CHAPTER II

TREATMENT OF LANDSCAPE
IN THE POEMS OF JAYANTA
MAHAPATRA
 31

CHAPTER II

TREATMENT OF LANDSCAPE IN THE POEMS OF

JAYANTA MAHAPATRA

Relationship (1980)

Jayanta Mahapatra is one of India’s most modem poets writing in

English. The Relationship and Life Signs are rooted in the soil of Orissa.
Relationship is long poem of twelve sections. It is thematic development
on various aspects. He began writing out of personal need, physical,
spiritual environment and so on. His poetry began with rich culture,
religion, rituals, traditions and myths of Orissa. It has attempt, the poet
precise the past and make the real ‘relationship’ between the poet and
land. Mahapatra’s orissa is in the walls of Konarka that pictures are
noticed to sufferings and glorious. Jayanta Mahapatra is firmly rooted in
the orissan soil. Puri, Konarka, Cuttack and Bhubaneshwar become the
part and parcel in the landscape of Mahapatra’s poetry. Legends, history
and myths associated with these places are the areas of immense interest
of Mahapatra and it becomes the unique centre of his poetry.

The twelve part epic poem Relationship is analyzed and the effort
is make to study experience of the past and the sense of rootedness,
alienation, loneliness and guilt accompanied with it. As Ezekiel, who is
busy in depicting the scenes of Bombay city, but Jayanta Mahapatra’s
poetic sensibility make interest in ‘Landscape’ of Orissa. It is represented
day to day experiences of Mahapatra’s in his poems. He has
consciousness of nature can be in numerous descriptions of landscape.
According to Mahapatra, Relationship is:
'1ARR. BAtASAFfe imm
*WVAJ| URlVLhOiuY, KOLHAPUR,
 32

“A long contemplation on the meanings of symbols on the

stones of a crumbling, once-glorious orison temple. In
twelve sections, the poem, fuge-like, in construction, dealt
with the mystery of suffering, with triumph and disaster. It
was in many ways my romance with my own land and with
my inner most self.” (50)

Relationship is a poem of seven hundred lines, a thin volume of

twenty three pages. In the first section of the opening line:

One again on must sit and bury the face

in this earth of the forbidding myth ,

the phallus of the enormous stone,

when the lengthened shadow of a restless vulture. (9)

The poem is set in Orissa- a land of ‘forbidding myth’. The poet

notices the lost glory of ruined tradition and culture. In this poem he has
presented the images, to convey the impossibility of unraveling the
mystery of life. The heroic past of the land of Orissa has been recalled
with regret. It has given references which are made for Mahanandi, the
prime river of the state, the temple of Konarka, the ancient harbors like
Chilka and Chandipur, it is precise symbol (images) Lingaraja temple and
its enormous lingam of black stone in Bhubaneshwar. Therefore, he
identifies himself with the past tradition and culture. The poet brings to
locate ultimate metaphysical roots in the stones, which has mentioned the
topsoil of modem Orissa with represented organic life. Thus, the poet
notices a keenly contrast in descending order between the past and the
present. It has been decline in values of life in our time. He says :
 33

We have come as dreams disguised that pinned us down,

artisans of stone

messengers of the spirit,

twelve hundred artless brown flowers in passion. (9)

Mahapatra brings a sense of time haunts in his anguished need to

define a self out of the bottomless flow of time. His wish is to cut identity
out of the ‘sky’s eternal vault’. He finds must still preserve, search, ‘times
mouth’ till finally the realization dawns on him:

But time has no mouth,

and the black labyrinth

of casuarinas along the edge of the sea

closes the sky’s eternal vault. (10)

The poet is aware of this tradition and his relationship to it.

Poetically narrates the story and he like a solitary traveller on the Orissa.
He tries to comprehend the brilliant ‘colors of the past in the ocean’s
strange and bitter deeps. Here the sense of dispossession guilt-ridden
senses of isolation haunts his mind. The past is thus sealed off the
narrator. The recognition of his existence and his relationship with this
tradition gets keener:

and yet my existence lies in the stones

which carry my footsteps from one day into another,

down to the infinite distance.
The dense jungles. (11)

Mahapatra creates in his mind the scene of the building of the Sun-
Temple in the eleventh century A. D. when about twelve hundred artisans
 34

and sculptures began work on the massive artistically designed and

beautiful structure. These artisans of stones were dreamers of dream and
torch-bearers of tradition, lovers of legends and speakers of souls in
stones. They are like ‘brown flowers in passion’ and the aerial roots of
any ancient banyan tree which tell the story of their sacred land of the
lusty, greedy and cruel people. The glory and pride of our ancestry
exhibited in the climatic Kalinga war 261 B.C. The unforgettable war
turned Ashoka, the great in the deeply religious man. When king Ashok
won a victory after a war full of bloodshed and large scale killings before
he turned to the ways of peace. He recreates ‘peaceful edicts on Blood-
red rock’. All this was trapped in the course of time. Only memories are
alive. The poet is disappointed by the savageous past. It feels sense of
alienation pervades his mind the Konark temple interprets our existence
in the context of the dreams of 1200 artisans realized in the form of the
temple. It tries to look within and realize the world.

