LATA, PRAMODA O ANYAMANE

PRAMODA:

I had to tour to Bhubaneswar, at least once a month, when I was in Rourkela during 1996-1999. I worked as officer of Investigation Unit in Rourkela Commercial Tax Office, and my job profile included to raid, which we called in a gentle language, ‘surprise visit’, the business houses suspected of evading taxes. I was called to Bhubaneswar to participate in centrally conducted raids, and also examine seized documents.

There were two routes then to come to Bhubanswar from Rourkela: one via Sambalpur; the road condition was better, though longer, and the other was through Lahunipara, Pallahada. I preferred the latter. It was a pleasure to travel by a jeep in the jungle route, from Lahunipara to Barakote and from Pallahada to Samal barrage, Talcher, the road coursed through jungles.

After Lahunipara and around twenty kilometres from Barakote, every time I passed, I noticed rush of eaters, the truckers and other travellers, at a road side dhaba managed by a lady. Our inspector ascribed the rush to the pretty looking lady. I just looked at the dhaba, never stopped there and had never seen the lady. We planned our journey in a way so that we always took tea at Barakote and our main meal of the day at Samal barrage; the fresh sweet water fish caught at the barrage cooked and served in those jhopdi hotels was really delicious.

One day, on our return journey from Bhubaneswar, after Barakoke and just two/three kilometres before the dhaba, the jeep I was travelling developed snag, the dynamo stopped functioning. It was an August evening and it was also drizzling. Without light the driver could not drive in the jungle road, though it was yet to be night; but the thick woods and the rain brought deep darkness. He tried to mend, but failed. The BDO, Lahunipara was returning from somewhere, he met us on the road. His driver drove his jeep slowly in front and we followed him till we reached the pretty lady’s dhaba. The driver again tried to sort out in the light of the electric bulb, but could not.

We did not have any other way except spending the night in that dhaba. I watched the lady working and instructing her boys. I was amazed at the grit and command of the lady managing a lonely dhaba in the midst of a forest. Later, the lady and my experience of the day, and night in the dhaba inspired me to write a story. The story was published in the annual special issue of Sambad under the caption, Pramoda Khudi (Promoda Aunty).

The story got good response and I had received a large number of letters of appreciation from different parts of Odisha. (That was the time prior to use of mobile phones, internet, WhatsApp or Facebook)

                                          (Letter of poet Ramakant Rath on the story)

LATA:

Jhankar, the prestigious literary magazine of Odisha had published in its Puja special issue of 2003 my story Tukuna, Lata Apa and Dustaloka (Tukuna, Lata Sister and the Mischievous Man). The story is about sex consciousness of a teenager (Tukuna); he is attracted to his elder cousin (Lata Apa) without being conscious, and turned forlorn after he has suddenly witnessed an intimate scene of Lata with her husband, estranged for a few months, but reunited in a marriage function.

I was working in the head office at Cuttack and sharing the room with a senior officer, K.N. Khatai. Mr Khatai had interest in literature; had dabbled with pen in his student days and also authored two books. He did not conceal his displeasure and minced no words in decrying the story as incestuous. But I received many letters of appreciation for the story. I showed him every day for some days, the letters I used to get, until he was completely silenced, though probably not convinced.

                    (Letter of Poet and Writer Nrusingha Tripathy on the story)

odiasahitya.com has published this story in 2011 and has sixteen comments. One reader has some reservations on the story, but the other fifteen have words of appreciation. (The link to the story is given below, ctrl+click to follow the link)

୨୧ଟୁକୁନା, ଲତାଅପା ଓ ଦୁଷ୍ଟଲୋକ

Santosh Publications, Sutahat, Cuttack has published the book, Lata, Pramoda O Anyamane (Lata, Pramoda and others) in 2007. 

    (Letter of appreciation of the book by Writer Ramachandra Behera)

The book, my fifth story collection, contains fourteen stories including the above two. Sashikant Rout has designed the cover. The book is priced at Rs.100/

*****

POLITICS

                                (NITIDIN had published this incident of my childhood)

I met Parvati after forty five years. I was a speaker in a literary function in Cuttack; she was in the audience.

