Ramesh Patnaik
This six-part book, comprising 30 short essays which are undoubtedly ‘‘carefully drafted literary pieces’’ was compiled from a learner’s perspective.
A middle path evolved between learning English and eliciting the joys of creative writing was handled deftly by a dexterous student of English literature.
The scholastic work by Mohapatra, dedicated to late Professor Biyotkesh Tripathy, a critic as well as a fiction writer of a unique genre, essays to compile various shades of critical ‘musings’ into a format suitable for the Indian student pursuing English literature or communicative English.
The musings are short, compact and witty. Often, they are subjective and manifest a fine literary sensibility. They embody an invisible protagonist who is born and groomed on rich Orissa soil, worthy enough to grasp the ethos and niceties of English language.
Affiliated to literature in general, Oriya, Vinglish and English languages in particular, the protagonist evinces exemplary passion for refinement in all its shades of communication, teaching, writing and criticism.
Short and stuffed with wisdom, these essays, however, are not for the ordinary, dunce or the lighter vein fiction reader. They are exclusively for the scholar, the classic writer or the teacher of language and literature. The author expresses concern over the prospect of our education system in terms of the pursuit of language for cultural studies and communicative English.
Mohapatra, being a teacher of English himself, quotes British philosopher Havelock Ellis to assess the teacher’s expertise in the art of writing: ‘‘There is so much bad writing in the world because writing has been dominated by ignorance and habit… and not least by academic teachers and critics who have known nothing of what they claim to teach and were themselves singular examples of how not to write.’’
There are many interesting pieces like Writing it right, Writing: The other face, Seeding Bhasha, Reading the Indian novel, Our lit, their lit, Oriya poetry now, Return to the muse and The value of literary education among others in the compilation which were published in various broadsheets and periodicals.
The concluding piece titled ‘Odia Renaissance’ dwells at length on the clear demarcations between creative history and fiction writing with reference to poet and novelist JP Das’ Desa, Kala, Patra which tries to portray a picture of growing strength and mobility of the Odia people under colonial rule. The author also brings in analogy from contemporary Bengali literature.
And the scholastic work is worth ‘‘reading and digesting’’ as Francis Bacon would put it humorously.