Haldhar Nag: ‘Truly’ Inspirational!

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This time of year, we often find ourselves thinking about the origins of some of our favorite writers:  how they found themselves on the writing path, how they learned. And we’ve been surprised to realize how many successful and even legendary writers dropped out of school and ended up teaching themselves. Many of those without a formal education, or without much of one, went on to achieve great success.

Charles Dickens, a celebrated English writer and social critic, in earliest years enjoyed a private education. At the age of 12, his father was tossed into debtors’ prison and everything changed. Little Charles was forced to drop out of school and take a job at a boot blacking warehouse, where he worked ten hour days for six shillings a week. Eventually, after an inheritance gave his father the cash to get out of prison, Dickens went back to school, but his experiences in the factory carry through much of his work.

William Faulkner, Nobel laureate, though  writing from his teen age, didn’t much care about school, and dropped out at age 15 to work in his grandfather’s bank. Despite his lack of a high school diploma, he enrolled as a special student at Ole Miss at 22 where his father worked, but dropped out again after only three semesters. An American author and humorist, Mark Twain dropped out of school at the tender age of twelve, when his father died, and all the children of the family had to pitch in. His elder brother Orion was already a printer, and Mark Twain took a job as a printer’s apprentice, his only compensation being board and clothes. A few years later, Orion bought out a small printer, and the two brothers worked there together, the younger just beginning to flex his writing muscles.

George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright, attended several schools in his youth before dropping out entirely at age 14, finding little value in formal education. “Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today,” he once wrote, “are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents.” A voracious learner and reader, he spent hours in the National Gallery of Dublin reading about art, history, and literature, and beginning to write on his own.

The legendary science fiction author, H.G. Wells was pulled out of school when his father, a professional cricket player, fractured his thigh. Wells was only 11 years old, but the loss of the grand part of the family’s income forced him to take apprenticeships. Wells worked as a draper at the South Sea Drapery Emporium but his experiences there later inspired the novels The Wheels of Chance and Kipps. One of the most critically acclaimed, oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers, Guan Moye, better known as ‘Mo Yan’, is the 2012 Nobel laureate. He attended a primary school in his hometown, but was interrupted in the fifth grade during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a decade of political chaos when many of China’s school closed down. To escape poverty, he returned to the life of peasant in a farm for years, and then in a factory in 1973 that produced petroleum. After the Cultural Revolution he joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1976 and after five years of military life, literature became his passion.

Doris Lessing, also writing under the name ‘Jane Somers’, was the oldest person ever to win the Nobel Prize in 2007 for Literature. The Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-resident novelist, educated in a Catholic Convent during 1927-31, just outside Salisbury, where, she heard ‘horrific sermons’ on ‘hellfire’ and the ‘undying worm’, as Lessing wrote in her autobiography Under My Skin (1994). Rebellion against her mother’s academic aspiration for her, she left the school and continued reading at home. After a short stint at home, she was sent to an all-girl high school in the capital of Salisbury (now Harare) from which she soon dropped out. That was the end of her formal education. Like other women writers from southern Africa who did not graduate from high school: Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer, Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

While it has to be conceded that education is the way out of deprivation for many, especially in our country, the fact remains that academic education is far from all that you need for success. As exemplified by these men and women, famous Indians who dropped out of school/college are many. Recently two awardees Gurdial Singh, ‘arguably’ the most celebrated and the best known Punjabi writer, writing fiction and non-fiction for nearly six decades, elevated to “the Immortals of Indian Literature” by the Sahitya Akademi in February 2016 along with Nirendranath Chakravarti, an eminent Bangla poet. In spite of good in studies and interested in pursuing education, the economic compulsion was Singh’s way to bind up his education in class seven as his father, a carpenter-cum-blacksmith, and crafted wheels for bullock carts in winters and moulded trunks and water tanks out of iron sheets in summer, was unable to bear his cost of education.

