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Inner World

Life itself is reminiscence, and poetry, therefore, is reminiscence of

many painful events that one would not like to relive

- Mahapatra

Quite a few of Jayanta Mahapatra‟s poems have recorded his private

history where the poet makes an inward journey and establishes his link with

the past. He resembles in this aspect, three outstanding contemporary Indian

English poets namely, A.K.Ramanujan, R.Parthasarathy and Kamala Das. As

her grandmother was for Kamala Das, Jayanta Mahapatra‟s grandfather

dominates as an important personality of the poet‟s childhood memories.

The man who is born into a particular socio cultural milieu inherits

quite unconsciously through and often without efforts, the accumulated

wisdom of earlier generations in the form of traditions, legends and myths.

Myths are the potent embodiments of man‟s dreams and aspirations which

provide him with ideals and help him set his goals in a hostile world that

constantly threatens man‟s existence. Man‟s life energies are spent in the

struggle for survival and the myths only provide him fresh impetus to face

and tackle new obstacles. For Mahapatra it is myths, rites and rituals that bind

people together into an identifiable whole, as a community. They form a vital

part of the socio historical background of Orissa. Human psyche acquires its

form out of the influence of the past experiences. The inner self of Jayanta

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Mahapatra has been woven with his childhood. When the roots in the past are

confirmed the poems naturally grow out them. His poems reveal the poet‟s

strong attachment with his childhood experiences as much as with the Oriya

fairy tales, myths and legends and the great Indian epics.

The sense of insecurity Mahapatra felt during his childhood was the

drive that resulted in the composition of poetry. His poems evoke melancholy

notes and childhood memories occupy a considerable space in his poetry. His

commitment to and identification with Orissa becomes a reiterated theme in

most of his poems. Jayanta Mahapatra recalls his childhood, his house and his

mother that instilled fear in him. His relationship with his mother during

childhood was not so happy. He says, in his autobiography

I have never been able to feel that affinity with my mother as I

have with my father. She was erratic in her ways, and as I grew

up my conflict with her increased… I slipped into dream. I kept

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

trust in me (139-140).

Though Mahapatra did not feel comfortable with his mother, his relationship

with his father was a lasting and friendly one.

The poet‟s recollection of the house where his family lived during his

childhood explains the unpredictable temper of his mother.

The house of my childhood turned into a strange intense

memory in later years. This was the one father built, into which

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we moved when I was nearly six. Father had left for the interior

province, and we lived by ourselves alone. The nights were

uncertain, and I recollect barring the front and back doors

without fail before the onset of darkness every evening. ... my

mother, physically ill with the passage of time, moving back

and forth in the restless darkness, my younger brother at his

heels. (139-140)

His mother heading the family, in her husband‟s absence was

overwhelmed with sense of responsibility. She often turned irritable due to

anxiety and sense of insecurity, ranting all the time. In spite of the rift

between the son and the mother the poet does not fail to project the softer

facet of his mother. The warmth of the poet‟s affection towards his mother

could be observed when we read the poet‟s recollection of his mother‟s

reaction when he cut his chin. His mother on seeing this became worried and

pressed sugar against the wound to check the bleeding as a domestic first aid

treatment. In the poem titled “Orissa Landscape” the poet recollects this

incident. The poet felt the ooze of love in his mother as soon as she saw the

ooze of blood from his chin.

The poet recollects the memory of the suffering of his mother due to

aging and sickness. This becomes a silent part of his life. He continues in

“Afternoon Ceremonies” (A Whiteness of Bone)

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In this room of mine,

last year‟s calendar hangs uselessly in the wall.

In my mother‟s eyes pain begin to stir again

like a venerable old gentleman

who has returned from afar (22-26)

In another poem Mahapatra records the picture of his old mother who

does not seem to have reaped any fruit out of life. The lines of the poem

“December” speaks, (A Whiteness of Bone)

The old woman

with grey hair and coarse wrinkled hands

Whom I call mother looks vacantly into her

tea cup, thinks she has been betrayed. (11-14)

This reflects the patriarchal set up in which a woman feels helpless

after her husband‟s demise. This particular incident stands for the universal

experience of women for these lines portray the plight of innumerable

mothers in our country, dependent and helpless during old age after a long

active period of labour and sacrifice for the sake of their respective families.

He recalls the appearance of his widowed mother in his poem “The

Dispossessed” (A Whiteness of Bone)

But what I realize is that

before, I reach the door

it would have all turned white

Mother stands by the door

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still wearing her clothes of mourning

I don‟t remember what father‟s

death was like. (20-25)

The poet remembers the flash of emotions of the whispers of loneliness

that surround him. His heart becomes heavy at the sight of his mother now,

changed in appearance. The poet feels the pain of his father‟s death in another

way. His contemporary poet, R.Parthasarathy, in his poem “Obituary”

presents a similar situation in his family and the changed appearance of his

mother after his father‟s death.

Mahapatra very often recollects his strong emotional attachment and

friendly relationship with his father. He imprints his high respect for his father

of his father as, he recollects in one of his poems the memories of his father

who is a teetotaler and vegetarian and took baths twice a day, one at dawn,

the other before his evening obeisance to Lord Shiva at the temple.

It is appropriate at this point to refer to what Mahapatra wrote in an

autobiographical and reflective essay:

My father worked as a Sub-Inspector of primary schools and his

earnings were comparatively meager. Father‟s work kept him

away from home. It would be right to say, however, that there

was a strong and warm bond between us that lasted right until

his death. That was a little more than two years ago. Perhaps as

emotional involvements usually are, something in the way a

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father reaches for his son‟s hand, with a vague longing that life

should last forever, I remember that web of force, the silence of

which we are a recognizable part. These times protected me

with courage. (138)

We understand that it is warmth and reassurance the children receive from

parents especially during childhood that strengthen their psyche and help the

emotional substance till the end of their lives.

The poet realizes that it is absolutely impossible to detach himself from

the memories of his father. He gains his identity from his family history

flowing through the time as the slow flow of the river across the Sal and

Deodar jungle of the ancestral past. As moving across the banks of the river

he understands that his existence would have gathered no meaning without

the blessings of his father and forefathers.

In another poem, the title of which is “The Hour Before Dawn” the

poet expresses and records his concern for his ailing father. The poet is filled

with apprehensions about his father‟s death. The poem expresses a sense of

pathos.

My father, sad-faced father (How very far you are)

from this empty room filled only with myself

without a sound the dark tree out there

struggles with its death in my life.

