Out of Orissa
Humra Quraishi

Jagannath Prasad Das is the well-known poet, writer, playwright and critic who was bestowed with the Saraswati Samman in 2006 and before that the Sahitya Akademi award. Years back, he quit the Indian Administrative Service to take to full-time writing. The latest from him, A Time Elsewhere (Penguin), was originally written in Oriya in 1992. Desh Kaal Patra translated it in English and it hit the stands recently. As in most of J. P. Das’s works, the focus of this volume is on his home state Orissa.

In fact, Das is definitely one of those Oriyas who have done much to highlight the state’s past grandeur, historical patterns, prevailing ground realities, customs and rituals of its people, places of significance etc. And not to overlook the fact that he has written extensively on Oriya art and art forms and some of his well-known volumes on the subjects are:Palm -Leaf Miniatures (co-authored by Prof Joanna Williams), Puri Paintings and Chitra-Pothi .

Not to overlook his volumes of poetry. Two of his poetry volumes are — Dark Times and Lovelines - Poems of Longing and Despair. Sensitivity drips from this verse titled "Kalahandi" tucked in the pages of Dark Times: "Put away the road maps now/ To reach there/no need for helicopters/wherever there is hunger/there Kalahandi is. The God of rain/ turned away his face /not one green leaf was/ left on the trees/the whole village a graveyard./ The ground cracked/river sand bone dry./All the plans failed /the line of poverty/ receded still further./Wherever you look,/there is Kalahandi ...

Excerpts from an interview:

In this volume you have focused on the historical-cum-social settings of Orissa till about 1907.Why didn’t you stretch it further because most of us Indians know little about Orissa?

Let me talk about how I came to write A Time Elsewhere. I was doing research for a book on a traditional Oriya artist of the second half of the 19th century`A0and reading up available material about that period. It was a momentous period in Orissa's history, covering a devastating famine which decimated a third of the province's population, and its subsequent regeneration, the rise of the nationalistic feeling among the people, and the blossoming of the Oriya language, literature and culture. The novel portrays this half-century of Orissa's history ... My novel starts in 1859 with the so-called Raja of Orissa on his death bed and ends in 1907 with the great Oriya poet Radhanath Ray confessing to adultery. I could have started with the British occupation of Orissa in 1803 and ended with the creation of a separate province of Orissa in 1936. But that would have been a different book.

It is true that Orissa is today best known outside for the starvation deaths in Kalahandi and anti-Christian killings in Kandhamal. I was in Kalahandi in 1966, when the famine there had reminded me of the great famine of a hundred years earlier. How ever, during the past 40 years, many poverty-alleviating schemes have been introduced and if there are starvation deaths, it must be due to the failure of the administrative machinery.

As for the anti-Christian atrocities, it is a more recent development in Orissa; it grew out of rising Hindu fundamentalism leading to the killing of missionary Staines. The Kandhamal riots are, however, a little more complicated, brought about by conflict between tribals and the Scheduled Castes, the confrontation of Hindu and Christian proselytisers, and the politics of`A0including castes and tribes in the schedules.

Solutions would have to be found keeping religious leaders out of these discussions. I have a poem dealing with Kalahandi and had written a play about`A0the problems of Christian proselytisation, much before Staines happened.

As an Oriya, you have spent your childhood and part of your adulthood in Orissa. What imprints of Oriya traditions and social settings have left a mark on your psyche? Do roots matter for a writer?

Though I have by now spent more than half my life outside Orissa and am a Delhiwalla for all purposes, I continue to be 100 per cent Oriya. Fortunately, cosmopolitan Delhi makes this possible. I grew up in Orissa and it shaped me and most of my literary and cultural contacts are there. I do all my creative writing in Oriya only and consider Orissa my constituency. With the present-day communication facilities — both efficient and cheap — I do not consider Orissa far away.

A writer, especially one writing in a bhasha, cannot make a living on his or her writings alone; one has to have another profession. The IAS was such a profession for me. Yes, there are many writers who have juggled their writing with the other professional work, which gave them sustenance. But I thought I would not be able to do justice to either if I continued both. So, I quit.

I think in literature the local is the universal. A picture of a locality can have a universal appeal. I do not think the so-called vernacular or bhasha literature is at a disadvantage. It has its own readership and though it may not be as widely known (or as good a royalty-earner) as English, its writer certainly does not die unsung. Television cameras may not follow her, but she has not been abandoned by her readers. Many bhasha writers have made it to the national scene through translations.

`A0I should say that the literary scene in Orissa today is quite vibrant and energetic. The writers of my generation are fading out and a whole new group of younger writers has taken over. I must, however, add that there is a big deficiency so far as writing of novels and plays is concerned.

I am only as restless as my neighbour next door!

`A0I am writing very little these days. I spend all my time reading all sorts of things. Of course, I have many ideas and plans to write so many things, but the problem is that literature is not made with these; it is made with words. Health, circumstances, laziness, and something called 'mood' have all conspired against me.

I was lucky to have a good translator; Jatindra K. Nayak has done a great job of it. Orissa is fortunate to have a set of excellent translators into English who have been able to project Oriya literature outside.

I would like to put on record the great work done by`A0other translators besides Nayak: Bikram K. Das, Jayanta Mahapatra, K.K. and Leelawati Mahapatra and Paul St-Pierre, who have innumerable works of translation to their credit and are active even now. I must add that besides a good translator, a good publisher is also needed to promote the translated work; otherwise all the good labour is wasted.

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