizing Tragic Flaw in 20 Century Indian Cinema; T Sai Chandra Mouli : Vicissitudes of Times on Visual Media ; N K Neb : Contemporary Hindi Films and Indian English Literature and the Consumer Culture; Neha Arora : Bollywood and Indian Muslim Women: Representation or Mis-representation?; Lavanya M, Swati Jadhav & Sachin Jadhav : Clashes of Womanhood: Concepts of True Woman and New Woman in Satyajit Ray’s Devi and Mahanagar; Manisha Sharma (Pandey) & Priyanka Pasari : Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children - Adaptation to Script and Deepa Mehta’s Movie-An Artistic Failure. Book Reviews by Ashish Kumar Pathak, Kalikinkar Pattanayak, N K Jain. Seminar Report of XI Annual Conference of Rajasthan Association for Studies in English on Learning from the Masses: Exploring the Folklore on 1-2 Nov. 2014, organized by Department of English, Jai Narayan Vyas University and Mahila PG Mahavidyalaya, Jodhpur by H S Chandalia. th

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Volume XI No I June 2015 Special Issue on New Literatures in English dedicated to Gunter Grass CONTENTS Editorial; Shikoh Mohsin Mirza: Reclaiming the Body: Ahdaf Soueif’s In The Eye of The Sun; Anurakti : Extraordinary Power of Perception into the Inner World of Human Heart and its Caprices in the Short Stories of Alice Munro; Deepak Kumar Singh: Debating Socio-Cultural Identity: Spaces of Negotiation in Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat; Ashish Kumar Pathak : The Empire Critiqued: History and the Ethics of Responsibility in Coetzee’s Disgrace; Kaptan Singh : Society, Self and Alienation: Woman in the Fiction of Margaret Laurence; Ghanshyam Pal & Surekha Dangwal : The ‘Otherization’ of Diaspora Community in V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas; S Sujaritha : Retrieving History from Alice Munro’s The View from the Castle Rock; Gajendra Dutt Sharma : Multiple Perspectives in New Literature in English with Reference to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; Priyanka Singh : Indo-Canadian Novelists from Africa and the Caribbean: A Historical Survey; Saikat Guha : Quest for Another “New Literature”: Poetic Contours of Northeast India; K Rajani : Post Modernism in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Lowland ; Book Reviews by A K Awasthi and Seema Sarkar. Volume XI No II December 2015 Special Issue on Post Colonial Litrature dedicated to Homi K Bhabha CONTENTS Editorial; A K Awasthi : Space, Time and Destiny: An Analysis of The Fire And The Rain; Beetoshok Singha : Questioning the White Man’s Moral Code: A Study of Kipling’s Lispeth (1886) and Beyond the Pale (1888); Suchitra Awasthi : The GNLF Dilemma with Special Reference to Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss; Pawan Kumar Sharma : Deconstructing the Dialectics of Difference: Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines; Soumyajyoti Banerjee, Rajni Singh & Amrita Basu : Food for Thought: Multiculturalism, Femininity and Identity in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices; Shivangi Srivastava : Identity Crisis and Diasporic Experiences in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Short Story Collections; Bhanupriya Rohila : ‘Mourning over the Past Is Negotiable If Today Be Sweet’: New Diasporic Consciousness in Thrity Umrigar’s If Today Be Sweet; Basudhara Roy : Feminizing Myths, Re-writing Identity: Assessing the Deconstructive Potential of Smita Agarwal’s ‘Lopamudra’, Revathy Gopal’s ‘Yashodhara II’ and Sampurna Chatterjee’s ‘Conversation’; Huma Yaqub : A Postcolonial Reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland; Monica Khanna : The Curse of Infertility in Manju Kapur’s Home; Vivek Kumar Dwivedi : Stylistic Hurdles in Critical Thought: Bhabha and Spivak; Jindagi Kumari : The Postcolonial Metropolis: A Study of the Cityscape in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines; Book Reviews by Deepak Kumar Singh.

