Born amidst the lap of nature at village Kujanga, nestled beside the Bay of Bengal near Paradip, Raju Samal is a poet by birth although a high-profile Insurance officer by choice. Samal’s name has almost become synonymous as a harbinger of freshness, beauty and of infusing new vibes and trends into the contemporary Indo-Anglican literature. Unadorned of rhetoric and shorn of literary embellishments; his poems at once captures the innermost fibres of one’s being or straightway enters into one’s soul. Each of his poems is like an invigorating mantra pulsating with life energy that carries you into dizzy heights accompanied by sublime feelings of imagination, wonder and awe. Samal creates a world of aesthetic absolute within a linguistic minimum and speaks volumes within a few drops of words. Khushwant Singh admired his poems in no unequivocal terms. His poems are highly appreciated by his Western readers, so much so that he was offered a red carpet welcome in an assembly of poets in london recently. In an interview to The Pioneer, Samal spoke to Sugyan Choudhury.
It’s said that as civilisation advances, poetry declines. How far is it trueIJ
It is very true in today’s context. While talking to a group of sixty MBA students in a class, I asked, “How many of you have read GitanjaliIJ” Not a single student had read it. My next question: “What is GitanjaliIJ” Only one student answered, “It is a novel.” I was not shocked because this is the reality. Modern man is not only far away from rivers, mountains, birds and trees, he is also eternity away from literature.
What should be done to bring the whole humanity back into literatureIJ
literature should be compulsory in all branches of education. Be it medicine, be it engineering, be it management and be it commerce and science, 30 per cent of the curriculum should constitute literature. What is required to build an ideal society is not only a competent mind but a compassionate heart. And a compassionate heart is only possible through literature, music and all forms of art. We have instances where doctors are stealing kidneys from patients. Gold medallist engineers are burning brides for non-receipt of dowry and students are firing guns in classroom to kill professors. All these are happening because their brains have sharpened and hearts have narrowed due to absence of adequate art and literature in their syllabus
Why have regional literatures in our country not earned as much fame as they deserve in the realm of world literatureIJ
The answer is poor translation. look how Russian and Spanish novels have been translated. It is sheer delight to read Spanish novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Feast of the Goat in English translation.
Russian novels like Dr Zhivago, The Resurrection, Brothers Karamozov or Anna Karenina are perhaps more delicious in English than the original version. One Indian classic to my mind that has been translated magnificently is Harivansh Rai Bachan’s Afternoon of Time.
What steps do you suggest to overcome this predicamentIJ
Governments both at the Centre and the States should come out with implementing the idea of setting up of a Translation Bureau appointing only creative people to be engaged in translation of Indian classics. Only creative people can translate creatively, and not academicians. For example, when Tagore recited English translation of Gitanjali for the first time in london, WB Yeats pointed out that such and such stanzas are grammar and not poetry. Tagore replied that those stanzas were corrected by CF Andrews and Annie Vasant. Tagore then showed him his own translation of the relevant portion which touched the heart and impressed the sensibility of Yeats. He suggested Gurudev to retain his own translation. Gitanjali is equally brilliant in English because Tagore himself had translated it.
Why present-day poetries and poets are less popular with massesIJ
It is because of the lazy repeat of what has already been written and said. It is because what they write is not existential. It is more from their mind and less from their heart. Any piece of excellent poetry should have three qualities: It should be absolutely new and pristine in its content; it should have lyricism to be soothing; and exaltation that is to throw the reader instantly from normalcy to ecstasy. Haiku as a form of poetry has become the most popular in the world because it is written out of the poet’s brief enlightenment and contains most of such qualities.
What are the extraordinary contributions of poets to our countryIJ
In an argument against the Orthodox Church of England and in favour of his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin said, “God has not created man. Man has created God. To justify his argument, he said who is lord RamaIJ Rama is a character in the Ramayana: an epic written by Sage Valmiki. Historically, Valmiki was a man. And he created Rama. And again, who is lord KrishnaIJ Krishna is a character in the Mahabharata, an epic written by Saint Vyas. Historically, Vyas was a man who created lord Krishna. The poets whose ancestors, once upon a time through their extraordinary imaginative skill, created gods for mankind, have today lost their divine glory in this competitive world.
Why is present-day humanity less attracted to literatureIJ
We are passing through an age of decadence. In a country where Amitabh Bachchan is more respected than Harivansha Rai Bachan, it proves that we are a people of mediocre sensibility. A country where bookstores are overcrowded with recipe books and poetry books are nowhere to be found is a country on the path of retrogression. A country where TV channels are more dedicated to showing what to cook and what to eat than how to live creatively is a country with people not of superior quality.
What will be the future of poetry in a few decades from nowIJ
In a country where chefs and hairdressers are more sought after than poets and philosophers, the future of literature in general and poetry in particular is futureless. John Keats might have said, “Poetry on Earth is never dead. But poetry in human heart is dying and will quietly be dead.” Mankind is caught in a vicious circle of comparison, complex and competition whereas it is supposed to be on the path of creativity, compassion and consciousness. Unless the system of education changes, unless our collective psyche is freed from the clutches of accumulation of wealth and handed over to creativity and collective consciousness, poetry will fade into oblivion and literature will march into extinction.