Further, he recalls his famous ‘martime ancestory’ fney were

sacrified their lives for the peace and prosperity of Orissa. They are
giving their message of peace to the present generation but this maritime
power has vanished in the ‘Black Bay without a trace’? It has recalled a
sense of alienation haunts his mind. In the second section touches
memories of the home. When he looks at his mother’s grave through the
window, the memories of ‘the white terraces’ gets created automatically.
He describes:

Today I watch through the window

the grave that is my mother’s,

watch the old impulses in red and yellow
chalked across the while terraces of childhood,. (12)
 35

The second section of the Relationship, the poet notices the past
haunts his mind and there feeling of loneliness and isolation he expresses:

and the unidentifiable dead shadows

strip the skin off my face,

and from body of the last green spring

memory takes a road vague with the distance. (12)

Mahapatra is often representing the present with the past. He gets

the support of his mother’s blessings for his dream of peace and silence.
The river provides the most perfect canvas to move into the past and
present of time. The river Daya, one of the most important witnesses of
glorious Orissa and Kalinga war is now dried and become an irrelevant
myth for the modem successors. Those successors have given up the
ideals and values of their ancestors. The loss of values has been well
evoked in the following line:

Orion crawls like a spider in the sky

while the swords of forgotten kings

rust slowly in the museum of our guilt,

while the carved rock loses its light, (13)

His awareness of origin his questioning journey continues back

and forth. They embody within them the spirit of mother or goddess. He
desires to know their deep meaning their existence and truth. Thus he
realizes the Vatsula rasa.

He is haunted boy with his childhood memories. Mahapatra

watches through the window- his mother’s grave which notices the
memories of the white terraces of his childhood. The poet becomes part
 36

of a white rabbit on the stage. A sense of isolation overshadows this

experience. When he recalls his childhood many memories gather in his
mind. Many shadows are reflecting in his mind. Mahapatra’s personal
memories are also mixed with the memories of history, war and peace.

He recreates this section much as they seem to be ‘just voice of

another world’ and the poet finds himself as a ‘man with many much
more memories doesn’t known that what to do with them’. All these
memories represent the sense of isolation and alienation. He notices it as:

as the grass of history

merely glistens for a movement with night dew

mearly that-
and memories are just voices of another world, (13)

The poet recognizes that all these past historical memories are
guilt-ridden, they extend our living. He accepts past memories. He
expresses past experiences it as:

as I forget easily
my old village’s pelt, glistening with rain,

and the stillness of my gentle daughter’s skin

forget the desire

oozing out of the hewn stones of konarka, (13)

The poet reminds of his own life and also the traveler poet
contemplates his old father, his old village, his daughter and ultimately
the rain, the purifier of men and earth. It is deeply brings sense of his
loneliness and alienation. He is recalls these memories spreading on his
mind but he is helpless with it. The poet is incapable to be rid of the
 37

overwhelming ‘Memories’ of the guilt-ridden past. It is Mahapatra

focuses the ‘Suffering’ human being.

The section three begins with ‘year’s first rain’ which is depicted a
sign of new life. It is bring as a long lasting experience of the poet. He
declares as:

how the age-old proud stones

lost their strength and fell,

and how the waters of the day

stank with the bodies of my ancestors; (14)

The third section opens other reasons of poet’s loneliness from the
past. This section begins with a description of Ashoka’s massacre of
Oriyas, he remembers red waters of the Daya River near Dhauli where
Ashoka had his furious war.

The memories of Daya river came out which had buried his
ancestors. He remembers how thousand of people lost their lives during
this war. The poet feels to convey the message of peace and non-violence,
one of the greatest principles of Buddhism. This is the kind of event
which supplies the staff of the savage past. The past is very cruel and
savages and before it the narrator shuts his eyes in fear. ‘His hands are
weak for violent life’. The poet’s shrinking from the sight of blood and
vomit betrays. He is unable which makes it difficult for him to look the
past in the face. He can not escape the thought of the invaders who
scattered the stones and the magnificent temple for the bloody victories. It
has Mahapatra expressed that ‘it is hard to tell’. His mind creates a sense
of isolation from the past is presented in his mind. Further lines extend

. i j llBRAiffy
2,1 v' KOI.HAPUR.
 38

between the poet and other his friends it is well evoked in the following
lines:

I remember only last week I counted up my friends,

and I felt as though I were in painful exile:

friendship is like a pool of water

where shadows move about and dance,(15)

Mahapatra recalls his few friends about relationship which are

sometimes affected by doubt, and even envy. He creates an errie
atmosphere. He considers himself as an object of envy as ‘envy sacks the
other away.’In forth section he also recalls the scene of the rain and the
sunshine, which affected his sensibility deeply he expresses:

the thousands windows of my sorrowful heart

look upon your untempered mile

that wonders through the eternal half-light of rain. (17)