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Volume XII No I June 2016 Special Issue on Folk Literature dedicated to Mahasweta Devi CONTENTS Editorial; Guest Editor’s Note; Abrona Lee Pandi Aden : Locating Lepcha Identity: Folktales, Myths and Legends of the Lepchas; H S Randhawa and Ms Shipra Joshi : Uttarakhand Folk Songs and Tales : An Inclusive Window to the Intricacies of Hill Ethos; Mrudula Lakkaraju : Anime, a Component of Japanese Folk Culture: The Analysis and Appreciation of Grave of Fireflies; Karan Singh : Structural Peripheries and Ideological Underpinnings: Performative Narration in Par of Pabuji; A Linda Primlyn : Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” as American Folklore: A Representation of Headway; C L Khatri : Magahi Folk Songs: Kaleidoscope of Life; Shaheena Tarannum : Mapping Odisha’s Indigenous Theatre; Rashmi Jain : Tagore’s Drama Synthesis of Myths, Legends and Folklores: A Medium of Social Reformation; Sanatombi K Sangma : Shape-shifting or Transformation Myth in Garo Culture; Shalini Misra : Folktales From India: A Feminist Perspective; Priyanka Singh : Traversing through Gender Issues in Baiga Folksongs; Brian Mendonça : Mando to Fado : Women in Goan Folksong; Manoj kumar : Listening to the “Unheard Voices” with Special Reference to Folklore of Rajasthan; Book Reviews by A P Dani, Mahima Singh, Sapna Dogra, Seema Sarkar Volume XII No II December 2016 Special Issue on Tribal Literature dedicated to Sunil Janah, Ram Dayal Munda, Sarat Chandra Roy, Gopinath Mohanty and Anuj Lugun CONTENTS Editorial; Basavaraj Naikar: Shadow Plays in Karnataka; H.S. Chandalia: ‘Bharat’ Narratives in South Rajasthan; Rohit Phutela: Tribal Mizo Poetry: Resignification through Identitarian Performanc; Shiv Shankar: Ghotul: An Institution of Tribal Art and Culture of Bastar; Sangeeta Kotwal: “Rape of the People”: Displacement and Dispossession in the Tribal stories of Mahasweta Devi; Mridula Rashmi Kindo: Judith Wright’s Poetry: A Case for Redefining Sensibility; Pooja Joshi: Interrogating Cultural and Identity Negotiations in the Poetry of North- East Tribes; Ruchi Tomar: Acceptance as a Process of Identity Crystallization: A Study of Laxman Gaikwad’s ‘The Branded’; Shivangi Srivastava: Deconstructing Patriarchy: Study of Mahashveta Devi’s Draupadi; Vipin K Singh:Kaleidoscope of Baiga Folksongs: Reading the Generic Forms and Literary Devices; Shalini Mathur: Tribal Life in Arun Joshi’s : The strange Case of Billy Biswas; Book Reviews by Raj Kumar Mishra, Nadia Mark, Deeksha Sharma

