Introduction

Poetry has been a cathartic means for me to purge myself of the various

imperfections of life

- Jayanta Mahapatra

Poetry is primarily concerned with human experiences. Poems are

made out of life; they belong to life, and exist for life. Poems are a kind of

revelations in which the poet expresses his willingness to come to terms with

himself as a human being and as a poet. Poems are records of experience to be

shared. Poets see, do, think or feel and they pass along their recorded

observations, actions, ideas and emotions to the readers. The prose writers

also do this, but the poets do this in a special way. The poetic form calls forth

emotional and intellectual responses in the fewest possible words.

Poets say a lot in little space. Poetry has the ability to communicate the

actual quality of experience with a subtlety and precision unapproachable by

any other means. The experiences which a poet expresses must have more

than a temporary or local interest; they must possess universality. Great

poetry is concerned with those feelings and thoughts which are innate and

unchanging in human nature. The poet has a keener eye and a keener

sensibility. The poet awakens the reader‟s sensibility and also quickens,

rouses and raises to dizzy heights of apprehension and leaves at last

becalmed, fulfilled and serene.

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Mahapatra‟s writing is a prized heritage of the humanity. He has

transcended the limitations of birth and place. It is not the poet‟s

responsibility to keep the world informed and advised to face the great

disaster and explained in terms of natural laws and immoral social practices

and irresponsible political decisions world - wide. One should not expect the

poet to write about these atrocities though the poet does not want to see them

all. But the immoral social practices and political aberrations around turn into

traumas which he cannot escape and which become the subject of his poems.

Whenever there are wrong happenings, the poet‟s conscience compels him to

write about it. The present study titled Individual and Social Reality in the

Select Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra is undertaken in order to analyse and

affirm whether or not the twin aspects of poetry, the inner and the outer forces

have influenced the proposed writer in the making of his poetic composition.

As the poet is an Indian the significance of Indian poetry in English needs to

be stated.

The Indo-Anglian poetry, the name assigned for the literature in India

written in English slowly sprang up as early as 1839. The Indo-Anglian

poetry, thus bloomed was dominated by poets, who were very much

influenced by the westernized culture-vultures. The growth and development

of Indo-Anglian poetry is one of tradition and experiment, imitation and

innovation. A tradition must have a beginning somewhere and continues

without end. Originally a great deal of Indian poetry had been imitative. But

during the course of time a drastic change has been observed in the realm of

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poetry. Indian poetry in English during the Post-Independence period

acquired its original voice and idiom in the true sense of the term.

Henry Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghosh and his contemporaries were

writers of the early 19th

century who wrote with the inspiration derived from

the English poets. Their poetry reflected those of their English models but to a

certain extent remained within the framework of the tradition of English

poetry. Though their poetry was very much imitative, they made an earnest

attempt to express the personality of India. Derozio‟s patriotic verses,

Madhusudhan Dutt‟s English verses on the ancient legends of India, Sarojini

Naidu‟s romantic poems of Indian scenes and sounds corroborate this idea.

These poets laid the foundation of Indian English verse with their exceptional

poetic gifts and individual talents.

People profess different views about the achievement of Indian English

poetry before and after independence. Critics like K.R.S. Iyengar,

V.K.Gokak, C.D.Narasimhaiah and some others laud the poetry of Sri

Aurobindo and his contemporaries like Sarojini Naidu. According to

V.K.Gokak, there are two categories of Indian poets in English before

Independence. They are neo-symbolists and neo-modernists. The neo-

symbolists dive deep into mysticism and the neo-modernists express

humanism. C.D.Narasimhaiah speaks about Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu in

his book The swan and the eagle as pioneers in the field of Indian English

poetry. Narasimhaiah eloquently praises Sri Aurobindo that he has made the

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English language accommodate certain hitherto unknown (inconsistent) areas

of experience both through his prose work, Life Divine and through his epic

Savitri not to speak of the numerous translations from Sanskrit poetry and

drama as well as his other less known but important works. But

R.Parthasarathy has expressed a view that Indian verse in English “did not

seriously begin to exist till after the withdrawal of the British from India”(3)

Critics like P.Lal and Adil Jussawalla along with R.Parthasarathy denounced

the poetry of Sri Aurobindo and his contemporaries. K.R.S.Iyengar in his

article entitled Indian Poetry in English Yesterday - Today and Tomorrow

severely criticises R.Parthasarathy, Keki N Daruwalla and Adil Jussawalla for

criticising Sri Aurobindo and earlier poets in English for invalid reasons.

