A new tendency has developed among writers in Orissa to confess their adultery and sexual infidelity openly in their autobiographies. This is not new in Oriya literature. In the early 20th century, connoisseur poet Kabibar Radhanath Ray had also issued a pamphlet to confess his sins of indulging himself with his extramarital affairs. And about a hundred years later, famous bilingual poet Jayanta Mohapatra described his sexual instincts in an article published in Sachitra Vijaya, a periodical, and a veteran critic, Dr Nityanand Satpathy confessed his ‘pious sins’ in his biographical 418-page book titled Prem o Pratarana, published by Prachi Sahitya Pratisthan.
I am deliberately using the word ‘pious’ with ‘sin’ because in the dictionary of psychology, adultery is neither a sin nor a sacred act. It is more a matter of body than of the heart. It is first and last, a satisfaction of the sexual urge. Psychologist Lucy Gray says that there is no single person on earth who does not have an extra-marital relationship — be it sexually or mentally. “If anybody denies it, he/she is either a hypocrite or not worth it.”
Dr Satpathy was my guide for doctoral degree and I possess a high rank of respect for him. I know how meticulous he is and how talented his wisdom with regards to literature. I adore him as a teacher and academician and also as a critic. But after reading his autobiographical descriptions, I can’t find any sympathetic mood for his agony. It is not because he has confessed his fornication, not because of his post-service attachment with rightist and fundamentalist political wings. It is only because he blames his wife for his adultery. Though I worked under Dr Satpathy and during my research I had to visit his house often, and as he is a poet and a critic and editor of a renowned literary magazine, and his wife is a poet and I am a writer of fiction, we have a fine sharing etiquette and I could know the family from a closer view. The couple separated after retirement from their academic work and this happened during my research period. She shifted her residence to her daughter’s house.
I was still visiting Dr Satpathy’s house for the final correction of my research paper and noted Dr Satpathy’s love for his wife and how he had missed her in every step of life. Very few people might know that the controversial conversation was not initiated by Dr Satpathy but by his wife.
She first started writing against her husband in the souvenir Saraswat Akalan edited by Odisha Pujya Puja Sansad, Bhubaneswar, and published by Grantha Mandir in 2000 on account of his completion of 60 years. Though she admitted that there was no need to expose one’s individual life to the public, she still wrote of how she was neglected by her husband and while reading it pained me to know that Dr Satpathy was not present beside his wife at her first delivery. But on the other hand I have witnessed how Dr Satpathy was feeling alienated and exiled without his wife and the love between the separated couple made me think again about the bonding of marital relationship.
I often wondered what made them separate at that mature age, when two souls have need of each other for support and sharing.
For me, adultery is not a question on which I should pass judgement and nothing seems to me unusual in their relationship.; but the main question still unresolved in my mind is, who benefited from these works? It is like throwing kitchen waste on the road. It may help to bring them into the limelight and to refresh their presence in the minds of their readers, but are there any aesthetic or social values in making family matters in public? To what extent are they both going in order to prove something of potential in these writings?
As I always advocate a hegemony-free partnership in marital life, I don’t think it would be wise to suggest who is more hegemonic in nature, but what shocked me in Prem o Pratarana was the attitude of the masculine world towards sexual promiscuity. How they can permit it for themselves, while opposing that status for the female world remains without a satisfactory answer.
