Wide and Varied range of the Thematic Concerns:
Mahapatra has dealt with many thematic concerns in his poetry. He has shown the hand of a master while dealing many themes in his poetry. The excellence of his themes matches the dignity and the significance of his themes. The significant, dignified, profound, stimulating startling and uplifting words occur to the reader in regard to the themes of Mahapatra's poetry. His poetry is redolent of the Orissa scene and Jagannath Temple at Puri figures quite often in it. The Orissa landscape, cultural history and background, the social life, and the rites and rituals of the people of Orissa constitute the most important and significant theme of his poetry. Mahapatra mainly shows his regional outlook. But though regionalism is certainly the most striking feature of his poetry, this poetry is not limited or narrow so far as its themes are concerned. His most characteristic note is one of quiet but often ironic reflection mostly concerning love, sex and sensuality in the early poems. There is an underlying existential concern in his themes which express the predicament of modern man in the meaningless universe.
Landscape, Cultural History, Social Life and the Rituals of Orissa:
The most important and significant theme of Mahapatra's poetry is the landscape, cultural history and background, the social life and the rites and rituals of Orissa. There is an abundance of local details in his poems. Shrines, temples, women, prostrating themselves "to the day's last sun' home-bound cattle and rickshaw pullers abound". Dawn at Puri, Taste for Tomorrow, Slum, Evening Landscape by the River, and Events are poems which deal chiefly with the Orissa landscape. In Dawn at Puri depicts realistically a typical scene in the pious and religious surroundings of Puri-endless noise of the crows, a skull lying on the holy sands, and white clad widowed women waiting to enter the great temple. Taste for Tomorrow also depicts a scene at Puri with its crows, with its very wide street, with its lepers, and its religious-minded crowds thronging the temple door. In fact, Puri figures prominently in Mahapatra's poetry. Puri and Konark temples partly in ruins constitute a big and impressive presence in his poetry. Other poems depicting the Orissa landscape and alluding to the culture and the ancient history of Orissa include The Orissa Poems, Orissa Landscapes, and Evening in an Orissa Village.
In Thought of the Future, Mahapatra caricatures a soothsayer, named Jagannath Mishra who predicts about future in Puri. Puri and the Konark temple, partly in ruins, dominate Mahapatra's poetry. Bazar, 5 P.M. is one of the finest poems of Mahapatra exhibiting his undiluted Oriya sensibility at its best. Mahapatra's masterpiece Relationship explores his unbreakable relationship with the religion, culture, rituals, traditions and myths of Orissa, and, above all, with the primordial shaping influences that Konark has exercised on him. Mahapatra vividly conjures up the gruesome past when in 261 B.C. Emperor Ashoka invaded Kalinga and butchered countless of people of Orissa in Dhuli, near the river Daya King Ashoka saw the river turned red with the blood of the vanquished, underwent a 'sea change' and carved his famous 'peaceful edicts' on the rockface for posterity.
Frankly Discussion of Sex, Sexuality, Prostitution and Poverty:
The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street and Hunger are his famous poems on this theme. The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street is a more elaborate poem that reveals how poverty compels young girls to adopt prostitution as a profession to provide economic support to their hungry and depressed families. In the poem, the customer has much scope for indulging his fancies. While going into a whore house, he fancies of a number of beautiful prostitutes whose faces resemble the pretty faces depicted on the posters and the public hoardings which he has often seen and which have always aroused a sexual urge in him. The customer is glad that he would get this opportunity but he also experiences a sense of guilt and a feeling of shame in having entered a house of ill-fame. In this poem the customer-prostitute relationship is depicted in detached and realistic manner. It is remarkable for the psychological study of the customer. The poem is not without its social implications. Prostitution is the result of poverty; and yet, even if there were no poverty, prostitution would continue and perhaps become more hygienic and therefore safer from the health point of view. The economic disparity in independent India is the root cause of prostitution in India and the adivasis of Orissa are its worst victims.