Poetry of the Post-Independence era also never escaped the attacks of

certain skeptic critics. Beginning with Nissim Ezekiel, even the best of Post-

Independence poetry was criticised as poor imitations of Keats, Tennyson,

Hardy and Eiot. Bijay Kumar Das believes that serious Indian English poetry

came to be written not immediately after Independence but in the nineteen

sixties and after. He evaluates that Post Independence Indian English poetry

has proved increasingly robust, varied, responsive to the times and enjoyable.

It is now very rarely either consciously indebted or consciously hostile to

Anglo American novels. It has acquired a distinct character and has

discovered its own voice. The voice is discovered by the poet‟s genius for

intimately registering the idiom of his own world.

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Modernity influenced the recent Indian English poetry which marked a

break with the past. This has displayed itself in three identifiable

manifestations: the first is a past-oriented vision which is associated with a

sense of loss and hopelessness which is a sort of cultural pessimism, the

second-a future-oriented vision, that arouses a desire to transform the world,

the third is the attitude towards the present times, ahistorical, amoral, neutral,

stoic, ironic, ambivalent, absurdist. This type of expression falls under two

kinds. The first mode of expression is subjective in which the poet looks

inward, the second mode of expression is objective, where the poet looks

around, observing the reality that prevails around him. These may be termed

as “voyage within” and “voyage without” respectively. In the hands of Nissim

Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, AK Ramanujan R.Parthasarathy, Arun Kolatkar

and Kamala Das the Indian English poetry is acquiring new dimensions.

They have acclimatised the English language to an indigenous tradition

and have written effective poetry. Indian English poetry of the Post

Independence period is sincerely and profoundly felt and is addressed to the

whole community. The poems are records of the objective and thought -

provoking observations of reality around us. The Indian English poetry has

risen above the Victorian taboos and Indian poets have broken new ground.

There is a pervasive presence of a conscious Indianness which is different

from the imitative mediocrity of poetry in the Pre Independence period.

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Much of modern poetry speaks about contemporary life and society.

Poems of today are short and compact. They deal with various aspects of

common life. Delicate feelings and personal notes are handled deftly. Creative

work in poetry is a discovery of oneself at a particular moment which just

happens and it does not follow a particular programme. Poetry is discovered,

not invented. It is a free and natural blooming that takes place in a language

rather than a planed composition meant to be accommodated in a framework.

already existing. The poet creates a new form which helps him know himself,

see himself, and analyse himself. It is like self-creation and self-realisation,

which reveal the beauty of poetry that flows from the heart of the poet.

Poets like Jayanta Mahapatra, Pritish Nandy, Arvind Krishna Mehroka,

Keki Daruwalla picture the live and vital nature of earth and society and the

themes of their poems bring forth and present the important places of Orissa,

Rajasthan, West Bengal, Kashmir, and Uthar Pradesh and embody the value

of survival, self-reliance and renewal. Their poems seem to emphasise the

need for an immediate order that stands in contrast to the disorder and pain of

human existence. On the other hand poets like Kamala Das and Shiv

K.Kumar focus on a world which is personal and social.

English Poetry in India, today makes the English language more

malleable to change with ease and naturalness. The poets draw their themes,

with conscious efforts, out of the glorious ancient Indian culture. The collage

of concrete images derived from the multi-dimensional learning of science,

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economy, geography, philosophy, psychology, ethics, scriptures and so on

vindicates the realistic trends that pervade modern poetry. It is in this context,

the researcher feels that a study has to be undertaken on Jayanta Mahapatra

who has carved a niche for himself in Indian poetry in English by merging the

inward and outward modes of expression.

Jayanta Mahapatra was born on 22nd

October, 1928 in Cuttack, Orissa.

His father, Lamuel, was a sub-inspector of primary schools. He belongs to a

middle class Christian family. His grandfather, Chintamani, adopted

Christianity during the devastating famine in 1866 that shook Orissa which

drove him to the verge of death. He finally staggered into a mercy camp run

by the white missionaries in Cuttack. He was provided with food and shelter,

in return for which he was persuaded to adopt Christianity, to which

Chintamani yielded. Thus Jayanta Mahapatra was a Christian by inheritance

and upbringing though he imbibed much of Hindu culture.

