Fourth Volume of Ganeswar Mishra’s Collected Works Unveiled

Bhubaneswar: Srujan Samagra IV, a collection of the feature writings of Ganeswar Mishra, was unveiled on the renowned writer’s fourth death anniversary here on Friday.

At a function, organised by city-based socio-cultural organisation Sateertha, at Buddha Mandir, Unit 9, here, the fourth volume of the collected works of Mishra was inaugurated by retired Professor of Philosophy, Utkal University, Dr Prafulla Kumar Mohapatra, well-known
translator Prof Jatindra Kumar Nayak, retired Professor of English, Utkal University, Dr Himanshu Sekhar Mohapatra, writer Dr Biraj Mohan Das, publisher Saroj Bal and convenor of Sateertha Sandeep Mishra.

Prof Himanshu Mohapatra also delivered the Ganeswar Mishra Memorial Lecture and underscored that Mishra’s novels reflected the Little Tradition in the face of dominance of Great Tradition in majority of the novels in Odia. While fiction having roots in the Great Tradition is social, outward-directed and prosaic by contrast, those that have their origins in Little Tradition is psychological, inward-bound and poetic, he noted.

“Analysis of this sort makes me aware of how the realistic and the outward-bound novel has imposed itself as normative in Odia fiction. The other kind of novel has remained under-estimated and under-recognised,” he pointed out.

In his lecture, titled Odiara Shilpi Upanyasa: Swakyara Ganeswariya (Artist Novel in Odia: A Signature Ganeswar Style), he described Mishra as a ‘home-bound pilgrim’, who was “one among a new tribe of Indian teachers of English who inevitably led a ‘dual life’, conducting their teaching and research in English by day and writing in their mother tongue – Odia in his case – by night. The two roles were of course in conflict. In the 1980s this trend came increasingly to be associated with what came to be known as postcolonial discourse.”

He dwelled at length on Mishra’s famous novel Sakalara Muhan (Face of the Morning) while pointing out that the author’s ‘love of the local’ is amply evident in all other novels: Samudrika (1964), Andharara Luha (1967), Arohi (1973), Neta (1980), and Sakalara Muhan (1987) and even in his epistolary novel Chithi Zorina Pain (2015).

Award-winning translator Prof Bikram Das, Dr Jatindra Nayak and writer Dr Siddheswar Mohapatra had delivered the memorial lectures in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively.

Das gave the welcome addressed as well as proposed the vote of thanks.