Four Replies for Joshua - I

Tangy, Mathikere, August  

Sailen Routray

Photograph of Bangalore Fort Taken in 2018
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Bengaluru. Bangalore. Bengaluru.
Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar.
 
When one starts feeling like a tourist in one’s own city,
it is time to go back home.
 
But the coconut tree that used to burst through
baba’s garage, like a sleek mongrel bitch, is gone;
 
The faces that used to litter
the jogging tracks of IG Park have other masks;
 
The flock of dreams that used to chase me in
Sailashree Vihar has nested in Mathikere now.
 
Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar.
Bangalore. Bengaluru. Bangalore. 

A Street in Pokhariput Area of Bhubaneswar in 2010
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Note: This poem was first published in the webzine 'Muse India' as part of a larger poetic conversation with Bangalore based writer and poet Joshua Muyiwa. 

A Requiem for Solidarity

The Travels and Writings of Chittaranjan Das

Sailen Routray

Chittaranjan Das as a Young Man

When Chittaranjan Das passed the Suez Canal, on his way to Europe from Bombay, on board ‘SS Sydney’ (an Italian passenger ship weighing around 15, 000 tons, returning from Australia to Genoa) on the 15^th of October 1962, he was quite surprised at the changes on the banks of the water course. The bank towards the left was lined with trees. Beyond the trees lay superb, newly constructed roads and rail-tracks, and just across these swayed fields of wheat, potatoes, bananas and millet. It was quite a change since he had passed by almost twelve years back as a twenty seven year old student, to join University of Copenhagen in Denmark in its doctoral programme in humanities. Then his only impressions were of vast horizons filled with sand, with most Egyptian faces weighed down with toil and sadness.

The slow-pace of travel on the Suez Canal had reminded him of traveling to Cuttack in the 1930s and 1940s from his village Bagalpur (in Jagatsighpur district), where the boats on the Taladanda canal were pulled by hand by people walking on its banks. Both the canals were colonial enterprises, the one in Odisha dug after a man-made famine in 1866 that had killed off a third of its population; both were opened in 1869, Mahatma Gandhi’s year of birth. 

When Chittaranjan traveled to Europe for the first time in the December of 1950, Egypt was still a British protectorate; by 1962, it was independent. The administration led by the country’s second President, Gamal Abdel Nasser had finally nationalised the canal, that was earlier managed by an Anglo-French company; the profits were now being used to improve the land, and the people’s living conditions. For Chittaranjan, the greenery in the landscape and the hope in people’s faces was linked not only with political freedom, but also with the first steps being taken for a long-overdue social transformation.

He saw his sojourn to Europe in 1950-53 as a doctoral student (financed by industrialist and politician Biju Patnaik), as being part of such a process - where he could learn from the remarkable experiments in popular education in Denmark, and then undertake similar work in India. By then he had had a longish stint in Shantiniketan: first as a post-graduate student between 1945-48 studying western philosophy with Binoy Gopal Roy and Prabas Jiban Choudhury, and Vedanta, Navya Nyaya and Sanskrit with Sukhamaya Bhattacharya, graduating with a dissertation on Spinoza (a resultant paper, leading to a lasting friendship with the celebrated psychiatrist Viktor Frankl); and, then, as a research associate assisting the Pali scholar Prahlad Pradhan to set up one of oldest university departments of Odia, during 1948-50.

Chittaranjan went on to become one of the foremost writers of Odia prose in the 20^th century. By the time he died in 2011, at the ripe age of 88, he had grown in stature as one of the most important public intellectual in Odisha. In a writing career spanning six decades, he produced more than two hundred books – both original works and translations.  Quite a significant number of the latter were translations of educational classics into Odia. Despite having excellent command of one and half a dozen languages, including many European tongues such as German, Danish and Finnish, and Indian ones like Sanskrit, Pali, Urdu and Bangla, he did almost all of his writing work in his mother tongue, Odia. 

Cover of 'Nepal Pathe'

He is perhaps the most prolific writer of Odia non-fiction ever, with his forays including diaries, essays, reviews, volumes of autobiographies and memoirs, columns, belles lettres, textbooks, and research monographs. Perhaps the most significant body of his work consist of the large number of travelogues that he produced. These include wanderings in Odisha (like ‘Ganjam Mala re Sata Dina’ - ‘Seven days in the Ganjam Highlands’); accounts of tours in various other states of India (such as the volume describing treks in Western Himalayas, titled ‘Silatirtha’ - ‘Mountain Pilgrimages’); and, stories of travels in the West (like the volume called ‘America ru Asili’ - ‘Back from America’ - filled with sociological insights about American society).