The poet has a memorable hymn to Konarka temple or the

civilization frozen on its stone. We find his ‘ancient love’ of gold nose­
rings of the figures in the to wering ruins of stone, of regal lions of their
breasts and arm-pits. He continues his peep into his dream world and he
enquires about ‘miracle of living’. His country seems to him to be full of
contradictions of the fabulous marriage processions and also of lies and
betrayals. He feels with a sense of loneliness, bitterness and
sorrowfulness. He is ultimately opposite the ‘emptiness of his destiny’.
Mahapatra regards feeling of painful and he also tries to define himself in
it. The poet finds brutal and cruel past. He describes:
 39

I know I can never come alive

if I refuse to consecrate at the altar of my origins

where hollow horn blows every mornings

and its suburban sound picks its way (18)

The poet now becomes more and more conscious of the feeling at
time, of his ageing, which he refers to in moving images like ‘a late
autumn night’ or ‘calmly circling hawk-like overhead for prey’. In this
stage the poet realizes they essential loneliness of every human being a
sense of isolation make him conscious that these crumbled and cracked
stones are the real essence of his origin. The poet expresses that his
existence in inseparable from the roots in the past. He confess that his life
force is shaped by culture, tradition, myths and symbols of past. He
represented his relationship with the past. It exposes the past is sorrowful
and bitter. Here it seems that is an attempt to draw his self out of ‘time’.
The poet says:

a prayer to draw my body out of a thousand years

and to reflect the earth’s lost amplitudes,

the bridal footprints of fantastic peacocks dancing

in the rain. (19)

Though he wants to draw his body out of thousand years to

revitalize past, the dark shades of past makes him weary. His heart is
weary with echoes of past suffering.

In section fifth the poet peep into dream his world. He observes
this condition as follows:
 40

This sleep is a song

that is heard from all sides continually

a coarse cage that can hold larger life

a time that stretches the scarlet’s in the mind

and graves the hearts mind with clear wind (21)

The poet tells us that this myth of ‘sleep’ in needed to come to

terms with the past and traditions. The poet want to run away from
contemporary but he accepts sleep habit. He is very much confused by
both past and present. The poet rejecting the sensuality of the world he
takes refuge in the idea of Maya. This nagging thought relives its pains in
the myth of ‘Sleep’ or dream. Mahapatra get relief from guilt ridden past
and evil. He also accepts dream like state and thus dispossession
continues.

Section seven Mahapatra depicts private world and his nightmare.

In his regard he explores following lines:

The green -leaved carpet of pleasure,

Somewhere, elsewhere,
wearing the dreams away of the forgotten Ganga kings,

digging at the ruins of their own private sorrow’. (23)

The poet is represented his predicaments of the private world. A

city of his psyche have arrives of faith innocence and guilt of the past and
present conflict at night perhaps to make the poet aware of the night in
the soul. Thus anguished sense of dispossession continues.

In the eighth section, the poet gives a reference to the Sun Temple
of Konark he is takes the readers to its spots through imagine this
 41

tradition as if a skillful painter paints a landscape and makes his observers

as if they are looking at the real sight:

It is my own life
that has concerned me beneath stones.
of this temple in ruins, in a blaze of sun. (26)

The poet is explore in the midst of the complexities of life and pain
and suffering and the inherited blood- ridden past and guilt, now, the poet
poses the overwhelming question. Here Mahapatra reveals a deeply felt
weariness and solitude of tone. The tropical landscape of Orissa cluttered
with rocky monuments and rains breathes history through every stone. He
is present of an oppressive past that the poet tries to relate to his personal
world. The oppressiveness of the past cultivated into scene of sunsets and
season producing an atmosphere of dissatisfaction. Mahapatra’s views
history as a certain inner heaviness and fatigue which clamps a curfew the
present.

The poet at once realizes a relationship between his own life and
‘this temple in ruins, in a blaze of sun’. This reference is to the Sun
Temple of Konarka, the most magnificent piece of sculpture and
architecture in the world. When he sees the ruins of this magnificent
temple in the blaze of the sun, he becomes more conscious of the feeling
of that time. It is poet noticed his loneliness. These passionate symbols
make the poet to realize that these are mere symbols ‘we have made’ he
observes:

This is the real body: raging pachyderm

with the crazy testicles, red and wild
the lusting good of the blackest Siva night:
thus it is that it can hardly contain ourselves. (27)

16870
 42

Above lines his emphasis is on fertility and maternity. Through

these passionate figures he realizes the origin of age long sexual life. He
finds himself in these desired figures. Thus he apprehends his roots in the
culture and tradition he underlies it as:

For now I touch your secret order

embarrassed yoni;

before me lie the sulking years of dreams,

the stricken purposes of the muscles,. (28)

In the midst of the complexities of life and pain and suffering and
the inherited blood-ridden past and guilt, the poet expresses his inability
to revitalize the past. He expresses his dilemma as well as his alienation
when he addresses to his land:

How would I pull you out

of the centuries of fallen stone?

how would I hold the linga cursive in the eye

until the world is made all over again? (28)

The poet finds the answer in his poetry of ‘Sleep’ or dream. He

picks up ‘the sleep-habit’ in order to realize ‘the miracle of living’
Mahapatra assumes reverie or contemplation as the means to capture the
meaning of the tradition which lies a sleep in the symbol of stone. Thus it
symbolizes the recovery of past from the stones of temple ‘Konarka’.

