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.