A Visit to Jeypore

 

I had visited Jeypore thrice, but all those on official business. I was put up in government guest houses. I met the office people, did the office work and returned by evening to reach Bhubaneswar by the next day, to attend the office in the morning. I did not have the opportunity to interact with the local people or to see the town outside the office, in other words, get the feel of the town. This time when Surya (Poet Surya Misra) proposed to attend Nirvan Sahitya Parisad as chief guest in their twenty-ninth annual meet on 19^th December, I readily agreed.

My son warned me of the biting cold of Koraput and Jepore, and suggested me to go with sufficient winter garments. I had to take my coat which was not in use since I retired from government service four years ago. (One does not need to wear coat in Bhubaneswar climate and I have not undertaken journey outside in winter because of Covid during these four years.) But I found cold in Jeypore not harsh, rather pleasant and enjoyable.

I travelled with Surya by Hirakhand express. Chandrakant Biswal, a writer and a resident of Jeypore came to receive us at Koraput railway station. An affable person, Chandrakant who looks younger than his age greeted us with warmth and affection and put us up in a lodge. The meeting began slightly late as it took time for the members to reach from faraway places like Damanjodi, Raygada and other places of undivided Koraut district. Besides the speakers Chandra Sekhar Hota, Surya Misra, the other dignitaries on the dais were Dr Surendra Das, Dr Pradeep Misra and social worker Prakash Nayak.

Nirvan Sahitya Parisad felicitated writers Umakant Das, Rabi Panda, Swati Chatarjee, Bijay Kumar Jena, Srikant Misra and poets Sushant Kumar Nayak, Suranjan Patra and Rabi Satpathy. The way the poets and writers were felicitated with blowing of conch cell and ululating by  women, the poets and writers felt special and really honoured. The post lunch session had poetry recitation. A day of literary festival and intellectual merry making!

                                                ( Writer Rabi Panda is being felicitated)

Surya, a great conversationalist and a mine of information, enthralled me with anecdotes and behind stories of writers and litterateurs’ acts and deeds. The next day we woke up late, went to have tea at a road side tea stall and chitchatted with Chandrakant and his friends and had our breakfast without taking bath and morning ablutions. A young officer of the organisation I had worked for thirty years had seen me while going to the office when I was taking breakfast, standing and gossiping with friends in a road side eating joint. Later, when I visited their office, she said, “Sir, I have seen you eating there in your night pyjama and T-shirt, but could not believe, and thought, perhaps I was wrong in my presumption.”

We returned by the evening train, Hirakhand Express with the dinner packets of paratha and fried cauliflower, prepared by Chandrakant’s wife.

                                                    Sambad (Jaypore edition) has reported the event)

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Travails of a Tax Officer

 

I am a bibliomaniac; I am tempted to buy, if I happen to see books of my taste. My favourite place in the railway station or airport is bookshop. I have purchased a good number of books from railway stations and airports. But I am unable to read all those books. I may have purchased five, read three and if I come across good books I will purchase another five. The unread books get piled up in my library.

I decided to read all those unread books after I retired from service. I politely declined an extension of my job when offered to me, to read and of course, to write. I retired in 2019. I found a little difficulty initially to cope with post retirement life from an active routine service life. During this time I decided to write my memoirs, and to write without procrastination, before memory faded away. I started arranging the old notes, journals I had maintained, although irregularly, to overcome post retirement adjustment problem.

Then Covid-19 from China reached India and government imposed lock-downs, shutdowns and all kinds of restrictions. I got myself confined to my house. The communication to outside was through telephone, internet, face book or WhatsApp. A feeling was there that the future was uncertain, anything could happen to anybody at anytime. A few of my known or near and dear ones died of Covid. The conditions were quite depressing, I  went into depression. Then I felt the urgency to finish my memoirs which I had started a few months before the onset of the pandemic.

I finished the first draft by December, 2020. Bharat Bharati published the book Anichhuk Prasasak and released it in October, 2021.

