—–Pinaki De
Jayanta Mahapatra (1928-2023), the enigmatic poet with a deep thirst for the ruffle and tousle of imageries in the vineyard of mysticism, founded the journal Chandrabhaga in 1979. His vision was to open new vistas for emerging voices as well as established compatriots.
The journal’s twenty-first issue, recently published, carries the same spirit of creative exuberance that Mahapatra had envisaged and nurtured until the very end. The legacy feels vibrant and secure in the hands of the present editor, Rabindra K Swain, a poet of eminence. Similarly, the deftness of design that had always guarded the journal, be it the cover or the unalloyed layout, has the same touch of its architect, Jyoti Ranjan Swain.
Chandrabhaga still pulsates with the same energy that Mahapatra first infused into it decades ago.
The issue opens with translated excerpts from Jayanta Mahapatra’s Odia autobiography, The Dawn’s Drops of Pearls. These passages set the tone for the rich chorus that follows — poems, features, stories, and critical pieces woven together in the journal’s modest yet compelling pages. Particularly moving is the inclusion of his grandfather’s diary written in Karani script, which chronicles famine and hunger. Mahapatra renders it with haunting precision: the walls of the body brought down, along with which the sky of the mind also dissolved. “Life is not a metaphor,” he reminds us. “It is just not a word. Perhaps, life is the end product of time.”
Sudeep Sen’s poem ‘Red’ lights up the reader’s imagination with its resplendent exploration of colour and emotion. Red becomes “an elongated shade of healing, our love-song,” before rising to its highest octave: “Red is defiance, red is molten, red is joy, red is love.”
Ashutosh Parida, the Odia poet, delivers five powerful poems that confront death that betrays life – mad parades with knives in hand, veracious lives murdered beneath a noonday sun, and the aching question: “Will there be any country left for me to be exiled in?”
Chittaranjan Mishra’s translation captures the original bhava and its emotional cadences with remarkable precision.
Sukirtharani, the formidable Tamil poet, is represented with the largest selection — ten poems. Among them, the searing ‘Amma’s Sky’ lingers in memory: “How much would her back have been squashed breathless whenever Appa felt lust? How long would she have carried us like bales of cotton?”
In Maithili, Vibha Rani performs a quiet, Houdini-like act in ‘The Better Half’: the moment the mangalsutra went on, the name went off.
Prabal Kumar Basu’s four Bengali poems explore acceptance and identity with quiet nuance. In ‘Conflict’, he writes, “Whenever you were suspicious you unleashed wolves towards me instead of me.” ‘Wait, Hold On’ probes the search for self with equal sensitivity.
Bhardwaj Mishra’s rustic poem ‘Sunari of the Countryside’ traces the inevitable journey along roads “to the mountain, to the rains, to perdition, to salvation.”
P P Raveendran’s essay ‘Sculpting in Words’ offers a luminous remembrance of Mahapatra. Raveendran recalls a man full of life and verve, whose search for the true self led him to the very places from which poetry sprouts. Mahapatra’s primary concern, he notes, was the inner form of his poetry, its ethical value, the spirit of humanism it transmits, and above all, “the ontology of instinct that veins its texture.”
This issue also takes pride in presenting ‘Tiger Attack’, a story by Jnanpith Awardee Gopinath Mohanty, translated with care by Jayashree Samantaray Mohanty. In it, a powerful reflection on war and the earth’s quiet resilience appears: “Earthworms are with the soil, they make the soil, eat the soil, dig the soil and when they die, they make the soil more fertile.”
Rachita Swain’s essay rounds off the journal with a discerning critical engagement with the works of Vinod Kumar Shukla, Vikram Seth, Devashish Makhija, Hemant Divate, and others.
Compiling an issue featuring 52 poems, a story, essays, and autobiographical writing is no small feat. Editor Rabindra K Swain has done so with real mettle, showcasing a remarkable phalanx of creative voices.
(The writer is a theatre enthusiast, film aficionado and follows profound poetry)