Moments after President Pranab Mukherjee conferred India’s third highest Civilian Award Padma Shri on 28th March 2016 on Haldhar Nag, a renowned Koshali poet and writer, for his contribution towards literature and education, his picture of receiving the award at Rashtrapati Bhawan had gone viral on various social media platforms. Clad in a white dhoti and vest, and hair slicked back with oil with barefoot when received the award, Nag was an anomaly, but his life is full of inspirational things. Certainly he may not be a man of means but his poetic fragrance lured many. Though failed to complete class III, Nag has been an awe inspiring genius. His creativity now is a subject matter for learned scholars and avid researchers. He is far more who inspires the elite as well, illiterate alike. Writing is his addiction. He could be anything, a peanut seller, a cook, a stationer, but he has to write a few lines. Playing around with words brings him pleasure. He writes because it gives him oxygen. British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has made a documentary film on Nag’s life and works.

Kedar Mishra, a noted Odia poet says, “Nag’s magic, perhaps, lies in his poetry as well as his simple life. In an age when poetry is becoming a little too hard for the masses, Haldhar touches people’s hearts. His poetry has modern and contemporary sensibility”.  Even at this age, he remembers all the poems and his twenty epics by-heart without having to refer any books that he has written so far. You just need to mention the name or subject. He never misses anything. He composes poems on his mind and recites with ease and grace. Now he attends at least three to four programmes every day to recite his poems. Nag with extraordinary skill hardly attended school has been named in the PhD research theses of five scholars. Born to a hardcore manual labourer couple in the village Ghens in Bargarh district; about 76 kilometers from Sambalpur in the western part of the state of Odisha on 31st March 1950, Haldhar, youngest of the siblings including five brothers and one sister, studied up to only Class III. He was forced to drop-out from school after death of his father when he was just ten. As no option left out to support his family he did odd jobs like dishwasher in a local halwai (sweet) shop near a bus stop, which saved him from starvation. Couple of years later a village Sarpanch took him to a residential school hostel and found him to got a job as cook and cooking at a school where he worked for years until he opened a small stationery shop near a school.

As a number of schools came up in the area, he approached a banker and got Rs 1,000 loan to start a kiosk in front of the school for selling stationery items and eatables, and to feel ink in the pens for school students in ten paisa. The small shop now has been renovated and serves as a memento for the scholars and admirers visit for their research work now days. “Life of a widow’s child was tough,” Nag added. During his tenure as a cook he developed a deep bond with the children of the school, serving them meal and listen them to prepare their lessons. It was there that his appetite for poetry was whetted. As they recited the poems of the popular poets in their textbooks, he was a listener, marveling at the beauty of the verses and learning them through repetition. Once he came across a poem ‘Gramapatha’, from a high school poetry text titled Kavita Pravesh, which describes a village road, touched him. He read it repeatedly.

Known as ‘Koshali Kuili’, ‘Jadavkila Gourav’, ‘Koshal Ratna’, ‘Jadav Jyoti’ and so on, he was initially writing folk literature in Koshali till 1990 including Lokgeet, Samparda, Krushnaguru. The first poem he penned ‘Dhodo Bargachh’ (The Old Banyan Tree), describing how a banyan tree near the village entry point which everyone took for granted, published in Art and Artist, a local magazine in 1990 followed by four more appreciated by critics and admirers, motivated Nag to compose more and more verses in Koshali, one of the five Prakrit languages existing since Vedic era along with Sanskrit, though some recent research done at Sambalpur University claims it as a distinct language. The felicitation and that encouragement he received since ’90 compelled him touring nearby villages to recite his poems, common occurrence of his native district. A Bargarh based literary organization Abhimanyu Sahitya Samsad started patronizing him and helped him to publish his poems in local magazines and later published most of his anthologies.

Popularly known as Lok Kabi Ratna in Odisha, the themes of his poems are based on the rural areas and draws from the rustic surroundings. His poetry brings closer to the mass. He can complete verses at will. His writings are mainly on religion, nature, society and mythology other than taking up the cause of the oppressed, social reforms, scientific events, and contemporary issues like farmer suicide, pre-eminence of cricket over other sports, as well as slow degeneration of our society, all derived from the everyday life around him, but hardly writes about politics, though his works reflects the rebellious spirit hidden among the mass ready to erupt in time. Nag picks up the raw theme from the dark uncrowned alleys and depicts them on the hitherto unanalyzed and unexplored territory. He is voice to all voiceless women of the society and boldly speaks about against their exploitations. He admits, “People in the lowest strata of life compel me to write. Nag reiterates, “Poetry is not merely an individual expression of self rather it goes beyond and work as a weapon of the marginalized to fight for injustice”.

