The poet laureate is unknown in his own town
This was 1985, I was then working with Bokaro Steel and beginning to realize that I could write tolerable poems in English. Sunday Magazine of The Telegraph had a special appeal for me. The renowned poet Jayanta Mahapatra edited and published new poets in English on that one page every week. He was among the doyen of English poetry in India along with Nissim Ezekiel, Pritish Nandi, Kamala Das, A K Ramanujam, Keki Daruwala and others. He was, interestingly, a Professor of Physics and had been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for English poetry.
Like all poet-aspirants, I used to assiduously send my poems to The Telegraph, fervently hoping that some day one of my poems would grace the poetry page. Six months of opening the Sunday paper with great expectations, and feel the dejection became almost a weekly routine. In sheer frustration, I wrote a rather acidic letter to Mr Mahapatra asking him whether he actually read the poems, and what did it take for an unpublished poet to break in to his editorial bastion.
Surprisingly, within a week came this inland letter, with very kind advice to read more poetry, write more, how pain was the lot of all poets and lastly, not to lose hope. In subsequent letters, he traced his late entry in to poetry. One Sunday, there it was, my first poem in the Sunday Magazine! I continued to write poems, send the to different magazines, had the occasional success. Much later did I realise that I had shared the poetry pages of The Telegraph Sunday Magazine with some poets who would later emerge as stars in the firmament of English poetry in India- Tabish Khair, Makarand Paranjpe! I was juggling my job and an evening M Tech from IIT-ISM that required me to travel 120km round trip from Bokaro Steel City and Dhanbad. Poetry continued and the zenith of my 'poetic career' was when Jayanta Mahapatra chose five of my poems called 'Cityscapes' and that entire page was dedicated to my poems, instead of five poets who got published every week! A couple of years later, Kamala Das published three of my poems in the poetry page of Femina. Heady days for a poet whose profession was engineering in a steel plant!
Letters went back and forth, mine seeking advice, probably cribbing about the lot of poets. His letters in pearl like script, perfectly formed with nary a correction, would be empathetic, caring and often, sharing his own experiences of failure. These letters never ceased to inspire me. He was a benign Drona to my ardent Ekalavya!
In January 1989, we were passing through Cuttack during a car trip to Chilika Lake. I begged my friends for an extra couple of hours, and rushed to the area called Tinkoniya Bagicha, where he lived. In my excitement, while buying cigarettes I left my camera at the shop and rushed off. Greater disappointment awaited me- the poet was out of station! I remember the house having a beautiful, well-kept garden with a clump of ornamental bamboo, shrubs and flowering plants. His wife Jyotsna was very graceful and kind, and offered to show me his study. Thus ended my attempt to meet the poet.
Years rolled on, my poetic career dwindled, because somewhere in early 1990s Telegraph closed its poetry page, so did Femina. They had more interesting things like semi-clad paragons of female pulchritude to publish for the more 'discerning' readers! Poetry does not sell, I concluded.
My letters to Jayanta Mahapatra tapered off, busy as I was with my career, my foray in to doctoral research at IIT Kharagpur, followed by career change from steel company to academia! The font of poetry dwindled to a sporadic dribble. One day I read that he had been awarded the Padma Shri, and later he had returned the honour in protest of rising intolerance in India!
In 2015, I realised that my career was nearing retirement and the unrequited love for poetry came back with a rush. I compiled my poems, got Jayanta Mahapatra' s telephone number through an old friend from Cuttack. I called him up, and to my surprise, he remembered me well enough to track my movement over the last nearly two decades. He readily agreed to read my poems, and I sent him a bound manuscript. A month later came a generous foreword, typed on his own manual typewriter with minute details of many poems explained! Thrilled as I was, it completely eluded me that he had not signed the document. A famous worldwide publishing house returned my manuscript, with a note of rejection, "...... foreword by Jayanta Mahapatra notwithstanding". So much for my bucket-list of publishing my book of poems!
