Hunger Poem by Jayanta Mahapatra: Analysis and Theme
In this article I am going to explain you "Hunger" poem by 'Jayanta Mahapatra'.
About Jayanta Mahapatra
Jayanta Mahapatra (b. 1928) studied in Cuttack and Patna. He taught Physics at Ravenshaw College in Cuttack. His verse collections include Close the Sky (1971), Ten by Ten (1970), A Rain of Rites (1976), The False Start (1980), Relationship (1980), Life Signs (1983) and Temple (1990). He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1981. He has translated Oriya poems into English and has also edited Chandrabhaga, a literary magazine. Mahapatra's works reveal how he examines his environment, his persal desires and various human relationships. Local realities lead him to investigate the depth of one's feeling and the possibilities of language representing them. Mahapatra is concerned with creating wordscapes of images and symbols that transform the local into the universal.'Hunger', selected from A Rain of Rites, is a hard-hitting poem about the degraded condition of people living in utter poverty. The speaker, in looking for sexual gratification, meets a fisherman who offers his daughter to the speaker. As he is led to the fisherman's shack, the speaker witnesses the miserable condition of the fisherman and his fifteen-year- old daughter who sells her body to earn her daily food. This human tragedy fills the speaker with a deep sense of guilt and shame and his carnal desire dies. The poem, with its vivid details and resonant images is a severe indictment of a social reality where hunger for food drives one to cater to another's hunger for sexual gratification.
'Hunger' Poem
It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes.
I followed him across the sprawling sands, my mind thumping in the flesh's sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth his old nets had dragged up from the seas.
In the flickering dark his lean-to opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nightsbefore.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to the walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind.
I heard him say: my daughter, she's just turned fifteen...
Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside.
Glossary
Line 3. trail draw along behind on the ground
Line 4. sanctify consider holy; make holy
Line 5. thrash beat severely
Line 6. sprawling sands a dispersed expansion of sand
Line 7. thump throb or pulsate strongly
Line 7. sling band of material looped round an object to support it
Line 9. claw get hold of, pull or scratch, with claws or hands
Line 10. froth creamy mass of small bubbles; foam; here, fish
Line 11. flickering (of lights) burning or shining unsteadily
Line 13. fronds leaf-like parts of a palm tree
Line 14. shack a poorly built hut especially of a poor person
Line 14. splay diverge in shape or position
Line 18. bunch come or bring together in a bunch
Line 18. exhaust use up completely: tire out
Line 18. wile cunning
Line 21. slithering sliding unsteadily
Explanatory Notes
Line 1. flesh was heavy on my back: symbolises carnal desire
Line 3. trailing his nets and his nerves: refers to the fisherman dragging his fishing nets behind him; it also suggests that he is dragging along the remnants of his nerves to face life.
Lines 3-4. his words... himself,: as if his words would make his purpose holy; fisherman's attempts to find justifications for his degradation.
Line 5. Hope lay ... I lived in: the speaker, filled with shame, feels that he can escape from the sense of guilt by burning his house of desire, that is, by overcoming his carnal desire.
Line 10. the froth... from the seas: the fish that the fisherman has caught
Line 11. his lean-to opened like a wound: a shack with a sloping roof, the upper end of which rests or leans against the wall of another building, the shack is like a wound, filthy and hurting
Line 14. splayed the hours: refers to the clock on the wall; the hands of the clock are splayed
Line 15. soot crossed... my mind: the filthy interiors of the shack increase his uneasiness
Line 18. Father's exhausted wile: the fisherman's cunning in making a living has been exhausted; he has therefore reached the stage of becoming a pimp for his daughter
Line 19. her years were cold as rubber: her age does not make her look youthful; hunger has made her look like a thing made of rubber
Line 20. wormy: very thin and worm-like
Line 20. hunger there: the hunger that has driven her to sell her body
Line 21. the other one: refers to the speaker's carnal desire
Line 21. fish slithering, turning inside: the pitiable situation of the fisherman and his daughter make the speaker lose his carnal desire
Title: 'Hunger' has two meanings in the poem: hunger for food and hunger for sexual gratification
Conclusion
"Hunger" is one of the great poem by Jayanta Mahapatra. Hope you enjoyed this poem by great poet Jayanta Mahapatra.
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