As he was growing Mahapatra experienced the pull of both these

religions. He says in his autobiography:

As children we grew up between two worlds. The first was

home where we were subjected to a rigid Christian upbringing,

with rules my mother sternly imposed, the other was the vast

and dominant Hindu amphitheatre outside with preponderance

of rites and festivals which represented the way of life of our

own people. Two worlds then; and thinking I was at the centre

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of it all trying to communicate with both, and probably

becoming myself incommunicable as a result through the years.

(142)

Although Christian by birth, Mahapatra‟s creative self is primarily Hindu in

terms of myth, symbols, folklore and idiom. Though his grandfather became a

Christian he was totally a Hindu. Christianity is something Mahapatra learnt

at his mother‟s footsteps. There were evening prayers at home. He learnt to

revere Christ. But Hinduism is a part of him too. That is his inner self and his

inner self is totally Hindu.

Throughout his youth Mahapatra felt neglected and humiliated living

in a Hindu dominated society. Talking about his childhood in an interview,

Mahapatra says that he was the youngest in the class. His classmates being

physically stronger, he felt a sense of intimidation all the time. He used to sit

reading a book when they were playing around. He was subjected to much

bullying and ill-treatment while at school. Even today he says he would like

to remain in a corner and does not like to mingle with crowds and that is what

has made him sensitive to poetry. As a student at Patna University, Bihar, he

was afraid of being humiliated by his fellow students.

A sense of loneliness haunted Mahapatra always. He felt utterly lonely

on those first days at Patna. Besides the differences, he experienced a huge

cultural gap, he also realised painfully that he would have been subjected to

unnecessary ridicule from other students in those lodgings had they known

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that he was a Christian. This feeling of loneliness and sense of rejection

influence his poetry to a great extent.

Mahapatra felt a sense of insecurity during his childhood. He speaks

about his childhood, his house and his mother which were the causes of the

fear. His relationship with his mother was not so happy. He says, in his

autobiography

I have never been able to feel that affinity with mother

(Sudnasubala by name) as I have with my father. She was

erratic in her ways, and as I grew up, my conflict with her

increased… I was flushed with a constant tension. I didn‟t know

what was important to me anymore… I slipped into dream. I

kept more and more to myself. Mother did not appear to have

any trust in me. (139-40)

But Mahapatra‟s relationship with his father was a friendly and lasting one.

Mahapatra was appointed a lecturer in physics in Ravenshaw College,

Cuttack. Jayanta Mahapatra was a trained physicist. He was interested in

photography and short fiction and finally started writing poetry. Mahapatra

wrote poems in English, not in his mother tongue Oriya. Mahapatra expresses

the reasons,

I am in love with English. And then, my schooling was in

English - and I learnt my language from British school masters

and mainly from English novels; H. Rider Haggard and Edgar

Rice Burroughs and Ballantyne from whom I caught the first

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delight of words graphic with meaning. Further I feel I can

express myself better in English than in Oriya

(qtd in Raghavan, 59)

Mahapatra started writing poetry after he became forty years old. He

brought out his first volume of poems at the age of forty three. He started

writing and using English rather late in life and all those years had been spent

reading books in the English language, mostly fiction. His first poem

appeared in his fortieth year after he had developed a considerable feeling for

the language. We come to know by his poems that Mahapatra has proved his

excellence in the genre of poetry while his autobiography shows him as a

profuse prose writer. The poet has successfully published many volumes of

poetry from the year 1971 till now. His first book of verse, Close the Sky, Ten

by Ten was published in 1971 after his forties. But his other volumes followed

in quick succession. It includes Svayamvara and Other Poems in 1971. It

deals with the theme of love and the magnificence it renders to the lovers. The

poems celebrate not only passion, but consistently evoke a melancholic

atmosphere rent with absences, fears and sufferings.

