International Referred Research Journal, October,2010.ISSN- 0974-2832VoL.

II *ISSUE-21

Research PaperEnglish

HIDDEN HUMAN SPIRIT AND MIND OF JAYANTA MAHAPATRA IN HIS POETRY

* Dr. Aliya Shobi Khan, **Komal Sharma,
October, 2010

* Research Guide, Assoc. Prof & HOD Dept of English, Singhania University, pacheri. ** Research Scholar, Dept of Eng. Singhania University,pacheri.
Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the most widely known and published Indian English poets in recent years. Like Nissim Ezekiel and A.K. Ramanujan, he is widely read and discussed both at home and abroad. But unlike Ezekiel and Ramanujan, Mahapatra is difficult to read for obscurity, complexity and allusiveness in his poetry. He is rather in the company of Shiv K. Kumar and Keki N. Daruwalla, in creating contrive images and learned vocabulary that immediately set him a class apart from most of his contemporaries. At the same time, in his desire to acclimatize an indigenous tradition to English language, and create a new Indian English idiom, he shares some of the concerns of the well known Indian English poets of our time, therefore, to study Jayanta Mahapatra in isolation seems to be a difficult task, especially when he has influenced a number of contemporary Indian English poets and brought recognition to this new poetry by winning the first ever award by the National Akademi of letters for his book of verse, Relationship in 1981. Jayanta Mahapatra has made an original contribution to Indian-English poetry within a fairly short span of time. There are some of the hidden layers of the psyche of this great poet from Orissa in his poetry. About his knowledge of English Literature and composition of a poem in English, he writes: More than twenty years ago, when I first started writing poetry I decided to test my powers at poetry by sending the poems out to various periodicals. At that time frankly, I knew very little about poetry, my knowledge of the subject being limited to a few poems of Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth that had been incorporated in our school literature texts. To me this was a severe test, because the act of writing a poem was totally unknown to me.1 He gives a detailed account of his early poetic career in his paper presented at the Seminar on Indian Literature: An End-Century Assessment organized by the Sahitya Akademy at New Delhi during 20-24 February 1991.2 Chandrabhaga the literary Journal he edited from Cuttack-Orissa helped him as the Ambassador-at-large of his poetry to America, England and other countries. Thus, he could establish his relationship with American and English poets, editors, critics and readers. It seems for a long time, Indian editors, poets, critics and readers found it difficult to understand his poetry. In 1975, he won Poetrys Jacob Glastein Memorial Award. But from the publication of his great poem Relationship in 1980, he drew attention of the people. The Sahitya Akademy Award for his book Relationship inspired many Indian and foreign critics to write assessments of his poetry in general and Relationship in particular. But no one has so far focused his/her attention on the hidden struggle of his Christian mentality, its deep-rooted agony and the problem of alienation which stood before him like the historic Berlin wall that kept him away from the people of his own motherland Orissa and its Ancient Cultural Heritage so dear to his heart. His wounded Christian spirit and mind lay dormant like a volcano only to erupt at a later stage in his poetic career. Through this eruption, a new Jayanta Mahapatra was born and we can see the struggle of his psyche in the two poems Myth and Grandfather. Let us see how his Christian psyche received a terrible blow of humiliation on one occasion when he tried to enter the famous Hindu Temple with a genuine desire to worship the deity (Myth). This incident symbolically reveals the great humiliations he must have experienced in his life. The poem reveals only the tip of the iceburg of the agony, humiliation, anger, anguish, frustration, a feeling of rootlessness in his own landa feeling that finally turns his mind to the past and reveals to him the sacrifices made by his brown ancestors, nameless as stones. He must have remained satisfied with an illusion that the glory of Orissas cultural heritage belonged to him as much as it belonged to any other person in Orissa. But The saffon-robed bearded Hindoo Priest gave his psyche a death blow. And from this moment he began to ask his motherland Orissa i.e, Kalinga a pertinent question Who am I? On his own Muse Mahapatra writes: These poems are just attempts of mine to hold a handful of earth to my face and let it speak perhaps this signifies to my roots so that they reveal Who I am?3

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International Referred Research Journal, October,2010. ISSN- 0974-2832VoL.II *ISSUE-21

So, he turned to his dead grandfather to know why he had embraced Christianity. For many years he must have felt that his grandfather had committed a grave mistake in embracing Christianity and leaving his ancestral religion and its heritage. It seems, he took three years to complete the poem Grandfather. It reveals the struggle of his wounded psyche to come out of its cocoon. His grandfathers invisible presence haunts him like The Ghost of Hamlets father and forces him to hear that voice. Jayanta Mahapatra seems to have grasped the intensity and the dimensions of the terrible crisis faced by his grandfather. So the shift is quite clear now, he is on the side of his grandfather and the poor nameless ancestors who fought bravely to defend his ancient kingdom Kalinga. The ten thousand soldiers who were massacred in the battle of Kalinga by the great army of Ashoka, the ruthless invader, were his ancestors. Many readers fail to understand that he is not on the side of Ashoka the Great who erected peace edicts on blood red rocks but he is pleading the case of the brave, Oriya soldiers massacred at Dhauli on the bank of the river Daya. Their blood flowed through the river Daya, and their corpses were scattered on the battlefield to be torn by wolves, jakals and vultures. And that is why, Jayanta Mahapatra while accepting the Sahitya Akademy Award spoke these words: To Orissa, to this land in which my roots lie and lies my past and in which lie my beginning and end I acknowledge my debt and relationship.4 Relationship reveals Jayanta Mahapatras great efforts to transform his mute inglorious sufferings which he connects with the sufferings of his nameless ancestors whose great sacrifices made them the stones a symbol W.B. Yeats uses for the Irish rebels who became national heroes through their great sacrifice in Easter 1916 . Many saffron-robed, bearded men will come and gobut the poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra will shine as long as men and women find time to read poetry of this Ancient Land and this will give a new life to his ancestors. Through his Relationship they shine like the innumerable stars in the Galaxy.

R E F E R E N C E
1.The Bombay Literary Review, Published by University of Bombay, Number1, 1991, pp. 5 to 6. 2.Ibid., pp. 5 to 11. 3.Madhusudan Prasad (ed.), The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra : A Critical Study, Sterling Publishers Private Ltd. 1986, p.171. 4. Ibid., p.156.

SHODH SAM IKS HA AUR M ULYANKAN

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