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Articles by Himansu S Mohapatra
Book Review: ‘The Blue Hill and the Broken Sky’ — A Story of Love, Loss & Reparations
Two years after his debut novel ‘The Other Side of the Rainbow’ was published, Niranjan Nayak recently brought out his second novel, ‘The Blue Hill and the Broken Sky’. He is just not accelerating on the creative high road, he is also adding to the repertoire of Odia-English fiction, that didn’t exist before. This is the life of a teacher of literature, more specifically the life of an English teacher.
Book Review: ‘The Other Side of the Rainbow’ — A Story of Love, Loss and Reparations
Two years after his debut novel ‘The Other Side of the Rainbow’ was published, Niranjan Nayak recently brought out his second novel, ‘The Blue Hill and the Broken Sky’. He is just not accelerating on the creative high road, he is also adding to the repertoire of Odia-English fiction, that didn’t exist before. This is the life of a teacher of literature, more specifically the life of an English teacher.
Book Review: Heart-Breaking Tales Of Loss & Recovery Of Identity
Heart Lamp is a heart-warming collection that delights in the same measure that it educates. The book grips you from the opening sentence and keeps you under its spell through all of its 214 pages that serve a delectable fare of twelve women-centric stories. There needs to be an added qualification, though: the characters are defined by their exclusively Muslim identity. Yet neither the politics of Banu Mushtaq nor her culture is exclusionary.
Prof Rabi Shankar Mishra: In Memoriam
Prof. Rabi Shankar Mishra (1948-2025) was connected with me in more ways than one. Though primarily my teacher in the MA English class at Sambalpur University (1977-1979), he was my colleague briefly at Berhampur University (October 1984 – April 1985). More importantly, he was my fellow UEA alumnus, and, last but not least, my role model as the successful translator of Fakir Mohan Senapati’s opus Chha Mana Atha Guntha.
Prof Dharanidhar Sahu: An Obitribute
I met Prof Dharanidhar Sahu, who passed away earlier this month on October 21, in 1989 when I returned from England to rejoin Berhampur University. He had joined as Reader in English during the time I was away, becoming a part of the galaxy that included Prof Biyot Kesh Tripathy, Prof Soubhagyakumar Mishra, Dr E Raja Rao, Anasuya Kumari, Dr Niranjan Mohanty, Dr Dilip Das and Dr Ram Narayan Panda.
Odisha’s Historic Tryst with Modernity: A View Through its Letters
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Book Review: A Redemptive Tale Of Losing And Finding
With his debut novel ‘The Other Side of the Rainbow’ published recently, Niranjan Nayak, an English professor at Puri’s SCS College, embarks on a transformative journey — from the routine life of an academic to the exciting life of a writer. The novel is about a friend’s loving recall of a friendship formed at the college of their dreams a long time ago, a friendship that was cut short by a cruel stroke of fate.
Book Review: 'This Is Salvaged', An Author’s Salvational Journey, Ours Too
Vauhini Vara, a US-based writer of Indian origin, won the Kalinga Literature Festival Fiction Award for her short story collection This is Salvaged. Joining the awards ceremony online on 11 February in Bhubaneswar, she said the book was her struggle to deal with grief and loss and an ‘attempt to find a way to write about them.’ The tell tale sign of it is the dedication of the book to her elder sister, Krishna Dweepa Vara, who died of cancer at a tender age.
A Salvation Journey
Vauhini Vara, a US-based writer of Indian origin, won the Kalinga Literature Festival Fiction Award for her short story collection This is Salvaged. Joining the awards ceremony online on February 11 in Bhubaneswar, she said the book was her struggle to deal with grief and loss and an ‘attempt to find a way to write about them.’ The telltale sign of it is the dedication of the book to her elder sister, Krishna Dweepa Vara, who died of cancer at a tender age.
Song In The Ruins - An Immigrant Story Differently Told
Mohan, the only son of a police constable in a coastal village in Odisha, receives his coveted I-20 for a Bachelor’s degree in engineering at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, thus kick-starting his American dream. He is good at his studies. Like the average Indian student from a lower middleclass background, he has very few interests or distractions. His goal is to finish his degree in four years, move on to his Ph.D. and then land a lucrative job in the USA.