The next volume of verse is A Fathers Hours (1976). In the same year,

yet another volume appeared, A Rain of Rites (1976). There had been a

succession of several volumes rapidly. They include Waiting (1979), The

False Start (1980) and Relationship (1980). The long narrative poem,

Relationship is set in Orissa and it embodies the myth and the history of the

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land. Mahapatra published series of verse collection in succession. Life Signs

(1982), Dispossessed Nests (1988), Temple (1989) and A Whiteness of Bone

(1992) were published to the delight of poetry loving public. Mahapatra

published his first collection of short stories The Green Gardener in 1995. He

has considerable reputation as a short story writer and the stories in this

collection have been published in various journals previously. It is discerned

that his training as a scientist has enabled him to use the language vividly and

precisely in prose and verse creations. Succeeding this there came out two

volumes of verses namely Shadow Space (1997) and Bare Face (2001). The

more recent volume of his poetry Random Descent appeared in the year 2005,

which is a distinct testimony of poetic vision, impassioned by its depth of

feeling and poignancy of expression. In 2013 Mahapatra has brought out a

volume of poems entitled Land. Lakshmi Kannan says: “These poems evoke

an answering ache and a shock of recognition in a reader” (5).

The dark recesses of the poet‟s mind embody themselves in

Mahapatra‟s poetry, for which the poet profusely uses private symbols and

images and deviates from the regular syntax in order to add profoundity to his

poems. Mahapatra himself has admitted on several occasions that he has

attempted to mould the English language to his „private needs‟. Some of his

critics comment that his poetry is written not in quite standard English, but it

is fascinating and moving. To the question of Sachidananada Mohanty about

the elements of mysticism in his poetry, Mahapatra replies: “I am fascinated

by the unknown in the external universe and that is why physics appealed to

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me… so I suppose I am a believer in that sense”. The element of subjectivity

is noticed in the poems of Mahapatra in which the poet makes an inward

journey and relates himself with his milieu and his native surroundings. There

is novelty and delicacy in how Mahapatra blends subjectivity with the native

landscape. In this way Mahapatra‟s poetry is extraordinary and outstanding.

Anxiety, inadequacies, unhappiness and such things could lead one to

writing. Perhaps the poet is talking to himself as he writes. One cannot do

away with the element of struggle in the making of a poem or in the process

of scientific research. The scientific training of the poet has taught him a kind

of discipline which he has used effectively in the making of the poem. Poetry

is a kind of science, a science of the heart‟s affections. On the other hand,

science is also poetry, but poetry of the mind. The poet expresses that he uses

his intellect for science but when he writes poetry, his heart runs ahead of his

intellect.

Mahapatra says that he never wanted to be a poet, because he never

read any poetry. He was initially interested in fiction. He had not ever thought

of reading Tagore or Eliot or Neruda. They never mattered to him at all. But

he was into poems. He was looking around the world and into himself. When

he started writing poetry, he thought he was the center of the universe, but he

was absolutely wrong. His early poems were exercises in a way, written

mainly to please himself. These poems were fused in themselves and they

appeared to be abstract. His mind was more to him than his heart which is not

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right when it comes to poetry. The poet did not see favourable response from

the critics initially. Hence he began reading contemporary poetry mainly, the

European and Latin American poets whom he considered to be the great ones.

He realised that he should write simple understandable poems in order to cater

to the readers and critics which he found to be difficult. The English language

which he was very familiar with and his own reading over forty years were of

great help to him in writing poetry.

When Mahapatra began writing poems he spoke about himself and the

people around him. It was his pain, his love, his relationship which mattered.

It took time to see things, feel them; it took time to bring out in his poetry the

myths that shaped him, from the chaos of history and tradition that always

energised his land, Orissa. He had been aware of all this very much but to

incorporate them into his poetry and make them contribute to the power of his

poetry were not easy for Mahapatra. The poet had not read much poetry and

did not know how to write. There was nobody to help him. He found writing

all by himself in his small town very difficult. But he persisted and continued

writing. Some poems were satisfactory to the poet but many were not. He did

not give up. He wrote a number of poems which he had not revised or

rewritten or sent for publication.

All these poems are rooted in the land where he lives and chooses to

live. It is strange that the poet is able to write when he is in Orissa, nowhere

else. Poets like AK.Ramanujan, R.Parthasarathy, Meena Alexander stayed

14

behind in the USA; even Dilip Chitre was there for several years. But the

affluence of the West never tempted or hypnotised Mahapatra. He seems to be

happy when he touches the shoulder of his rickshaw puller or his dentist -

friend. Only these things matter to him. He wants to be believed and the

honesty of his poems should also be believed. He does not feel comfortable

sitting in a glass house and talk about the plight of the people in Kandhamal;

the poet wants to be there and see and touch them. After visiting the remote

villages in Thuamulmampur in Kalahandi and Barakamura in Mayurbhanj, he

realises that the opulence in which he lives tortures his waking hours.