The silent world floats besides me;

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tomorrow may be I‟ll hear my father is dead

but he might bear the face of my son.

The poem bears in itself a great significance that it embodies the Hindu

faith that parents are born to their children as their children, which Mahapatra

shares with other Indians. In several of his poems the poet expresses the

memories of his dying father. There is no escape from the past, pain or from

death.

The poem reveals the strongly established bond between himself and

his father. There is a sense of despair over his inability to prevent the ailment

and resulting death. Ultimately what remains is a passing sense of shadow

that is kindled by memory every now and then. It appears that his father, even

on the verge of death, wants to share the burden of sufferings of his son and

relieve him from all difficulties of life.

In his youth Jayanta Mahapatra experienced the pull of two religions

about which he says:

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 I thinking I was at the centre

of it all trying to communicate with both, and probably

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becoming myself incommunicable as a result through the years.

(142)

Mahapatra himself has stated the reason of this change of religion by

his grandfather and its impact on him. When his grandfather was on the verge

of death, he finally staggered into the mercy camp run by the white

missionaries in Cuttack. They gave him food and shelter in return for which

he embraced Christianity. The poet was forcibly made a Christian and he had

a Christian upbringing but he has been a Hindu through and through. He

admits that there are tensions. Part of him wants to merge into the ancient

Hindu culture. Such tensions urge him to write poetry. He cannot do anything

else.

The sense of agony and disgust provoke the poet that he directs a

volley of questions towards his grandfather, only to regret it in the end. He

understands that the past comes alive to remind him of the misfortune that

befell on our people to choose the path they did. When Mahapatra grew and

acquired maturity he understood the compelling situation of his grandfather

and also the advantages he enjoyed, his education at a missionary school and

so on. The poet appears to have changed in his attitude to religion. But the

agony abides in him that the poet asks in “Grandfather” (Life Signs)

What did faith matter?

What Hindu World so ancient and true for you to hold? (24-25)

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The grandfather was not financially well off and the whole family was

forced to experience an inexplicable financial crunch which was solely

responsible for the members to sell their religious faith to another religion

which promised them food, security and education. Mahapatra‟s poems make

us aware of the prevalence of proselytism which is against the spirit of Indian

constitution. India is a secular nation but either in the name of religious

fervour or poverty, people and their individual faith get trapped. Mahapatra‟s

grandfather is an example. However, the son, Jayantha Mapahatra comes to

terms with social reality which says that one cannot talk about religion to a

hungry man.

The poet analyses the consequences of that great famine and feels the

pricks of the conscience. The poet understands that it is no use to hold our

ancestors responsible for the change of faith and regrets. Poverty and

starvation drove his grandfather to accept a new religion. He says that

We wish to know you more,

We wish we know what it is to be, against dying,

to know the dignity ... (38-40)

The poet rediscovers his grandfather and realises the misery his

grandfather had experienced when the terrible famine struck the society. The

yellowed pages of diary reveal to him the truth about his grandfather‟s

conversion to a different religion. The poet reveals this in his poem

“Grandfather” (Life Signs) This is at once an experience of joy and sorrow,

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joy because the poet could hold it clearly because the grandfather is no more

and absent for ever.

The yellowed diary‟s notes whisper in vernacular.

The sound the forgotten posture,

the cramped cry that forces me to hear that voice.

Now I stumble in your block-paged wake (1-4)

The poet regrets in the absence of his grandfather, that he should have

known him more closely and intimately. He expresses his deep sentiments

thus:

A conscience of years is between us. He is young

The whirls of glory are breaking down for him before me

Does he think of the past, as a loss we had lived, out own?

Out of silence we look back now at what we do not know.

There is a dawn waiting beside us, whose signs

are hundred odd years away from you, Grandfather. (29-34)

The above lines echo the thought content of Shelley in his poem “To a

Skylark” where the poet expresses that,

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not.

Our sincerest laughter

with some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts

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Similarly to Shelley who describes the predicament of human life

which is filled with anxiety and fear, Mahapatra states that in his childhood

days he was caught up between two major religions, Christianity (the religion

at home) and Hinduism (everywhere outside home). His mother‟s compulsion

to follow and practise the rigid regulations of Christianity and the secondary

treatment he experienced being a Christian in his college among many Hindu

fellow students made him frustrated and as a result he avoided employing

Christian themes and images in his poetry. The Hindu ancestry and Hindu

racial sensibility seems to be dominant in the poet‟s personality. The

influence of two religions makes him grow up in two worlds.

From the poems of Mahapatra we find that the poet is very firmly

rooted in the soil of Orissa. There is a quadrangle landscape formed by Puri,

Konark, Cuttack and Bubaneswar. We learn a great deal about the legends,

history and myth associated with these places. Puri in Orissa is considered to

be a sacred place for the Hindus. They worship fervently Lord Jagannath, the

presiding deity of Orissa. Dawn at Puri and Main Temple Street, Puri are the

poems that underline the importance of Puri and what it means to the Hindus.

Widows long to spend their last days at Puri based on the faith that, it would

fetch them their salvation. The poet expresses this sentiment that the last wish

of a widow is to be cremated here.

The collection of poems in A Rain of Rites takes its form from the

cultural heritage of Orissa in particular and that of India in general. A Arun

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Kolatkar in “Jejuri”, Mahapatra is disappointed with the meaninglessness of

traditional practices and customs. Mahapatra‟s “Dawn at Puri” depicts the

famous holy city Puri which is a most revered pilgrimage centre for the

Hindus. The poet‟s inner self is full of Indian sensibility which is shaped by

Oriyan landscape.

White-clad widowed women

past the centers of their lives

are waiting to enter the great Temple

Their austere eyes

stare like those caught in net

hanging by the dawn‟s shining strands of faith (4-9)

………………………………………………………..

………………………………………………………..

and suddenly breaks out of my hide

into the smoky blaze of my sullen solitary pyre

that fills my aging mother:

The last wish to be cremated here

twisting uncertainly like light

on the shifting sands (13-18)

The prayers offered at the shrine of Lord Jagannath would lead widows

into an unending rhythm which would ultimately enable them to attain

Mukthi. The Temple Road, Puri, is another poem where Mahapatra describes

the stream of common men on the road to the temple to perform their prayer.

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The devotees hear the message of the Lord and begin to understand it.

