Kalahandi (poem)

"Kalahandi" is perhaps the most well-known poem of Dr Tapan Kumar Pradhan, the Indian writer and poet, and 2007 it won Kendriya Sahitya Akademi's "Indian Literature" Golden Jubilee Award for Poetry in 2007. The poem received critical acclaim following its publication in the journal "Indian Literature" in December 2007. [ "Indian Literature", Sahitya Akademi's Bi-monthly Journal, Volume LI, No. 6, page-47. New Delhi ISSN 0019-5804.]

The Poem

:In the shifting shadows of lantern light:Her hollow contours become yet more pronounced:Against the pitch darkness of the impatient man:As he advances she struggles with the suffocating stench:Of empty sacks stained with kerosene smoke

:Smell of hooch, of sweat, of flesh, the Man's:Drunken half-smile, look of vague desire, the dark:Hollow of her dry hung elongated breasts, the dark:Gaping cleavages of paddy fields throw a mocking sneer.

:"Erratic fingers, nails digging into the skin -":Haggard looking crows swooping down in haphazard trajectories.

:"Twisting of bodies, arms clasping, unclasping":Emaciated naked children fight over a loaf:Of dark bread snatched from a tired dog :

:silhouettes of puppets in a drollery

:A woman wails by the body:Of husband crushed under a sack of relief rice:"his breath, her breath, hot, mingling together :":Dry leaves rustle in the mid-afternoon air.

:She cambers up, indifferent, like a crab, in spasms:As the hairy-chested man lunges for a decisive thrust ::Look of tiredness in the eyes,:"ready to bite, but unable to move the underjaws."

:Her body, breathing, lies exhausted -:A gleam of compromised content in her eyes:Having added two rupees to the forty she earned last

:week by selling off her daughter.

Origin of the poem

The poem was first written by Dr Pradhan in his mother tongue Oriya in 1992. It was subsequently translated by the poet himself into English and got published in "Vani Vikas", the literary journal of Utkal University in 1994 under the author's pen-name of "Helios El Sol". In the words of the poet, the single event that prompted him to write the poem was "a news-item published in the daily Samaja in 1992 which described the story of a poor tribal woman who was compelled to sell off her six-months old child for a paltry sum of forty rupees in the face of starvation..."

Allusions and criticism

The poem depicts the scenes of squalor, poverty, starvation and economic exploitation poor illiterate people in Kalahandi symbolically through the suffering of a woman being forced into prostitution due to starvation. The poem is notable for its skillful use of stark imagery, symbols and onomatopoeia. For example, the rhythm in the words "smell of hooch, of sweat, of flesh, the Man's..." is suggestive of the sounds produced during an act of sexual intercourse. The repetition of the words "the dark" at the end of the second and third lines of the second stanza has an allusion to the idea of "darkness" suggested by the word "Kalahandi", which in Oriya literally means a "black pot". The imagery is at its best when the "dark cleavage of a woman's dry breasts" is juxtaposed with the "gaping cleavages of paddy fields throwing a mocking sneer."

See also

*Dr Tapan Kumar Pradhan
*Sahitya Akademi Award
*"Indian Literature"
*Indian Poetry

References

(1) "Indian Literature", Sahitya Akademi's Bi-monthly Journal, Volume LI, No. 6, page-47-48. New Delhi ISSN 0019-5804.