From this point Mahapatr‟s poetry has taken a turn that he has started

writing poems from the experiences he had. So long he had been writing

about himself and his Orissa, but now he feels a sense of despair in what he

sees around him. He is not able to sleep when he thinks about his fellow men

living in remote villages, who are starving, are inadequately clad and are

without a roof over there head. Besides this the poet also notices the new

violence that is prevalent everywhere around. The poet unburdens that pain he

is experiencing, through writing poems.

Though the poet has a strong social commitment, he is not a social

person. But this kind of immune set back has made things a little worse. He

always prefers to sit thirteen rows behind when he is at a meeting, and can

only answer the questions which others might put to him. However he tries to

participate in many poetry readings. He was at Delhi on 8th

May 2011 reading

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his poems on the occasion of the 150th

anniversary of Rabindaranath Tagore.

He always has the urge to express his thoughts. He says that he feels the need

to write because the new violence bothers him though he feels safe within the

confines of home.

Mahapatra‟s Relationship brought him the prestigious 1981 Central

Sahitya Academy Award in India. He also won the Gangadhar Tiher National

Award for poetry (1995) and Vaikom Mohammed Basheer Award (1997) All

this fame and critical acclaim won by Mahapatra are not an accidental one, for

he has emerged from a literary tradition that has deep root in the soil.

When the poet won an award for the first time, he felt extremely happy

and felt that he had to write more and write better. He wrote poems and sent

them out to very prestigious journals in USA, UK, Canada and Australia.

Awards and honours kept coming in. He sent a manuscript of poems to the

University of Georgia Press, USA. It was a winning manuscript which was

later published in 1996 under the title A Rain of Rites in which all the poems

dealt with Orissa, his land. Twice in his writing career, once in the USA,

when he was reading his poems to an international gathering, a girl who was a

Brazilian simply wept and left the hall hurriedly. Then again at the

international ACALS conference in Hyderabad, the same thing happened

when a Canadian poet rushed out of the hall with tears in her eyes as he was

reading his poems. These two separate incidents made him feel in a way he

never experienced before. There was both delight and despair, and the poet

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considers these two moments to hold more weight than any awards he had got

for poetry. The poignancy hit him still, it came out of the words he used in his

poems, and that was more than enough. But the awards do not mean much to

the poet. As a matter of fact, they do not affect him at all, Not even the

Padmashree award. The poet says whatever he has done in the field of poetry

he has done himself without taking anyone‟s help.

In the early stages of Mahapatra‟s poetic career, the poet has made

copious references to his childhood experiences as well as the fairy tales of

Oriya, the myths, legends and the great Indian epics. In his poetry, the readers

come across the well-knit family life, the rites and rituals associated with

cyclic agricultural seasons and the rich tradition of arts and crafts of Indian

life. As Mahapatra sets forth to find out the relationship of his innerself with

his locale, he gradually becomes aware of self identity. The poems in the first

few volumes represent the feeling of hurt and silence, the temporality and

falseness of the world. CB cox, in his review of The False Start observes

that, Mahapatra‟s poetry “reflects a form of quietism, a sense of inevitability

which is peculiarly Indian… In poems like these the process of creating a

proper unity, a truly Indian English, takes a significant step ahead”(478).

Mahapatra speaks in an essay titled “The Door” that the door “served both as

a refuge from the terrors of the outside world which mutely went on to lock

me in, offering me no escape. It became both a heaven and a prison and my

mind positioned itself both inside out… There is always something very final,

very secretive about door” (1991:191). In the early stages of Mahapatra‟s

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poetic career he makes a “journey within” and presents the realities

experienced by his individual self.

During the course of evolution of Mahapatra‟s poetic career it is

observed that in the mid nineteen eighties there was a shift in location from

Orissa to Punjab and Bhopal. The volume titled Dispossessed Nests contains

poems that speak about the Khalistan issue and the Bhopal gas tragedy that

resulted in innumerable deaths, disfigurement and mutilation. In Temple

(1989) the poet sublimates death. Life is elevated even in its most miserable

condition. Mahapatra highlights women as the subject of endless human

sufferings and points out possible redemption. The poet illustrates this by

means of many myths. In A Whiteness of Bone (1992) the poet raises the

theme of his poem to the level of National importance. He speaks effectively

on Mahatma Gandhi, his principles and his sacrifice. In later volumes like

Shadow Space (1997), Bare Face (2000) and Random Descent (2005)

