A letter from Shri Jayanta Mahapatra

I really don't know how to start this blog post.

I also do not know how to write about my recent visit to Orissa with my parents (for 5 hectic days prior to Ugadi) when the bittersweet disquiet of being back at a home that we had left (I grew up in Orissa) played hide and seek with the joy of experiencing and enjoying the familiar milieus of my childhood.

This was a brief, rushed trip since Amma wanted to be back in Hyd for Ugadi (I had a marriage and the reception that followed to attend), but we did manage to go to Lord Jagannath's temple at Puri, the Sakhi Gopal temple at Sakhi Gopal, Lord Lingaraja Temple at Bhubaneshwar and Maa Biraja's Temple at Jajpur.

While at Cuttack, I remembered that a famous poet (somebody whose poems I had hunted out and read back in my schooldays) whom I remembered without recollecting his name, whom I remembered without recollecting anything definite about his poems lived in the same city at a locality quaintly named Tinkonia Bagicha (triangular garden).

Our cab driver said he knew Tinkonia Bagicha and took us there, but since I gave him the wrong name (for some reason the name that came to me was Jatin Das), it took me some wandering around in the afternoon heat before I was directed to a building with the name "Chandrabhaga" besides its gate.

Not at all bothered by the afternoon heat, but feeling very penitent for not having done this long before and mentally kicking myself for getting a senior and eminent poet's name wrong, I finally fetched Amma from the cab and we together walked through that gate -- to meet Shri Jayanta Mahapatra.

We weren't lucky enough to meet Shri Jayanta Mahapatra (he was away at New Delhi) but I did manage to spend some time in his living room / study and the feeling was of being blessed, like being in a temple of wisdom and thought -- because I somehow feel fortunate when I come in touch with senior / old poets, be it when I read their poetry or when (in rare cases like this) I get to feel the aura of their presence.

Since I couldn't meet him, I left a note for him instead -- along with a copy of my book -- introducing myself as someone who hasn't met him or enjoyed the privilege of knowing him and requesting his feedback on my book.

I had a sense of fulfillment as I stepped out of Chandrabhaga (similar to how I feel when I step out of a temple) and since we left for Jajpur thereafter (to Maa Biraja's temple, where again I felt very blessed) you could say these intense feelings were poems in the book called Orissa, segueing seamlessly into each other.

Yes, I felt fulfilled and really didn't want or expect anything else from my visit (though I did hope that Shri Jayanta Mahapatra would read and probably like my poems).

Which is why when M told me yesterday that a letter has arrived from a "Jayanta Mahapatra, Tinkonia Bagicha..."at the Coucal office, I couldn't really believe it. And when M wanted to know why I was acting so "worked up" and who Jayanta Mahapatra is, my reply was a terse "google him".

I hurried to meet M, claimed the letter (and the envelope) and have read it more than a dozen times already. And I still don't find words to explain my happiness. As you may very much expect, I am going to frame this letter and cherish it as a treasured possession for the rest of my life.

Not because he has praised my poems (which he has done), but because the letter (incidentally handwritten) itself reads like a poem, one revealing the wisdom, bighearted nature and humility of the great man.

P.S. Coincidentally, when I started writing this post my father wanted my help in filling up some forms to transfer his Kisan Vikas Patra certificates to a post office here in Secunderabad. The forms had an address field starting with "To The Postmaster..." where my father asked me to fill in "Ispat Post Office, Rourkela 769016" and that very act made it feel like I was writing a letter home.

I guess that's another reason why I am so kicked about this letter from Shri Jayanta Mahapatra. Because though I am very much a Telugu belonging to Hyderabad, my childhood "home" was Orissa and Shri Jayanta Mahapatra's letter was like a letter from home.