In the section ninth onwards myth and its relation to contemporary

is explored. There is no doubt the soul matter for the discussion in this
poetry is myth, but at the same time landscape becomes subsidiary to
myth. He attempts to unfold the ‘myth of happiness’, the myth of ‘The
 43

wounded sun’ encased in the Konarka Sun Temple sculptures. The poet
has raised the question more than once. But what was this myth of
Konark in which is captured the unceasing rhythm of life. Myths are
timeless. It is easy to appreciate the past. The wounds of the heart
exposed “the cry of the wounded sun silenced among the ruins of the
Konark” is the culmination of the prolonged feeling of one “Wounded
pool of living” A sort of anguished sense of self identity haunts his mind.
He feels outcast, exile and alienated from the past.

The poet says those who have been his friends throughout the
years, he refers to ‘The rapture of ownership on their valuable faces’ their
eyes are:

Black and bitter with malice

like envelopes with poisonous glue on their flaps

because they are positioned by an ignorance

‘ in my heart, (32)

Here his poetic endeavor to trace his relationship with his friends
creates errie atmosphere.

In the tenth section, the poet remembers moments when he

stumbles out of the door of his present-days temporal and spatial life in
Orissa. He expresses his troubled face wearing:

to see the sage like look of final awareness

sitting under the peepul tree, all alone

unspoken repose against the body oozing of love; (33)

He realizes with an atmosphere of meaningless and

purposelessness. The poet notices his disenchantment with present and
 44

hence a sense of alienation. He tries to explore his own relationship with

Cuttack. His painful awareness of the past leads him to make the dialogue
with the present. But he is not satisfied with the present also. He is
disputed with his friends the poet says, the poems of his friends seem
‘object and anyious’ giving a feeling of stale cupboards turning black
with the color of their past. Thus we find his revulsion against the
present.

In section eleven Mahapatra is basically focuses with what is

‘enduring’ in the past and the relationship between past and present. If
man can envision such a world, he can rise from the surrounding gloom
and darkness and spot out the beauty that soars into the sky in the midst
of cloud and rain, respond to voices of souls are following lines:

For lofty as they are on their twenty-four blue spells,

my walks along the trembling of the stone seems loftier still;
to the flashing tendril
from the fugitive root,. (36)

Thus, the poet continues quest for ‘an essence divine’ and for
‘grace’ in relationship between man and men, man and god, man and
sculptured art.

The twelfth and last section of Relationship is partly concerned

with the poet’s inscrutable sense of guilt, and his attempt as securing
release from it.’ Fear of my guilt, I bid you farewell’. (38) The poet
attention wanders to the song that arises from the latticework of stone and
he is confronted by something beyond him which he cannot cope with
and then he is inspired to speak to the great beautiful figures in stone:
 45

Is anything beyond me that I cannot catch up?

Tell me your names, dark daughters
Hold me to your spaces. (38)

Mahapatra seems to believe that his own elusive birth and his sleep
are compassed in the dance of these apsaras and nayikas, which adorn
the great Sun Temple and the stone itself watching the ebb and tide of his
sadness becomes a dark soul of his memory. Thus, memory becomes a
pervasive mode of comprehending relationship-between personal, self
and society, the creative self and 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.

Mahapatra’s Relationship is also concerned, among other things,

with the basic problem of the inter-relationship between sculpture and
poetry; it sheds light on the fascinating aspect of aesthetic from. He can
best try to visualize the scene. Mahapatra, a sensitive creative person sea
coast of Orissa, and observes the grandeur and the ruin, the beauty and
the broken pieces of the great Sun Temple. The Sun Temple had been
built in the eleventh century, whereas the poet watches and it receives
impressions from it in 1982 nearly nine centuries after the great temple
was constructing.

Mahapatra’s loyalties are his soil, Orissa, form which springs the
fountain of his poetry. In his speech on the receiving the National Sahitya
Academy Award for Relationship, Mahapatra declared:

To Orissa, to this land in which my roots lies my past,

And in which lie my beginning and end...
I acknowledge my debt and relationship. (10)
 46

It says a fact that only if one truly belongs to ones own socio­
cultural miles, one will be able to transcend it and universalize that
experience a sensitive poet. The poet should be able as to feel the pulse of
his land in his blood and bone as it were, to be in resonance with the
wider world of which he is a part.

