Manoj Das Memorial: What’s the Fuss About?

It’s such a shame that the giant billboard, appropriately painted in the colours of the ruling party and with the smiling visage of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik towering over it, had to be covered with sheets of cloth, violet in colour for a change, just a day after it was unveiled with great fervour just because some morons raised a din against it on that godforsaken place called the social media (SM)!

And pray what they were raising a din against? First, that Manoj Das was described as a ‘poet’. Was he not one? The din raisers clearly don’t know that the doyen of Odia writing started his long and illustrious literary career with poetry. That he was also a master storyteller - and was better known for that – is purely incidental. None of those barking on SM had the cheek to say he was not a poet, did they? They claim Manoj Das was a storyteller first because they don’t have the finer sensibilities to understand his poetry. You chose the storyteller in him and we saw the poet. So, what exactly is all the fuss about?

And now the second objection: that it has been erroneously described as ‘Renovation and development of the house of Poet Manoj Das and his family’ whereas the correct name of the memorial project is ‘Manmath-Manoj Smaraki’. Well, what’s in a name, after all? Is it not a fact that both of them mean the same thing: renovation of the ancestral home of Manmath and Manoj Das? As for the objection to the name of Manmath Nath Das, the great historian and Manoj’s elder brother, missing altogether in the signboard, you must understand that the idea of a memorial came from Manoj Das Smruti Sansada. So, it was only appropriate that the memorial be named after him, isn’t it? In any case, when we have made it clear that the project involves the renovation of the ancestral house of the Das brothers, what material difference does it really make if the name of one of them is left out in the signboard?   

Let us take up the third objection of the good-for-nothing SM warriors: that there is no picture of Manoj Das in the board? Pray, where was the space left for it? After all, the man to whom the entire credit for the whole memorial project goes had to be given his due. And it goes without saying that the size of his picture had to match the size of his magnanimity, right? And then there was all that important text to be accommodated, including the bit about the project cost of Rs 6.90 crores. How else do you think the people would know the size of this government’s magnanimity? Last but not least, there was the all-important message, suitably highlighted against a yellow (or is it saffron?) background, that informs the people that this ‘property’, made for them with their money, belongs to them and exhorts them to take care of it. After all this, where exactly was the space left for a picture of Manoj Das – or Manmath Das, for that matter? If we had accommodated the picture of one or both of them, they would have been of a size that would have insulted these two illustrious sons of the soil, wouldn’t it? So, was it not a wise decision in the event to black both of them out together instead of humiliating them together before their own people?

And now to the point that has raised the heckles of the habitual Naveen-baiters the most. “Why must the Chief Minister’s picture be there in a memorial dedicated to Manmath and Manoj Das?” they ask. “Why not?” we say. After all, it was the Chief Minister’s gift to the people of Shankhari – and Baleshwar, at large. Had it not been for this act of his benevolence, there would be no memorial to the Das brothers. In a generation’s time, people would have forgotten all about them. So, is it not appropriate for us to give due credit – and of course, space – to the man but for whom Manmath and Manoj would have gone into oblivion? But who will explain this to those who cannot see anything good in anything our beloved Chief Minister does.

One prominent member of this obnoxious tribe, a perennial Naveen-baiter named Biswajit Mohanty, even had the gumption to post surreptitiously taken pictures of the ongoing work on SM to allege that we are killing the ‘soul’ of the place by cutting 80% of the fruit-bearing trees, all but filling up the family pond and putting up ‘ugly’ concrete monstrosities all around the place. The sanctity of the small family temple on the premises has been desecrated with the overzealous use of marble, he says. This man may himself be a member, but does he even know that our beloved Chief Minister is a founding member of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH)? To accuse the most aesthete man in the history of Indian politics of insensitivity to the cultural ethos of the place is like questioning the musical credentials of Pandit Ravi Shankar! 

Mohanty and his fellow travellers would not even be a footnote in history. What would be written in golden letters is the name of the architect of a Naveen (Odia for ‘new’) Odisha!!

(DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own and have nothing to do with OTV’s charter or views. OTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.)