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Volume XIII No I June 2017 Special Issue on Contemporary Indian Fiction dedicated to Amitav Ghosh CONTENTS Editorial; ShyamBabu : Relocating ‘Self’ and Identity in South Asian Context : Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions; Mohd Sajid Ansari : Ismat Chughtai’s The Crooked Line: A Silent Quest for Queer Space and Existence; Jyoti Kala : A Socio-Psychological Study of ‘The Second Coming’ in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger; Mamta Dixit : Khushwant Singh’s Delhi: Revisiting History; Shashi Kant Mishra : Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s The Householder: A Study of Personal Exile and the Predicament of Female Characters; Deepak Kumar Singh : A Study of Parsi Selfhood in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey; Swati Srivastava & Avneesh Kumar Singh : A Comparative Study of two Contemporary Writers Bharati Mukherjee and Manju Kapur; Ashok Sachdeva & Tushar Jadhav : Emerging Creative Trends in The White Tiger and The Immortals of Meluha; Manjusha Kaushik : Equity for the Urban Transgender in India: Perspectives from Laxmi Narayan Tripathi’s Me Laxmi Me Hijra; Manisha Sharma (Pandey) : Existential Predicament in Shashi Deshpande’s A Matter of Time; Vinati Bourasi & Ashok Sachdeva : The Journey Motif in Amitav Ghosh’s Novels; Megha Khandelwal : Treatment of Women in Rohinton Mistry’s Fiction; Book Reviews by R K Bhushan, Mamata Dixit, Basavaraj Naikar Volume XIII No II December 2017 Special Issue on Contemporary Indian Poetry dedicated to Meena Kandasamy, Tishani Doshi, Sonnet Mondal, Akhil Katyal, Harnidh Kaur, Nabanita Kanungo, Arjun Rajendran, Arundhathi Subramaniam CONTENTS Editorial; Amrita Bhattacharyya : Poetry as a Reflection of Indeterminacy in Consciousness: Select Study of North-east Indian English Poetry, Neha Nagar : Illusion v/s Reality: A Glocal Study of Indian English Women Poetry, Jindagi Kumari : The “Deluge of Development” in C. L. Khatri: Representation of the Anthropocenein Indian English Poetry, Sudhir K. Arora : The Poetry of R. C. Shukla: A Critique, Amrita Sharma : Rediscovering the Poetic Self: Analysing Subjective Trends in the Female Voices of Contemporary Indian English Poetry, Pulkita Anand : Glocal View in Kolatkar’s poetry, Mahima Singh : Culture and Canon Formation: Charu Sheel Singh’s Gandhi- A Script and a Scroll in Perspective, Prashant Maurya & Nagendra Kumar : Echoes of Contemporary Realities in Binod Mishra’s Multiple Waves, Neelam : Indian Sensibility And Ethos In The Poetry of Arundhathi Subramaniam, Shruti Singh : Mamta Kalia : An Interview, Book Reviews by Basavaraj Naikar, Gazala Khan, Ajay K Chaubey, N. S. Kullur

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Volume XIV No I June 2018 Special Issue on Travel Literature dedicated to V S Naipaul CONTENTS Editorial; Bhupen Chutia : An Apology for Sir Vidia as a Traveller and Writer; Basavaraj Naikar : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers: An American Travelogue; Siddhartha Singh : Traveller’s Nostalgia to Rewrite History of the Lost Land: Reading M. G. Vassanji’s A Place Within: Rediscovering India; Raj Gaurav Verma : Heterotopic Meanderings: A Study of Vikram Seth’s From Heaven Lake and Amitav Ghosh’s “Dancing in Cambodia”; Kusum Srivastava : Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia as a Voyage of Self-discovery; Anant Dadhich : Travelogues as Source of History: An Overview of Francis Bernier’s Travel Writings; Pulkita Anand : Exploring Elements of Travel Literature in Arun Kolatkar’s Poetry; Ritu Saxena : Understanding Naipaul’s India: Socio-Political Contexts; Suresh Chandra Pande : Reading Manas Bakshi’s Man of The Sevevth Hour : A Brief Appraisal; Book Reviews by Harbir Singh Randhawa, Basudhara Roy Volume XV

No II Special Issue on Modern Short Story

December 2018

CONTENTS Editorial; Pooja Narain : Indian English Short Story; Rama Islam : Romesh Gunesekera's Monkfish Moon: Loneliness and Failure in Human Relationships in War-torn Sri Lanka; Pooja Joshi : 'Lest We Forget': Mapping the Written and the Unwritten in the Tales of North-east India; Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi : Major Themes in The Short Stories of Ruskin Bond; Pulkita Anand : A Critical Overview of Chinua Achebe's “Marriage is a Private Affair”; Debdeep Chattoraj & Sreetanwi Chakraborty : An Exploration of Liminality via the Kashmiri Identity in 'Short Stories of Akhtar Mohiuddin Translated by Syed Taffazul Hussain'; Ronald Franklin & Rooble Verma : Modern Issues in the Selected Regional Short Stories of Abburi Chaya Devi Translated into English; Shubha Tiwari & Jagjeet Kour : Beyond Boundaries: A Study of Folktales; Anupama Verma : Eco-Feminism in the Short Stories of Shashi Deshpande; Book Reviews by Bhavatosh Indra Guru, Raghu Venkatachalaiah, Basavaraj Naikar, Andleeb Zahra

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No I & II Dedicated to Girish Karnad

Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

June & December 2019

CONTENTS Editorial; Ritu Saxena : Girish Karnad : A Tribute; Antelak Mh'd Abdulmalek Al Mutawakit* : Self-Liberation and National Struggle in Yemeni Women's Early Short Stories; Basavraj Naikar : Translator as Cultural Ambassador; Kavita Arya : Karnad's Yayati : A Study in the Eternal Conflicts of Manking; R. K. Mishra : Spiritual Pilgrimage towards Salvation : A Critical Study of Basavaraj Naikar's Religious Play The Pilgrim of Life; Deepak Kumar Singh : Treatment of Indian Diasppra in Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance; Dimple Dubey : Terror has a History : A Fretful Conceptualization of the Loss of Kashmiriyat in Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown; R. K. Mishra : Magnanimity of an Indian Saint : The Portrait of an Apostle of God : A Focus on Basavaraj Naikar's Religious Play The Golden Servant of God; Siddhartha Singh : Critically Reading C.N. Ramachandran's Narration and Discourse : Critical essays on Literature and Culture; Book Reviews by B S Naikar, Sanjay Kumar Mishra, S M Mirza, Maria Khan, Maziah Shaaz, H. S. Chandalia Volume XVI

No I & II Dedicated to Amitav Ghosh

June & December 2020

CONTENTS Editorial; Jasbir Jain : The Dialectics of Faith and Non-Faith: Kierkegaard to Sartre; Nisha Indra Guru, Bhavatosh Indra Guru : The Bhagavadgîtâ and the Poetry of Robert Browning; Aloka Patel : Caliban's Curse: M. NourbeSe Philip's “Discourse” as Challenge to White Hegemony; Sumana Mehendale : Balkrishna Anjana, Shashi Deshpande's 'The Duel' : A Critical Perspective; Shubha Dwivedi : Susheel Sharma's Unwinding Self : A Timeless Testimony to a Poet's Perspective; Jaya Chetnani, Rooble Verma : A Study of Feminine Perspective in the Novel Butterfly Burning Meenakshi Shrivastava, Rooble Verma : Alice Munro's “Free Radicals”: A Tale of Grief, Guilt, and Survival; Ritu Saxena : Analyzing Sibling Rivalry : Its Prevalence in English Literature; Pradip Mandal : Overcoming Profanity, Penance, And Piety: Stephen's Journey To Freedom In Joyce's Novel A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man and The Cinematic Adaptation Of The Same By Joseph Strick; Book Reviews by Ragini Ramachandra, C. N. Ramachandran, Purabi Panwar, Sudhir K. Arora, Siddhartha Singh and Basavaraj Naikar, Seminar Report by H S Chandalia.

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Volume XVII No I & 2 June & Dec. 2021 Birth Centenary Commemorative Issue on C D Narsimhaiah CONTENTS Editorial: S C Hajela; Foreword : C N Srinath; Ragini Ramachandra : Prof. CDN: A Personal Reminiscence; Jasbir Jain : The Generous Disciplinarian; Rajnath : C D N And Me; Uma Ram & K S Ram : Remembering CDN: Our English Guru; Tej N Dhar : Autobiographical Grumbling/Autobiographical Artistry: C. D. Narasimhaiah's N for Nobody; C N Ramachandran : C. D. Narasimhaiah and the Formulation of 'Indian Sensibility'; Mohan Ramanan : C. D. Narasimhaiah's N for Nobody; Shyamala A Narayan : C.D. Narasimhaiah: Teacher and Critic; Basavaraj Naikar : N for Nobody: An Academic Autobiography; Deepak Kumar Singh : Postcolonial Consciousness And C. D. Narasimhaiah: An Appraisal; S C Hajela : Decolonizing Indian Critical Practice: A Reading of CDN's The Swan and the Eagle; Review Article by Shubha Dwivedi : Cosmic Beckonings in the Poetry of Manas Bakshi; Book Reviews by C N Ramachandran, Uma Ram & K S Ram, Tej N Dhar, Sukhvinderjit Kaur Chopra and Seminar Report by H S Chandalia.

