Lovely tales from Odisha hinterland
Gopinath Mohanty started writing much before India gained independence and his works were considered brilliant by many even in the 1940s.
Before I delve into and Other Stories, it is important to write a few lines about Gopinath Mohanty, the king of Oriya literature. It’s a pity that some of India’s finest writers hardly shook the literary world because they never wrote in English or Hindi, considered mainstream in India. But these writers were brilliant and very prominent within their communities. Mohanty started writing much before India gained independence and his works were considered brilliant by many even in the 1940s. He was the recipient of the first Sahitya Akademi award.
And now that his works are being translated into
English and other regional languages, many are getting to know about his earthy novels which flow with the serenity of rural Indian homes, or like the nobility of a big river. Many of his works revolve around poor boys growing up in nondescript rural India or women facing insurmountable challenges emerging from the rawness of life.
His characters are genuine. They, actually, concern us all and are timeless. These are hidden stories of India, from the hinterland where sounds of conch shells and the chorus of crickets herald the arrival of fireflies in the fields and stars in the sky. Mohanty’s stories are human documents of problems that both individuals and families wrestle with—poverty, love, pain and violence. His writings portray unique characters.
Mohanty wrote “Da”, his first short story sometime between 1935 and 1936. It’s an emotional one about a regressive social custom of the time. The protagonist is an octogenarian woman in an Indian village busy with her many household chores and, occasionally, checks up on the whole gossip of the hinterland. Does that make her popular? To some, not too many. So, the majority make her life miserable because of her past and pushes her out of the village. Da—tired and humiliated—walks into the river next door. She does not return. Am I seeing shades of the old Indira Thakurun of Pather Panchali?
And then I shifted to “Oblivion”—it was originally titled Bismriti and written six years before India attained independence—where a calm-faced Sibaram Salura leaves the comfort of his village in a goods carrier for a new job in Vijaynagaram (Vizianagaram now). He remembers his life, everything from the moonlit nights to the temple bells. He remembers, as the author writes: “The Paraja girl with the rose tucked into his hair, the harmonium-playing Mina, his girlfriend far away, his future wife, who sings so mellifluously.” Sibaram remembers the first and only kiss he planted on Mina.
Lovely lines—i mean the translation by Sudeshna and Sudhansu Mohanty.
So, what happens next? An accident as the truck crashes off the road. “Teardrops mingle with his blood, the shadow of death flits across his eyes. And then something primal— oblivion! Beyond and over to a world of yonder.” Did the world change because style of his own.
Sibaram died, no says the Oblivion, as the book author very interestingly. says, revolves around the Read the lines: “Sibaram innocence of Sibaram—he left the world. His name is also the Noble Savage— was lost. Nothing unusual in the back of beyond the in this vast world where tribal district of Koraput. so many people are born The oblivion that sets in the and so many people die. end lends the story its equilibrium. Sibaram died, the moon didn’t get less lustrous, the In the same year, Mohanty flowers didn’t wilt faster wrote “The Paper Boat”, to droop and die, the purling which is a macabre story of the jungle stream did revolving around the lives not stop, the full-throttled of two young boys from the giggles of the Paraja girls Reli community of Doms. didn’t come to an end.” They operate under the
And then the author cover of darkness, looking turns emotional when he for corpses floating in writes: “Only his father the river. Actually, they aged—seemingly by twenty are looking for gold ornaments years.” Losing a son heading on the dead body but for success and happiness their efforts fail because the is not easy. Or knowing body has no yellow metal. the son has fallen very sick. But it does not help because I remember Bibhutibhusan the body has none. Ella and Bandopadhyay’s “Dui Singamu are like two shadows Bari”, and the young lawyer walking beside the embankment. Madhu down with typhoid Writes the author: even before he could see the “Involuntarily, there girl, Manju, he loved. By the surges from within them time he reached his village, a desire to do something Manju was already engaged daring and audacious, to to the local judge. Sorry, if vindicate the boundless I appear to be drawing too frustrations of their lives by many parallels, but I am engaging in this sepulchral not. Mohanty stands out hunt.” brilliantly and has a unique I got interested in “Cricket”, another story from Mohanty, for obvious reasons. He penned it in 1982, the year of the Asian Games and a year before India won the World Cup under Kapil Dev. Well, it is about a cricket match to be played in Cuttack’s Barabati stadium between India and England. A frail Kamaladevi is at home where her family members are supercharged about the match. Some members of the family have gone to watch the match. She has stayed back to listen to a running commentary from the family radio.
And then, the match starts. The visitors are playing exceedingly well, the hosts are crumbling. But Kamaladevi is deep in prayers, she has faith in the Gods. Eventually, the clouds start looming over the cricket ground and many feel India’s chances of winning are really less. And then, almost suddenly, the hosts win the day. It is almost a miracle, claim the commentators. Kamaladevi says it is the power of the family deity, Ma Budhi Mangala. She is firm on her belief. Today, cricket is indeed a religion in India.
Mohanty touches the human chords with his works. “Endless” is about a child whose disappointment borders on the poignant. The kid is young, innocent and wants to grow. Yet, there is crushing poverty that threatens to kill his innocence and hope every now and then. On the day of the Rathyatra, everyone is dressed beautifully, except Banu, the central character of the story. And then, he weeps and turns his face away from the crowds. Poverty is a curse, probably the Gods made him realise.
I am reminded of an interesting poem that is almost folklore in Odisha:
It translates as the road says I am the Lord, the chariot says it’s me, the idol says I am the Lord, smiles the one who remains unseen and almighty.
A lovely read, some credit must go to Penguin’s editor Saloni Mital who pushed for this tome.