He also wrote five travel books set in Asia. Of these ‘Sagar Jatri’ (‘Seafarer’) and ‘Sagar Pathe’ (‘On Marine Paths’) describe his journeys on ships to Europe via the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, in the years 1950 and 1962, respectively. ‘Aertej Israel’ is about his experiences in 1991-92 in Israel, when he was a visiting faculty there at a university for three months; these are then juxtaposed with memories from his first visit to that country in 1953, when he spent three months on his way back to India from Denmark. We have additional details of his first visit to Israel in the autobiography,’Mitrasya Chakshyusha’ (‘With the Eyes of a Friend’). 

‘Bharata ru Chin’ (‘From India to China’) is an account of his travels in the mid 1980s, as a part of an Indian delegation to China, under invitation from ‘Chinese People’s Association with Foreign Countries’. But the earliest of these Asian travelogues is ‘Nepal Pathe’ (‘Onward to Nepal’); the text was accompanied by woodcuts by Beohar Rammanohar Sinha, who had accompanied Chitta babu on the trip. Sinha went on to become a celebrated artist, illustrating the original manuscript of the Constitution of India.

‘Nepal Pathe’ narrates experiences of the author as a traveler in Nepal in the months of April and May in the year 1947. When Chittaranjan embarked on this short trip, as part of a group of five students, across the Himalayas in the summer of the year of India’s independence, he was a 24-year old postgraduate student in Shantiniketan. In this book, he describes his observations of the first stirrings of the national movement in Nepal and the development of the initial strands of consciousness against oppression by the Rana regime. In the volume’s introduction the author says, “A reawakening has started in Nepal. Till now the Nepali Gurkha used to obey his masters’ orders as a loyal soldier. Now a new consciousness has taken birth there, where all the various communities call themselves ‘Nepali’, as one nation.”  

His first impression of Nepal was the poverty of the coolies; in this destitution of the masses he saw the unity of all suffering and toiling Asians. After crossing over from India, his group’s first major halt was at Taulihawa, where a friend’s father was posted as a government servant. This small town used to be a claimant for the location of Kapilavastu, the capital of the Shakya clan to which  the Buddha belonged and where he grew up. After exploring this ancient Buddhist site, they pushed ahead to Kathmandu via Lumbini, Gorakhpur and Birganj. 

Chittaranjan Das

Nepal had only one college then, and only half a dozen high schools; the travel of outsiders was strictly regulated; the food in the wayside rest-houses was restricted to rice, arhar dal, boiled vegetables and a basic chutney, at most. The extensive Buddhist built heritage of the country alerted Chittaranjan to the key role traditions related to this faith played in pre-colonial times in forging relationships between Nepal and India.

In his travels in China, he encountered the same profound influence of Buddhist traditions originating in India, on the largest country of the continent. But what intrigued him the most, was that this cultural relationship was one-sided. Despite claims of openness and liberalism as a country, India does not seem to have actively sought out knowledge from other lands. Who is India’s Xuanzang, he seems to ask. What struck Chittaranjan the most in the new China, were the transformations underway in the material living conditions and the political consciousness of the ordinary Chinese, as a result of the communist revolution.

Although he had briefly flirted with communism in his teens, in his approach to life and politics, Chitta babu can only be termed as a Gandhian. He participated in the ‘Quit India’ movement when he was a college student and was jailed for one and half years. In the latter half of the 1950s, he was instrumental in setting up and running what was, arguably, the most important educational experiment in post-Independent Odisha in Champatimunda in the central parts of the state. 

This was a school called Jibana Bidyalaya (‘The School of Life’) run for post-basic education students, whose parents had worked in the freedom movement. In its pedagogic practices, it combined ideas drawn from the educational philosophies and experiments of Gandhi and Tagore. In the period when he made the trip to China, Chitta babu was leading a movement for operationalising the educational ideas of Aurobindo Ghosh and Mirra Alfassa in Odisha; soon it was to run more than 200 schools across the state.

Therefore, by no stretch of imagination could Chittaranjan be called a partisan communist. But he was enamoured by the education system that was being woven into being in post-revolution China. Manual labour and book learning provided the two legs on which the education system of the new China ran; this had a strong resonance with Gandhi’s ideas of basic education. 

