The Boy with a Catapult : Question-Answers

 

1.      What kind of a boy was Bodh Raj? Pick out words from the text that describe him.

Ans: Bodh Raj was the oddest boy in the school. He was callous. He would catch a wasp with his bare fingers, pull out its sting, tie a thread around it and fly it like a kite. He was vindictive and took pleasure in hurting others. Everyone was afraid of him. If Bodh Raj quarrelled with anyone, he would charge at him head-on like a bull or viciously kick and bite him.

2.      Why did the narrator’s new home appeal to Bodh Raj?

Ans: The narrator’s new home appealed to Bodh Raj because he found it a good hunting ground.

3.      Why did the narrator’s mother tolerate his friendship with Bodh Raj?

Ans: The narrator’s mother tolerated his friendship with Bodh Raj because she realised the narrator was lonely and needed company.

4.      Why was the narrator afraid of taking Bodh Raj to the storeroom in his new house? Did his fears come true?

Ans: The narrator was afraid to take Bodh Raj to the storeroom in his new house because he thought that he might kill the birds. No, his fears did not come true.

5.      What change did the narrator notice in Bodh Raj while the latter was hunting the mynah chicks?

Ans: The narrator noticed a change of heart in Bodh Raj. Instead of harming the mynah chicks, he saved their lives from the kite.

6.      How did Bodh Raj save the mynah chicks?

Ans: Bodh Raj saved the Mynah chicks by continuously distracting the kite by aiming at it with his catapult. He then asked the narrator to do the same, while he arranged a table and a broken chair, stood on it brought the nest down and placed it safely in the garage, where the kite could not enter.

Savitri: An Introduction

 

        Sri Aurobindo Ghosh is one of the greatest personalities in modern India. He is a multifaceted genius. He was a profound thinker and a prolific writer. He was essentially a nationalist, a yogi, a guru a scholar, a philosopher, and above all, a great poet. He gained a deep insight into Indian culture and civilization. His creativity and inspiration came from his practice of yoga. He began his public life as a political activist. It was he who pushed the agenda of complete Independence of India from British rule. He was one of the most distinguished spiritual leaders of India. As a spiritual reformer, he introduced his visions on human progress and spiritual evolution.

          Savitri, an epic poem in blank verse, is Aurobindo’s masterpiece. It is based on the story of the Mahabharata. Here Ghosh expresses his mystic experiences. It is a means of ascension. Its richness of imagery, beauty of expression, and sheer number of memorable lines remind us of Shakespeare.  But in terms of depth and width of spiritual experience, it has no equal in the English language. Savitri is the most valuable text ever composed.  Sri Aurobindo tried to lift the level of the poem higher and higher and that’s why Savitri was published only after he left his physical body.

          The story woven in this epic is based on the Mahabharata. This is the story- There was a king named Aswapathy. He was the king of Madra. He was childless. To have a child he worshiped gods and goddesses for eighteen years. Simultaneously he performed a hundred thousand sacrifices. The goddess Savitri became happy with him. She appeared before him out of the sacrificial fire. She declared herself pleased. She said that his desire to have an issue would be satisfied. She bestowed upon him a daughter. As she was a gift of the goddess Savitri, Aswapathy gave her the name of Savitri. She was beautiful like Laxmi. She was of golden colour and she had heavenly beauty.

          Over time, she became young. Her parents became anxious about her marriage. But it was very difficult for them. She had so strong and brilliant personality that no prince dared to come forward to ask for her hand. Aswapathy was pained at this. And thus he asked her to go around the country and choose her own partner. He sent her out to travel with an old minister as an escort.  Savitri wandered here and there for more than two years.