The Taj, Ratatouille & MPC: A Tribute To My Alma Mater
Is there anything in common between The Taj Hotel in Mumbai and Maharaja Purna Chandra (MPC) College in Baripada? Or for that matter between the cartoon animation movie Ratatouille and MPC College? The dullest and the most deluded person on earth would dismiss it as a non-question. The person of average intelligence would shrug off the question with an impatient wave of his hand, saying comparison is done among comparables, not non-comparables.
Fiction: The coming-of-age tales of Banka, a sweet schoolboy from small-town Odisha
When Robin Sir dropped his name in the class like a bombshell, Banka’s heart missed a few beats. He was reminded of a poem by Wordsworth. A short poem of seven to eight lines, called “The Rainbow”, whose very first line always baffled him. “My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.” Bhagabat Sir, who taught English poetry, had tried hard to explain, but had failed to drive home the point. How can the heart leap when one saw a rainbow?
The Story Of Odia Cinema: Its Told And Untold Aspects
There is good news for the small world of Odia celluloid and the larger socio-cultural world of Odisha. A book entitled ‘Of Reels, Romance and Retakes: Social Narratives of Cinema in Odisha’ has just been released. The writer. Sanjoy Patnaik is e a development professional by vocation and a filmmaker by persuasion. The book’s international publication plus the fact that it is the first academically respectable book on the subject of Odia cinema have conspired to make it something of an event.
Here Lies God’s Plenty: A Comprehensive Book On Odisha’s Vyasakabi Fakirmohan Senapati
Fakirmohan Senapati:The Making of an Author, published by Vidyapuri, is unprecedented for two reasons. Firstly, it is a comprehensive assessment of the entire oeuvre of Senapati. Secondly, it is the first such study to have been written and presented in the English language. Admittedly, there are scores of studies in Odia of Utkala literature’s Vyasakabi and Saraswati, many of them very good.
In The West Country
The bus left Cuttack’s Badambadi around 9 at night and got to Sambalpur in the small hours of the morning. Dawn was yet to break. The sky over Sambalpur was dark, with no hint of orange light streaking through the eastern horizon. Shastras call it the brahmamuhurta, the moment just before first light, a moment when one’s senses are most heightened, are, therefore, well turned for noble thoughts. There was perhaps no arrival more auspicious for Subrat.
Westward With A Sigh
Up to mid-July, there was absolutely no sign that anything in or about his life in Baripada was going to change or was to be termed ‘the old life’ hereafter. True, there was no college to go to. He had gone as far as MPC College could take him in the educational line in the mid-1970s. Studies beyond graduation would involve relocation to Bhubaneswar or Berhmapur or Sambalpur.
A Thinking Woman From Planet Venus
The L-shaped house with its sloping two-part tiled roofing stood at the end of the road just before the road gave way to the small bridge over river Sukjuda. It basked in the warm glow of the winter sun, exuding peace and quiet. The master of the house was at work. The children were at school. The lady of the house, a woman in her forties, was home by herself. She was up at the crack of dawn. Having bathed and performed worship of her God, she had cooked the day’s meal.
A Cold Coming - odishabytes
In course of time school ended and college life began for Subrat. It didn’t, however, bring the much coveted independence. Also it was a new ‘C’ word that troubled him now, making a mockery of his just achieved adulthood. As a school kid Subrat had looked at, as if from the foot of a hill, college students acting with freedom and abandon. They went to the movies or loitered near tea stalls and cinema halls until late evenings without the fear of incurring the wrath of their father.
The Detour - odishabytes
It was in the slice of real life as it was in that slice of reel. A young couple in their late twenties and their three-year-old daughter were walking the Chowringhee Road under a sweltering July sun as cars, buses and trams sped past them.
When A Poet Dies
With Test over just before Christmas holidays, school was practically over for the 1973 batch. With the turn of the year, new things were coming to light such as tie-ups that were not noticeable in the all too gregarious school days. And new interests were surfacing too, other than football and film. It was at an unsettled time like this, with the school leavers sandwiched between a past not yet dead and a future not yet born, Subrat first became aware of a stranger in their midst.
