Article
“Life becomes unbearable if you are fed and hated.”
February 01, 2007
BS: No.
RKS: Being yourself an ‘insider’ to the world of Dalits, how do you look at the world itself and at poetry as it is practised in Oriya today?
BS: The Dalit consciousness cannot be shared by non-Dalits. It is a stupendous task to present it before those who do not have the experience of it, especially through poetry. Yesterday’s Shudra is today’s Dalit, ‘untouchable’. It is inhuman. The upper caste people cannot fathom the humiliation an ‘untouchable’ undergoes. In a world of disparities it is natural that there is no humanity. One’s creativity is incomplete without a love for humanity.
Taking all this into consideration, one finds that Oriya literature has not produced any significant work dealing with caste conflict. When my book Untouchable came out in 2001, some of my fellow Oriya poets mockingly asked me, “Untouchable? Who? Where?”, etc.
Like hunger, love is universal. But unfortunately, here love is determined by the caste to which you belong.
RKS: Did you start by writing poems on Dalits, or did this vein show up later on?
BS: Even before I started writing I was well aware of hunger. The place I have come from – Kalahandi – is rife with hunger. My love for my people grew as I realized how well they hide their hunger. Love makes one forget hunger. But life becomes unbearable if you are fed and hated. Now I repent that I did not have this Dalit feeling or consciousness earlier.
RKS: Your latest book Karadi Haata is a character-based collection. The inherent danger in being theme-driven is that you lose sight of craft. How do you balance it?
BS: Yes, most of the time, the theme drives me. But a situation, an event or even a word might provide elements for my poems. All the poems of Karadi Haata are character-based. But then, they are symbols.
You cannot force a subject to be your poem. Your consciousness and feeling have a kind of perception through which events, situation and sights are filtered into your heart and at some point of time they erupt as poems. It is only the theme that directs the poet to present a poem in a particular way. In this process of making of a poem, the poet does not have much of a role.
RKS: Don’t you find yourself lonely among Oriya poets?
BS: Lonely? Sometimes. Dalits have no place in Oriya poetry, which is laden with brahminism. Excepting a few like Rabi Singh, Prasanna Mishra and Ashutosh Parida, you do not come across very much of this voice of the deprived.
You do feel lonely if you are not among people with the same intellectual faculty. But I do not know how far I am accepted among my peers.
RKS: Among Indian poets, who are the ones you like most?
BS: Muktibodh, Namdeo Dhasal, A.K. Ramanujan, G.S. Sivarudrappa, Kedarnath Singh, Joy Goswami, Sarbeswar Dayal Saxena, Ayyappa Paniker, Manglesh Dabral.
RKS: You are a vet. How and when did you get lured into poetry?
BS: It is true that I’m a vet. I have had the opportunity to treat birds and animals who cannot talk like human beings. But I was attracted to poetry well before I entered veterinary college. When I was a child, I accompanied my father to the paddy field. Early in the morning, my father would wake up, sit before a fire and start humming. I liked those bhajans, devotional songs, that he sang. I used to ask him: who writes these bhajans? He would say: poets. I imagined a poet to be someone different from people like us.
RKS: When you met them, were you enchanted or disillusioned?
BS: Disillusioned, mostly. They are also men with feet of clay, who quarrel or pine for awards or attention.
RKS: You have written a book entitled Dalit, Capitalism and Globalization. Do you believe that a poet should write prose on poetry?
BS: I have also written short stories. My book on the cultural history of Orissa will be completed soon.
A poet should write on poetry. That way he can also understand himself through his discussion of others’ work. Of course, one should not attempt a discussion on poetry unless one has a certain ripeness.
RKS: When you read a poem very different from yours, do you feel prompted to write like that? Say, love poems.
BS: When I read a good poem I curse myself: why can’t I do a poem like this? As for love poems, I find them pitiable, especially when a poet is toiling to lift his beloved to the clouds.
RKS: In the poem ‘Rain, Market and a Sick Mentality’ you talk about the domestic aspect of your life. How does your wife look at you as a poet?
BS: I have presented myself and my family as an emblem of lower middle class life in ‘Rain, Market and a Sick Mentality’. Nowadays the ‘empowerment of women’ has been limited to their education and job. I believe that along with this should go the cultivation of a finer sensibility. Once they attain a certain intellectual prowess, this world will be a better place to live in.
No, my wife does not praise my poems. But she is a discerning reader who does not hesitate to voice her opinion if she does not like something.
December 2006 Poems
Satyabhama
Question
Evening
The Golden Jubilee
Rain, Market and a Sick Mentality
Play-Acting
Basudev Sunani talks to Rabindra Swain about the brahminism of the Oriya literary scene and what it means to be a Dalit poet.
