An Oriya by birth, an English poet by divine dispensation, in the town of Cuttack, Odisha, lived a man extraordinaire whose heart perpetually went out especially to the man and woman on the street held ransom by a world growing more corrupt and hostile day by day.
On a certain January afternoon years ago decreed by destiny I sat enraptured in Tinkonia Bagicha devouring his royal response to my questions, noticing all the while how his resolve “To be whole / To know where the water lies” (On the bank of the Ganges) had lent a halo around his determined chin.
The responses were not immediate always. Often, during the conversation, he fell into pregnant silences, the theme on which he repeatedly wrote every time with a different dimension. He spoke as he composed poetry depending wholly on the shrine within for the words to glide up onto the tip of his tongue impregnated with the seed of life.
Reading his own poems, I learnt, or that of Pablo Neruda and the like, he used to attain Samadhi. One felt blessed to watch him at his study table: His chin lightly propped on his thumb with the forefinger placed diagonally across his lips, the specs tucked up on the forehead, his unblinking gaze apparently placed on the street fronting his modest house but actually focused within. It’s the picture of a man at peace with himself, meditating, everything about him serene and silent.
Go to any literary hub almost anywhere in the world, and you will invariably find at least one anthology where his poetry has found home. Yet when my time was up and I got up to go rather reluctantly, he rued: “People still hurt me.” The words rang out like the cry of a brainfever bird.
How could one forget the cry of Amrita Pritam, poet, novelist and essayist: “Liberate me from the people, o Lord, who are giving me pain! I am very tired” (The Other Dimension). Jayanta Mahapatra, a very gifted poet, short story writer, translator, professor, memoirist, photographer, poetry editor, and a great humanist went to his last resting place on 27 August 2023.