‘The umbrellas are on a protest march': Bishnu Mohapatra's poems on rain for a desolate May

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31-05-2025

It is May. And May has its darling buds. Palash and hibiscus. Zinnia and marigold. But this May is not the month of flowers in the Indian plains. It is a parched month of pining. For compassion. And for the rain. The open beak of the sparrow and cuckoo, the dry petals of marigolds and zinnias, the paws of cats and the dogs, and the desert of the mind and the heart all wait, panting for the rain to descend. So do the poems of Bishnu Mohapatra's book, Rain Incarnations. It is rain in its many (in)carnations - the euphoria, the nostalgia, the awakening of the rain, as it arrives, as it seeps in, as it sponges in and caresses the soil and all life nestled within.
Paeans to rain and the monsoon are not new in the subcontinent. Kalidasa's Ritusamhara offers resplendent rhymes to rain, a Sanskritic canon that Rabindranath Tagore was very fond of. His early work Bhanusingher Padabali carries clear signs of how immersed he was in both Kalidasa and the rains. In between these two maestros of monsoon came the mythologies of rain, the rhymes and the lores, and the poetry of Mas'ud Sa'd Salman, Mirabai, Surdas, Kabir and even Mirza Ghalib. When Tansen sang Megh Malhar and Desh, he could bring rains to the dry and wry lands of the northern plains, it is said.
In recent years, one can remember Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things invoking, in her way, the wetness of Kerala; or Alexander Frater's Chasing the Monsoon, which the critic Rukun Advani called 'a literary monsoon mania' which made 'a religion of rain'. Rain is in our music, our food, our travels, and indeed, in our tongues. Clearly, no one – no poet, no wanderer, no romantic, no raconteur – could be immune to the subcontinental samhara of the monsoon.
Mohapatra, who is a senior professor of politics at Krea University and an acclaimed Odia poet, is the latest literary devotee of the rain. Rain Incarnations is his elegantly published volume of mostly short poems translated eloquently by Aparna Uppaluri and are accompanied by a set of minimalist, mostly monochrome, atmospheric, abstract art by Gauri Nagpal. It is a petit volume in every sense of the French word.
A note on the original Odia volume, Barshavatar, by Uppaluri perhaps best captures the mood of the original. The rain of Barshavatar, she writes, is 'the rain of the ordinary man, the ordinary woman, it is the rain that ripens mangoes; here, rain is a witness, rain is time…lost love,…God's gaze; rain dances, sleeps, transforms, glides, flies and sinks'. In keeping with the mythical origins of the title, we see, among others, the dancing rain in 'Raasa Leela', and the departed rain in 'departure'. Then there is the troubadour-like lonely rain with whom a chance meeting is valued on a deserted night on the street; or the shifting relationship with the rain during the pandemic, or when one is faced with the idea, if not the actuality, of death. In 'Blame', probably the most touching poem of the volume, rain bears the cross of all human adventures. These themes are perhaps to be expected in the lines of a poet who invokes the rain as muse. But what is genuinely telling are the poems in which the political scientist in Bishnu peeks from the behind the poet in him, in poems like 'Rain thinks of Socrates' or 'Rain in the Footsteps of Ambedkar' – in the first, rain 'representing' the suicidal thirst for knowledge, and in the second, the source of ablution. Most poems in this wonderful volume would call for a reread; the first time to comprehend, then to soak in them.
In this country of the present, without the slightest touch of compassion, dry in heart and isolated in hate, may rain inundate us all. As it should. This May.
Blame
Tonight
the moon's youth
is squandered.
For this,
we can blame the rain.
The salt of love we hoarded for years,
has been washed away into the ocean
For this,
we can blame the rain.
The black mole on my lover's breast
slips slowly
to her belly.
For this,
we can blame the rain.
Flouting all orders, the umbrellas of the city are
out on a protest march.
Demands, slogans, and speeches fill the streets,
police break their barricade.
Even for this,
we can blame the rain.
In the Irani café in Bandra,
Sarveshwar while cleaning the tables,
remembers the moist eyes of his mother.
A few drops of his tears fall into a teacup.
For this, too,
we can blame the rain.
Rain thinks of Socrates
I am not an imitation,
nor an image of my own being.
I am not a diminished body,
nor its broken reflection.
You will not find me, even if you look for me.
My ideal form is not in your heaven.
I have wandered for long around the world,
fatigued, with muscles tired, heels cracked and broken,
soles of my feet, drenched in blood.
I have walked the world.
Whether you know it or not,
I live life caught in my own questions.
From the womb of my answers,
questions emerge like dark butterflies
and scatter across my sky.
That day, you drank hemlock surrounded
by your friends, your disciples, your lovers.
Your feet, then fingers, then your thighs and your
abdomen, finally your heart –
slowly turned to stone.
I loitered in the city-square for a long time,
everything was quiet –
only the untimely cawing of the crows.
Your toga came flying,
a pack of street dogs tore it to shreds.
I rolled over those tatters till they moistened and mingled with the earth.
I will tell you a truth. I too intoxicated the young.
Made and unmade
known and unknown Gods.
Like you, I know
Life is familiar –
Death, intimate.
Raasa Leela
Look, look – at that ecstatic dance of rain,
like Sri Ramakrishna swaying,
or avadhootas with ashen bodies
whirling in abandon.
Rain appears still, at times –
like a note held in raag Malhar, or
like Manguli the peasant, rapt
in love for his wife.
Rain, an unruly cow in the city forages,
feeding on everything.
Torn clothes, pajamas, hawai chappals, polythene bags,
crumpled newspaper, computer CDs, condoms,
and old bottles of homeopathic remedies.
Everything whisked together and gulped.
Still, much remains –
like the broken arm of Jesus in Kandhamal,
like severed limbs of workers of Kalinganagar,
or the duplicity of our statesmen.
The deep sad sigh of those whose
lands are taken by force,
their bulging anger, our blind intolerance
and the torso of broken dreams.
In these turbulent times, the times of war –
Where does the rain get such courage?
To dance wildly on the high streets of the City?
Rain –
melting moonlight
pearl fallen off the stars
horses let loose from the stable
dove flown away from its coop
first touch and the stirring of breasts
intimate flicker
unseen face of the world
rumble of drums
naked water lily
green melody.
'Rain does not deceive, has no alibi'
Who says this?
Who flatters rain?
Look, look, again – at this ecstatic Raasa of Rain
Its Leela
And the wild laughter of its sycophants all around.
Sayandeb Chowdhury teaches literature at Krea University, Andhra Pradesh.