RKS: When you titled your third collection of poems Untouchable were you aware of Mulk Raj Anand’s novel of the same title?BS: No.
RKS: Being yourself an ‘insider’ to the world of Dalits, how do you look at the world itself and at poetry as it is practised in Oriya today?
BS: The Dalit consciousness cannot be shared by non-Dalits. It is a stupendous task to present it before those who do not have the experience of it, especially through poetry. Yesterday’s Shudra is today’s Dalit, ‘untouchable’. It is inhuman. The upper caste people cannot fathom the humiliation an ‘untouchable’ undergoes. In a world of disparities it is natural that there is no humanity. One’s creativity is incomplete without a love for humanity.
Taking all this into consideration, one finds that Oriya literature has not produced any significant work dealing with caste conflict. When my book Untouchable came out in 2001, some of my fellow Oriya poets mockingly asked me, “Untouchable? Who? Where?”, etc.
Like hunger, love is universal. But unfortunately, here love is determined by the caste to which you belong.
RKS: Did you start by writing poems on Dalits, or did this vein show up later on?
BS: Even before I started writing I was well aware of hunger. The place I have come from – Kalahandi – is rife with hunger. My love for my people grew as I realized how well they hide their hunger. Love makes one forget hunger. But life becomes unbearable if you are fed and hated. Now I repent that I did not have this Dalit feeling or consciousness earlier.
RKS: Your latest book Karadi Haata is a character-based collection. The inherent danger in being theme-driven is that you lose sight of craft. How do you balance it?
BS: Yes, most of the time, the theme drives me. But a situation, an event or even a word might provide elements for my poems. All the poems of Karadi Haata are character-based. But then, they are symbols.
You cannot force a subject to be your poem. Your consciousness and feeling have a kind of perception through which events, situation and sights are filtered into your heart and at some point of time they erupt as poems. It is only the theme that directs the poet to present a poem in a particular way. In this process of making of a poem, the poet does not have much of a role.
RKS: Don’t you find yourself lonely among Oriya poets?
BS: Lonely? Sometimes. Dalits have no place in Oriya poetry, which is laden with brahminism. Excepting a few like Rabi Singh, Prasanna Mishra and Ashutosh Parida, you do not come across very much of this voice of the deprived.
You do feel lonely if you are not among people with the same intellectual faculty. But I do not know how far I am accepted among my peers.
RKS: Among Indian poets, who are the ones you like most?
BS: Muktibodh, Namdeo Dhasal, A.K. Ramanujan, G.S. Sivarudrappa, Kedarnath Singh, Joy Goswami, Sarbeswar Dayal Saxena, Ayyappa Paniker, Manglesh Dabral.
RKS: You are a vet. How and when did you get lured into poetry?
BS: It is true that I’m a vet. I have had the opportunity to treat birds and animals who cannot talk like human beings. But I was attracted to poetry well before I entered veterinary college. When I was a child, I accompanied my father to the paddy field. Early in the morning, my father would wake up, sit before a fire and start humming. I liked those bhajans, devotional songs, that he sang. I used to ask him: who writes these bhajans? He would say: poets. I imagined a poet to be someone different from people like us.
RKS: When you met them, were you enchanted or disillusioned?
BS: Disillusioned, mostly. They are also men with feet of clay, who quarrel or pine for awards or attention.
RKS: You have written a book entitled Dalit, Capitalism and Globalization. Do you believe that a poet should write prose on poetry?
BS: I have also written short stories. My book on the cultural history of Orissa will be completed soon.
A poet should write on poetry. That way he can also understand himself through his discussion of others’ work. Of course, one should not attempt a discussion on poetry unless one has a certain ripeness.
RKS: When you read a poem very different from yours, do you feel prompted to write like that? Say, love poems.
BS: When I read a good poem I curse myself: why can’t I do a poem like this? As for love poems, I find them pitiable, especially when a poet is toiling to lift his beloved to the clouds.
RKS: In the poem ‘Rain, Market and a Sick Mentality’ you talk about the domestic aspect of your life. How does your wife look at you as a poet?
BS: I have presented myself and my family as an emblem of lower middle class life in ‘Rain, Market and a Sick Mentality’. Nowadays the ‘empowerment of women’ has been limited to their education and job. I believe that along with this should go the cultivation of a finer sensibility. Once they attain a certain intellectual prowess, this world will be a better place to live in.
No, my wife does not praise my poems. But she is a discerning reader who does not hesitate to voice her opinion if she does not like something.
December 2006 Poems
Satyabhama
Question
Evening
The Golden Jubilee
Rain, Market and a Sick Mentality
Play-Acting
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