Such a devotion makes them humble. Their hearts get purified as a sense of

brotherhood overwhelms them. Through poetry Mahapatra tries to explore

these places, where he belongs to. The sense of belonging to the places in the

land of his birth and its landscape urges the poet to relate them to his poetic

craft. The man is part of his land, the place of birth in “Somewhere My Man”

Mahapatra says

A man does not mean anything

But the place

Sitting on the river bank throwing pebbles

into the muddy current,

a man becomes the place.

When the poet pays respect to the place he belongs to in a language

which is familiar and beneficial to him we understand the inseparability of the

land and the resident. The landscape gains significance and importance

because of the people living there and their religious faith. The temples at

these places and the people‟s worship are the embodiments of their strong

religious faith. The poems of Mahapatra related to these places show that the

poet is a part of these places. Like Puri, Konark, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack

are also important places for Mahapatra since they embody the tradition of

ancient Orissa and her heroic past. The poets‟ typical Indian sensibility is

revealed in the poems like, Indian Summer Poem, Evening in an Orissa

Village, The Orissa Poems, The Indian Poems and The Indian way. B.K. Das

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quotes Mahapatr‟s words which express his sentiments towards his land while

receiving the National Academy of Letters Award

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

and in which lies my beginning and my end, where the wind

knees over the grief of the River Daya and where the waves of

Bay of Bengal fail to reach out today to the twilights soul of

Konark, I acknowledge my debt and my relationship. (9)

We observe a tendency to search for the self, in the modern Indian

English poets like A.K. Ramanujan and R. Parthasarathy. Mahapatra also has

shown such a search in his Relationship which fetched him the Central

Sahitya Akademi Award.

This poem is not a collection of mere observation, a place here,

a character there, an unstrenuous meditation or two, inevitable

landscapes, but a determined, integrated set of selections built

into the theme. For the poet, the Orissan landscape is the

objective setting of his mental evolution, the phases of which

get mixed up with the lyrical vocabulary of a humanist creed.

The poem being set in Orissa embodies the myth and history of

the land. As the conflicting principles of man and nature, history

and autobiography and faith and suffering interact against the

vast panorama of Orissan landscape, the poem shows a

dialectical progression where every synthesis in further analysis

turns into a thesis (Das, 40)

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The basic thrust to write Relationship arises out of the poet‟s

confrontation with the existential anguish of a conscious and prodigious self.

A poet‟s immediate and spontaneous response to the landscape of his country,

his sense of tradition and culture of the land of his birth and many other

factors go together to assume an identity of his own. A poet or a novelist

ought to have observed and absorbed his own country before he makes it the

background against which his imagination moves. Only then his imagination

can move unhindered. Mahapatra expresses a sense of rootedness in the

Oriyan soil. Search for roots, - the trend in modern Indian English poetry - is

clearly expressed in Relationship. Mahapatra‟s deep seated allegiance to his

birth place is the outcome of his quest for identity and roots. Out of the sense

of belonging to his birth place, Mahapatra revitalizes the sprit and mettle of

his identity.

The twelve part epic poem Relationship is a record of the poet‟s

experience of the past and the sense of rootedness, alienation, loneliness and

guilt accompanied with it. The poet‟s consciousness of the sense of the past

arouses in him the question who he was. The involvement with the self and

the society runs through Mahapatra‟s Relationship. Like Walt Whitman in his

Song of Myself Mahapatra may not openly claim that he is „large‟ and that he

„contains multitudes‟. But the underlying current of this claim and the poet‟s

profound concern is with the community, the society to which he belongs.

The search for the roots and the relationship with the past is the core of

Relationship.

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The consciousness of time and past are fused neatly in Relationship.

About Relationship, CCL Jayaprada views:

Relationship is not a poem about the relationship of a man to

men in friendship, love, family or community. It is about

relationship of man to time, man to land and man to generations

of men who have passed before him and who will come after

him. Finally it is the relationship of man to his self and man to

his soul (166)

In the early poetry of Mahapatra, he presents the past as a dream - a

world full of love, sympathy, delight and hope. In the later poetry, Mahapatra

appears to be poet of consciousness. He observes the external realities keenly

and feels the effect of them on his consciousness. Thus Mahapatra is

essentially an inward looking poet. The experiences of the outer world yield

to the pressures of the consciousness and are sieved through it. The logic that

operates in his mind is not that of the objective world but that of the mind. He

is always engaged in some quest that explores human relationship for a

rationale that would render it whole in his poetry. Mahapatra never tries to

pursue any ideal or religion in his poetry but his search through poetry always

helps him realise his whole self.

A whiteness of Bone is both a continuity and departure from the poems

in the earlier volumes. It is continuity because most of the poems display the

same fertile inwardness, the same melancholic tone of voice emanating from

the same deprivation and loss, suggesting the same willingness, “to polish the

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light in his heart”. It is a deviation because Mahapatra falls back on the sense

of loss, deprivation and melancholy but only to recreate his strength and to

confront the essential facts of life. The poem creates a bleak atmosphere

carrying the burdens of hunger, poverty, loss of innocence, fleeting nature of

time, fear of death, and uncertainty about future. It appears that the poet

discovers and points out the whiteness of bones beneath the sheen and gloss

of a dream - oriented skin. The poet also seems to be determined to show us

the heritage of growth in his poetry as well as in his own self.

Though engulfed with infinite rustle of pain, hunger, poverty and grief,

Mahapatra does not try to defend himself for what he is or where he is. He

accepts the destiny of being here and nowhere :

Love : let me not try to defend myself.

If this love of mine is light, a grace,

Let it be unimportant and uninteresting

To inspire me through the long way

Into nowhere, to tell them I am here (16-20)

Mahapatra lays bare in A Whiteness of Bone, having taken a

challenging leap into the pool of existence which has already been filled with

shapes of solitude, infinite affliction and grief. He comes to terms with his

own self in relation to his own place and country, in order to grapple with the

burden of mortality and vulnerability at the hands of time that posts this

inescapable whiteness. The poet is very sensitive and conscientious that he

confronts the essential self with such humility and his poetry becomes

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painfully and absorbingly human. The poems sound with a melancholic tone.

In the poem “Silent in the Valleys” (A Whiteness of Bone) the poet says that

he does not want to probe into the reason for the pervading sense of gloom

and melancholy.

Do I detect a note of melancholy in my voice?