Thus, Mahapatra to explore in Relationship relations built on

history, myth and vision. The myth of the ‘native land’ and living past of
Orissa coupled with the artistic vision of Mahapatra presents an
integrated experience the poet tries to re-create the myth in modem terms
and succeeds too to a great extent. The landscape of Orissa artistically
portrayed becomes evocative and it gives ‘a local habitation and a name’
and appeals to us in out situation. Mahapatra at its beginning of
Relationship walls down to the accurate lane of loneliness and gets
created the memories of childhood. Mahapatra works altogether on a
different plane and both the quality and quantum of last and he has
handling of theme and form is commensurate with his inner compulsion.
In his poetry he presents social and psychological factors of experience.
He has recaptures the vision of life in endless mutations, underscored by
a muted happiness. The Indianness in Mahapatra’s poetry is more
complex his sounds more original and realistic.

He has described village landscape or town or a street very vividly

and authentically. Mahapatra deals with Orissa landscape:

Everything here is palpable

Here and there

the muggy breeze from the river
bursts with the sour smell of faces
crushed grasses and wet earth. (94)
 47

His next collection of poems followed the same theme which

reflected in Relationship.

Life Signs (1983)

Life Signs is a collection of poems which depicts the various

situations in the life of human being. There is a sort of social aspect
included in Life Signs. Mahapatra speaks about Indian culture and scenes.
While portraying these pictures he focuses both on Christianity and
Hinduism the poet keenly observes:

Day after day the drunk sea at Chandipur

spits out the gauze wings of shells along the beach

and rumples the thin air behind the sands. (1)

Mahapatra’s poems are not only the product of head, but it is a fine
combination with heart also. It does not emphasis on the absurdities in
life in contemporary India, does not smack of rationalized distrust of
Indian landscape. His poetry is non-comment, poetry that round silence.
The reaction to his personal past is well evinced in the poems-“The
Capative Air of Chindipur on Sea”. “Life Signs”, “of that love”,
“Firelly”, “June”, “Iron”. Alongwith this personal quest, he also reacts
against social sphere and marks the human condition in it. He is
conscious all the time of the suffering of man and his ironical reaction to
it is indirectly pointed towards the contemporary socio-political set up.
The social aspect is brought to notice in the poem, such as “Morning
Sings” and “An Impotent”.

In Life Signs Mahapatra has seen a full of anxiety looking at the

sights of prostitution, unwanted religious activities, rape and so on. The
poet observes poor and helpless life of the fishermen. Here also he
 48

describes points out in the context of the fruitlessness of the religious

practices. Therefore, in his poetry he depicts the pictures of fishermen
and comments that temples are weak and dreamy to social evil like
poverty. He faces the wrong religious, customs, ill thoughts and the
power of the God and points out the fruitlessness in life. He gives
following examples:

Fishermen’s broken shacks by the river

let even starlight slip out

form their weak roofs.

A temple stands frail and still

in the distance, as though lost in reverie. (2)

The poet depicts on commenting the evil structure of society,

sometimes he feels laughing looking at the blind faiths of the human
being. As well all known that the solar eclipse is a natural phenomenon,
but it is critical looking that the Indians observe fast on this day. It is the
poet comments on this blind religious belief and its social implication.
The solar eclipse described in the poems offers the ‘new image’ of night
for the animals like hyena. This new image of the night is the night of the
superstition that has baffles the Indians for centuries together. Social
discrimination and inequality are the further issues for the discussion.
The poet comments on starvation and hunger. All over the world,
especially the Asian countries are influenced by these issues. Thus these
countries are haunted mostly by it and the human suffering is at its apex
due to it. These issues are crucial one and need to be tackled skillfully. He
also presents problems the greedy politicians and the whole country as
well as responds to this panic situation in a stranger like way. That is the
reason why death and disease are in full swing everywhere especially in
 49

country like India. In this way Mahapatra is conscious about the diseased
and disfigured world around him.

Mahapatra expresses his same passion, imagination and intensity.

For example The Wound he writes:

It is dark and cold

and rain-water slashes the streets.

In the neighboring house a child whimpers

For a while, then all is still again.

It is the silence which says the world is not ours. (3)

The poet comment on the various cycle of life .It is the reason why
he contemplates over his ancestors their activities. He emphasis their life
force and ere through old and ruined artifacts. His past memories same
that of firefly stinging him, makes him more serious and personal. He
agrees the evolution of the present through the past and hence asserts it.
Even the childhood memories are the part and parcel of Life Signs. At the
many places he is found roaming in childhood memories. He is aware to
the fact that the Life Signs which he got the gifts of his father. The poet
wants to relief himself from his father’s beliefs but in the real sense.
Hence the real sense he is the true son of his father echoing his voice,
‘wearily also get covered him and also his memories go in search of his
grandfather and other forefathers, it makes him uneasy.