Tashmai Shri Gurave Namah
First the sandalwood tilak on the forehead and a single shrivelled-up rose with its aluminum foil-wrapped stem tucked into the shirt pocket. This was the pre-entry ritual. Then upon entry, the rapid switch to attention pose followed by the belting out in chorus of ‘Happy Teachers’ Day, Sir and Mam’. This is how Teachers’ Day was celebrated in his department year after year. This year was no exception. But then this year was also different.
At The Crossroads
In the waning sunlight before dusk, the bus was crawling up a steep, narrow road that spiralled around the mighty Kalinga Ghat. The side seat on the front right provided a view of the alluringly perilous depths below. How thrilling was the abyss as long as it remained only a spectacle! And what a fatal free fall it would be if the bus tipped over the thin edge? Subrat wrenched his mind away from such gloomy thoughts. The marriage in Sambalpur was over the day before.
Tale Of An English Sunday
Sundays slid on listlessly on the campus all through the summer of 1987. Shops and stores being closed, there was nothing to do, at least not for the miniscule community of overseas Indians studying at UEA. Sunday for them was the last rapidly dissolving frontier of a long weekend break. The whirligig would turn and soon it would be OGIMA time. “What’s OGIMA?” RP Rajan, a new arrival from India at UEA, asked Subrat who was thought to be up on the local lore, with his head start of two years at UEA.
Imperial Embrace
“Do you mind spelling out for me the names of the four people that are always popping up in your talk? So I can write them down in my notebook. Will help me to know where you’re coming from.” Marc said as soon as they were settled down at a corner table in the university pub with their beers. Subrat shared the four names gleefully: Rao, Patnaik, Pathi, and Giri. They were all left-leaning professors at his alma mater in Odisha, fearless and uncompromising, at war with the capitalist value system.
Book Review: What The Critical Thunder Said; Lessons From The Past
Terry Eagleton, in the book under review, has written about five British critics of the last century who, by general consent, revolutionized the reading of English literature before the so-called theoretical revolution held sway from the 1960s. These critics have now been forgotten in academia. Eagleton wishes in his book to recall these pre-theory critics, T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, William Empson, F.R. Leavis and Raymond Williams.
Book Review: A Novel Of Its Time
The first translation of Kalindi Charan Panigraphi’s classic novel Matira Manisha (done by Leela Ray and Narendra Mishra) bore the title, The House Undivided. It obscured the novel’s rural and agrarian setting, so unmistakably captured in the Odia title, which means ‘men of the soil’, and, from which comes the author’s Romantic-idealistic concern with the earth, the soil.
Debendra Kumar Dash: A Towering Figure In Odisha's Intellectual World
The untimely death of Debendra Kumar Dash on August 25, 2022, at the age of sixty-eight, has robbed Odisha of its worthiest sons. The loss is not simply to be measured by the number of projects he left unfinished and the number of books he had still to write. The extent of the loss can be imagined by the void that has suddenly opened up in Odisha’s intellectual life by the sudden disappearance of a living and walking encyclopedia on Odisha’s literature, history and politics.
‘The Fanged Waters,' A Gripping Tale Of River Baitarani's Fury Seen From A Little Girl's Eyes
‘The Fanged Waters’ is the English translation of an Odia novel titled ‘Badhi Panira Danta’, authored by the acclaimed poet Prasanna Kumar Mishra. The translator, Snehaprava Das, who has many notable translated titles to her credit, has approached this work as a pure labour of love. She shared with this reviewer that she had read the novel in her early youth when it was being serialised in the well-known literary periodical Asanta Kali (The Morrow) and had been left profoundly moved.
Odisha's 'Mehentars' Get A Face & Voice In Gopinath Mohanty's 'Harijan'
Harijana is the first of the two fine novels that Gopinath Mohanty wrote in the ‘urban phase’ of his literary career, the second being Danapani (1955; English translation The Survivor, 1996; Our Daily Bread, 2015). The novel was published in 1948, just a year after India achieved independence. As can be assumed from the name, the novel focuses on the plight of a vast class of disenfranchised people who are yet to have the taste of independence, though they may have been legalistically free.