           After completing her journey, she returned to her father's place. At that time the great seer Narad was there. She disclosed her choice of Satyavan who was the son of King Dyumatsen. Dyumatsen was living in exile because his enemies had taken advantage of his blindness and driven him out of his kingdom. Satyavan along with his family was living in a hermitage in the forest. The young prince Satyavan was brave, intelligent, generous, and forgiving. The parents therefore approved of her choice. But Narad disapproved of the choice because he knew that Satyavan was fated to die after one year. But Savitri was adamant. She said that one makes the choice once only. The parents consented to her choice and she was accordingly married to Satyavan.    Immediately after marriage, she betook to the simple and hard life of the hermitage where Satyavan lived. She was extremely happy to find Satyavan as her husband, the man of her choice. But she could not for a moment forget the dire prophecy of the great sage, Narad. She was preparing herself for the great crisis.

          On the fateful morning, Satyavan wanted to go to the forest to bring fuel for the sacrificial fire. Savitri insisted on accompanying him to the forest.  In fact, she did not want to undertake the risk of letting him go alone to face his death. She got permission. She argued that she wanted to see the forest. They reached a certain place well known to Satyavan and stopped there to cut wood. After cutting some wood, Satyavan complained of severe pain in the head and Savitri offered her lap for him to rest his head. After a short time, Satyavan fell asleep, and Savitri saw the God of Death standing before her. He declared that he had come to take the life of Satyavan and accordingly took it. Savitri followed the spirit of Satyavan separated from his physical body and captured in the noose of the God of Death. She conversed with Yama, the God of Death. Her conversation so pleased him that he granted her several boons, the last of which was the restoration of the life of Satyavan. Thus Savitri triumphed over Death as well as Fate and returned to her hermitage.

          Savitri is the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful, and perfect cosmic poem ever composed. Its range is vast - earth to heaven. It illuminates every important concern of man. The theme is not merely Satyavan’s death; rather it is the suffering, misery, and death. The death of Satyavan means the defeat of Truth and the invasion of darkness. But Savitri armed by the power of her love, struggles with Death and secures her husband. The Mother says that ‘…everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. All that nobody yet knows. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained in clear words so that spiritual adventurers may understand it more easily.’

          Savitri is considered as a legend and a symbol. Sri Aurobindo exploited the action for subtle and symbolic purposes. The tale of Satyavan and Savitri is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death. But this legend is one of the many symbolic myths of the Vedic cycle. Savitri is a goddess of the supreme. She is a savior spirit. She is the light of love that defeats darkness and achieves the recovery of Truth. She is the vanquisher of evil. She is the symbol of power or shakti and love. Savitri is the symbol of struggle, redemption, and the incarnation of the divine mother. She is both the response and the resulting transformation. She redeems the universe from the tyranny of Yama and restores to earth the paradisal vision of life. But in her victory, there is an affirmation of the spirit. There is the ascent from lower consciousness to the next higher level of consciousness and this is a precondition for the progress of civilization. There is continuous and upward progress in the human race.

             Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descending into the grip of death and ignorance. Aswapati is the Lord of Tapasya that helps us to rise from the mortal to the immortal planes. Still, this is not a mere allegory. The characters are not personified qualities but incarnations. They take human bodies to help man and show him the way from his mortal state to divine consciousness and immortal life. The symbolic significance of the poem is brought out by focusing on the development of the inner life of Savitri. Commenting on the symbolic significance of the poem, Sri Aurobindo remarked that “Savitri is an experiment in mystic poetry, spiritual poetry cast into a symbolic figure.”

           In Savitri, the central myth is the myth of freedom. This myth emphasizes the evolutionary view of human nature. It focuses on the soul’s ability to experience infinitude and to attain freedom from a deterministic order of lower nature. Thus the mythic conflict between Savitri and Yama not only reflects the myth of individual freedom but also reflects the myth of social or collective salvation. Savitri is also a cosmic epic as it denies private and personal salvation as an end in itself. Aurobindo’s conception of evolutionary progress implies cosmic consciousness. Cosmic consciousness concerns humanity as a whole.