Even though he might not have attended school, his works have gone even beyond them. In his view, “poetry with real-life connection has a message for the people. Everyone is a poet, but only a few have the art of giving them shape.”  Both his Mahasati Urmila, and Tara Mandodari are of mythological in nature, and Achhia, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s fight against untouchability, is a masterpiece on social issue. Bacchhar, which has left a lasting impression on everybody, on the theme nature as it’s about how the year was divided into six parts and seasons came into being on earth. His use of exotic verses interweaving scientific and social theme made the volume memorable. His other notable works Siri Somalai, Veer Sundar Sai, Karamsani, Rasia Kavi, biography of Tulasidas, and Prem Paechan are included in Haldhar Granthabali: Vol. I brought out by Friends’ Publishers, Cuttack. Soon Sambalpur University is coming up with a compilation of his writings titled Haldhar Granthabali: Vol.II and will be a part of their syllabus. Famous publishing houses have come forward to publish most of his works.

The State and the national apex bodies should come together to publish his entire writings and translate them into Odia, as well, in Hindi and English for the wider readership. Presently along with Laxminarayan Panigrahi, an academic in a college of Ghens, he is working on the project on Sri Aurobindo’s supra-mental consciousness since last twelve years. They have read and discussed Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri several times to understand the philosophy of super-mind and Haladhar has completed a draft text of the manuscript, but not in verse form. His contribution in the academic sector doesn’t end there. Five scholars have done their PhD research based on the works of Nag. He leaves his audience spellbound wherever he goes, be that Shantiniketan or Hyderabad, Raipur or Pithoda.

Nag is also a recipient of Odisha Living Legend Award, which was established in 2011 by Odisha Diary, the leading website of Odisha, on its 11th year of foundation, as an acknowledgement of his excellence in Koshali literature and his special contribution of social and cultural harmony. Besides, he has been felicitated by more than three hundred institutions, including Odisha Sahitya Akademi in 2014 for his work in development of language. Sambalpur University has already honoured Brahmaputra Award on him. Number of institutions has been established in the rural pockets of western Odisha by the poetry lovers i.e. ‘Loka Kavi Haladhar Sanskrutik Parishad’, ‘Loka Kavi Haladhar Bana Bidyalaya’, ‘Haladhar Mandap’, etc. which is befitting tribute to a ‘truly’ rare creative phenomenon of Odisha. But his major achievement lies with two decades of his writings Koshali language have been recognized worldwide. But people keep referring him as the second Gangadhar Meher, the svabhabkabi, considered as one of the chief architects of the renaissance of Odia literature, who lived in Barpali, only a few kilometers away from Nag’s village.

He does not want to be comparing with great poet. For him Gangadhar Meher was like an institution in the field of Oriya literature and does not want to be known as the second Gangadhar Meher. He just wants to live and die as ‘Haladhar Nag’. If people remember him even after his death, they should do so only by his name. Hundreds of poets imitate his style and technique boosting a robust ‘Haldhar Dhara’ in Western Odisha. Living with his spouse Malati Nag and daughter Nandiniin Ghens in a simple hutment, his only wish, being in the forefront of the Sambalpuri-Koshali Language Movement, is the inclusion of Sambalpuri-Koshali, the language over 1.5 cores people in western part of Odisha, in the 8th Schedule of Constitution. It’s the lingua franca of at least ten district of western Odisha including Kalahandi, Nuapara, Sambalpur, Bargarh, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Boudh, Bolangir, Sonepur, Sundergarh, a block of Nabarangpur district. Besides, a sizable population also speaks in areas adjoining and contiguous to Western Odisha i.e. Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand though there are multiple tribal and ethnic dialects in the area.

Despite the fame and epithets he achieved, Haldhar Nag remains unchanged and unaffected by adulation and material possession. Never uses soap, only applies mud to wash hair. Whatever he earns from recitations and Rs 1000/- that he gets as monthly allowance from the state government he donated to ‘Haldhar Nag Orphanage’, which he started in 2009 at Luhurachati on Odisha-Chhatisgarh border. In an interview he asks, “Why do I need money for myself when I grew up as an orphan”? Nag is only happy to recite his verse if one offers him a bowlful of pakhal (watery rice), a traditional Odia-dish.

 

 

 

 

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