Jayanta Mahapatra

Jayanta Mahapatra, as I have known him, As I have read and understood him, The professor of physics teaching physics in his classrooms And writing poems in English as for hobby And he turning to it as for his avocation. A poet, he edited Chandrabhaga, Picked poems for the Sunday issues of the Telegraph coloured magazine For sometime just like Khushwant Singh selecting short stories for it, A poet, an editor, a short story writer, a translator and a prose-writer And above all, an Odia of Odisha, my native land, The place of his birth and rearing up. A poet imagistic and photographic, he took poetry As images and photographs, Marking the negatives and shadows in lights, Using the notebooks of light and darkness Which he taught to physics students. A poet of faith and doubt is he And to doubt his skepticism in faith, Discerning with Western reasoning, But what it ails him most is the present-day situation, Rape, murder, domestic violence, dowry deaths, bride burnings, female feticide, Terrorism, communal harmony, factionalism, loot, rapine, corruption, trafficking, Hunger, poverty, backwardness and underdevelopment. Call him whatever you like to, An imagist, a realist, a mythist, a feminist, a nihilist, An existentialist, a modernist or a post-modernist, Whatever have you to call, You call him, As he is ever eluding, ever escaping. A dreamer and a visionary, A myth-maker and a historiographer, An imagist with the picturization is he not merely, Not a lensman merely But one with a social purpose, Art for art’s sake not, for morality too, Poetry with some social purpose And the images of his dazzle the reader. A modern poet, it is difficult to fathom him As meaning is not, And it is useless to search for it As he writes not for the meaning sake But as for imagery sake, Which is so slippery to pass out of sight. With the camera hanging from the neck, He photographs the temples, The ancient rock-built, stone-hewn temples Of great architectural splendour, The Jagannath Puri temple, the Lingaraj temple, The Udaigiri and Khandagiri caves, The Dhaulagiri. A historiographer, he tries to trace out and re-locate The site of regional history, A cartographer He is a map-maker of Odisha, Its art, culture and tradition. A poet of serenade and its landscapes, Relationship, man-woman relationship story, He dreams of the Kalinga war Fought between the Ashoka and the Kalinga king, The battle-fields laced with bloodshed And the river Daya full of blood, Which but he has not forgotten them. A poet of time, he shows everything As the ed disc of the sun appearing on the horizon And the retreating sun setting down, In terms of light and darkness And it is of course difficult to explain light and darkness, What things are they made of? He sees the art and artifacts, the great work of masonary and architecture, Thinks of the heyday of glory and splendid temple-making, The sculptures and figurines on the outer walls of the temples In love and relationship, Dharma, artha, kama and moksha, But the toils, tears, troubles and tribulations of the dark daughters None has come to feel them sociologically, The fruits of their labour.