          Sri Aurobindo was one of the greatest mystics and visionaries of modern history. It may be observed that mysticism is embedded in Sri Aurobindo’s poems. He says that man should transcend the conscious level and realize the super-conscious level through the medium of yoga. The union with God can transform a person into a worthy human being. Savitri is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man’s mind towards the Absolute.  Like the two Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, Savitri, has a romantic inwardness and an insistent emphasis on the mystical. The marriage of Savitri and Satyavan fits in with a definite stage in the spiritual evolution. Savitri is looking for inward expansion of her spiritual energy. Satyavan is looking for transcendent power. They find the fulfillment of their quest in each other. The two lovers were born to realize the words of the Divine Mother. Together, they can assert the victory of love over death. His mystical thought can illuminate the world and destroy ignorance and fanaticism. It can also enhance the toleration level in an individual.

            Sri Aurobindo revolutionized human thought and had a tremendous impact on people all over the world. He evolved a writing style of his own that would be in line with his spiritual thought. Sri Aurobindo is a skillful craftsman in the use of blank verse and felicity in poetic expression. He shows a piercing and instantaneous insight into the heart of his subject. He came under the influence of poetic movements of his time like Decadence and Modernism. Sri Aurobindo’s monumental epic, Savitri, reflects the consummation of the many poetic styles.

            Savitri is an epic of universal significance. In this context, he can be compared with Dante and Milton.  Like Goethe, he chose an ancient story from mythology and molded it into a legend. It is concerned with the destiny of man and his relations with the Divine. It is an inner drama, the inner epic of man.  K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar says that Aurobindo was not merely a writer who happened to write in English but really an English writer.

 

Coolie is based upon the theme of hunger, starvation and degradation. or Coolie is “an epic of misery”

 

Munoo is the central figure in the novel. He is a boy of fourteen, living under the shadow of the ill-treatment of his uncle and aunt. Despite all this, he is content with the idyllic happiness. He grazes his cattle plays with companions and enjoys the juicy mangoes. However, he has seen the people dying of hunger and starvation. He knew how his father died a slow death of bitterness and disappointment and his mother passed, her life in grinding grains. He had also heard that his father’s five acres of land were seized by the landlord because he could not pay the interest on the mortgage due to scanty rains and the bad harvest. The most horrible was the sight of his mother’s death. “The sight of her as she had laid dead on the ground with a horrible yet set expression on her face” had sunk into his subconscious with all its weight of tragic and utter registration.

Munoo has been taken from the village to the town of Sham Nagar by his uncle to work as a servant in Babu Nathoo Ram’s house. The ill-treatment which he receives in the house of Babu Nathoo Ram is more harrowing than he received at the hands of his uncle and aunt. Babu Nathoo Ram is a Sub-Accountant in the branch of Imperial Bank of Sham Nagar. His mistress is a shrewish, quarrelsome woman, who employs the boy at Rs. 5 per month. She ill-treats Munoo. She takes hard work from him. He was engaged in the work from morning till night. She gives him very poor quality food to eat, sometimes stale food. He is practically starved. Babu Nathoo Ram always showered torrents of abuses and curses on his head without rhyme or reason. They also beat him severely. When he complains to his uncle, he instead of showing love and sympathy for the boy beats him mercilessly and he even does not give him any money to take food. His uncle said to him that he had neither money nor sympathy for him. Hence he threw him out of the house. He was so badly treated that he had hatred for him. There is none in his life now. He is alone and alone only and he runs away from his callous and inconsiderate uncle and his mistress.

Munoo has left the hellish place of Sham Nagar and come to Daulatpur. This is the next phase of his life. This place also could not evaluate him and he is again in the grip of heavy circumstances. He is employed in a pickle factory the owner Prabha Dayal and his wife have a soft corner for the boy but Ganpat, the other co-partner of the factory treats him badly and because of his bad character he cheats on Prabha Dayal and he is reduced to beggary the pickle factory is sold out, and subsequently Munoo is fated to work as a coolie — which, means mere beast of burden—first in the grain market and then in the village market. In the market, he saw the naked starving conditions of the coolies who are competing with one another for jobs at extremely low wages. The suffering of Munoo and the other coolies is harrowing. In fact, they are reduced to the level of beasts.

  Munoo is paid very low wages in the vegetable market and he sees here that there is stiff competition from numerous starving coolies like him. After that, he tries his luck at the railway station but he had no license which is required for every coolie. The police make him go away and he runs away in terror and a kind-hearted elephant driver comes to his help. He then reaches Bombay with the help of the elephant driver.