Mahapatra speaks about contemporary problems, the suffering of women, the

burning of the Australian missionary and his two sons. The slim volume titled

Land 2013 has poems in which social themes are recurrent. The poet‟s heart

simply refuses to accept heart-rending happenings with a taken-for-granted

attitude. Thus as the poet matured in his career he started looking around his

own self. He makes a “journey without” that drives him to the present the

social realities. Every human being should account for something good in

between birth and death and the artist or the creative person should throw

light on those areas of moral or social diseases and defects so that the

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individual would be able to address those issues. The study aims at this. The

difference between Mahapatra and most of his contemporaries are: his lower

middle class family background, commitment to poetry at the age of forty,

many volumes of his poems despite his physical ailment, the first one in

Indian English poetry to grab Sahithya Academy Award, publication of his

poems in reputed journals of the world, a man of science but with great fervor

and vivacity for poetry and his unique poetic images. All these factors

differentiate him from the rest of the twentieth century poets. Mahapatra‟s

profoundity, prolification and poignancy of expressions distinguish him from

other Indo Anglian poets.

The present study is divided into five chapters devoting the first and

the last chapters to introduction and conclusion respectively. The

methodology of the study consists of psychological, sociological, archetypal,

historical, political, cultural and feministic perspectives. The study of select

poems has been presented in the core chapters under the titles „The Inner

World‟, „Response to Reality‟ and „Poetic Devices‟ respectively. At the

beginning of each of the three main chapters, the chosen concept has been

explained in general, followed by a thorough investigation of the poet‟s select

poems to exemplify the concept.

The Introduction defines and states generally about poetry and poets. A

poem is born out of the experience of the poet. It reveals the thoughts that

haunt and illumine the poet and present them in the limelight. Poems cleanse

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the poet‟s heart of its pains and purge his tormented soul. Mahapatra

successfully portrays the tradition of India in an alien language. Having taken

English as a medium of instruction from the primary classes of school, he has

found writing in English rather more comfortable than writing in Oriya his

mother tongue. It has been observed by many, that Indian writers in English

of the nineteen sixties have been freed from the tensions of global anxiety and

have become more conscious of personal experience and requirements of

poetic craftsmanship.

Poets like Nissim Ezekiel, Shiv. K.Kumar, R.Parthasarathy, Kamala

Das, Keki Daruwalla and Jayanta Mahapatra published a number of

collections of poems during this time. Mahaptra‟s poems are regarded as the

most sustained, rigorous and carefully defined exploration of the land, people

and lifestyle of India. The evolution of Mahapatra‟s poetry in his „voyage

within‟ and „voyage without‟ shows a gradual and progressive growth and

development leading to a higher degree of achievement.

In the core chapter titled „The Inner World‟, the researcher has taken

for analysis some poems which present the poet‟s „voyage within‟. In many

poems the poet turns inward, recalls his boyhood experience with his mother

and father and thus establishes a link with the past. His grandfather and his

conversion to Christianity are recurrent theme in Mahapatra‟s poetry. Many

of his poems reveal his consciousness of the heroic tradition of the land of his

birth which kindles a sense of belonging that relates him to the important

20

places of Orissa. There prevails a conflict between the poet now being a

Christian due to his grandfather‟s conversion to Christianity and the racial

Hindu consciousness that is still awake in him.

The poet in many poems poignantly speaks about his relationship with

his father and mother. Landscape which was his childhood haunt plays a

pivotal role in Mahapatra‟s personal poems. The poet always associated

himself with the past which enables him to portray his inner reality. He

searches his own self in order to understand the world in its proper

perspective. The poet, being firmly rooted in Orissan soil, the legends, history

and the myth associated with Orissa, makes them an integral part of his

poetry. The search for roots is the trend in modern Indian poetry. Mahapatra

searches for his roots in the volume Relationship which fetched him the

central Sahitya Akademi Award. This poem embodies the myth and history of

Orissa. The poet acknowledges his indebtedness to Orissa where his roots lie.

The poet‟s attachment to his birth place is very strong which is the outcome of

his quest for identity and roots. The poet, in the poems where he looks inward

describes his encounters with all the significant aspects of his private life and

relatedness to his native land.