I had become a communist by the time I was in Class X. One of my teachers was a leftist and he did not miss an opportunity to teach us his leftist ideas. I could not avoid hearing from him a lot on Marxism, Socialism, Russian Revolution, Mao’s long march. Inspired by him, I read the poetry of Kazi Nazrul Islam, Anant Patnaik, Rabi Singh, Brajanath Rath. Off and on, while discussing any subject with friends or others, I used the words like capitalists, bourgeoisie, proletariat, exploiter, exploited, class struggle, class war, revolution, etc. In the 1974 Assembly elections, CPI had fielded Dushasan Jena as a candidate from Barachana constituency. I campaigned for him in the villages near to our school. He was elected to the Assembly. (That was his first and last win in any election.)

A few days after he was declared elected, he, along with four/five Comrades, visited the constituency to thank the voters. It was a holiday. He came to the school and told me to accompany him to the villages where I had campaigned for him. There were neither cars nor any vehicles. We walked to the village. One of us went by a cycle to inform in advance the villagers about the MLA’s visit. The people spread a reed mat on the veranda of a villager. We sat on it. A few people who had not gone to the field, and were in the village at the time gathered and the MLA discussed with them on various issues like the weather, farming, and also their problems. They  served tea and offered paans. He took the tea and put the remaining one or two paans in his pocket after chewing one. Then we went to the next village.

In the third village that day a Comrade had arranged lunch for us in his home. The Comrade’s daughter, Parvati was in my class in the school.  She had, for some reason, discontinued her studies after Class IX. Parvati helped her mother in serving us a simple meal of rice, moong dal, fish curry, saag (spinach) and alloo bharta (mashed potato). The food was tasty. Parvati, clad in a saree, looked grown up and also beautiful.

After lunch I did not go further with the MLA and returned from there. The MLA would proceed to another village after taking rest and sleep the night with a  Comrade where it would be dark.  Parvati came to see me off. She said, “You have Board exam next year. Are you studying or wasting time with these vagabond communists?”

I was a good student in the school; I always stood first in the class exams. Parvati’s beautiful face and her sweet reproach were in my mind until I reached the school, in my room.

The voting in Odisha for the general elections, 2019 had been completed, but counting of votes were awaited. People discussed everywhere they gathered on elections, high expenses and its probable results. After the meeting was over I was taking my lunch arranged by the organisers of the meeting. Parvati came to me, introduced herself and her husband. She had not changed much physically and her voice and way of speaking remained almost unchanged. Participating in the discussion she said, “Now, there are road shows, mutton biriyani and alcohol for the party workers and unemployed youth, and bribing the voters the night before the day of voting. One cannot win the election unless one has money and muscle power. In fact, the people like you should have been in politics.”

I had not forgotten the lunch I had taken with the MLA in her house, and her sweet reproach forty five years back. But I could not tell her one of the reasons for which I left politics was her words of caution or reproach  that day.

*****

                    (This story was published in PRAMEYA  on 21st June,2010)

An Odia Sculptor in Haridwar

( Statue of Subhash Chandra Bose at the park. P.C. Sefali Suman)

After I boarded the bus at Delhi to Haridwar I rang up Fakir Parida. I introduced myself and requested him to suggest a hotel for me to stay three days in Haridwar. Fakir Parida told he would ring back after a few minutes.

It was 2007. I was going to Haridwar and Rishikesh with my family. In the Cuttack Khatti , where I used to sit every day after morning walk, one member of the Khatti, Manoranjan told me to contact Fakir Parida in Haridwar. He said he was from Kumbharsahi of Cuttack, and had settled in Haridwar since 1980s. He made idols and images. I got the impression that he might be like the nomads selling on the road side images of laughing Buddha or different idols and images made of terracotta or china clay as we had seen in Bhubaneswar or on the road side elsewhere.

Manoranjan worked in the Municipality as a tax collector. His job profile included to visit houses of the area allotted to him and collect holding tax. He knew many persons of Cuttack. He had given me the phone number and said, “He loves to treat when a man of Cuttack visits him.” Of course, there was no doubt about it, the Katakias were known for their bhaichara, fellow feeling.

Fakir Parida rang back when our bus had reached Roorkee. He said, “Better, you should stay in Jayaram Aasram, I have told them. Please visit us after you reach, and taking rest for some time. The gatekeeper is an Odia; he knows me. He will tell you the way to reach me.”

