Bhaskar Parichha
One hundred Odia poets, a literary institution as old as Bhubaneswar Sahitya Samaj and a known publishing house called BirdNest – that can be a fantastic combination. And, the end-result is a collection of contemporary Odia poems translated into English.
Odisha has always been a fertile ground for poetry. The sheer number of poems churned out day in day out is simply mindboggling. Tell me another region or another language where poets outnumber readers and poems outshine other literary areas.
Why poems come so easily to us? Not difficult to answer. Verse is something intrinsic to our ethos. We Odias have basically been an emotional people and ‘if poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility’, it couldn’t have found a better expression elsewhere. Over the past five hundred years- since the times of the great poet Sarala Das- we have been writing poems with such multiplicity and such effortlessness.
Modernity or ‘contemporariness’ in Odia poetry is said to have been ushered in the 1990s. Poets were keen to experience life in its emotional depth. They created engaging images of life and of love in diverse tunes. Bhagaban Jayasingh,Prasanna Kumar Mohanty,Ajit Dash Mohapatra, Sunil Prusty, Manoranjan Panigrahi, Abhay Nayak, Pradip Biswal ,Akshaya Behera, Rasananda Sahoo, Pramila Satpathy wrote with no existential dilemma. The biggest challenge of the post -1990 periods has been, as pointed out by Dr Ashutosh Parida, the depiction of social reality in poetry. These and some other poets who find a place in the present collection even today write some excellent poetry.
Translating Odia poetry into English so that a bigger audience can be reached out to was the idea behind this volume. ‘Voyage’ (released on Christmas, 2017, Price Rs. 499) is a compilation of some hundred contemporary poems and, as the blurb says, ‘has made a humble attempt to cater to the aesthetic and intellectual needs of the discerning readers’. Edited by Dr Kamala Prasad Mohapatra and Dr Chittaranjan Mishra, ‘Voyage’ is the first of its kind and is an honest endeavor to stretch out to the non-Odia readers remaining outside Odisha, and yet want to savor Odia verse.
The Preface in a few words touches on the intent and right away rambles to a not- so – exhaustive account of the poems included in the anthology. As the editors indicate, “this is a representative volume of contemporary Odia poetry in English translation…it offers a convergence of signs indicating varied patterns of lived experiences and ideological encounters.”
What makes ‘Voyage’ noteworthy is the selection of poems and the poets. There possibly couldn’t have been a better choice of poets than this. If context is vital in any literary enterprise, who writes what is equally important. Some of the poems in the anthology have common threads like patriarchy, colonialism, urbanisation and globalization, while some are open –ended.
The poetic expedition in this anthology starts somewhere with Bipin Nayak and ends with a poem by Debasis Mishra.In between you have all the acknowledged names of Odia modern poetry who write rather profusely – Hrusikesh Mallick,Subhendu Mund,Aswini Kumar Mishra,Soubhagyabanta Maharana,Khirod Parida,Prabasini Mahakud,Indira Dash,Senapati Pradyumn Keshari,Surya Mishra,Bharat Majhi and Amarendra Madhab Dash,to mention only a few.
One good thing about the anthology is that many of the poems have been translated by the poets themselves denoting their flair in both the languages. Even then, some poems have been translated by such celebrated names as Jayanat Mohapatra,Ramachandra Behera,Rohini Kanta Mukherjee and JP Das -making it more representative and more respected.
Amarendra Khatua’s poem Intimacy, Satrughna Pandab’s ‘Dust’,Subhendu Mund’s ‘A Poet’s Living’,Hara Prasad Parichha Pattnayak’s ‘Between Us’ ,Girija Kumar Baliyarsingh’s ‘Bharatvarsha’ Khirod Parida’s ‘Tributary’. Manua Das’s ‘Butchered Palms:A Dice Game’,Saroj Bal’s ‘The Wind’ and Kedar Mishra’s ‘Farewell to Poetry’ are particularly some of the poems which are out of the ordinary – thematically strong and lyrically pleasant.
Two poems by two women poets are uplifting. Indira Dash in her poem ‘The Journey’ goes into the whole world of abstraction. The beginning lines are fascinating: Before the landscape changes/In the shadows of sunset/Mallika has to cross /The threshold/And step into the street /Into the river/Into the riverines, hills and mountains – (translated by Sailaj Rabi).
Prabasini Mahakud’s confessional poem ‘Father’(translated by Dr JP Das) is equally poignant: Why didn’t you kill me that very day, father/With your double-barreled shotgun?/Why didn’t you pull the trigger?/That day, the first time that I disobeyed you/Talked back to you with bitter words? Amusingly, there is another poem in the anthology with the same title by Amiya Ranjan Mohapatra.
Surya Mishra’s poem ‘Conjugal Life is straightforward yet commanding. Rendered into English by the poet himself, the opening lines are breathtaking: Don’t humiliate the eyes welled up with tear/Don’t inflame me anymore, with blazing hunger/Come here and behold/Life’s customary scenes/Revolving round matter.
Manu Dash’s poem ‘Morning in Mintu Park’ (translated by Jyotsna Mohapatra) is a schmaltzy journey in a recreational area where you come across everything from the ‘obese girl wearing a half trouser’ to a ‘group of people chant the Vishnu Sahasranam.’
‘Wounds of Time’ by Soubhagyabanta Moharana(translated by Jayant Mohapatra)is ,as the title suggests, a distressed image of life’s sordid happenings. While Pitambar Tarai’s poem ‘The Lost Butterfly’ is metaphorically strong and by far the lengthy one, Aparna Mohanty’s ‘The Taste of Love’ has love as the deepest premise.
When you flip through the poems spread over 250 pages, you get an authentic feel of all that is happening to modern Odia poetry. The poems selected in this collection may not be the best or may be that some equally competent poets have been left out in the process; but it can safely assumed that ‘Voyage’ is the emissary of present-day Odia poetry – rich with varied patterns, styles and nuances.