A Memoir & ‘Bildungsroman’ Of Literary Criticism
In his maiden appearance at the English Department of Utkal University in April 2011, Chandrahas Choudhury chose to speak on “Staying in Literature”. On a subsequent visit to the Department in September 2017, he slightly modified the topic and called it “What is Literature For?”, thereby retaining the emphasis on literature.
Book Review: Secrets Of Similipal Holds the Key to Mankind’s Future
A sturdy hard back with a themed front cover in glossy white splashed with a generous daub of green and with a completely green back, the first glimpse that “Secrets of Similipal” presents is captivating enough. The interest of the reader is further aroused as he/she takes in the brief foreword written in impeccable English by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
What’s (Not) In A Name?
That was college time. And a fantasy-laden, violence-ridden time it was. Please don’t get me wrong. The violence was not so much out there in the street as it was in the crevices of the mind. And the fantasies, well, they oozed out of the three cinema houses of Baripada, Jagadhatri, KMBM and Roxy, and woven around Hindi film actresses, especially the item number performers. It was at a time like this that my cousin and co-fantasist broke to me, with a chuckle, the news of the conquest of Kali.
East Coast Baby Or The Day Art Imitated Life
It is as if fate had ordained that life and art synched in perfect harmony. Only days after becoming a daily commuter, as a result of an unexpected job switch, I chanced upon a Sunday magazine article on the lives of commuters. I was happy now at the prospect of life imitating art. As a literature teacher, I naturally built castles in the air. But I had forgotten that life had the habit of gate-crashing the party.
Scapegoat: A True Story
If I were able to travel back in time to fix one thing, I would choose that night in Baripada forty years ago. It was on this night that I willingly became a party to an act of vendetta against an innocent. Yet the craven blood lust had seemed perfectly natural and logical to my sixteen-year old mind after two weeks of mysterious raid on the ‘house on the hill’, so named because of its strategic location on the sloping road.
Book Review: Poems That Are Scorched By Anger And Scalding Tears
Satya Mohanty is a former administrator-turned-writer. Originally hailing from Odisha, he has made Delhi his home.
Primal Fear - Odisha Bytes
Like previous evenings, that evening too Subrat and his cousin repeated the ritual of one last chat under the electricity pole that stood a few feet into the mouth of the concrete road which sloped down towards river Sukjuda. After that Subrat would cross the road to go into his own house right opposite the pole and his cousin would go further down into his. “There’s no one to see or care for you. Don’t forget no one has your back,” said his cousin just before they parted.
Hare And Hound - Odisha Bytes
The commotion on the main arterial road that cuts the town of Baripada in two made us boys suspend our game in the empty patch of grassy field below. An extraordinary scene was unfolding before our eyes. A young boy, healthy, robust and strong, came running from the direction where the Ambika Cinema Hall was. He stopped by the roadside, huffing and puffing, unable to flee farther from his pursuer. He was Jaga from our locality, known as a wastrel. His pursuer soon appeared.
Down In Oxford - Odisha Bytes
On a pleasant October morning in 1996 Subrat was disgorged from a bus on to the famous cobblestoned ground of Oxford’s Gloucester Green bus station. He had come for a three-month stint as a Visiting Professor at Linacre College. From prior experience he knew Oxford to be negotiable by foot. So he walked to his place of accommodation, dragging his large-wheeled suitcase behind him without much effort. The modern building he was to move into was at a place awash in history.
Flying In COVID Times: A Moment Of Quiet Heroism
Nothing could stop us now. We were homeward-bound. Our little moment of heroism awaited us. I took courage from Renu’s determination to go, be it hell or high water that we faced. She in turn took heart from my desire, made stronger by the minute as the clock advanced, to ace it. We were like Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren in The Leisure Seekers, hitting the freeway in their RV in gay abandon.
Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts: A Novel Against The Grain
At a time when the world is in a tearing hurry and future projection is the name of the game, Jhumpa Lahiri seems to have discovered the pleasures of stasis and retrospection. Moving or looking back is not an escape route for her, for she has the courage to stare the signs of our times in their face. As a writer she has reasserted her traditional obligation to reflect and self-reflect.