In the Life Signs throughout his writing he is quite aware of the

past. He finds out for the real meaning of Life Signs which is found in
their lives. Thus, he attempts to give voice to the cries of dead:
 50

That go on searching
the secret places of the soul?
Do we open ourselves, fully, ever,
for the moments of love and death
to echo off the hidden wound in the darkness? (3)

According to the poet the world is powerless and he searches

himself in it. Mahapatra always to make recollect the Life Signs of his
father but he fail. He is conscious to the fact that they are going to lose
their colour and meaning in the course of time. He does not feel apart
from his ‘people’ of Cuttack. He always considers himself one of them,
Mahapatra is inherits the racial, cultural, religious and social background
of Cuttack. The poet has depicted the picture of Cuttack as the landscape
of hunger, starvation and social evils throughout in Life Signs. He focuses
on the false customs to tell the hunger, stricken people are living on the
faith that the myths will bring pleasure one or the other day in their lives.

Mahapatra is aware to the realistic picture that Cuttack- once a

glorious city, is now colorless because of dirty socio-political scene. The
moral and social horrors pervading the life are depicted with a great
ironic insight in poem ‘Violence’ the poet observes:

The children sit in their classrooms,

shrunk like caged slaves, pointing

accusing fingers, hands that keep their hold

on coins in their pockets

with peaceful Gandhi heads. (5)

Here the poet describes in truly minds about violence. During the
period of Mahatma Gandhi the strong weapon and principle of ‘non-
 51

violence’ become very popular all over the India, therefore, Indians have
adopted the peaceful and silently atmosphere. But today’s means present
time in society loss of thoughtful thinking. All the people in society
become cruel and greedy so it is mostly wanted to control corruption and
violence. Mahapatra is confused by this human tendency and so makes a
sharp ironical comment in:

The silted boat that will not move;

tamed temple god, this river
Sluggish centuries curled away from its bone. (6)

The poet sees the temple and broken of fishermen and comments
that destroy the temple and social issues. Here he accepts challenges the
religious, social, evil and poverty. The music and glory at Chandipur sea
is now lost and hence a matter of great regret for the poet. The
fisherman’s songs were once the glorious music, now the fishermen only
carry and that is harsh and disappointed to the ears. He expresses his
anguish as- With stretched arms to clutch the silence of my being? (7)

The poet is very much conscious of the diseased world and the
signs of such a world are close at his hand he depicts:

On a grieving pout of earth, footprints

Of diseased hollow-cheeked children

Rust-colored casuarinas cones frayed in the sun,

and the dim consciousness that everything (9)

Mahapatra expresses the landscape of Cuttack provides the signs

of starvation and poverty too. The government’s inability to breed is also
hinted at. But the people continue to live nostalgically further
remembering the tales of the age-old myths. The poet attempts to know
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the meaning of ‘Life Signs’ hidden in their lives. Though the world is
powerless one, now. He says:

Ashes cool in the dying fire, a breath of wind

flats up again from a past phosphorescence:
what cry is it of the dead that refuses to be quiet?
What shadows are these that pass through. (10)

Mahapatra realizes that he never restore the ‘Life Signs’ of his

father that freshly and in the courses of time. They are going to lose their
color and meaning. So there is going to be unpleasant separation between
son and father the poet describes:

How out hands return, the shadows

turn on us and ashes sit in a circle
with closed eyes. Bom, reborn,
a whisper of wind comes floating in,(10)

The poet is caught in the childhood memories in many times. He

tries to focus the Life Signs he has got from his father. He wants to escape
from his father’s belief.

Mahapatra’s collection Life Signs walks between senses of

acceptance the past and haunting evocation of the landscape. It is on
operation of the Indian society, its morals and social hate, done with
expertness and self translating, Mahapatra reaches his past memories as
he puts up:

What’s in my father’ house

is not mine. In his eyes,
dirty and heavy as rainwater
flowing into earth, is the ridicule”' (12)
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The poet’s painting of landscapes with all its decay and

deracination. Mahapatra becomes leading critic of local customs. He
attacks quite strongly on the ill-going social ways which have already lost
their value. The poet knows that prostitution is a great social evil. Here
he points out how love is degraded to debased nature to sex he comments
on wild nature of male sensuality. The dryness and futility of an
intercourse with a prostitute come alive in:

The wet road on his mind

Is blotched with the blood of neon

‘The plump whore he has just left

has brazenly gone to work on a new customer. (18)

Prostitution is a way of life for the ill fated women and they have
to stick up to it for-ever prostitution is the child of their suffering and they
have to nurse it, rely on it for their existence’s sake. There is little sense
which imprint on the minds of the readers, like the scene of rape of
fourteen year old girl by a priest’s son behind the temple. The lust doesn’t
end here.

Mahapatra introduces the famine which attacked Orissa in 1866.

His grandfather Chintamani Mahapatra embraced Christianity during the
time his grandfather which remained a dominant figure in many of
Mahapatra’s poems. He rightly says that:

turned it inside out?

What did faith matter?

What Hindu world so ancient and true for you to hold?

Nervously you dreamed toward the centre of your web. (19)
 54

The poet gives the picture of cows entering in a slaughter house, at

down, their feet slipping dim eyes, wet and glue face. Like other scenes
this picture also disturbs him through the nights. His personal observation
underlines hollowness of human nature based totally on utility value him.
This seems like the poet’s attempts to search himself. He describes:

There is a dawn waiting beside us, whose sign

Are a hundred -odd years away from you, Grandfather.

