A sense of fear appears to have gripped the society as the situation has undergone changes in recent times, said Jayanta Mahapatra, the first Indian to win the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award for English poetry.
“The situation is not what it was a few years ago. The sense of freedom which I used to experience personally has disappeared,” Mahapatra said while participating in a ‘Face to Face’ programme at a two-day 1st SOA Literary Festival, which concluded at the SOA University here on Sunday.
“Whatever that sounds illogical has become logical today. I don’t like it,” the celebrated 91-year-old poet said in an oblique reference to the current situation in the country involving protests by students and others and the faceoff with the police.
In an interaction with Dr Dipak Samantrai, Mahapatra walked down the memory lane while expressing his love for mundane things like the sunshine, moonlight, birds and flowers. “I always wait for sunshine to light up my life,” he said, adding that he doesn’t like the idea of an overcast sky.
Asked about his daily routine at this age, Mahapatra said he is primarily confined to his home in Cuttack and works at his desk. “I spend my day learning new words,” he said.
“I never ever wanted to be a poet, but perhaps my experiences of an unhappy childhood made me a poet,” he said.
Speaking at the valedictory session, eminent Odia poet Dr Ramakanta Rath underlined the need to make poetry comprehensible to the common reader.
“The idea that poetry which is difficult to understand is high-quality stuff borders on the ridiculous. Somehow, we have come to accept this thinking,” he regretted.
Dr Rath was accompanied by two other Odia literary giants Dr Sitakant Mahapatra, winner of the Jnanpith Award, and Dr Bibhuti Patnaik, Sahitya Akademi Award winning novelist, on the dais.