Jayanta Mahapatra : A Silent Valediction

Abstract

Sahitya Akademy award winner Jayanta Mahapatra - a luminary of Indian English Poetry was born on October 22,1928 in cuttack-Odisha and died there on August 28,2023.He belonged to a lower-middle class Indian family and after having gained Master's degree in Physics began teaching in different Government colleges in and across Odisha from 1949 to 1986.Meanwhile he authored 27 books of poems of which 7are in Odia and the rest in English. Best known for “Hunger” and “Indian Summer” Jayanta Mahapatra's “A Rain Of Rites” has an unusual enthrall and merit that I have attempted to interpret/ unravel briefly in my own culturally creative mode in this article besides commemorating his death. It is a book having imagery and symbolism as it's main thematic concern. The image of rain is used by the poet to symbolize fertility, creative impulse and destuctive power-potency.The rain as metaphor at various places never falls rather gets converted into light and then fails to accomplish its objective. Moreover, the whole series of poems suggest a process of purification by means of –strange stillness, quietude, solitude, mud-built houses, rivers, hills, trees and a vast stretch of landscapes. The soul of the poet is torn between good and evil, fair and foul and the ultimate judgement for deliverance, Mukti or salvation. As a whole-Rain Of Rites is an exacting lyric of troubled soul and undefined unhappiness that has left a good legacy :a gift.