You are an invisible piece on a board

Whose move has made our children grow, to know. (20)

Mahapatra comments in his poetry about social evils. He always

feels loneliness and also belongs to cultural, historical and personal past.
When he recalls at his past he feels guilty, loneliness and alienation. He is
tried to one focuses a light on his past. It comes to the conclusion that
Mahapatra is a victim of biculturalism. A poem like ‘Total solar Eclipse’
illustrates how form and content authenticate each other in Mahapatra’s
poetry. The eclipse is seen as an awesome event that fills the landscape
with a primordial disquiet. He presents:

Quietly the moon’s dark well moves on,

against the stone pillars, the disturbed blood,

the dust, the pigments and embers, the clear ash,

against the lonely foetus of puri. (21)

The title of the poem the parenthesis that follow with the words,
‘Puri’ February 16, 1980 established the time and place of the central
event. The total solar eclipse of that day becomes the culmination of the
metaphor of the blind eye suggesting loss of vision. The people who
words Puri on that day are ‘afraid to reveal their bodies, peering here and
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like ‘hunted days’ even the morning sings are not pleasant one; they are
very painful, nasty and disgusting. In this poem surface of the opening
lines cracks to reveal an introspective reality the landscape becomes
dehumanized. Cobras, hyenas, vultures and sparrows take over and they
stand alert under a catastrophic stay. With the culminating figure of the
crocodile, these figures constitute the dark insides of the social psyche:

And cautiously the crocodile

Pushes its long snout the deep water

like the fearsome Brahmin priest in the temple

secure by shadowy layers of sleep. (22)

The poet reveals two streams of thoughts jointed together in the

poet’s attitude towards past and his country’s tradition. It has been
compare modem sensibility and tradition. He does not accept modem
sensibility of Christianity to the tradition he has gifted by his forefathers.
Mahapatra sees rational why his perception of Hindu culture is different
from that of a Hindu. The past to them meant only sacred events,
benevolent goods and goddesses an order of things kept in place by the
powers they worshipped. Their attitude to the ancient past and tradition
having a religious bias and bases on their strict observance of rites and
rituals could not have been detached and objective.

Mahapatra’s constantly reveals irony in his poetry everywhere.

The moral and social horrors pervading the life are depicted with a great
critical insight aiming the shafts irresponsible representatives of the
society as in:

along river banks splattered with excreta and dung

in the crowded market square among rotting tomatoes.
 56

fish scales and the moist warm odour of bananas and piss
young

whores, passing by the big breasted, hard eyed young

whores. (23)

The poet represents the social and political aspect in the poems. It
presents itself in variegated shades and colors. The poet observes
suffering and pain in the society around and studies the dehumanization
of man in it. He is again anxious about staying at Cuttack because he
feels that this place is not a fit place to live. He questions:

We gaze at each other in silence, the lost child and I;

Who knows who is playing a joke on whom?
What can drive me from these ocean sordid alleys?
Where I live? (26)

He accepts the fact that human beings are the victim of time. He
search that his life is stretched on the canvas of time.

A few scenes focus on the minds of the readers. One of most

important example the rape of fourteen year old girl by a priest’s son
behind the temple and the cruel rape of the same girl by four constables
further suggest the corrupting influences in the administrative set up and
define the competition in the country. The poet comments:

her father found her at the police station

assaulted over and over again by your policemen,

dripping of darkness and of scarlet death. (26)

The corrupt administrative set up and lawlessness figure in another

poem. It is a custom of this society to manage killers and rapists free. The
 57

poet rightly observes ‘The weary thump’ of my dead grandfather is a

dominant character in his poems. He has emphasized the voices of his
dead grandfather. The past memories present the conflict between the two
life forces, one of the grandfather and other of the young grand-son. As
like as there is having Wordsworthian quality about them all for example,
in ‘A country’ we have the picture of a familiar landscape. He depicts :

It’s the dust every where

the burden on my eyes: for they belong to Asia

where the air is burnt and incense and ask

pile up on their misty whites. (29)

The poem ‘A Country’ in this poem the poet reveals the bloody
horror and harsh realities around make a sensitive person aware of his
position and his being helpless in the face of such circumstances and so
here question is raised. He notices :

Here is my world, and it makes me dream as a child.

yet why do I wear myself out

feeling for the girls who die

before their breasts are swollen with milk? (29)

He is very worried about the degenerated moral values. He has

thousand of questions in his mind about the fruitfulness of such activities.

The changing identity of women haunts Mahapatra’s mind. He

says that there are knives in the hands of women but the connotation of
this is totally different from that when the brave women were fighting
against enemy to restore peace and welfare of people. The image of
historical women is quite changed now, Naxal girls are found today
 58

having knives in their hands to restore their own identity and interest. He
describes this some evil and horror attitude as:

Why am I hurt still by the look

in the hand of that graceful Naxal girl

who appeared out of now here that winter

holding a knife as old history? (29)

Mahapatra tries to the reader familiar to the fact that the women
are changing. The real image of brave women is lost somewhere. The
modem girls are using the knives for their selfishness.