No use explaining that my life

Has involved me in delicate situations

For which solutions could not be found (2-5)

Perhaps the poet feels that seeking reasons and finding solutions would

push him into more misery. The burden of loss which Mahapatra experiences

and explicates in his poetry is generated partly from the past and partly from

the present. It stems from the past because it happened and existed once and it

cannot be brought back or rectified except recalling in memory. It stems from

the present because the poet realises that degeneration has crept into his place

and country - degeneration in terms of a system of values which govern our

existence. In the outer world the poet encounters loneliness, betrayal and

faithlessness everywhere. The poet tries hard to seek redemption from such a

disease-ridden present. He tries to fall back on his past. But the memories of

the past as well as the encounters with the present ultimately leave him a

wounded person. Suffering existed in the past, it exists in the present also. His

acute sufferings emanate from loss of childhood, of his father, mother and

above all his innocence. In “Father” (A Whiteness of Bone) Mahapatra depicts

the change between his time and his father‟s, between himself and his father:

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My old father believes, even in his last days;

That‟s why he isn‟t a lover or a poet.

He cannot drown himself in water or in awe. (1-3)

Though his father had not stayed with him always, it was the father‟s

love shown during his infrequent visits that nourished the sap of his life

infusing courage, being the source of mental strength and support. The demise

of his father leaves the poet in deep anguish. The bondage once established

would last till the end of his life though in memory. The poet is able to sense

that, even in death his father shares the son‟s sufferings and sympathises. He

expresses this sentiment in “Unreal Country” (A Whiteness of Bone)

And through the dull suburbs

of his death, my old father

gropes his way back.

yes, he seems to whisper

overwhelmed by the defeat

in my eyes, hunger and earth

made the bones one‟s breath. (15-21)

The world appears for the poet to be filled with pain and suffering and

the passage of time weighs heavily on his back. The poet wants to escape

from them all. The memory of his father relapses and also reminds him of the

past, pain or death.

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I remember my father, dying

under the slackening kindness of librium

making pained noises, reaching out

his life to fill my tongue and mouth

with the bitter taste of despair.

The other dead are so quiet.

And one feels no more

than a passing shadow of shame

when one remembers them.

(A Whiteness of Bone, 4)

Mahapatra‟s father, grandfather and mother form a galaxy and twinkle

like stars comforting him in the distress of the present experience. The poet

tries to escape from such stings of pain by recalling the memories of his

younger brother and mother in “God‟s Night” (A Whiteness of Bone)

the shadow of my brother follows me,

becoming blood on his hooves,

my loving mother turns pale and cross (13-16)

The poet is reminded of the pain that the mother expressed in her eyes.

The previous year‟s calendar takes him back to the mother who has become a

silent part of life of which he speaks in “Afternoon Ceremonies” (A Whiteness

of Bone)

In this room of mine

last year‟s calendar hangs uselessly on the wall.

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In my mother‟s eyes pain begins to stir again

Like a venerable old gentle man

who has returned from afar (22-26)

The poet wants to detach himself away from the past which for him is

a storehouse of infinite pains and anguishes. He fondly recalls his house that

sheltered him in boyhood in the poem “The Dispossessed” (A Whiteness of

Bone). The photograph on the wall takes him back to the memories when the

photograph was taken.

There is a photograph still hanging

on the wall in my father‟s house. It‟s quite old,

and against an elaborate

back drop the photographer used

are my parents, my younger brother and I.

I want to shut it from my mind

because it reminds one of a useless monument (1-6)

Mahapatra on a rainy day in the month of July feels lonely that he

remembers the old house where he lived when he was a small boy in “With

Broken Wings” (A Whiteness of Bone)

The old brick walls of my house

go down into shadow

I remember tales prattled,

my grandfather‟s ghost standing in the rain

watching the secrets between us burn away

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and smoke past past his grey eyes;

Mother‟s voice a cricket‟s scream

and my remorse, like the brief red glow

of fireflies, gashing the air of trees. (7-16)

The sense of the past, for the poet, lies everywhere like water.

Mahapatra presents a very clear family album through his poems. The

mention of people, occasions and incidents points out the changing patterns of

time. Mahapatra‟s account of his house enables the readers to understand his

deep sense of allegiance to it. He speaks about this in his autobiography

The house where I grew up in Cuttack was located at one end of

a cluster of houses-mostly with clay walls and straw thatched

roofs-belonging to poorer people, who eked out their livings by

doing stray, odd jobs on daily wages. (138)

Mahapatra seems to feel emotionally secure when he whirls back to the

place of his birth and childhood. It keeps him away from the fear of being

faceless in this over populated universe. He expresses this in “December”

(A Whiteness of Bone)

To live one must do those things one loves,

but always in secret so to keep going

back to the place one has come from. (24-26)

The recollected lost moments for the poet revitalise his present and

creates an atmosphere of awe and wonder. The present blends with the past

when it intrudes into the present. “It appears that these dead things always /

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loom larger with every hour that goes”. With the memories of the past, the

poet comes to terms with the present. The collection of poems, fifty nine in

number with the title A Whiteness of Bone are not new but they have the

elegiac tone and mood. The poet associates himself with places of his land of

birth, contemporary events, rain, father, the Mahanadhi and many other

aspects of life that affect the poet‟s sensibility.

In the early days of his poetic career we come across Mahapatra as a

poet of love. Mahapatra‟s early poems speak about his frustration in love.

When his son was ten years old, he fell in love with a woman. The love

poems were published in his two of the earliest volumes, Close the Sky, Ten

by Ten and Swayamwara and other Poems, (1971). Mahapatra‟s intimate

passion for conjugal love is expressed in the poems of these two volumes.

Mahapatra himself says in an article in Youth Times,

My poems were born of love, of love‟s selfishness and of a huge

self-pity, like the poems of many whom I admire. And it was

only of myself I thought as words took possession of my sense,

measured me and linked me with the fable kingdom of love (10)

The fear of separation always lingers in the mind of the poet which is

expressed in “Intimacy”. His love poetry reveals his childlike innocence and

possessiveness which is revealed in “Love Poem”.

There is no pornographic taint in Mahapatra‟s love poetry that we find

in the poems of Kamala Das. His love poetry is based on the Indian tradition

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of wedding, which allows the union of the body only after the wedding. His

poems of love exhibit the sanctity and purity attached to the relationship

between the lover and the beloved, which is expected to build a strong family

relationship Mahapatra expresses such a cultural sensibility in the poem “The

Indian Way” which says that the lover will not touch the lady love until the

wedding is over.

At a later stage love as a theme dwindles in the hands of Mahapatra.

