That Pretty Woman Nayagarh

Manas Ranjan Mahapatra

Last month I met Manoj Kumar Dash from Nayagarh in a meeting at Bhubaneswar. He is from Nayagarh. We know each other for the last three decades. Two more living connections at Nayagarh for me are Sarat Chandra Acharys and Prafulla Kumar Sahu. I was once regular contributor to a literary magazine' Hrud Bakya' published from there. I helped the district administration for holding a Book Fair there over two decades ago. Now, it's past and I have become part of history. 

I have not visited Nayagarh for the last almost four decades. Whenever I think of Nayagarh, its delicious cheese cake ( Chhena Poda) and wit of Poet Jadumani comes to my mind.
 
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Jadumani was a famous poet and narrator from Odisha.Ingenious humour and Satire was the specialty of his writing. Though he was born in Athagara village in Ganjam District, yet he left his birth place during his adolescence and resided permanently at Itamati Village of Nayagarh , then a princely state. He was popularly known as an extraordinarily talented poet, intellectual and orator. Spontaneous poetic talent and sharp wit was filled within him. He was able to acquire in-depth knowledge in Oriya and Sanskrit language with self determination and hard endeavour. Through jokes, humours and satire, ridicule, he used to face the truth and unmasked dishonesty, illegitimacy and untruthfulness. Many of his humourous poetic exclamations are used as idioms in day to day activities even current day society. Jadumani was indeed a gifted child of Goddess Saraswati. 

Nayagarh has always remained a pretty woman for me as I have always seen it in the midnight either when going or coming back from Umerkote where I was a School Headmaster for three years in 1980s. My younger brother like Arindam Dakua once invited me in early 2000s  for inaugurating a Book Fair he organised when he was appointed as its Collector after it became a district, but I could not make it. I have two more young friends from there, Bibhuti Jena and Sarat Acharya. Of late my student Ajeet Kumar Mishra joined Nayagarh College as a Lecturer in English.

Nayagarh College and my School Utkal Hindi Vidyapith were contemporaries, both were established in early 1960s. Eminent poets Devdas Chhotaray and Haraprasad Das were lecturers there before joining civil services. Prof Ganeswar Mishra was also there before joining Utkal University. Poet Harihar Mishra ,!Essayist Parikshit Nanda and fiction writer Nimai Pattanayak was also there. 

The kings of Nayagarh were patrons of literature for centuries. Poet Laureate Upendra Bhanja was in his court beside Sadananda Kavisurya Brahma.It was a dream of artists in the medieval period to get an invitation from Nayagarh Royal Court to showcase their talent.

Pandit Binayak Mishra who succeeded Pandit Nilakantha Dash as a Professor in Calcutta University, was also from Nayagarh, my teacher Dr Bijoy Kumar Nanda too.

I had two more personal connections with Nayagarh at one point of time.

My father had three cousins. One of my aunts was from Nayagarh. Her brothers were at times visiting us at Puri. My own uncle was teasing them by saying that since they are from an underdeveloped princely state, visiting Puri for them is like visiting Bombay city !

One of my closest colleagues at Umerkote Prafulla Kumar Sahoo, PET, was also from Nayagarh. He gave me shelter in his quarters when I joined there. At that time I was just a stranger for him.

Nayagarh is very close to my heart. But, nobody has called me to visit Nayagarh for the last three decades and I don’t visit uninvited to the house of a pretty !