PAST PERFECT AND PRESENT INDEFINITE
(On starvation
deaths in Kalahandhi and Kashipur in Odisha)
The art of living, sharing, caring
for all
And working together for a common
goal
Is the greatest art mankind must
learn,
If at all for its misdeeds it cares
to mourn.
Love for freedom, national pride,
Sense of loss in an ancient war,
The burden of the past and tradition,
And the animation of the sublime on
stones
May help produce the space-shuttle
poetry
Of some private pleasure, five-star
agony
Or even in building up some info-tech
story.
Awards and honours mean much for the
elite;
But the lifestyle of the common
people,
The pain and strain they endure
Is a nation’s true identity.
Why is it that we have plenty of
people
Who have passions for poetry and
politics,
But none to show us some definite
direction?
When achievements reduce to be
personal,
Failure remains to be the collective
responsibility
Of a people for sheer debate that ends
verbal.
One wonders at those unknown soldiers
Who had given us a taste of victory
In their fight to death, eternally
present
As undying resistance to force,
For history to remember,
Instrumental in its way to peace.
Though age makes us weary,
Makes us sad, self-centered and
lonely,
The lines of Gopabandhu,
Who wept for the poor, worked for
them
And wrote for them, still haunt our
memory.
“Not in years, months,
Not in days, nor hours of pleasure;
Man lives in his work,
And the work, his only measure.”
II
While the coastal belt bears nature’s
brunt
Having to experience cyclones and flood,
The anguished west has a hungry earth
to tread.
Our ambitious appetite
For name, fame and creativity
Helps in no way to end poverty.
In this land of temples and gods
People are, as it were, too great and
godly
To think of the wretched of the
earth,
Who, in their opinion, are destined
to die
Starvation deaths or eating mango
kernel,
Cursed to make only babies to rock.
They seduced and stole their god,
They stole all their woods
And the little they had for food.
The dignity of living as humans they
denied them,
For which a mother now sells even her
child
Compelled to pay so great a price for
a handful of rice.
In our incompatible feudal minds,
aids,
How much big, doesn’t add up to our
needs
As it all disappears in the black
hole
Of our recklessness and greed.
Our big-brother-show of promise
Like the rock edict mockery of peace
Ebbs with the dark waters of dying
waves.
III
It is not for our lack of courage
Or skill that we suffer.
We too had our greener days.
The malady is elsewhere.
When strength becomes weakness,
The burden of achievement
Turns out to be the cause of misery.
Others built a sound sustenance
And left their pride to God;
We made God our face
And installed pride in the head
instead.
Idle worshippers of cult figures
And alien to commitment and work
culture,
Most of us love to depend on others.
Money comes and goes
And we get used to our woes
Spending the little we have or get in
pleasing
Gods and godheads much in a community
feast.
The larger part of a loan
Which otherwise could have assuaged
The suffering, is found finished and
gone
In celebration of some sorrow or a
little gain
To please all gods in the
neighborhood.
The big and beautiful adorns the
Odissi sky
With religious fervor even in sensual
joy.
So, there is this dumb dereliction,
This deletion of the basic needs
Which shy away in the dominant
presence
Of the big black God of total absence.
The Radha Krishna myth takes new
dimensions,
New depths in its passionate
presentation.
The miserable, rejoicing their
transformation
In the night, strip to their hells at
dawn.
The primeval theme of love, sex, war,
Possession and pride gives us a good
ride.
The thought of a lost war and the
struggle
Compensates the loss and abuse.
It contemplates the sluggishness
If it doesn’t exhaust means by much
use
Like a militant outfit, left with
little to offer the people
It makes suffer, wasting more on weapons
and the hit.
Pillars only don’t ensure peace
If the ground beneath is hollow,
Where each and every one growls
For a bigger share of the kill.
If past perfect is our treasure,
Can’t our present be progressive
And food for all be our
pleasure?
V
When caste ridden power politics
Aims at establishing superiority,
The concept of a welfare state
And democracy doesn’t work.
Since the deprived,
Most often victims of false prestige,
Feel contented with a gift of lies
And stick to image worship
In their love for noble lineage
Which, they think, can deliver the
good,
A humble origin doesn’t fit into
The scheme of the things to begin
with.
Thus we sit and wait
In the deluxe suite of our insight
Looking for some poetic truth
And invest on our intellectual
exercise,
Aching for some new surprise, new
image,
Good enough to please, conceal and
confuse.
The desperate dreams
And defiance of a simple folk
That has always loved
To have a life of its own
Free from subjugation,
The beautiful landscape,
The golden beach
And the mystic silence
Of the poetic network
Of magnificent temples
Come to my mind and I smile
When they ask me,
“How do your people write
So good poetry?”
But when I am asked
About starvation deaths
At my place
Or a mother selling her child
For a handful of rice
Even after fifty-four years
Of Independence,
I feel miserable myself
Groping for words.
(From my forthcoming poetry collection 'THE BITTER CANTO'.
Written in 2001, this poem was first published in Rock Pebbles in 2006.)
Copyright: Bipin Patsani
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