Chitta babu was also fascinated by communes that were the central organising institution of socio-economic life in new China. These were being operated with the ideas of ‘Democratic Centralism’ (where the central  leadership provided ideas, guidance and support, and local communes carried out experiments in communal agricultural production, political education and shared living), and filled him with hope for a new Asia. 

Revolutionary land reforms had removed the intermediary classes; now a model of economic development that put communes of peasants at the centre, made agriculture and a new egalitarian political consciousness the basis on which democratic social life and a prosperous nation could be built.

It is this drive towards social transformation by creating humane, egalitarian, collectives that fascinated Chitta babu about kibbutzs as well, when he saw these in Israel. Kibbutzs are experiments in communal living combining ideas of Zionism and socialism, where a group of men and women live and work together; all resources are owned communally, and decisions are taken democratically. 

Cover of 'Aeretj Israel'

Starting in the early years of 20^th century (the first one, ‘Degania’, was established in 1909), Kibbutzs have become central to the taming of the deserts of Israel, providing a disproportionately large part of its agricultural and industrial production. In both his stints of travel in Israel, Chittaranjan spent considerable time in the kibbutzs, focusing specifically on its schools. 

By the time he went there for the second time, a few religious kibbutzs had started as well, that placed Judaism at the centre of communal life. But for Chittaranjan, the distinction between secular and religious kibbutz movements was not that significant, as what mattered to him was the constant human search for transcendence.

For him this was exemplified in the life and works of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965), whose philosophy of dialogue creates the conceptual scaffolding for building bridges between warring Jews and Arabs. Chitta babu met Buber in his first visit to Israel, spent long hours with him, soaking in his wisdom and presence. 

Apart from Buber, these travelogues introduce many other remarkable people to the reader: Danilo Dolci (1924-1997), the Italian Gandhi who fought non-violently and democratically against poverty and social exclusion in Italy; Moshe Harif (1933-1982), Israeli architect and politician, who played a crucial role in the movement surrounding kibbutzs; and, amongst others, the Chinese thinker Hu Shih (1891-1962) who made significant contributions towards the development of Chinese liberalism and language reforms, and advocated for written vernacular Chinese rather than using the classical version of the language. Do we have any space for the ideas and ideals of these people in our Brave New Asian Century? 

Note: A much shorter version of this article was published in the Sunday magazine of The Hindu newspaper on 31st March, 2019. 

ମେଗାନ୍ ହଲ୍‌ଙ୍କ କବିତା 'ମଞ୍ଜି'

ଅନୁବାଦକ - ଶୈଲେନ ରାଉତରାୟ

ନେପଲ୍ସ୍‌ଠାରେ ସ୍ଥିତ ସ୍ଥାପତ୍ୟ 'ଇଲ୍ କାଭାଲେରିଓ ଦି ତଲେଦୋ'
ଦକ୍ଷିଣ ଆଫ୍ରିକାର ୱିଲିଅମ୍ କେଣ୍ଟ୍ରିଜ୍‌ଙ୍କର କଳାକୃତି

  ମୋ ଛାତିର ଗୁମ୍ଫାର ଭିତରେ
ଗୋଟିଏ ମଞ୍ଜି ।
ତୁମେ ମୋ ଛାତିକୁ ଯେତେ କେଞ୍ଚିଲେ ବି
ସେ ରହିବ

ଏବେ ଯେଉଁଠି ଅଛି, ସେଇଠି ।
 
ଫୁଲ ହୋଇ ଫୁଟିବ 

ସେ କେଉଁ ଅନାଗତ ଦିବସରେ ।
ଉପଯୁକ୍ତ ଖାଦ, ପାଣି ପାଇ;
ଚେର ତା’ର ଲମ୍ବେଇଯିବ ;
ତା’ର ସ୍ୱପ୍ନସବୁ ଫୁଲ ହୋଇ ଫୁଟିବେ ;
ଆଉ ମୋ ଚମ ସାରା ବ୍ୟାପିଯିବ ବିଷାକ୍ତ ତା' ଛାଇ।
 
ଝିଅଠାରୁ ମା’ର
ଆଉ କିଏ ଅଧିକ ଆତ୍ମୀୟ ?
ଏକ ଲିଙ୍ଗ, ଅଧା ସାଧାରଣ ଆନୁବଂଶିକତା,
ଆଉ ଏକା ଦେଖାଯିବା ଲାଗି ଅନେକ ଅପେକ୍ଷା ।
 