When he examines love from various angles, he finds that it remains

unfulfilled. Some of his important love poems are “Another Evening”,

“Women in Love”, “The Whore house of a Calcutta Street”, “Armour”, “Love

Fragment”, “Of That Love”, “Lost” and few others. In “Another Evening”,

we see the protagonist, longing for his beloved whom he has lost and there is

a lamentation. The poet expresses a passion for love in “Woman in love”. The

desire for love abides even when the body decays. Mahapatra‟s poems reveal

the zest for life and longing for love. The disappointment in love overwhelms

the lover, when he remembers the young woman in “Love Fragment”. In his

later poetry, Mahapatra expresses his desire to blend with the affairs of

society and become part and parcel of the living. The poet realises that the

good and evil in man‟s destiny are inevitable and one has to cope with them.

Mahapatra has written many poems on rain. Rain is the poet‟s

favourite metaphor. His famous rain poems are “In a night of rain”, “A Day of

Rain”, “The Rain Falling”, “After the Rain”, “A Rain”, “Four Rain Poems”,

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“This is the Season of Old Rain and Again the Rain Falls”; Besides these, a

number of poems deal indirectly with this theme, the rain accelerates the

desire in man and woman for a physical union. This is commonly found in

traditional Indian Literature. Thus rain kindles the desire for sexual union. It

is also a source of hope for a better future. Mahapatra contemplates and

reflects how rain has brought upon him a self-realisation and cautioned him

against the days wasted and has created in him an awareness of reality.

In the volume of poems called A Rain of Rites, rain, which is usually

depicted as a life sustaining element of Nature, recurs often. The rain is

connected with the poet‟s mind arousing futile thoughts of regeneration:

“breaking away into light / before it reaches its objective”. The people take

the rain for granted as they conduct the religious celebrations, without

knowing significance and without caring to know its hidden meaning.

„Stone‟ is another important motif in Mahapatra‟s poetry. Stone is the

embodiment of the metaphysical and eternal as well as personal conflict. It

symbolises his and his people‟s beliefs embedded in the age-old traditions.

Mahapatra says in the opening line of “Bhubaneswar” (Waiting 8) says

“Stone is the theme”. His historical and mythic consciousness is revealed

through the image of stone. It seems to evoke the forbidden memories.

Stones-in the forms of common slabs, ruins of temples, phallus of Shiva and

so on are sacred to the fetish of our people steeped in pagan faith. Women

waiting in groups outside the shrine ruminating over their sad plights are

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stony. The devotees touching the linga with forehead are stony in the same

way. All of us, every man and every beast who is trapped, deaf and mute in

one‟s own sleep are equivalent to a stone. The priests in the temple appear for

the poet like ghosts of the old stone.

All the dreams, hopes and new thoughts of man seem to have been

petrified and buried in the stones from his very childhood. His conduct is

regulated and life pattern is set by the dogmatic minds of the ancestors who

impress upon us through our parents. About such a powerful influence the

poet says,

Tonight I know that the life I have lived

is my life softened in my father‟s life

I am the water in my father‟s eyes,

I am the slow flow that takes me gently down

Has its darker depths taught me already

the art of disguise, its strange necessity? (Waiting, 11)

The poems in Waiting record the fears and frights of the poet‟s

childhood and youthful days. They are caused by the familiar superstitious

childhood stories of evening stars relating to some one‟s death, the visual

effect of Lord Jagannath‟s image evoking “fear”, “fetishes”, forebodings of

the astrologer and many other experiences of the early part of his life. They

all seem to have restrained the growth and freedom of the poet, stealing away

his courage to take to flight. The poet is caught in a helpless condition of

decay, vaguely dreaming about the “axis of the past”. The enormous size of

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the hills of Annapoorna, Dhaulagiri and the temple of Konarka fill him with

awe. They were the vague grieving years which were fearful:

I dare not go

into the dark, dark sanctum

where the myth shifts

swiftly from hand to hand, eye to eye.

(A Rain of Rites, 22)

Gradually the poet gives up this fear and tries to identify himself with

the stones he comes across. He understands that nothing can be revealed

about the past until it comes alive. So he invokes the stones: “there I stand,

close to the stone / trying to smear it with blood / to give it life” (Waiting, 23).

The poet at once remembers the sacrifices made by the people through ages

which he learned through the legends and myths of the past. The evocation of

the legends is a tribute to the people of this land who look back to their past

with awe. It is really surprising that the people spend a lot of time reveling in

the past and never hardly realize that they must rise to action today. The lives

of the people of the entire land seem to have become “immobile / like the

River in its used infirm bed” (Waiting, 23).

People go about gazing at the temples, having inherited the faith in

gods from the past and worship them blindly without any surprises, doubts

or questions. The silence of the land increases and becomes stone at present

while the past revives itself again and again in the carved stone walls of the

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temples of Konarka, Bhuvanewar and Puri. These walls speak greatly about

the glory of ancient art and architecture.

Such an association of the people with what are revealed through the

stones and walls is equivalent to death. No doubt the people of this land have

inherited a glorious historic, legendary, artistic and architectural past. But

they are trapped in a condition of decay and death. The tendency to imitate

others blindly, believing in dogmas and reveling in sloth threatens to ruin us.

The land simply allows people lead such a life that reduces them to mere

stones which isolate them and would never allow them to realize their dreams

of future. These people live a callous, apathetic life

Does the brood of white - clad

luckless widows shuffling up and down

the fractured temple steps distress you?

Everyday I see them debase themselves

and am afraid, understanding nothing

(Waiting, 25)

The poet is sensitive to the debasement that he observes. But many

people are insensitive and they die ignorant and weak. It never strikes them

that they must question the cruel authority of priests. They never become

inquisitive about the meaning of their chants. They never question whether

the frail white flower that they offer to God would expiate them from sins.

They utter meaningless words like a parrot, in the name of prayer. They allow

their fears to be swallowed up by the voices of their priests. The poems

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“A Summer Night” and “A Country Festival” tell how he with others

celebrates the joyous festivals in the town of Cuttack. They celebrate festivals

amidst the whining of the cripples and lepers. The cry of the naked diseased

children looms large and the entire place is thus infested with the swarm of

crows. The chants of the “tireless tongues” of the priests go along with these.

The priests are highly haughty and are hateful towards the beggars that they

shrink back at the very sight of the priests. The very same priests never

hesitate to run behind the rich, begging for charity. They bury their doubts

and questions raised by the conscience, flatter the rich and hope to get

atonement.

There is absolutely no regard for humanitarian concerns and old

values, while the festivals are observed. There are unexpected eruptions of

violence. “There is light talk of rioting and murder on the festive day of

Durga‟s immersion” (Life Signs, 11). Festivals, one after the other are

celebrated inspite of the sordid condition of the people. People hope to purge

themselves of all ills and inaction by idle indulgence in meaningless rites.