He Was A Crusader For The Cause Of Indian English Literature: An Obitribute To Subhendu Mund
The cognoscenti of Odisha’s literary and academic world woke up on the morning of 28 May to the sad and shocking news of the sudden death of Dr Subhendu Mund, renowned English academic and scholar, acclaimed Odia poet, editor, translator and lexicographer. He was 70. Whatever be the cause of death, COVID or cardiac arrest, this divine summons was brutal. Dr Mund was not only in the prime of his health but also at the very height of his intellectual powers at the time of his untimely demise.
Virtual Reading - Odisha Bytes
Anant Mahapatra needs no introduction, of course. He is one of the most renowned thespians and theatre personalities of Odisha now living. Mahapatra founded the professional theatre group Srujani in the 1960s. In the recent years he has set up the Utkal Rangamanch Trust to revive the professional theatre movement in contemporary Odisha. He has directed over a hundred plays, including, most recently, Shakespeare’s King Lear.
“Chha Mana Atha Guntha” And Its Latest English Avatar
Unlike the iconic early novels in some Indian languages, Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Chha Mana Atha Guntha (1897-99), considered the first modern novel in Odia, was not translated into English immediately. The Malayali novel Indulekha by O. Chandu Menon was published in 1889 and translated into English within a year or so. So was the case with the Telugu Rajasekhar Charita (1880) by K. Viresalingam. Rabindra Nath Tagore’s Ghare Baire was published in 1916 and an English translation came out in 1919.
Building A Mansion of Contentment
You may have seen some fathers helping their young daughters to appreciate the magic of a rainbow or brood over its colours, but certainly not someone ride roughshod over his daughter for her fascination for the arc in the sky. You may have come across some fathers not encouraging their daughters to study instead of doing household chores, but not someone who rips his daughter’s school project work to pieces just because she didn’t respond to his call in an instant.
An Odia Woman Writer’s Voyage In And Out
Jayshree Misra Tripathi is a Delhi-based Odia writer who writes in English. Primarily a poet, she works in prose too. Given her cross-cultural journeys flavoured by her perspective as a sensitive and cultured woman, she was bound to reach for the medium of the short story for a more elaborate recounting of her trips, trials and tribulations. Mercifully this has happened recently.
Simple With A Twist - ODISHA BYTES
The Lost Daughter and Other Stories. By Sukubina (Japani). Trans. Purabi Das. Delhi: Authors Press, 2020. Pp. 98. Rs. 295/-. Reviewed by: Himansu S. Mohapatra One of the back cover endorsements for The lost Daughter and Other Stories is spot on with its remark that the hallmark of these stories is their ‘simple, straightforward and clear style.’ The idea is echoed in the word ‘genial’, used in the foreword. Fine. But a question arises: how does transparency of style square with ‘literariness’?
Battles Of Our Own: From A Quaint Odia Novel To Modern Indian Classic
The Odisha Literature Festival, which has been hosted by The New Indian Express in Bhubaneswar since 2012, has from this year on been incorporated into a larger entity — Dakshin Literature Festival — with the same media network as the host. I came to know about it when a few days ago I received an invite from Penguin Random House.
The True Postcolonial: A Tribute To Ananta Charan Sukla
In the death of Ananta Charan Sukla – he passed away in his Cuttack residence on 30 September, aged 78 – Odisha lost an English Professor who was the exact opposite of the image we normally entertain of an English teacher. His choice attire was the traditional Indian dhoti and panjabi in spotless white. Sanskrit was his muse. And he worshipped at the altar of comparative literature and aesthetics.
A Book Of Essays Spanning A Translator’s Career Shows Why Translation Matters
Acclaimed US writer Jhumpa Lahiri, who directs the Programme in Creative Writing at Princeton University, recently spoke about the challenges and rewards of translation. Lahiri, who now translates books into and from Italian, said that for her, translation was an incredibly “powerful and regenerative” activity. Being a creative writer, Lahiri’s avowals about translation are bound to be met with instant approval.
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