ମାତ୍ର ମୁଁ କେତେ ମୋ ମା’ ଭଳି ?
ଆତ୍ମହନ୍ତା, ସେକ୍ରେଟାରୀ,
ନାଚିବା ପାଇଁ ଯିଏ ଥିଲା ନିର୍ଘାତ ପାଗେଳୀ ।

ହେଲେ କେମିତି କରିବି ମନା
ଏ ଉତ୍ତରାଧିକାରେ ?
କେମିତି କରିବି ମନା
ଏଇ ବାଳୁଙ୍ଗା ଲତାକୁ ?
ମା’ର ସ୍ୱପ୍ନର ଭବିଷ୍ୟତରେ ଫାଟୁଥିବା
ପାଗଳ ଫୁଲଙ୍କୁ ?
 
କିନ୍ତୁ ଏହି ଫୁଲ ଫୁଟେ ସବୁ ଆଡ଼େ,
ଆଉ ଫଳ ବନେ ସପ୍ତାହାନ୍ତେ ଲଜ୍ଜାର ଖୁଆଡ଼େ ।
 
ଆମେ ସବୁ କଞ୍ଚା ଫଳ ତୋଳୁ ନିର୍ଲ୍ଲଜ ଭାବରେ ।
ଆଉ ପବିତ୍ର କୃତଘ୍ନତାର ସହ ପ୍ରାର୍ଥନା ବି କରୁ,
କି ମଞ୍ଜିସବୁ ଶାନ୍ତି ଲଭୁ ବସନ୍ତ-ଶବରେ ।

କବି ପରିଚିତି: ମେଗାନ୍ ହଲ୍ (ଜନ୍ମ – ୧୯୭୨) ଙ୍କର ଜନ୍ମ ଓ ଶିକ୍ଷା ଉଭୟ ଦକ୍ଷିଣ ଆଫ୍ରିକାର କେପ୍ ଟାଉନ୍ ନଗରରେ । ୧୯୯୫ ମସିହାରୁ ସେ ପ୍ରକାଶନ ଶିଳ୍ପରେ କାମ କରିଆସିଛନ୍ତି । ସେ ୨୦୧୮ ମସିହା ପର୍ଯ୍ୟନ୍ତ ଅକ୍ସଫୋର୍ଡ଼୍ ୟୁନିଭର୍ସିଟି ପ୍ରେସ୍‌ର ଦକ୍ଷିଣ ଆଫ୍ରିକା ଶାଖାରେ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟରତ ଥିଲେ । ତାଙ୍କର ପ୍ରଥମ କବିତା ସଙ୍କଳନ ‘ଫୋର୍ଥ୍ ଚାଇଲ୍ଡ୍’ - ‘ଚତୁର୍ଥ ସନ୍ତାନ’ - ନିମନ୍ତେ ସେ ୨୦୦୮ ମସିହାର ସମ୍ମାନଜନକ ଇନଗ୍ରିଡ଼୍ ଜଙ୍କର୍ ପୁରସ୍କାର ଲାଭ କରିଛନ୍ତି ।

The flotilla of verses: the anchor of khatis

Sailen Routray

Photos by Jyoti Shankar Singh

'Our house is without a fence. /All that is there are only sparse hedges, /'

These lines that start Bhubaneswaria poet Rabindra K. Swain’s celebrated volume of poems ‘Susurrus in the Skull’ (Authorspress: 2008) tell us something significant about the habitations of poetry in Bhubaneswar: ‘our house’ is a metaphor for that typical Bhubaneswaria, and Odia, institution – the khati. 

Bengalis have the adda; Odias, especially those from Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, have the khati. Addas are regular gatherings of like-minded people who get together to enjoy the subtle art of conversation. An adda can take place in a drawing room or a veranda of a home as well. But a khati, a very similar institution, has to take place in a public or a semi-public place; in Bhubaneswar these range from the ubiquitous OMFED tea stalls, to the newly erected bus stops, to public parks.

With the absence of the ‘usual’ avenues of publishing, performing, and the sharing of poetry, such as regularly and frequently published literary journals, bookstores and cafes that organise regular poetry readings, and active poetry groups in educational institutions, in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, poetry in Bhubaneswar is anchored in the dense ecosystem of khatis; be it the khati near the Sailashree Vihar Jagannaatha temple that sees accomplished Odia poet Bharat Majhi reading his work regularly for friends, or the khati near the Housing Board office which once saw an amazing efflorescence of Odia poems and translations (unfortunately never published) by the film artist Bharadwaj Panda (Julu/Julu bhai to friends), or the one near the old bus stand that often sees the dance critic and Odia poet Kedar Mishra share his poems along with English Poet Rabindra K. Swain, the muse of poetry often haunts khatis.