Literature is the only medium to appreciate the life. What is

according to his life? All colors of life are found in the literature only.
Mahapatra’s poetry expresses:

I know that much

When all else has failed

The poem’s words are perhaps justified. (34)

Another major theme of Mahapatra4s poetry is human

relationship and these relationship centre round sexual love. Chiran
Kushreshtha is all praise for Mahapatra’s poetry and writes, ‘Mahapatra
often excels in love poems, especially those expressing, through the
accoutrements or rhetorical irony, the fragility as well as stasis of
interpersonal relationships .The stasis is never accounted for terms of
tangible commonplaces such as infidelity or incompatibility ;more often
it results from staleness that enters life through the systematic certainties
of familiarity and routine. It is best for example, in ‘’Lost” the speaker
observes:
 59

I watch your body ease off the seasons

Stretched out on the stone of my breath,

Going nowhere. (34)

He says, the heavenly pleasure one can get through literature only.
The words are come from life. According to him the life of people has
justified through literature only. Mahapatra is quite various from his
contemporary poets as like as treatment of love is ‘Ecstasy in love’ and
‘the imminent fear of being separated’. He depicted picture of love
however effect at the loss of love. The poet says :

Of that love, of that mile

Walked together in the rain

Only a weariness remains. (36)

The poet realized agony is social tendency. He finds out

everywhere the answers of many questions about love. But also he else’s
did not get answers. He is not only attack on others love. He lastly says
that his love has lost its dignity and become weak.

He becomes conscious about the Life Signs which sometimes he

given shaped his own life. In his Life Signs he is direct attack on various
customs of society and also mate of irony his most of life spent in
Cuttack, Orissa. He writes:

The same river, the same sun, the same town

Out of the comer of my eye

The barge loaded with golden day

Trapped like a leaf in a basin of water. (39)

Ilkr'■ ] • ! C *l-» ***

...... _Y, JCCL'HAPUR.

 60

It is poet explains regularly scene that the women keep engage

themselves in repairing and to find out to earn their livelihood. In the
society working class people to make hard work under the sun rays
Mahapatra conscious about various diseased in the world. He has so
much to say about the world of leaper’s diseases. So he is pity about
them. He describes agony:

the mangled lepers will shuffle along, going home

their helpless looks
drawing fantasies on the town square. (39)

Mahapatra depicted about the social illness. He feels that reality of

common men belong tragedy. It is most of reason to dirty politics and
meaningless politicians. The common people have no freedom because
highly politicized society. He reveals political thread everywhere. The
poet feels pity for the men. As like as pitiable sights make long lasting
impression in the minds of poet:

The tar smoke scatters unnoticed over the water.

I wonder where the day goes
Even in the bright sun
This was world I did now know (39)

In this poem the poet describes irony becomes another side of the
coin Mahapatra’s attempt to introspect is also an attempt to mock and
satirize his society. In Life Signs the poet concern by the issue of
suffering of women. He observes:

The sun flood the trees, the sweet sweat smell

Of women walking quietly by
with a market basket of bananas on her head. (43)
 61

The poet gives formal experience of the readers at every stage. It is

the poet expands such issues attacks on the hopeless economy of India
and so sucking their blood. All the people know that prostitution is a great
social evil. Hence he criticizes on wild nature of male sensuality.

Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the leading poets of Indian English

Poetry. In Life Signs he brings to ironical reactions to social evils his
poetry depicted the huge suffering of human being and also real picture of
human life. Mahapatra is also aware about moral conflict in
contemporary life. He represents his poetry is sharp cry at the vision of
life. The poet brings to noticed that the socio-political scene in Cuttack is
responsible to make the life signs colourless. Jayanta Mahapatra
presented various themes in terms of the element of landscape have the
weight of a reconciliation of the spirit and country, sub conscious with
the topographical and human aspects of the Orisan landscape.

In this poem many vices are depicted the life signs of life.
Mahapatra’s poems explore the continues relation of aspects of the
isolation, loneliness, solitude and alienation of the self from external
realities in the world without intension. This is the existential dilemma of
most modem literature. The following lines from Life Signs reveal the
existential dilemma:

No man points to the sky

Without being aware of the desire to live his

belly where the earth snakes sleeps. (Prasad 58)

Mahapatra also brought poetry nearer to the realities of life. He

vividly and realistically depicted the socio-political reality in modem
India. His poetry is not an escape from life but an escape into life. He
 62

chooses the metaphysical tone to express his sentiments with regard to

the physical and psychological features of his country.

In the context of Jayanta Mahapatra, Keki N. Daruwalla has

written his poems applying the same term landscape in various shapes
and shades. Therefore, the next chapter analyse and interpret the poem of
Keki N. Daruwalla and his treatment of landscape for the same.