One morning I just called him and asked him whether he would be free to meet me for a few hours during the next Sunday. When he agreed, I promptly booked the tickets, booked a hotel near the Cuttack railway station. Saturday I boarded the train for the four hour journey from Kharagpur to Cuttack. Sunday morning was spent in getting a print out of his foreword. It was around 1.45pm that I landed up in Tinkoniya Bagicha. The place is named after a small triangular park. Where is the park, I thought, as I looked around and trying to remember the location of his house. The park had vanished under a load of garbage, and an ugly electrical transformer lorded over this once green triangle!
The next one hour was spent in enquiring about the location of his house, at a paan shop, a tailor, a grocery, auto rickshaw driver, tea shop, sweet shop, assorted pedestrians and so on in a two hundred metre radius of the park that was a garbage dump and existed as an address. To help I added, professor at Ravenshaw College, famous poet, Padma Shri, and an old inhabitant of this locality. Responses fell under, "Jayanta who?", "Do not know!", "Not in this locality" and "Are you sure it is Tinkoniya Bagicha?" Thereafter, one helpful individual pointed out that there was one reputed lawyer, Jayanta Rath and perhaps I had mistaken the surname. While I was cycling through Rath, Mahanty, Swain, Panda and host of Odiya surnames with first name Jayanta who probably lived in this area, realisation dawned that the poet laureate, feted abroad, awarded and honoured with Padmashri in 2009 for literature (which he returned in 2015 as a gesture of protest against 'growing intolerance'. of the country) was virtually unknown hundred meters from his home of sixty years! So much for preserving our cultural heritage and remembering our cultural icons!
This was 1985, I was then working with Bokaro Steel and beginning to realize that I could write tolerable poems in English. Sunday Magazine of The Telegraph had a special appeal for me. The renowned poet Jayanta Mahapatra edited and published new poets in English on that one page every week. He was among the doyen of English poetry in India along with Nissim Ezekiel, Pritish Nandi, Kamala Das, A K Ramanujam, Keki Daruwala and others. He was, interestingly, a Professor of Physics and had been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for English poetry.
Like all poet-aspirants, I used to assiduously send my poems to The Telegraph, fervently hoping that some day one of my poems would grace the poetry page. Six months of opening the Sunday paper with great expectations, and feel the dejection became almost a weekly routine. In sheer frustration, I wrote a rather acidic letter to Mr Mahapatra asking him whether he actually read the poems, and what did it take for an unpublished poet to break in to his editorial bastion.
Surprisingly, within a week came this inland letter, with very kind advice to read more poetry, write more, how pain was the lot of all poets and lastly, not to lose hope. In subsequent letters, he traced his late entry in to poetry. One Sunday, there it was, my first poem in the Sunday Magazine! I continued to write poems, send the to different magazines, had the occasional success. Much later did I realise that I had shared the poetry pages of The Telegraph Sunday Magazine with some poets who would later emerge as stars in the firmament of English poetry in India- Tabish Khair, Makarand Paranjpe! I was juggling my job and an evening M Tech from IIT-ISM that required me to travel 120km round trip from Bokaro Steel City and Dhanbad. Poetry continued and the zenith of my 'poetic career' was when Jayanta Mahapatra chose five of my poems called 'Cityscapes' and that entire page was dedicated to my poems, instead of five poets who got published every week! A couple of years later, Kamala Das published three of my poems in the poetry page of Femina. Heady days for a poet whose profession was engineering in a steel plant!
Letters went back and forth, mine seeking advice, probably cribbing about the lot of poets. His letters in pearl like script, perfectly formed with nary a correction, would be empathetic, caring and often, sharing his own experiences of failure. These letters never ceased to inspire me. He was a benign Drona to my ardent Ekalavya!
In January 1989, we were passing through Cuttack during a car trip to Chilika Lake. I begged my friends for an extra couple of hours, and rushed to the area called Tinkoniya Bagicha, where he lived. In my excitement, while buying cigarettes I left my camera at the shop and rushed off. Greater disappointment awaited me- the poet was out of station! I remember the house having a beautiful, well-kept garden with a clump of ornamental bamboo, shrubs and flowering plants. His wife Jyotsna was very graceful and kind, and offered to show me his study. Thus ended my attempt to meet the poet.