But as must be evident by now, and as poet (and editor of the city’s literary journal The Dhauli Review) Manu Dash says, ‘there is no specific ‘Indian English Poetry’ scene in Bhubaneswar. What exists is ‘a poetry scene’ most of whose practitioners write in Odia’. English poets in Bhubaneswar practice their craft at the margins of this scene; but they are not necessarily ‘marginal’.  Still, the way in which there are khatis of Odia writers and poets strewn across the city, the same is perhaps not true for those who write in English. There are no exclusive khatis of English poets.

Bhubaneswar is not a city that is popularly known for its writing in English. But, surprisingly, the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack metropolitan area has carved out a space for itself with the work of its English poets featured in major Indian anthologies and published in widely received journals. The anthology edited by Jeet Thayil (titled 60 Indian Poets, and published by Penguin in the year 2008) features the work of poets Bibhu Padhi and Jayanta Mahapatra. The one edited by Sudeep Sen (titled The HarperCollins book of English Poetry, and published by HarperCollins Publishers India in the year 2012) has poems by Bibhu Padhi, and Rabindra Swain. The one edited by Vivekananda Jha (titled The Dance of the peacock: an anthology of English poetry from India, and published by Hidden Brook Press in the year 2013) features the works of Bibhu Padhi, Gopa Nayak, Jayanta Mahapatra, and other poets from the state.

The work of Jayanta Mahapatra looms large over the English poetry scene of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, because of his craft and generousity. The journal Chandrabhāgā started and edited by him has played a critical role in promoting English poetry in India and Odisha. But all other recent attempts at publishing literary journals in English from Bhubaneswar/Cuttack have been failures with the only two possible exceptions being a couple of new entrants - The Dhauli Review and margASIA.

City poet, and student of B.J.B. College, Sidharth Mohapatra feels that ‘Bhubaneswar is a city that surprises you all the time, especially with startlingly strange and beautiful places.’ For him ‘marginal’ areas such as Dumduma, Sailashree Vihar and Bhimatangi that have interesting places – deserted roads with tall Kadamba trees; old temples tucked away in niches between garish homages to the new plutocracy; OMFED tea stalls under flyovers manned by cranky, eccentrics with wits as sharp as the edges of broken plate glass; the light of a pale full moon bouncing off the mounds in the recently de-silted Bindusagar tank in Old Town - make for poetry in Bhubaneswar. 

Poet Bharadwaj Mishra (whose volume of poems titled ‘Bathing Ghat At Kotipalli’ was published a couple of years back by Athena Books) feels that ‘it’s the streets, lanes, and bylanes of the city that give it its character, that create the spaces for poetry to emerge’. But for Rabindra K. Swain it’s the material conditions so to speak, ‘the community of writers, the availability of good book shops (now of course, online shopping has come up), and the ever-changing nature of the city that continuously challenges the poet’ that make Bhubaneswar a fertile habitus for poetry.

As the Anglo-American writer Jonathan Raban argues in his seminal book Soft City, the ‘city of the mind’ is at least as important, if not more, than the ‘mind of the city’; cities can only exist in the totality of their possibilities when they are creatively imagined, reimagined, and refashioned by its poets, writers, painters, film makers, and other creative artists. It is high time other creative folks start doing what the poets have been doing for Bhubaneswar and Cuttack – ‘creating’ the city by giving it a home in the taut tensions of the poetic imaginary. It is this flotilla of verses that keeps the city afloat.

Note: This article was first published in the Bhubaneswar-based magazine My City Links in 2014. It has been posted here without any major edits. 

ON THE DAY OF YOUR ESCAPE

   Sailen Routray    

Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

    On the day of your escape,

    lotuses bloom in the sky.

    And I can walk, finally, on the thin film
    of the mercury of my sorrow.

    On the day of your escape,

    the sunflowers in my garden 

    laugh uproariously
    like a bouquet of shameless whores;
    their voices like the echo
    of the explosion of your silence.

    On the day of your escape
    the gunpowder of your memories
    falls with the intensity of untimely rains;
    and penetrating the pores of my body
    like uninvited sawdust
    cruelly amuses like Chinese torture.

Note: This poem was first published in November 2011 in the thirteenth issue of the bilingual webzine Pratilipi. Its Odia version was published for the first time, in this blog on 28th of October, earlier this year.