Volume XVIII No I An Open Issue, dedicated to R N Tagore & Premchand

June 2022

CONTENTS Editorial : S C Hajela; Shouvik Narayan Hore : Imaginary Conversations: Weiskel Versus Coleridge; Shirin Akter : Identity, Resistance, and Body: Reading The Cancer Journals as “Manifesto”; Lalita K M : The Post-Truth Analysis of Farmers Suicides Explored in Shoes of The Dead by Kota Neelima; Y. Varalakshmi and R. V. Jayanth Kasyap : Steadfast Pursuit of Motherhood in Amy Tan's The Valley of Amazement- A Critical Perspective; Kh. Kunjo Singh : Fictionalisation of History In Basavaraj Naikar's The Sun of Freedom; Raj Gaurav Verma : Infusing New Life in Folktales: Children's Literature in India; Kavita Arya : Visible Women in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; Ankita Sundriyal : “The rightful property of some one or other of their daughters”: Men-as-Commodities in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma; Harbir Singh Randhawa : Post-Modernist and Cosmopolitan aspects in Haruki Murakami's After Dark; Pankaj Bala Srivastava : Shades of Silence in Different Disciplines: Not Everything Said is Relevant, Not Everything Relevant is Said; Lucky Gupta : Mahasweta Devi's The Divorce: Search for Alternative; Prithiviraj Singh Chauhan : Attitude, Accessibility and Disability: Decoding the Trajectory of Exclusion in Malini Chib's One Little Finger; Sonali Das : Portrayal of Gandhi in Cinema: An Analysis; Madhukar Rai : From Abuse to Apotheosis- Decoding the Trajectory of a Feminist Quest in Girish Karnad's Nagamandala; Book Reviews by C R Visweswara Rao, Ragini Ramachandra, C T Indra, Basavaraj Naika, Seema Sarkar, Mahesh Kumar Dey.

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Volume XVIII

DIALOGUE

Vol XIX, No. 2 Dec. 2023

No II Dedicated to Salman Rushdie

December 2022

CONTENTS Editorial : S C Hajela; Rama Islam : Fluidity in Cultural Identity in Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Neha Singh and Abhilasha Singh : Interpolations in the Valmiki Ramayan and Rationality Behind It; Shyam Babu : Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and An Untold Tale of Subjugation and Eschatological Reality; Pramod Kumari : Dalit Literary Discourse : Mapping the Journey from Pain to Tale; N. Lakshmi : Acculturation or Assimilation of the Diasporic Individual in Bapsi Sidwa's An American Brat; Ragini Raghav and Sharmila Saxena : Concept of the 'Ideal Woman': A Critical Study Through The Female Characters of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Forest of Enchantments; Neha : Role of Women Leaders in the Pan African Movement; Miti Sharma and Rooble Verma : A Feminist Study of Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand; Paramba Dadhich : Echoes from the Prison Walls: A Study of Select Poems by Wole Soyinka; Book Reviews by Ram Bhagwan Singh, Alok Kumar, Pulkita Anand, Nidhi Tiwari, Nibir K. Ghosh, Tej N Dhar; Seminar Report by Sumer Singh.

Volume XIX

No I Special Issue on Indian Literature in Translation Dedicated to Arunava Sinha

June 2023

CONTENTS Editorial : S C Hajela; N. Lakshmi : Role of Translation and Impact on Indian Literature; Pankaj Bala Srivastava : Problems and Prospects of Translating Indian Literature: With Particular Reference to Geetanjali Shree's Ret Samadhi; Shinu C and Binu Zachariah : Doctors and Doctoring: An Analysis of the Cultural Discourses of Medicine; Shubha Dwivedi : Traversing Gendered Margins through the Lens of Mother-Daughter Relationship: A Reading of Krishna Sobti's Listen, Girl! and Geetanjali Shree's Tomb Of Sand; Alok Kumar : The Historical Rewritings of S. L. Bhyrappa: Reading Aavarana or The Veil; Abrar Ahmed and Manoj Kumar : Ethos and Displacement in the Ghazals of Kaif Bhopali: An Analysis; Kavita Pant and Bhawana Mauni : Not A Disorder: A Deep Insight Into Vidya's Narrative I Am Vidya; Shubha Dwivedi : Dream India Dream:Re-kindling a Post Colonial Perspective Through Manas Bakshi's Vision of India; Book Reviews by Ragini Ramachandra, R.W. Desai, Ragini Ramachandra, Basavaraj Naikar, Naveen Vishwakarma, Shubha Dwivedi , Sunil Kumar Sarker.

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