His warm behaviour touched me. I decided to visit him after I checked into the aasram and having our lunch.

We did not have difficulty in finding him. He resided in Saradhapuram Colony of Bhutpada near Gangaswarup Aasram. Getting down near the aasram when I asked a man, he said, “Parida, the Silpi (Sculptor)? Are you from Odisha?”

I could feel the respect he had in pronouncing his name. He showed me the way.

( Fakir Parida in his studio. This photo is downloaded from internet, I had not brought the camera with me when I visited him)

Contrary to my expectation, he had a big house adjacent to the park. There was a big statue of Subhash Chandra Bose on horseback to the left side near to the park in front of his house. He had a spacious studio and in the studio, he had many small and medium sized idols and images. Parida was sitting on the floor and giving final touch to an image. He indicated a stool for me to sit near him and called his wife. His wife escorted my wife and children to their inner house.

I was waiting for him to finish his work and watching his house. I saw photographs of Fakir Parida with Somnath Chatarjee, L.K.Advani, Shusama Swaraj, Jaswant Singh, and many top leaders hung on the wall. I could not connect; I had the impression when Manoranjan told me he was from Kumbharasahi, that he might be a nomad like person, selling idols and images on the roadside; but here, besides a big house, he had photographs with Speaker and Cabinet Ministers and who’s who of India, that surprised me and that was beyond my comprehension. When I asked the occasion he had to be with these great leaders in the photographs, he said, Somanath Chatarjee, the Speaker of Loksabha had inaugurated the statue of Rana Pratap he had sculpted in the Parliament precincts, and the Speaker had invited to honour him.

When NDA led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in power, the Government decided to build the statue of Rana Pratap in the Parliament precincts. The Maharaja of Udaipur suggested the name of Fakir Parida to Jaswant Singh, then a cabinet minister in Vajpayee government, to entrust him with building the statue. Jaswant Singh had come to his Haridwar residence to invite him, as per the tradition, with paata (silk cloth) and a gold coin. The Maharaja had inaugurated a few statues sculpted by Parida in different places and had known him well.

Fakir Parida was born on 15^th July, 1942 in Kumbharasahi, Cuttack. He did not have any formal education; he had studied up to Class IV. He started making clay images, their traditional craft, when he was at 10. He had built a scenery of Indo China War of 1962, which the then Governor of Bihar had appreciated and felicitated him. In 1964, he had sculpted tribal images for the State Museum, Bhubaneswar. He had also sculpted forty images of primitive men for the anthropology department of Punjab University in 1974.

(My write up on fakir Parida, published in Ravivar magazine of Sambad on 18th November,2007)

Fakir Parida’s turning point was in 1982.  The Maharaj of Jayaram Aasram, impressed with the images Fakir Parida exhibited in an art exhibition, invited him to sculpt the scenery of sagarmanthan (Churning of the Ocean) in his aasram precincts at Haridwar, which gladly he accepted. Then his fame spread far and wide. By the time I had met him in 2007, he had sculpted images and statues in Haridwar, Rishikesh, Derhadun, Mussouri, Bhatinda, Faridkot, Kuruskhetra, Karnal, Madhuban, Mathura, Gurugaon, Sonipat, Aligarh, etc. The previous year, he had made Jain images in the Jain temple in London. Many governments and organisations had honoured him. The Governors of Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab and Chief Minister of Rajastan and Speaker of Loksabha had felicitated him.

I saw him training fourteen/fifteen disciples in the craft in his studio. We had snacks and tea with their family and when we took leave of him, he invited us to have lunch with them one day during my stay in Haridwar. But I could not make it as I did not have time.

(With my wife on the bank of the Ganga in Haridwar. P.C. Sefali Suman)

Many people in Odisha did not know him. I wrote an article on Fakir Parida after I returned to Cuttack. Ravivar magazine of Sambad had published it on the 18^th November, 2007.

 Fakir Parida saw the article and telephoned me. I promised him at his request to be his guest next time I visit, but the next time has not come till date.

