Cuttack

 

(Receiving Citizen's Award, Cuttack from Chief Minister, Odisha in 2011) 

Cuttack nagara, dhabal tagar. I had read it when I learnt alphabets from Barnabodha of Madhusudan Rao. This was the prescribed book for children to learn alphabets. The name of the city, Cuttack was ingrained in mind from the very childhood. Later, when government celebrated one thousand years of the city in 1988-89, coined the slogan, Cuttack nagar, barasa hazaar, (Cuttack, a city of thousand years). Besides my village and village of my maternal uncle, the only place I did know or hear was Cuttack till I went to school. In my childhood, Cuttack to me was a city like London or Paris.

I was born in a remote village. Flood visited almost every year and marooned our village for more than a fortnight. The flood water cut off our village from outside world. For any urgency, the means of communication was rowboats. Some people of the village, relatively well off, had boats which came into use during flood. Some people made rafts stitching banana logs with thin bamboo sticks. They used the rafts to go to the mango grove or to a banyan tree to relieve in the morning on a branch of the tree. When I was in the college or university I have to traverse a distance of five kilometres in waist or in some places, chest deep flood water to Koudikol Chhak to go to the collage. From Koudikol, on the Daitary-Paradeep Express Highway, I climbed to the body of a truck that carried iron ore from Daitary to Paradeep port, and reached Chandikhol. From Chandikhol I got the bus to wherever I had to go. No bus or any other transport vehicle plied in those days in the Express Highway.

The school where I studied and passed Matriculation was on bank of the river, Kelua, a branch of the river Brahmani. There was an embankment in front of the school; hence the school was in between the river and the embankment. When the river overflowed, water entered into the school campus and flooded the rooms. The school remained closed till the flood water receded. I was studying science in my intermediate classes and I needed the board certificate to fill up forms for final exam. It was rainy season. I had to swim seven or eight metres from the embankment to reach the school and get my board certificate. Holding the certificate high in one hand I swam back to the embankment.

 Cuttack, the city of my dreams is only fifty kilometres from my village, but the city seemed to me distant and unreachable.

Cuttack was the city of politics, learning, history, culture and literature. It was the centre of freedom struggle. Guru Nanak, Sri Chaitanya, had visited the city, many writers, educationists; social reformers had their residences, so also many kings and emperors had once ruled from here. It was the old capital of the state. The premier institute Ravenshaw College is in Cuttack. The obituary of any great person published in newspapers mentions he was once a student of Ravenshaw. I did not get an opportunity to study in Ravenshaw. After matriculation I applied for Ravenshaw, BJB and Bhadrak College. Intimation for admission I first received from Bhadrak and took admission there. Later, I got the intimation for Ravenshaw, but then, I did not like to take transfer certificate from Bhadrak. On different occasions I came to Cuttack, stayed with friends in Ravenshaw College hostels, but for two three days. I had never resided in the city for a long time.

                                        (On the bank of the river, Mahanadi in a quiet afternoon)

On transfer, I had to join Cuttack office. It was already dawn when Rourkela bus reached Cuttack, but the lazy city was still asleep. The shops and market had not opened. I got a rickshaw and came by Dolamundai, Bajrakabati, Ranihat. In some places, cows and bulls slept on the road. A thrill passed through me when I passed college square. When I was a student, I bought books and magazines from college square, and stayed with my friends Biraja and Sitanath in their hostel. We came to college square and used to chitchat over cups of tea and smoking cheap cigarettes.

I stayed in Bombey hotel.

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I studied up to class five in the village school, and then, went to study in the school of my maternal uncle’s village from class six. I stayed four years with my uncle and remaining two years in the school. In college and university I was staying in hostels. I enjoyed freedom, more than other students, my friends; me having relatively less parental or guardian’s control over me. I used to wander; chitchatting, sitting in a khatti and discussing whatever come up for discussion over cups of tea and cigarettes. This had been a habit with me since my school/college days. Wherever I was, I got my friends and a khatti.

Soon after I joined, I got a khatti in Cuttack. In the morning I went to a tea stall. Saroj Ranjan Mohanty and Prafulla Mohanty joined there. Soroj Mohanty was a reputed poet and editor of the prestigious literary magazine, Jhankar. Prafulla Mohanty worked in the secretariat. He was an actor, a theatre person as well as an AIR artiste. The writers or poets who came to meet Saroj Mohanty, first they looked for him in the Khatti. Prof. Deepti Ranjan Patnaik, a writer, was then in Ravenshaw College, Debabrat Madanray, a writer, was editor, Nabalipi, a literary magazine, both sometimes dropped in, so also other men of art and literature. There was no fixed subject; discussion went on literature, politics, art and culture, whatever cropped up. Some local people also joined. The Khatti continued for a longer time on Sundays or other holidays.

(Khatti; Saroj Mohanty reading the morning newspaper, me sitting next to him in the above photo, Prafulla Mohanty, standing and reading the Paper in the photograph below)

I always tried not to bring office to home; office work in office and when I was home reading or writing or in the Khatti, I tried not to think about office. I lived in two worlds. Office often irritated, tired me; the foul mood, sometimes, was with me even after I reached home. The khatti or a book drove out those fetid thoughts. Discontent in me often vented out in my writings.

When I was in Rourkela I wrote two stories, Eka Eka (All Alone) and Kaunria Kathi (Fibre-less Stem of Jute Plant), published in Katha. Manas was the protagonist in both the stories. The readers appreciated. I continued to write based on certain events I experienced; idiosyncrasies of some officers and colleagues also inspired me, and I told all those stories through Manas. Then, there were no cell phones, SMS or WhatsApp or Facebook; readers used to write letters. Readers often wrote me to let them know the next magazine which would publish Manas’s next story, so that they would buy the magazine. Besides common readers, I received letters from the employees of commercial tax organisation or persons associated with the organisation.

Some senior officers and colleagues did not appreciate the stories. Two/three officers who had interest in literature (they were also published writers) told me it was enough, stop writing on the department. I stopped, but not for their pressure; I did not want to be a typecast. Cuttack Students’ Store, Cuttack published a collection of selected fifteen of those stories under the title Nija Batare Nije (All in Their Own Ways).

( Nija Batare Nije (All in Their Own Ways), Cuttack Students' Store, 2002)

At this time, ‘Nabalipi’ had published my story Charibandhu (Four Friends); the story was based on characters of the Khatti. Debabrat Madanray liked the story and later, inspired by Four Friends, he wrote a story; of course, from his experience and one of the characters of his story was Sahadev.

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