They enjoy a temporary excitement out of these festive celebrations. But after

this they have to come back to the reality of life with its diseases and

dishonest practices.

The greedy grocer exploits the ignorant customers but plans to donate

marble stones to the temple of Jagannath. People suffer from hunger and

poverty. Women‟s dissatisfaction keeps increasing. Sorrow deepens. People

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look like ruined stones. It appears that everybody is coldly waiting for death,

living in a mouldering country surrounded by a savage storm. Life goes on in

the same way. There is no change and no development. The situation is

symptomatic of Eliot‟s “Waste Land” where people experience death in life.

Mahapatra says:

even if the copses of thirty five thousand

are piled up in the carthouse of my will,

even if the patriotic drums beat on

and the wind brushes past with the curses

of the undying dead,

even if we grieve for the door that shuts

into place behind us,

as the dead keep roaring over us,

drawing the secret laughter

out of our nothingness

(Waiting, 56)

The poet, in a cynical tone speaks about the insubstantial, callous

living that keeps driving all of us to our fatal end. We lead a life blindly

adhering to superstition, imitation, nervous uncertainty, vague grieving,

suffocation, melancholy and so on. We must cleanse ourselves of all these

evils and take up a life of total freedom, originality and fresh understanding of

nature, one‟s place in it and the type of response one should have.

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There are many things around and within us which should purge and

refresh us. We must go to the river to flush the darkness from the crumbling

eyes. We should play with the earth and learn to love it so that it does not turn

vile in taste. We should share the ooze of earth‟s pain. The people of the

country should get firmly rooted in the soil by strengthening their

sensibilities, as its sons. They should have faith in the power and excellence

of mind. They should proclaim their rights from there.

The poet expresses his environmental concerns which are based on a

feeling of a strong relationship with the land in Waiting. The poems like

“Orissa”, “Dhaulagiri”, “Konarka”, “Strong of the Start of 1978” and “Strike

your secret Earth” unravel the land, its history, myth, legend and the people.

The poem “Thought of the future” reveals the poet‟s relationship with his

family. We find a tone of exploration in the poems like “Performance” and

“The Twenty Fifth Anniversary of a Republic” in A Father‟s Hours and in

poems like “Somewhere, My Man”, “Hunger”, “Ceremony”, “Appearances”

and “Five Indian Songs” of A Rain of Rites. The poet attempts to identify

himself with everything that strikes his notice, stirs his memory and kindles

his sensibility.

He discovers within himself the conflict that always troubles him due

to his innocent faith being blurred by his mother‟s fetishes and himself one

among the many who celebrate festivals in Cuttack town. The more the poet

tries to understand the people and their place, the more sorrowful he becomes.

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The poet is shocked by the living death in their lives. The poet says that the

people are uprooted from the true tradition and are leading a “wooden life”

being insensitive to “the burnt whispers of the wind at Konarka / like the lost

faces of a lost language at Dhauli” (Waiting 57). The people hardly show any

sign of life, rotting in fear, suspicion, sloth and inaction. Their lives resemble

the familiar old ruins hardly showing any sign of life.

The awareness of the log-like, stone-like lives of the people drives the

poet to seek regeneration in the secret terrain of his heart by proclaiming its

rights and enjoying its virility. A new kind of society could be raised out of

the ruins of hate by loving the earth deeply and nourishing its water and

empathising with the pain and suffering of its creatures. Each one has to give

up the fetishes of vain burden of the past memories and wait for a new

consciousness about the nature of future life.

The poems in ‘The False Start‟ reveal the conflict between the poet‟s

attempts to venture with the possibilities of awareness and the confrontation

with failures in relationship and the ever present time and death. The poems in

this volume are characterised by mental restlessness, dominant darkness and

an indistinct awareness of the imagined. The self is preparing itself for

enlightenment but very soon it encounters pain. The old inherited beliefs drag

it backward while it is lost in the dreams of eternity. The new birth appears to

be a remote possibility.

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The poet finds it difficult to escape from the abiding presence of time.

It appears that time only will bring solutions to give answers to his enquiries

about life, the purpose of life and thoughts of deprivation. But time seems to

have confiscated all the potentials for change and deprived us of all insight

into the real. It blurs the sight by raising a mist. The poem “Today” (The

False Start) speaks thus

Time faces me; and there

like the lurking madness in a tyrant‟s eye

is the whim of another day

dark wings shut and unmoving in the blue.

This day is an instant which possesses me,

from which I cannot escape: who knows

what part of this day lies in the coming life (11-17)

It appears to the poet that time holds him in a clutch. He feels restless

and helpless trying to escape from it that he comes to realize much later that it

is no use trying to put off the instant when it comes, or even taking it by force,

because this again leads one backward to become helpless victim of

memories. Memories flow into the mind like the wind,

Memories come like the wind and today

peers from the years: over unbridled waves

and tenacious skys, and I know

that you can never be lost

because their secret nets of pain

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would always be there to bring you in …

Today

leads me, round the corners of your memory (5-12)

The letters and mementoes lying packed in a trunk distresses the poets

like a dead man. They remind him of his friends of the past days. Such

memories burden the poet so much that his power of reasoning lies

suspended. Present happiness gets ruined. So the poet feels the necessity of

exposing everything to the will of time. But the poet is also dubious about the

faithfulness of time which keeps hidden all the potentialities of man. Time

does not answer questions regarding the mysteries that cover life and death.

Thus memory brings to the surface painful experiences but the passage of

time appears to heal them. But time holds people with uncertainties and

anxieties of future, and provokes gloomy thoughts of death. The poet is

overcome by sadness that he questions, “can grief let me do what I wish /

littering every corner of this dark / with awakenings of death?” (The False

Start, 15)

Mahapatra points out the paradox about time that time makes him

aware of all pain, and suffering is conquered by the “time of imagination”.

