Excerpt: The Hour of God
A key unlocks a gate, memory flares. Loss arrives as a scent,…
Read more →In Memoriam – Jayanta Mahapatra: You’re safely ensconced in our hearts Jayanta da…, by Vinita Agrawal
From vada pavs in Mumbai to quiet lessons by the sea — Vinita Agrawal remembers a poet whose greatness never outgrew his gentleness.
in Jayanta da was a beautiful soul and a remarkable human being. Everything about him was inspiring – his poetry, his physical agility despite his age, his lucid mind and his humility. Despite being a decorated poet and having a huge fan following in India and overseas, Jayanta da’s feet were on the ground, his head firmly on his shoulders.
He had a delightful sense of humour and an endearing ability to narrate amusing anecdotes that would leave me chuckling. He also had a roaring love for food: street food, restaurant food, home food, everything! He loved the quintessential Mumbai vada pav and I remember being chastened by well wishers when I indulged him with a vada pav everyday for the duration of his stay in Mumbai once.
It seems rather hurtful to recount those carefree, happy hours now. Happy memories feel raw and poignant when one looks back on them after the person is no more. Jayanta da’s passing has left a terrible vacuum in my life as well as in the literary world. I imagine it’s going to be rare, if not impossible, to find a poet as gifted and humble as him – that combination might be hard to replicate.
I recall once, we were sitting on the parapet of Land’s End watching the sea lapping the rocks below. Jayanta da happened to observe a woman selling small, plastic toys on the footpath. He drew out a ten rupee note and bought a plastic toy whistle from her. I was puzzled by his actions but refrained from expressing my confusion. After a few minutes, several passers by, stopped by and bought toys from the seller. Jayanta da, paused and said, “See! You buy one and a cascade starts…” I wondered silently if there was a subtle message there…
Whenever Jayanta da spoke about his adolescent days, the child in him bubbled up from layers of tiredness of being a nonagenarian. I saw tears fill his eyes as he recounted incidents close to his heart, I saw his jaws convulse as he gave way to emotions that were anchored in memories, that went beyond the confines of time and space, like when he mentioned how his mother threw away his precious diaries when he was a teenager. “I used to be a loner in school. Those diaries were the only voice I had in those days…”, he said.
I remember him deeply every day since he left us on the 27th of August. Remember him with tenderness and nostalgia for the person he was, for the values of honesty, dignity and humility he stood for and for how much he meant to us as a poet. Jayanta da, the morning after you left us, a Laughing Dove visited my terrace, looked me in the eye and cooed away incessantly. I imagine it was you, saying your final goodbyes and singing of your freedom at last. Of course. Birds speak to me like that.
Vinita Agrawal
Vinita Agrawal Author of four books of poetry, – Two Full Moons (Bombaykala Books), Words Not Spoken (Brown Critique), The Longest Pleasure (Finishing Line Press) and The Silk Of Hunger (AuthorsPress), Vinita is an award winning poet, editor, translator and curator. Joint Recipient of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 and winner of the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award for Literary Excellence, USA, 2015. She is Poetry Editor with Usawa Literary Review. Her work has been widely published and anthologised. Her poem won a prize for the Moon Anthology on the Moon by TallGrass Writers Guild, Chicago 2017. More recently her poem won a special mention in the Hawker Prize for best South Asian poetry. She has contributed a monthly column on Asian Poets on the literary blog of the Hamline university, Saint Paul, USA in 2016-17. In September 2020, she edited an anthology on climate change titled Open Your Eyes (pub. Hawakal). She judged the RLFPA poetry contest (International Prize) in 2016 and co judged the Asian Cha’s poetry contest on The Other Side ‘ in 2015. She is on the Advisory Board of the Tagore Literary Prize. She has curated literary events for PEN Mumbai. She can be reached at www.vinitawords.com.