Years rolled on, my poetic career dwindled, because somewhere in early 1990s Telegraph closed its poetry page, so did Femina. They had more interesting things like semi-clad paragons of female pulchritude to publish for the more 'discerning' readers! Poetry does not sell, I concluded.
My letters to Jayanta Mahapatra tapered off, busy as I was with my career, my foray in to doctoral research at IIT Kharagpur, followed by career change from steel company to academia! The font of poetry dwindled to a sporadic dribble. One day I read that he had been awarded the Padma Shri, and later he had returned the honour in protest of rising intolerance in India!
In 2015, I realised that my career was nearing retirement and the unrequited love for poetry came back with a rush. I compiled my poems, got Jayanta Mahapatra' s telephone number through an old friend from Cuttack. I called him up, and to my surprise, he remembered me well enough to track my movement over the last nearly two decades. He readily agreed to read my poems, and I sent him a bound manuscript. A month later came a generous foreword, typed on his own manual typewriter with minute details of many poems explained! Thrilled as I was, it completely eluded me that he had not signed the document. A famous worldwide publishing house returned my manuscript, with a note of rejection, "...... foreword by Jayanta Mahapatra notwithstanding". So much for my bucket-list of publishing my book of poems!
One morning I just called him and asked him whether he would be free to meet me for a few hours during the next Sunday. When he agreed, I promptly booked the tickets, booked a hotel near the Cuttack railway station. Saturday I boarded the train for the four hour journey from Kharagpur to Cuttack. Sunday morning was spent in getting a print out of his foreword. It was around 1.45pm that I landed up in Tinkoniya Bagicha. The place is named after a small triangular park. Where is the park, I thought, as I looked around and trying to remember the location of his house. The park had vanished under a load of garbage, and an ugly electrical transformer lorded over this once green triangle!
The next one hour was spent in enquiring about the location of his house, at a paan shop, a tailor, a grocery, auto rickshaw driver, tea shop, sweet shop, assorted pedestrians and so on in a two hundred metre radius of the park that was a garbage dump and existed as an address. To help I added, professor at Ravenshaw College, famous poet, Padma Shri, and an old inhabitant of this locality. Responses fell under, "Jayanta who?", "Do not know!", "Not in this locality" and "Are you sure it is Tinkoniya Bagicha?" Thereafter, one helpful individual pointed out that there was one reputed lawyer, Jayanta Rath and perhaps I had mistaken the surname. While I was cycling through Rath, Mahanty, Swain, Panda and host of Odiya surnames with first name Jayanta who probably lived in this area, realisation dawned that the poet laureate, feted abroad, awarded and honoured with Padmashri in 2009 for literature (which he returned in 2015 as a gesture of protest against 'growing intolerance'. of the country) was virtually unknown hundred meters from his home of sixty years! So much for preserving our cultural heritage and remembering our cultural icons!
Overhearing my persistent enquiries, a casual bystander
walked up to me and asked, "Poet and professor, you said, famous,
aah!" Then followed very specific directions to a an old gate in a small
lane which I must have crossed at least four times over the past hour!
The gate, the garden overgrown and neglected, especially the ornamental bamboo near the entrance brought back memories of the visit twenty nine years ago. The poet greeted me warmly, as if we had met only the other day, and not for the first time. What ensued was a long conversation, mostly mine -questions seeking explanation. All my pent up angst about poetry and life in general spilled out in a torrent and with his abiding patience, Jayantad da responded.
The gate, the garden overgrown and neglected, especially the ornamental bamboo near the entrance brought back memories of the visit twenty nine years ago. The poet greeted me warmly, as if we had met only the other day, and not for the first time. What ensued was a long conversation, mostly mine -questions seeking explanation. All my pent up angst about poetry and life in general spilled out in a torrent and with his abiding patience, Jayantad da responded.
What was amazing that Jayanta da, just a month away from his 90th birthday, had overcome his grief of losing his wife about ten years ago and the harshest blow of losing his sixty two year old son, his only child, two years ago! He continued to lead a meaningful life, write poems, correspond and meet people. Amazing fortitude! My salute to the poet and above all, superb human being!