The poet is relieved of the fear about time by the growing conviction about

the possibility of a psychological apprehension of eternity. He says

My secret is more than songs or air,

more than time‟s unpleasant corner

in which the smells of rotted meat

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and decayed fruits take refuge, … (26-29)

(The False Start)

All failures, betrayals, absences, consciousness of timelessness are engulfed

by time. Critic P.C.David compares Eliot‟s and Mahapatra‟s notions of time

and draws a parallel,

Eliot finds all time „unredeemable‟ and for Mahapatra it is

something in-escapable. He is detached from his perspective of

time; but for Mahapatra, time carries a sense of urgency, a

feeling of helplessness at the thought of not being able to escape

from the instant which possesses him and perhaps becomes an

instant of reckoning, bearing with it a consciousness of the final

test of life. (252)

Time promises with a possible end to all uncertainities and seems to

provide a solution to the enigma of death. Hence the poet learns to accept

time and understand the mystery of death. Acceptance of death must awaken

us to an awareness of better living. According to the poet one must die a death

other than “The death that comes swings back and forth / like a bewitched

barge upon a weaker race” (Waiting, 25)

The poet is against the attitude of death which keeps us waiting for it

until it strikes down and brings a fatalistic end to everything in life. In the

poem “Measuring Death”, the poet questions this kind of death-in-life

attitude. He strongly pleads for a death which brings “you your meaning of

life” (Waiting, 75). There is no meaning in life if it is just lived with little

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longings, trifle perusals and purposeless activities. This state of life is

vehemently criticised by the poet in his poem “Something Spreading Itself “

And this life still stands,

propped up by our thousand little longings.

But when we cannot go on living

simply for the smoke

that struggles to get us outside,

for the sake of an empty word

(Waiting, 37)

Life continues in the face of apparent oppositions posed by time and

death reveals its tremendous potentiality to overcome all these like the waves

in a sea fighting to merge into silence to get free of earth and death. Life is a

boat tossed by storm which sails through tempests of confusions and

contradictions to ultimately attain its equipoise. The concluding lines of

“A Sailboat of Occasions” (The False Start, 25)

Inside may be, the noise spin, like gull cries

like the love of other men. And the bare sails

dance, sudden canvas and whole exile of your day (18-20)

Mahapatra‟s seventeenth book of poems Random Descent (2005) deals

with the reminiscence of the variety of themes and images chosen by the poet

in his career. The first section of the book consists of the poet‟s rumination on

the same old themes as he has been doing over thirty years of his career. The

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poet is on a quest for meaning of living, he is still arrested by the indecision,

myth and stillness but is hopeful of overcoming it.

His poetry presents his obsessions, concerns, his mother‟s soul,

palmistry and a girl‟s desires, Orissa‟s starvation, twilight, stone, silence,

Oriyan landscape and so on. After many years of experience in his poetic

career Mahapatra speaks in a mystic‟s tone on finding meaning of life. In the

poem “The Shore”

If I seek an answer to our life

It is because I see myself everywhere,

all the time.

But there is the hard old boat man

Watching over the utter desert

of his waters.

The river flows without from intangible

And when island on the shore that is not. (28-33)

Mahapatra in his poetry of recent times turns a mystic against the tradition of

Indian mysticism and several trend of mysticism of the land of his birth where

flows a river of the mixed collection of various religious mysticisms.

Many poems of Mahapatra in Random Descent glorify nature through

a mystic mode and mediate between human and non human worlds pitched

against an ethical measure. The poet feels that nature has become a medium

for settling a balance between mystery and contemporanity, related to the

immanent grace perceived through nature. Random Descent marks a mature

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phase in the evolution of his poetry. In the dedication page the poet states that

the wait‟s begun again for the angel to descend upon the earth to transform

the word, for which we have been waiting long. It is going to be a rare

random descent. The descent points at the waiting of the earth for some

angelic arrival, a transformation. The title of the collection suggests this

descent as a random one.

It is observed that events happen at random in the human and non

human domains is natural and beyond any rational explanation. The poet says

that the complexity of life around us which reveals itself in the form of

mechanical device, electrical circuit, wild life migration, rioting crowd,

atmospheric storm, national economy are governed by a multitude of

independent factors and are subject to random influences.

The earth has been rendered ecologically degraded by the

technological intervention, which is not a triumph of man over nature but a

warning of chaos resulting in danger. All delusion of victory is going to be

defeated and demolished if it continues in this state. Mahapatra points out that

the answer to all his questions is hidden in the natural phenomena and we

have to search for and arrive at it. In “Things that Happen” he writes:

(Random Descent)

But these things that happen

have always beginnings that cannot be seen.

It is the body I think I‟ve carried along

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forcing me to wander from the secret

to secret, mirage to mirage,

pumping up half truths into a reality I never lived. (26-31)

In a lyrical essay entitled Freedom as Poetry: The Door Mahapatra states

clearly “… a poet‟s business is to see-which he should do, listening to the

voice of his inner self. Let the poet not bother about conscience of the world -

simply be the water that flows, finding its own level, even if it is soaked by

the earth, with no trace left behind” (6). In the same essay he says: “…

surrounded by my own words which crowd me down, I try to escape, thinking

of another kind of freedom”. He asks: “who will whisper the whisper of

summer breeze? The politician or the poet?” (5). It implies that a poet is

necessitated to present his observations of the world to others so that others

would make a decision of their own to live meaning fully.

For Mahapatra, the key to understanding of the world lies in nature.

The dichotomy of human and non-human dissipates. The power and working

of nature is all pervasive. He says:

No more do men go out on to the earth

to be close enough to the mountain‟s quiet

and wait for an answer. (8-10)

The silence and vastness of the mountains and seas and the natural objects

become metaphors for human situations in most of his poems. Mahapatra says

in an interview on 31st May 2011,

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I was looking around the world, and into myself. May be when I

started out writing poetry, I thought I was the center of the

universe, which was absolutely wrong. My early poems were

exercises in a way, written mainly to please myself. These

poems were fused in themselves, and they tended to be abstract.

My mind was more to me than my heart, which is not right

when it comes to poetry (227)

In the same interview, to the question as to why and how he came to

choose to write and publish poetry, in English, he says “As to why I chose to

write I have no answer, who knows why one does these things? Or why one

does anything, for instance? I can‟t say. Anxiety, inadequacies, unhappiness,

these could lead one to writing. Perhaps I am talking to myself when I write

… then there is this subject of English, and the answer is simple: I wrote in

English because it was the most natural thing for me to do. My studies in a

missionary school where English was mandatory; we had to speak English

and no other language; and the urging of my Principal, who liked me much,

and instilled in me a love for the English language - these were the factors

which led me to use English for my poetry … As you are perhaps aware, I

started writing poetry when I was approaching forty at an age when most

poets would have finished their strongest work. But some things happen in

life and reasons are not always easy to find”. (226)

