A Few Scenes and Some Characters

 

(A Few Scenes and Some Characters)

My professor in Kurukshetra University where I was doing M. Phil. in 1983-04, one day asked me, “Why don’t you go for writing?”

He was Prof. V.N. Dutta. Penguin Random House has recently published his book Jallianwala Bagh (with his interview and an introduction by Nonica Dutta). The book is in the best selling list in the category of non-fiction.

I replied, “Sir, I don’t have command over language.”

Prof. Dutta suggested writing in English in the journals and newspapers. He said, “That’s a bogus idea. You need three things to write. First, you see if you have something to say and second, you have clarity and conviction of what you want to say. Third, you need courage. Language will automatically come, language is never a barrier.”

I feel I have something to say. (I cannot claim I have courage.) I have been writing stories and novels. (Courage deficit and conduct rules for a government servant prevent me from writing all that I want to.) Readers have appreciated and have inspired me to continue. I have published so far thirteen story collections, seven novels in Odia, and one novel in English. Besides, I write features for newspapers, both in Odia and English.

Citra O Charitra is my thirteenth story collection.

In my childhood, there was a wise old man in our village. We called him Manthan Budha. He told stories from Ramayan, Mahabharat and other ancient literature. People, particularly the women and children loved him. Manthan Budha told the stories as if he were present on the scene and witnessed the events. One day he was telling a story from Kalidas’s.

The king was painting the image of his most beautiful queen on the canvas with all his love and care. Kalidas reached. The king asked him, “How does it look?’

Kalidas nodded his head in disapproval. The king understood, and being upset, threw in disgust the brush he was holding. A drop of paint fell on the thigh of the queen’s image. Kalidas remarked, “Now it’s okay, beautiful!”

The King, surprised, demanded, “How was it not good a moment before, and now it’s beautiful?”

Kalidas replied, “The queen has a mole on her thigh, you had not painted the mole, so the painting was incomplete. When you threw away the brush in disgust, a drop of paint fell on her thigh and made a mole. It’s now complete and it's really beautiful.”

The king suspected Kalidas. How it was possible Kalidas knew the mole on the thigh which the queen was supposed to cover with her dress in public? He ordered his soldiers to take Kalidas to the deep jungle and kill him.

The soldiers took Kalidas to deep woods. But they had respect for the great poet. They let him free, killed a bird and produced the blood before the king as evidence of Kalidas’s assassination.

Once, after a few days, Kalidas had gone to a courtesan at night. The same courtesan was also king’s favorite. The king went to her when Kalidas was there and knocked at the door. Kalidas, finding no route of escape, hid below the cot and waited. The king recited a Sanskrit sloka for the courtesan, but it had a mistake.

Kalidas heard the sloka and immediately corrected. The king knew it could be only Kalidas.

I asked Manthan Budha, “Kalidas knew if he was found, the King would punish him with death. Why did he take the risk?”

Manthan Budha smiled and said, “The King did not kill him. He realized his folly and the next day he called Kalidas to his darbar and reinstated him to his previous position.”

And Manthan Budha added, “Kalidas cannot keep anything inside his chest; he has to speak out, otherwise his heart will burst.”

I have been writing for more than thirty-thirty five years. If I feel something I have to speak out or write, I feel restless and sometimes fall sick, until I vent the inside out in my writings. I am conscious of conduct rules of a government servant and I try to be within official limit, but the pen, perhaps, sometimes transgresses. Those are often not palatable to my friends and colleagues of the organisation I work for. But I am helpless.

I happened to meet one of my former commissioners in the month I was to retire from government service. He asked, “What will you do after your retirement?”

I said, “I shall read and write.”

He said, “Do you know your friends and colleagues in the department  do not like you for your writings?”

I said, “They don’t like me when I am in service, working with them for more than thirty years. What difference it will make to me if they don’t like me after my retirement?”

I have not stopped writing. Citra O Charitra, a collection of eighteen stories is my first book published after my retirement in 2020. Publisher: Cuttack Students’ Store, Balu Bazaar, Cuttack

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