The second core chapter titled “Response to Reality” records the

researcher‟s observations, after a very close reading of the select poems of

Mahapatra and how the poet looks at broad issues of national history through

the experience of personal life. This chapter also deals with the poet‟s concern

21

over certain political and social issues and his obligations as a member of the

civil society. The poet‟s engagement with the social issues is a means of

exercising his citizenship in the modern world. Emperor Asoka has found an

indelible and honourable place in history for the edicts he carved on rocks and

for the message of peace he sent throughout the world. But according to

Mahapatra the memory of the brutality that preceded his transformation is

overwhelming and that cannot be erased from the images of our land.

Mahapatra views history from the angle of a humanitarian and finds fault with

the political dynamics of power mongers.

Similarly, the first and third sections of Relationship reveal the burden

of Mahapatra‟s racial memory. In two other poems the poet records his

observation after visiting the forts of Shivaji and Tippu Sultan which are now

reduced to ruins. The poet feels heavy at heart that nothing is left behind to

speak of these times or the courage of Shivaji who fought for the cause of

justice against the invader. In “Of Independence Day” (A Whiteness of Bone)

the poet affirms his stand point that the horror we witness in the present is

worse than any episode in our colonical or medieval history. In most of his

poems Mahaptra tries to point out that the reality we experience today show

that the quality of people has not changed and history relentlessly seems to

repeat itself. The enemy of the past came from outside the country, now the

extortionists come from within the country in the form of the country‟s

inefficient political and administrative system.

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Mahapatra has devoted several poems to Mahatma Gandhi. He

expresses his wonder in one such poem that, if Gandhi had lived would he

have had the strength to witness the abusive happenings that take place in the

Post-Independent India. The only time when people lived in real peace is the

sixth century BC when Buddha lived and preached his message of peace and

equality. The poet writes about it in the fifteenth section of “Requiem”. But

Gandhi now is dead and Buddhism too disappeared as did peace and non-

violence. The poet‟s heart is full of empathy for the topography and the

people of Orissa. The dirt and filth found everywhere around the cities of Puri

and Cuttack pain the heart of the poet. The plight of women and children, the

victimised weaklings, become the subject of many of his poems. One of his

poems speaks about how a fisherman subjects his daughter to prostitution due

to poverty. As Mahapatra attains maturity in poetic career, his themes

transcend his local obsession and native cultural preoccupation. The poet

expresses the agony he experiences over the Bhopal Gas tragedy, Khalistan

issue, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and so on in various poems which

would be discussed in the core chapters.

Mahapatra has now ascertained that the poet is much remembered not

on account of his adherence to subjective experiences but on account of his

ability to transfer the immediate present into moments with a hopeful note

that „though much is taken, much abides” and the art of poetry encourages us

to feel that the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.

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Poems like “A Missing Person”, “Hunger”, “The whorehouse in a

Calcutta Steet”, 30th

January 1982: A story” and “The Twenty fifth

Anniversary of a Republic: 1975” link the individual‟s social commitment to

social reality. They express the poet‟s conflicting concerns over the modern

life. Mahapatra depicts the predicament of human life. He dwells on hunger,

violence and terrorism. The poet identifies himself with the complex

problems of the society as a humanist. He judges social and political issues

with a humanist‟s eye.

The first and the second core chapters titled “Inner World” and

“Response to Reality” respectively would deal with the content of the select

poems. The socio-psychological factors of a male-dominated world, Orissa in

this context, have never accepted the fact that a woman is man‟s counterpart.

Every woman does have a “bruised presence” (Prasad 68) as she is not

considered as a human being. In every orthodox society a woman finds it

difficult to have her socio-cultural identity. Mahapatra revolts against women

being treated as an object of sexual gratification.

He also focuses on the agonies of prostitutes who suffer in their

everyday life while facing the pseudo cultured society. He wants those

prostitutes to be accepted as a part of the civic society because prostitutes

have been treated as ostracised individuals. The poet in his poem “The

whorehouse in a Calcutta Street” raises a cry for their social space and

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recognition though those women take their plight as granted. Mahapatra

speaks in favour of such helpless women.

His themes range from sex to nature from religion to superstition, from

the metaphysical to the physical, from the personal to the impersonal. In all

his poems, whatever the themes may be, there seems to be a meditative and

reflective quality. The authenticity and the universality of the poem “Hunger”

come from the very fact that it presents a down-to-earth world out of the

imagined one. It shows a severe indictment of a social reality where hunger

for food forces one to subjugate oneself to another‟s hunger for carnal

pleasures.