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Thus many of the poems of Mahapatra are a search for the self. The

search for the self gives a sign of continuity to his poetry. Memory helps the

poet delve into the depths of the past that enables his search into the self. With

the aid of memory he tries to discover his own roots, and find solace from the

burdens of the present. The past redeems him from the fear of being faceless;

from the fear of aging and death; from the fear of the changing scenario in the

present. The poetic world of Mahapatra reiterates the concept that one should

journey into one‟s own self in order to cope up with the outer world without

exploiting others and their resources. To understand the natural surroundings

one must understand oneself. In order to understand oneself one must travel

inside oneself. Mahapatra‟s poetry, according to Bhat “makes the reader look

inwards, question himself about life, its significance uncertainity and so on

leading him into process of personal discovery”. (274)

Mahapatra strongly believes that personal discovery will supply a

person with sufficient courage to face the society and will strengthen man and

equip him encounter social evils. It will pull him out of his trapped situation

and motivate him to relate himself with the external world. Close relationship

with himself and nature will turn him inward and make him learn the root

cause of his inner conflicts and teach him the ways to overcome them. Such

an emotional exercise will heal the wounds of today and will enable to

explore the possibilities of creating a promising future.

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Mahapatra‟s commitment to the locale is similar to that of Whitman‟s

nineteenth century New York, Robert Frost‟s New England, WB Yeat‟s Sligo

and Nissim Ezekiel‟s Bombay. Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri form the

background of Mahapatra poems. A poet writes about the surrounding in

which he lives. His poetry serves as a link of his experiences. A broader look

at his poetry enables us to understand that poet‟s task is not only to paint the

picture, but also to remind people of their past, their roots and the benign

nature that moulded and shielded them.

The poems included in Shadow Space (1997) and Bare Face (2000)

illustrate the modes of pain and grief. The poet assimilates his role as a human

being and as a poet in the outer world. In these volumes Mahapatra brings to

the surface, the bare face and the shadow space of individual‟s living in the

contemporary world. Mahapatra‟s concern from the beginning has been to

capture the nuances involved in creative writing. The pressure of forces

outside himself are heavy that the poet feels disappointed and doubtful of his

own poems because he starts realising that the forces outside create fissures in

the ideals which he held high. The compelling demand of the outside world

on the poet and poetry drives him to paint the blackest face of woe and find a

new direction both for the poet and his poetry. An inner need compels the

poet to articulate about the forces of disorientation in the real life situations,

sharpening his protest against those forces, which dehumanise, individuals

leading them to an utter sense of helplessness. The poems in these volumes

articulate much of this. We observe that the creative expression of the poet

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has undergone a lot of changes that it has become less metaphoric, less

circuitous, and less oblique than it was in his earlier volumes. Similes

employed in these poems are original and striking. The language has assumed

an intimate informality and an unalloyed simplicity. The tone of voice is more

frank and open.

The spontaneous fertility of his metaphors and their profuse flow form

the chief strength of Mahapatra‟s poetry. The individual line, image or group

of lines as well as their unified totality of poetic experience are memorable in

a Mahapatra poem. These poems seem to describe how Mahapatra has lived

the reality with the sensibility of the historical and mythical past. They

engagingly and eminently define the relationship between the poet and his

place.

The poet makes a euphoric celebration of the relationship between the

poet and his place after securing and establishing his identity. He begins to

search for meaning in a place that has turned meaningless. He starts looking

critically at his own place, people, at his own self, his own idiom and

medium. There is an undertone of pain and suffering that springs from the

poet‟s perception of society that makes the poems weak causing bleakness

and dampness which leads to helplessness and misery. It appears that the real

world cannot be redeemed or saved from its present decadence.

The poet was highly excited about his relationship with his own place

when he received the award for his poetic accomplishments. But he is also

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painfully aware of a sense of defeat that occupies the shadow-space of his

heart. The poet admits this sense of defeat in the poem “Living in Orissa”

(Shadow Space).

Something here, perhaps fatal spirit

Something that recalls the centuries of defeat

To live here,

antlered in sickness and disease

in the past of uncomprehended to terms

and the split blood of ancestors

one would wear like an amulet

Today the darkness of our own shadows

Slips over the uncared for cemeteries by the river

Someone keeps walking still

across the ravenous dust

between the graves.

Waiting like an ancient debt.

Someone goes on dancing

at the door of indifferent temples

Carrying pain in an eyeless face.

Only shadows shift now.

They have the eyes of defeated sprits.

The old old eyes (1-19)

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The spirit of the poet gets drained when he feels the burden of history

of defeat and the burden of sickness and disease. The poet expresses his

dejection in this poem. Inspite of the sense of despair and grief, the poet is

attached to the region in which he lives. It is the love of the land that gives

him sustenance to withstand whatever is dismal or unsavory about his place.

The poet‟s concern has been to relate the individual self to its history, to the

burden of history and to the fleeting nature of time. The world would not open

up its relationship with the individual self. The individual has to negotiate it

and generate interest in knowing the dead and the living, the past and the

present about the world.

As Mahapatra moves from early to later poetry, a change in the

treatment of themes is noticed that the poet adheres to an unassuming style

devoid of any experimentation. His thoughts are anchored in many other

modes of living. The poet studies at large the intricacies of life which makes it

whole. He identifies himself with his roots and his childhood experience. He

upholds the complexities of a sensitive and time bound man: his alienation,

his suffering his growing sense of frustration while aging fast, his perpetual

fear of death and the inevitable triumph of time over him.

The poet seems to gain and acquire an awareness of the contemporary

situations that social, religious and political issues find expression in his latter

poetry. The poet appears to be realising that he is large and contains

multitudes. The whole range of human experience matters, not a fraction of it.

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The self-bound tone and vision of the poet makes way for a more profoundly

felt home-bound and world-bound attitude and vision.

The poetic inspiration of Mahapatra‟s springs from his individual

world and the poet is unrepentant, as he feels that his poems are for himself

more rather than for the reader. He wanted to make sense of the life which

was lying in fragments before him. He was urged to seek answers for himself,

testing his feelings by striking them against the fabrics of the poem he knew

he must write. His poems do not exhause themselves as verbal images

translating into multiple layers of meaning. Mahapatra presents a constantly

changing skyline in his poems. He creates a poetic universe which is totally

Indian.

The poet looks at the world and is pained by the despair around and he

finds it hard to keep silent about it. He becomes a poet by virtue of what he

sees or hears and that itself begins the mystifying process of the poem.

Passion for writing poetry is activated when the poet is compelled by the urge

to understand the world he lives in and understand his own self. The subjects

are often parts of the topography of his own psyche; he explores his own

feelings with painstaking and often painful honesty but never loses sight of

their universal participation.