The book received, to use a cliché, mixed reactions. Most of the readers appreciated the book and were full of praise and a few condemned me. Those who appreciated the book telephoned me, sent messages through WhatsApp or posted their views on Facebook timeline. I am quoting here some of the views, particularly sent through WhatsApp or posted on Facebook timeline in English only:

 

(Manisha is a school teacher and Sudhansu, a student of English literature, a was special commissioner, GST)

(Sailendra is a banker, resident of Mumbai)

                                          (Radharanman is a banker, residing in Mumbai)

Those who condemn me does it on my back, except one who wrote two pieces in a web magazine, of course, without mentioning my name, but castigating me and casting personal aspersions. The persons to whom they vilify me duly inform me. It pains me when I learn some of those who malign me were once my friends; at least, I considered them so. They speak one thing in my front and the opposite behind; of course, this peculiar behaviour not unusual with the persons in administration I have witnessed during my thirty years stint in the tax department. The appreciation elated me and vilification amused. I am grateful to those who admire and thankful to the condemners. For, both have contributed to sale/promotion of the book. The publisher of Anichhuk Prakasak, for the first time, paid a handsome royalty for half yearly sales of the book.

My friends of outside the state, on learning the publication of my memoirs in Odia from the Facebook and WhatsApp, urged me to write it in English so that they could read, and I obliged them, and now “A Reluctant Bureaucrat.” Shalandi Books has published the book within a very short time. Thanks to Shalandi Books.

(Sibabrata Das, IAS (Rtd.), retired bureaucrat  is reading A Reluctant Bureaucrat)

Love for the Princess

 

It was 1977. The emergency was lifted. The press, muzzled during emergency, was now enthusiastic to expose the emergency excesses. Perhaps, they were making up what they could not or were debarred from doing during the emergency. First time, a non congress party, Janata Party formed government; Moraji Desai was the prime minister.

We used to sit on a bench of the tea stall and hold our Khatti (adda in Bengali) everyday in the afternoon in the college square in front of the block office in Jajpur. Then, I was studying in  N. C. College. The driver of the BDO sat with us and was also a member of the Khatti.

The driver told us a story; he claimed to be privy to the incident. One top bureaucrat, a senior member of the IAS, was corrupt and oppressive. Field officers were mortally afraid of him. Wherever this IAS officer visited, he stayed the night and a woman served him fried fish with whisky in the inspection bungalow. He enjoyed his whiskey and the woman.

The driver told us that this IAS officer had visited the Block where he was driving the jeep of the BDO, and had driven a woman employee in the night to the inspection bungalow.

The story Behind the Scene is based on the incident told by the driver. The story was originally published in ‘Jhankar’ in 2000, the twenty-fifth year of emergency.

When I was treasury officer in Satyabadi (1992-96), my batch mate was the BDO in Kanash. He was honest and sincere, but his honesty did not go well with his political and administrative bosses. He could not withstand the pressure, and harassment inflicted on him by his collector and the minister. He committed suicide. This incident provoked me to write the story Chakravyuha.

The story then created a sensation in Puri district, as it was published in Katha within one year of his death and the incident was fresh in the memory. The story upset the collector, the petty politicians sent me hate and abusive mails; but the officer in charge of the police station treated me with a sumptuous lunch in a dhaba. This story also facilitated my transfer from Satyabadi, which I could not get despite all my efforts.

During my school/college days I was a member of the students’ wing of a leftist party. Of course, party and politics disillusioned me and I left soon. But I have not forgotten those friends. Whenever we have chanced meeting we exchange greetings.

One day (in 1999) I met such a friend. He was a committed member of the cadre. He was doing party works and for a livelihood, he sold books supplied by USSR. The persons having a taste for literature might have bought Dostovesky, Gorky, Turgenov, Tolstoy, Gogol, Puskin, etc in 1970s or in early 1980s at a cheap price and have enjoyed the books. This was before Gorbachev and his glasnost and perestroika. Gorbachev’s reforms broke up USSR and Russian supply of books stopped. Communist movement in India weakened. This friend of mine did not give up his ideology, but became a pauper. Once he was dreaming of bringing revolution and changing the society, now he was struggling hard to eke out a living to survive. His case inspired me to write the story Just for a Living. The Jhankar had originally published this story.

Love for the Princess contains nine stories including the above three. The stories are translated from original Odia by me, except one translated by Deepa Nayak.

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