While sojourning in Bombay; Munoo came across the lepers, the beggars, the sick and the dying and the wretched condition of the workers and the coolies. They are all degraded and demoralised. They cringe before Jimmie Thomas because they are afraid of being dismissed from the job. They also give commissions and fruits to him to make their jobs secured in the factory they have to tolerate bitter humiliation. They also cringe before the baniya from whom they purchase provision on loan, and hence their exploitations by all possible crooked ways are at the zenith.

            The last phase of Munoo’s life is spent in Simla where he is employed as page-cum-rickshawpuller of Mrs. Main waring. He has not only to do domestic work but also to pull her rickshaw, whenever the memsahib would like to go or wherever she wants to go. Besides, she also uses him sexually. Hence his health is aggravated and he begins to cough out blood. And finally, he dies in the arms of his friend Mohan at the age of sixteen. His miserable life comes to an end as a welcome release.

The misery of Munoo is the misery of millions of Munoo in India. The life history of Munoo is full of miseries. He finds no silver lining in the dark cloud. He is beaten from pillar to post, is overworked and humiliated, and treated merely as a beast of burden till he dies in the bloom of life due to hunger, suffering and disease. Munoo is a universal figure, than life character, and he represents the suffering and starving millions of the country.

Jayanta Mahapatra: General Estimate as a Poet

 

Jayanta Mahapatra is an eminent Indian English poet born in Cuttack in 1928. He belongs to a lower-middle-class family. He had his early education at Stewart School, Cuttack. After a first-class Master's Degree in Physics, he joined as a teacher. He began writing poetry at the age of forty in 1968. Therefore he is called “a late bloomer in poetry.” Mahapatra’s poetry is an eloquent expression of the eternal silence of the Unknown. His poetry springs from deep personal memories and experiences. He is a celebrated poet in post-independence Indian English poetry. Perhaps any discussion on Indian English Poetry is incomplete without referencing his poetical works.

According to him “poem is knit together by an inconceivable silence, which is intangible (abstract/untouchable) substance, of which words are but manifestations; words which can build the poem from a silence and to which the poem must eventually return.  The poet experiences this silence within and it opens out “a thousand memories, a thousand longings, as these, in turn, come into being in a poem.

The Orissa landscape, history, culture, social life, poverty, rites and rituals constitute the most important theme of Mahapatra’s poetry.  He frankly discusses sex, sexuality, prostitution and poverty. ‘Hunger’ and ‘The Warehouse in a Culcutta Street’ are his famous poems on this theme. He depicts a somber and gloomy vision of life which is marked by loss, dejection, grief, alienation and suffering. His poetry is an exploration of the Indian sensibility and ethos, especially the Orissa landscape, religion and psyche, and the intricacies of human relationships. His poems seem like all of these are his personal life encounters.

He uses language in a very vast way; he uses English idioms for Indian text. He shows his love for Orissa in many poems like Myth, and grandfather but he finds the English language more comfortable than Oriya. His poems also show women in a helpless and objectifying light. A major example of the power of males and sexuality is seen in his poem ‘Hunger’. His area is indeed limited only to his experiences and history. His poetry appears to be very difficult because of its contrived style.

Mahapatra’s poetic sensibility is typically Indian. He is intensely aware of his environment and vividly portrays the variegated Orissa landscape throbbing with religious fervour. His poetry deals with contemporary socio-political reality in India. It also exposes the economic disparity and utters the apathy (indifference) of the politicians to the public welfare. Prostitution and sexual exploitation result from economic disparity and gross social injustice.

Mahapatra also explores with robust tenderness the intricacies of human relationships, especially those of lovers. His poetry is related to the existential dilemma of the modern man.  He is intensely aware of the alienation and isolation of the modern man. His poems demonstrate a remarkable concern for both structure and linguistic versatility. His symbols and images are evocative (motivate) and suggestive, and they reflect his love for the Orissa landscape with all the myths and rituals associated with it.