LS.1 HUNGER POEM

BY JAYANTA MAHAPATRA

(DEGREE I YEAR OU SYLLABUS)

INTRODUCTION:

 

Hunger was written by JAYANTA MAHAPATRA. He is a translator and also edited Chandrabhaga a literary magazine.His words collections include close the sky, ten by ten, A rain of sites and temple. He won the Sahitya Academic Award in 1981. His writing is closely related to his environment and relates his personal desires and human relationships which explore the reality, feelings and loop holes of the society.

CONTENT:

Jayanta Mahapatra’s  poem “Hunger” depicts the miserable condition of a fisherman whose daily routine is to catch fish which he did not satisfy the basic needs for his family. The quest for the fulfillment of his family needs lead to selling of his daughter. Thus, he opted unpleasant way of pimping of his daughter to earn money.

Fisherman meets the speaker near the bench where he draws a man to sell his daughter as he trails a net to catch fish. He used all sorts of tricks on customers by telling them about the beauty and freshness of his daughter. It showed wickedness and carelessness of father and making his daughter as a commodity.

As the girl turned just fifteen made her surrendered himself to her father wish and exhibits her obedience as she was immature mentally. Thus she was compared to rubber for her flexible nature.

The speaker gratified his sexual hunger with fisherman’s daughter. This perception on girl as an object indicates that she was used numerously owing to malnutrition. At the end of the poem the speaker said that for the first time he understood the real meaning of hunger not owing to sexual gratification but which had driven by poverty. The feeling of the empty stomach is compared with the fish which slither when it comes out.

CONCLUSION:

In this poem, poet brings out that images of slink, claw and unsteady light, flickering a poor men hurt which signify the exploitation of a poor girl for feeding themselves. This poem presents two kinds of hunger one is flesh related and other is poverty related.

Through this poem Mahaptra exemplify the brutality of our society towards poor people. When agony and suffering become intolerable, weak spirited poor people tend to surrendered to inhumanity. The ethical and moral values have no place in such utterly degraded human plight. These offences are spreading like wild fire in our society.