*****

DRUSHYARA ANTARALE

(Things Not Visible)

A few events of the Emergency have etched on my memory:

1.    My first day in college. I have used my experience of witnessing police excesses during emergency (1975-77) on my first day in college in my novel Kasatandira Swapna (My blog in the same name dated Dt. 27 June, 2010). It was 1^st August 1975. The police on that day in Bhadrak were forcibly cutting the long hair of the boys who had hippie and tearing up the pants of the girls who wore bell bottoms. They did not spare a lecturer who did not have even hippie, but long sideburns. They coerced him to shorten his sideburns.

2.    With my friends Biraja and Sitanath, I had gone to Draupadi Talkies, Bhadrak to watch the movie, Kalicharan for the night show. Satrughan Sinha and Reena Roy starrer, it was a super hit. Two queues snaked long; I was on a queue to book the tickets for the three. A police constable stood at the counter. A gentleman came and went straight to the counter to enquire whether first class tickets were available or not. The man was just enquiring and, if they had no ticket, he would not waste  time in standing and waiting for the tickets. Since the man was not on the queue, the constable suddenly beat that man with his lathi. Enraged, the man snatched away the lathi from the constable and gave him two three blows. Two/three persons, policemen in plain clothes were among the people gathered in front of the cinema hall,  rushed to the spot, beat the man left and right, kicked him in full public view and dragged him away. Shocked, we did not watch the movie and returned to the hostel.

3.     My friend Biraja’s father was a professor in Economics. He was, of course, a member of the RSS, the organisation the Government had banned. The police arrested his father under MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act), the most draconian law, and threw him in jail. He spent the entire period of Emergency in different prisons without trial and was released only after the Emergency was lifted.

4.   One police officer had rented our house in Sindhekela. He stopped payment of rent just after the Emergency was declared. My father was a businessman. He did not ask for the rent. He feared if he asked for, the police might put him in trouble. In fact, the police arrested some businessmen known to my father on flimsy grounds and let them free after huge payment. Some businessmen had paid in advance to avoid such arrests.

Our exams were postponed for the Parliamentary elections of 1977. The students in the West Hostel where I was a boarder glued to the transistor to know the results the whole day and night on the day of counting of votes. Both Mrs. Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi lost the election in Raibarelly and Amethi. When BBC declared the result of Mrs. Gandhi late in night there was an instant procession of students celebrating the defeat, shouting slogans against the Congress and Mrs.Gandhi and her son Sanjay.

One day, in 1998, I was travelling by Hirakhand Express from Titlagarh to Rourkela. It was an eight to nine hours’ journey by the train. In the coupe of the train I was, among other five co passengers one was a retired clerk. A talkative man, he recounted stories from his experience and enthralled us. He spoke about a bureaucrat, a senior member of the Indian Administrative Service. When this bureaucrat went on tour he wanted for his dinner fried fish and whiskey, among other things, and a woman would serve him. He enjoyed the food and the woman.

I said, “I have also heard this kind of stories; I do not believe. Whether these stories are real or concocted?”

He said, “Yes, real. Once he had visited to the Block where I was working. One LSEO was persuaded to serve her.”

“What is LSEO? How did you the people comply with?” I was surprised.

“LSEO means Lady Social Education Organiser, there was such a post in the Block. In fact, the BDO was an honest and upright officer. He had no hand; the Junior Engineer arranged everything. But those were difficult times. If higher authorities, such as an IAS officer was dissatisfied, he could easily suspend, get arrested the subordinate officer on framed up charges. One has his family and his children, to look after.” The retired clerk said.

No one objected to the injustice during emergency, not even the media. Later, L.K Advani remarked on media, “You were only asked to bend, but you crawled.” I said, “I am really surprised. How no one had guts to stand against such injustice, against a rogue?”

The retired clerk became serious, kept mum, smoked a cigarette silently and said, “I can’t explain now. I was a mere clerk. But I have seen that day senior officers like the sub collector, ADM trembling before him. But the BDO went on a long leave after the visit of this rogue and when he resumed duties, he was not the same person. He carried a guilty feeling. He was not involved in the arrangement, but it was done in his knowledge. He could have avoided, we heard him saying to someone.”

I wrote a story on this incident. Jhankar published the story in 2000 in the 25^th year of Emergency under the caption drushyara antarale. Later, I kept it the title of the book Cuttack Students’ Store published in 2006. The book, my fourth short story collection, contains twenty two stories and priced at Rs.80/.

****