Dawn at Puri

Jayant Mahapatra, an eminent Indian English poet, was born in Cuttack in 1982. He was
educated in Stewart School and Ravenshaw College, Cuttack and Science College, Patna. He
taught Physics in Ravenshaw College.

Commenting on his quest of the unknown Mahapatra writes: “And this is how I feel”: that
one must somehow try to reach the border between the understandable and un-understandable
in a poem, between life and death, between a straight-line and a circle. “The technique in
Close the Sky, Ten by Ten is significant of the nature of Mahapatra’s early work in which
experiment through language, image and sound prevails over emotion.” His second volume
Swayamvara and Other Poems (1971) show signs of remarkable maturity.

K.N.Daruwalla writes: “Tradition and myth consciousness and the Orissa landscape play a
large part in poetry. There is an abundance of local details in his poetry. Shrines, temples,
women prostrating themselves ‘to the day’s last sun’, homebound cattle and rickshaw pullers
abound. And whores....” Mahapatra has a constellation of poems on them……The local
touches from an essential part of a wider and more complex poetic fabric.

Jayanta Mahapatra is intensely aware of his environment and vividly portrays the variegated
Orissa landscape throbbing with religious fervour. Orissa, its landscape with Puri and Konark
looming large, has a dominant presence in his poetry, as the Waverley has been described in
the novels of Scott or the Lake district in Wordsworth’s poetry or Wessex in Hardy’s novels.

He writes about the Orissa landscape with the minute knowledge and sureness of an insider.
The real landscape becomes symbolic, a suggestive image in his poetry. In Dawn at Puri he
depicts a touch of subtle irony and pathos the incongruities in the religious landscape of
India:

White-clad widowed women

Past the centres of their lives

Are waiting to enter the great temple

Their austere eyes stare like those caught in a ne

Dawn at Puri, Taste of Tomorrow, Slum, Evening Landscape by the River, Events, Orissa
Landscapes and Evening in an Orissa village are poems which deal chiefly with the Orissa
Landscape. Dawn at Puri is a vivid and realistic description of the temple town of Puri with
its endless crow noises, a skull lying on holy sands, white clad widowed women waiting to
enter the great temple.

The Orissa landscape, history, culture, social life, poverty, rites and rituals constitute the most
important theme of Mahapatra’s poetry. In this sense, he is a regional poet. There is an
abundance of local details in his poems. Shrines, temples, women are all prostrating
themselves with faith in their minds. Taste For Tomorrow also depicts a scene at Puri with
its “crows”, “one wide street”, “five faceless lepers”, “ a priest passing by”, at the “street’s
end” and “the crowds thronging the temple door” and “a huge holy flower swaying in the
wind of great reasons.” Orissa landscape picturesquely depicts stunning vignettes of Orissa
landscape and life.

Mahapatra represents a poetic tradition that has deep roots in the Indian soil, especially in the
literary tradition of Orissa. “Orissa remains the seed ground of his flourishing art.”

“To Orissa to this land in which my roots lie and lies my past, and in which lies my
beginning and my end, where the wind keeps over the grief of the river Daya and where the
waves of the Bay of Bengal fail to reach out today to the twilight soul of Konarka, I
acknowledge my debt and my relationships.”

“Dawn at Puri” depicts Mahapatra’s consciousness to the environment of Puri, the famous
temple town of Orissa. In this poem, we get the description of the penury of the people of
Orissa and in the poem there are subtle ironical touches, incongruities in the landscape and
the religious life of Puri. There are contradictions, oppositions, contrasts and unexpected
revelations in this poem.

The famous temple of Jagannatha, a holy place of worship, is situated here. The poet
picturesquely depicts the morning scene in the holy town of Puri, a holy town where the
people of Orissa wish to be cremated in order to attain salvation. The scene in early morning
depicted here is that of sea-beach at Puri, where countless crows are cawing. The poet while
wandering on the sea beach, which is in the real sense a cremation ground, comes across a
skull of a human being whose body has not been fully frenzied in the fire. The skull remains
unborn. The sight of the unborn skull ironically suggests the tremendous deficiency of the
people of Orissa.

This poem clearly portrays the suffering and severe pain of “white clad widowed woman”
who have passed their middle age. They are waiting to enter the temple gate for offering their
prayers to lord Jagannatha. Their “austere eyes” hear an expression of extreme sorrow and
melancholy like helpless creatures caught in a net. They have no worldly desires and lack
self-confidence. However, they are sustained by their religious faith.

There are a large number of lepers with decayed and wounded bodies. Their faces bear an
expression of nervousness, vulnerability and horrendous misery. His eyes fall on a burning
pyre and all of a sudden poet begins to think about his aged mother who has willed that after
death she should be cremated here on the sandy beach.

Dawn at Puri is a realistic recordation of poverty and deprivation of the majority of the
people in Orissa, suggested by “a skull”, “white clad widowed woman” and “ruined, leprous
shells leaning one against another. A mass of crouched faces without name....” The evocative
words and the short closed structure contribute to the overall beauty of this poem.

Puri is an eminent town in the state of Orissa. It is distinguished for its religious associations,
particularly the annual festival held to honour the deity, Jagannatha.

The poet ruminates on the beach premises at Puri. The endless cawing of crows catches the
speaker’s attention at the outset. He then notices a skull on the beach where bodies are
normally cremated. The skull is a part of a cremation that has not been completely burnt by
the funeral pyre. This skull is emblematic of the abject poverty and spiritual handicap of Puri,
in spite of all the religious connections and connotations. The skull represents the hollowness
of life and the inevitability of death. It symbolizes the spiritual stagnation and pseudo-
existence of Orissa. Puri here, functions as a miniature metaphor of India in. The term ‘empty
country’ emphasizes the same, the nihilism in a non-productive life. The hollow skull points
to the irrational superstitions prevalent taking man back to primitivism.

The speaker then notices a number of widows adorning white saris all ready to perform the
customary rites and rituals. These women are depicted as “past the centre of their lives” They
have whiled away a significant portion of their lives, implying they are past their prime. The
word ‘centre’ may also signify that they have crossed the peak of their lives. Again, the word
centre may point to their spouses who are no more, and were the centre of their lives. They
appear serene and solemn. There appears an expression of austerity in their eyes, as they are
divorced from all worldly concerns. The white color that they adorn is as symbol of their
purity and tranquility. They are like creatures caught in a net. The creatures caught in a net
having nothing more to lose as they remain captured. The widows too have nothing more to
forgo, as they stand in spiritual submission. The force that anchors these women to be steady
in their approach to life is their undeterred faith in God. They dreamt with the hope that
religion equipped them with. As they stand in a group, their uniting factor seems to be their
timidity .They are a “mass of crouched faces” possessing no individuality. They are presented
as a common noun. Women are relegated in a patriarchal society; and this marginalization is
more pronounced, if it is a widow.

At the break of dawn as the poet looks at the single funeral pyre burning, a sudden thought
occurs to him: that of his mother’s last wish. The phrase “And suddenly breaks out from my
hide” echoes the thought springing out; just as the poet sprung out from his mother’s womb
(hide). His aged mother wished that she be cremated at this particular place. It comes across
very strongly to the poet. Rites and rituals are mandatory. However, perhaps, performing
one’s mother’s last wish is far more important than these obligatory dictates of religion and
doctrines of custom. It ‘dawns’ on him all of a sudden. The symbol of Dawn is thus also one
of realization.