The evil of prostitution finds a space in Mahapatra‟s poetry.

Prostitution occurs on account of social injustice and economic disparity.

Shiv. K. Kumar, Pratish Nandy and Kamaladas have treated love and sex in

their poems. But Mahapatra never arouses ignoble instincts while he talks

about love and sex. He is rather delicate, but obviously unsentimental and

realistic. He is restrained in his expressions.

The poetic technique which contributes to the excellence of poetry

enriches the meaning of the poem. The third core chapter under the caption

“Poetic Devices” would explicate the nuances of poetic techniques adopted by

the poet. Jayanta Mahapatra says that “the capacity or power of conducting

the essential experience of the poem will primarily depend upon the poem

itself-on the poem‟s design”(10). Hence, it becomes essential for the

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researcher to devote a chapter exclusively to the poetic techniques the poet

has adopted in his poems. Jayanta Mahapatra‟s poems abound in symbols,

imagery and allusions to encompass the human condition. Mahapatra seems

to have been influenced by the imagist movement especially by Eliot and Ezra

Pound. The poet, being rooted in the traditions of Orissa, introduces so many

religious images and symbols in his poems. Rain is used as a symbol of

wisdom and innocence. His images are subtle, controlled, apt and moving,

strengthening the significance of the meaning of the poem.

In his Relationship, the long poem, there are shadows of W.B. Yeats

and T.S.Eliot. The images, phantom darkness, half light of rain, resemble

Eliot‟s imagery in “The Hollowmen” and that of Yeats in “Sailing to

Byzantium”. Mahapatra is also influenced by Whitman‟s imagery. Most of

Mahapatra‟s symbols are personal symbols used for specific purposes. The

imagery and thought content are proportionately integrated. Like most of the

Indian English poets, Mahapatra writes in free verse and avoids the rigorous

metrical verse. He presents irregular stanzas in elliptical style with no

rhyming scheme. The tone is equivalent to colloquial and conversational.

Mahapatra tries to evoke the Indian tradition without sentimentalising the

past. There is a detatchment in the way Mahapatra views the world and

comprehends the reality which results in total objectivity in presentation.

The last chapter is the summing up of all the observations of the

researcher on Mahapatra‟s poetry. Mahapatra is a very talented Indian English

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poet of our time who has inspired a number of budding poets and has

provoked the curiosity of many poetic critics. Mahapatra‟s vision and

obsessive search for meaning in the human condition of the present days is

characteristic of postmodern writing. Cuttack, a city of historical importance

which had the great Barabati Fort is now a symbol of broken empires and

vanquished dynasties. In Relationship, the poet speaks about the Kalinga war

that transformed Emperor Asoka the great. Mahapatra never takes pride in the

glories of the past. He rather contrasts it with the deplorable present day

conditions. His poetry deconstructs the pride over the glorious past by

presenting it in juxtaposition with the gruesome and grim reality of the

present. Mahapatra speaks in his poetry about the materialistic, poverty-

stricken, violence-infested, self-centered, gas-polluting, power-craving, and

women-abusing society of today.

Mahapatra who refuses to romanticise a questionable mundane reality

through his nerve-wrecking poetry about men and manners, has created an

awareness that one should take socially productive efforts to set right the

head-over-heels world so that lasting progress and peace would become

possible. The study under the title Individual and Social Reality in the Select

Poems of Jayanta Mahapatra is meant to awaken human sensibility which in

turn would attempt to cleanse the world of the wrongs that are being

committed. Mahapatra‟s invocation to moral and social consciousness could

be compared with other socially committed writers of all nations.

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The poet as a single man cannot recreate the society by his poetic

composition. Being more sensitive than other men he can only sense the

impending predicament. The poet, through his complex poetic medium,

cautions the people as a prophet that all is not right with the world. Poetry can

at times be useful in providing answers or responses to questions which the

self asks. Poetry is a meeting place of the inward and the outward. It can be

extremely intimate too, and the thoughts, when they come into a poem do not

want to be alone in them. Whether these provide an answer is difficult to say

but the urge to confess, and unburden oneself can tie the poet‟s impulses to

the community and contribute to a sharing of human voice. The present study

is a humble attempt to examine how poetry serves Mahapatra as a launching

pad to express his self through which he is able to see a wider world around of

which he is only a speck.