In the poem Hunger, the unquenchable sexual urge compels a customer to go to the shack of a fisherman who prompts his daughter, who is just fifteen. In the poem the word hunger has been used in a double sense. It means the desire to eat something and it also means the desire for sexual gratification. The belly demands food and eating is a necessity if a human being wants to live. Food is indispensable for the belly. This desire is a most compelling one, and if one is starving, one would go to any length to get something to eat. A man may have to steal food or a man may have to snatch food from somebody else or a man may devise some trick to get something to eat in order to satisfy this hunger. The other meaning of the word 'hunger' is the desire for sexual gratification; and this desire is also very compelling. After the belly has been satisfied, the desire for sexual satisfaction is the net strongest to be felt.
Philosophical, Reflective and Psychological Undertones:
There is an inherent existential concern in the entire gamut of Mahapatra's poetry. He describes a serious and dark vision of life which is characterised by dejection, sorrow, suffering, loss and alienation. In the poems entitled Hunger and The Whorehouse in a Calcutta Street, there are nameless prostitutes without having any identity. They suffer from the feelings of alienation, loss, grief and poverty and ultimately resort to prostitution in order to survive and maintain their existence in the cruel and merciless world. He pries deeper and deeper into the human psyche and vividly expresses the existential anger. The Logic. Grass, The Exile, The Abandoned British Cemetery at Balasore, Total Solar Eclipse and The Moon Moments are the most conspicuous and the most impressive of poems of this category. The Exile has both philosophical and psychological undertones. It describes the protagonist's feeling that he is an exile. He is nowhere a man. A Rain of Rites is about the monsoon season which also presents a contradictory picture. It is both a time of grey skies, disasters, and depressions and also a period of renewal, birth, vegetation, after the dry stifling Indian summer. But the poet, who is inwardly morose and depressed, fails to see illumination and renewal in the outer environment. The Moon Moments is one of his finest poems with philosophical significance. 'Moon' in this poem symbolises an ideal which a man wants to fulfil in his life time. The Abandoned British Cemetery at Balasore encapsulates the tragic vision of the poet. In it, he, while questioning the meaning of history, sadly broods over the tragedy of 'the dying young'. In Relationship the truth finally dawns upon him. He discovers that the ruined landscape that spreads around him in an interior landscape that signifies the self's destiny.
Realistic Depiction of Contemporary India:
In An Old
Country, the poet expresses his deep anguish over the downfall of
India, which once boasted of being one of the greatest civilizations of the
world. The dead grandfather's soul seems to be silently protesting over the
tragic downfall of their beloved country. In his volume, A Father's Hours
which
consists four poems, Mahapatra reveals contemporary socio-political reality but
his approach is neither comprehensive nor penetrating. However, the poet evinces
his sharpened sensibility towards the presentation of the multiple problems
facing India. The poet sees a barren world around him feels epidemics in the
poisoned air and notices dusty streets stretching away like disgruntled
socialists. The poet contrasts the homeless beggars drifting on the stone steps
of the old mosque with the world's beautiful people, there, beyond, dying so
beautiful humility can't touch them.
Conception of Love: The poet's love poems, few in number, are rational and not emotional. Lost, one of his finest love poems, reveals how something goes wrong in a man's love for a woman. To the poet love is aligned with sex. Sexual fulfilment alone leads to the realization of love. The Logic describes consummation of love. A Missing Person is a memorable poem on the theme of love. It reveals the poignancy of separation in love. A love-lorn woman contemplating on her life with introspection seeks to see her reflection in a mirror in a dark room but she is disappointed. She is haunted by a sharp sense of loss and loneliness, as her lover, who has sexually enjoyed her, is away.
Thus it may be observed that the poet's dominant concern in his poetry is the vision of grief, loss, dejection and rejection. The tragic consciousness does not seem to operate in the work of any other Indian poet in English as disturbingly as in that of Jayanta Mahapatra. ‘The sombre wind'. ‘The darkened room’ and ‘The intrigues at my fingertips’ these objects and images put their unmistakable emphasis on the sombre vision. When the poet deals with the themes of trade in flesh, poverty and destitution, his skill and subtlety do not fail him. The poet often excels in writing love poetry, especially poetry which expresses the fragility as well as stasis of inter-personal relationships. Lost is one of his best love poems. The Logic too is a great success. The poet always depicts the encounter between a man and a woman in a gripping manner.
