MEETING WITH MAHASHAKTI

Suffering and the Looking-Within

The year 2001 will be stored in my memory for ever.I was trying my best to get my works published. Once I met Professor Harish Panda and told him about my problem.He recommended me to Banabihari Chaudhuri based at Cuttack.I was told that Mr.Chaudhuri was extremely close to Ajay Panigrahi,the famous and world renowned poet.
I met Mr.Chaudhuri in his home.He was going to have his breakfast. I was in his room. Instead of eating his breakfast himself,he prevailed upon me to eat the breakfast on his table.He was gentleness incarnate.We ate our breakfast and rode to Ajay Panigrahi's house. When we reached there,we were welcomed.Panigrahi sat on a chair and a chit-chat started.He took the manuscript of my short stories and turned its pages.He said,"Looks Okay...You being a student of English literature are bound to write better than I write."
Then there was a long discussion.But I was impatient inside to draw the poet's attention to my topic. After the end of the discussion I said to Ajay Panigrahi,"Sir please write a few lines on my stories. I think that can help me find a publisher."

As I kept insisting, Panigrahi said,'Go...and tell editors of Indian Literature and all others that I liked your stories. Use my  name and try to get published." I was filled with bitter disappointment. I came back home full of sorrow. Even though all  treated him like a God,I didn't have the slightest respect for this man.When I complained to Mr.Chaudhuri,he told me that it took Panigrahi many long years to acquire fame. We know how Amitabh Ghosh helped Upamanyu Chatterjee to get his first book published. An Odia will never help another Odia.

Now if I say Panigrahi is not a good poet,
you might think I am biased. To me,his poetry is mere juggling of words. What can a man write to edify society,a man who refuses to help another man? But there are empty headed literary critics who want to find and discuss things out of a poem that leave you speechless. The poet never even imagined what the foolish critic says about him.

I will tell you about two more frustrating incidents.
Dr.Sadananda Misra was staying at Puri.I went to him quite very often. He had assured me that my writings were very good.He was very down to earth.He had once said to me,"If your English had  been bad,I would have never encouraged you to write."
One day when I was at Puri,he advised me to meet Benudhara Padhi.It appeared to me that Padhi was the best man on earth and the greatest poet Odisha had ever produced.After facing a lot of confusion and difficulty, I located Mr.Padhi's house.He and I sat together on a sofa and he turned the pages of my manuscript. He said something was lacking in my stories. He never expressed it.When I insisted he said,it was something not expressible.I knew it was just a gimmick and  nothing else.Let me tell you something that hurt me badly.Ajay Panigrahi had given me a cup of tea,maybe because I was with Mr.Chaudhuri whose responsibility seemed to be the popularisation of Panigrahi as a poet.

At Padhi's residence something unexpected happened. His wife brought two cups of tea. Padhi and his wife drank tea in my presence.I felt insulted. He had told me my English was not upto mark which I never believed.

He and his wife were taking tea in the presence of a visitor. Both were cultured and refined. Their action showed their apathy and indifference to me. I came back with a heavy heart. Their behaviour was meant to reduce my self-confidence. I didn't give up my search for  someone who would accept my writings.

Another incident comes to my mind. Dr. Sadananda Misra told me to make another attempt to find a publisher for my stories. He said,"A former student of mine teaches at Ravenshaw college. Go to him and seek help." The man was P K Mallic or P K Sahu .I was waiting for him holding Dr.Misra's letter for this man. He had told me that the man had published some works in America.

I knew that that P K would enter a classroom. I was waiting for him. He did come with an armful of books. When I said Namaskar and told about Dr.Misra,he snarled at me furiously and entered the  class.I pronounced a string of curses on him and decided  to come back home.I still waited there for some time hoping to drag him into a conversation. The class got over and the man called P K came out. He refused to look at me and walked away proudly.After that I was very tired and found my way home.

I had become used to people's mistreatment and harsh behaviour.I once decided to make a visit to journalist Gajendra Patnaik hoping to be absorbed into his big organisation.
Riding my old bicycle, I reached his place about eight in the morning. I found him seated in his veranda. Two or three old people who looked like peasants were sitting there in chairs.When I broached the topic to  Gajendra he just boiled over with fury and venom and told me to leave. When I tried to show him my paintings,cartoons and some stories,he thundered at me outrageously and said he didn't want to see anything. After this incident,
I went to Gajendra's office two or three more times to seek the help of some kind-hearted employee.Once I saw something funny. I saw a bald headed gentleman talking to Gajendra from a distance of two metres..!Perhaps a year or two passed and Gajendra came to our door begging  for votes and the man who had thundered at me so nastily was now all smiles, transformed into pure sugar candy.He was trying his best to become an M.P.

My mother began burning with rage seeing Gajendra at our gate. She went hurrying to the gate showering the prospective politician with angry sentences and extremely bitter sharp words. Gajendra was merely baring his teeth in a shameless smile.

Just as I am today, my mother too never hesitated to chastise the wrongdoers mercilessly using the sharpest words she could find at the time.She used to call evil on a former professor of mine Suresh Chandra Sahu. Suresh was pretty bad tempered with his students mostly boys who came from villages.His highest goal in the class was to make the girls laugh aloud. If a girl was beautiful but came from a village,she didn't have to face as many humiliations as the less attractive ones.We often wondered at his servility.
He would unlock the HOD's office door with a view to winning his favour. He belonged to my brother- in-law's village.My brother-in-law would narrate the history of their family. It was interesting to listen to him.

You might wonder why I am washing my dirty nylon in public. I  just want to tell you how disappointments and humiliations led me from darkness to light.At one time, I developed intense loathing for everything and everybody in this world. Nothing was good. Not even the beautiful places people adored and admired.Every human being was an enemy of mine.Since I had closed the doors of my mind to the outside world,I was left with no choice but looking into my innermost being.As long as man craves external things,the looking-within can't happen.So the kind Mother Kali heaped me with unbearable disappointments and never ending suffering. Had I got a good job like a journalist's or editor's of a publishing house,I would never have been able to do the looking-within. When my looking within happened,from 1997 to 2003,I never had a dream. Not a single thought entered my mind. There was only God consciousness and nothing else.There was a time when I had to keep a copy of the Bhagavad Geeta under my pillow for thought control. That had not helped me and I had wondered,"Can anybody in this world completely control his thoughts?"A friend asked me this morning whether those experiences were happening. I told her yes. Honestly speaking,now the experience that is occurring is that everything and everybody including the gods,the goddesses,
my friends and my sworn enemies are within me.When Mother Kali said to me something and popped into me,I would be happy. Now I have a number of enemies. I clearly feel they are all inside me and no power can expel them from within me.If I think of Ashok or Prabhakar my thoughts don't run to the places where they live because they are already within me and they have been there since the beginning of time.Each and every friend of mine  is present in me. In this world everything is mine and I can discard none. Now I feel only this much but Sri Sai and my supreme master must have got a lot more deeper into this state which enabled them to read everybody's mind flawlessly.

I wanted to describe and validate that God has not created us. We have come into this world of our own sweet accord.Let me tell you that God is ever active and we know every action has its reaction.Each of us has come from God according to their own sweet will.Each of us has the potential to become God on earth. Lord Krishna and Lord Rama had human bodies but they attained godhood and we worship them now.
We have written our own fate and so let us not blame our misery and unhappiness on God.