Hunger by Jayanta Mahapatra

          The poem 'Hunger' by Jayanta Mahapatra, a well-known poet from Orissa,India, depicts two kinds of hunger. One is the hunger of food and another is the hunger for sexual gratification.

Note from the summary author:-
          It is usually seen that men who are not satisfied with their married life or are not married or are divorced, go to brothels and give money for their own pleasure. It has become a business now, especially in India. Saying India a poor country will be an understatement. India now is not just poor by money, but poor by morals. The basic moral of a human being to realize that women are responsible for the creation of a new generation is wiped off our minds. Instead we see women being housewives, or maid servants, or further low standard jobs I find shameful to discuss about. It is a shame that we have forgotten women are not toys meant for sexual gratification or satisfaction of men. They are the creator of the entire human race. Rapes, prostitution,  household tortures, are these the only aspects women are meant to go through now?

Jayanta Mahapatra's poetry not only explores the influence of local realities in creating the depth of one's feeling and sensitivity but also stretches the possibilities of language to represent them.

Summary:-

"It was hard to believe the flesh was heavy on my back.
The fisherman said: Will you have her, carelessly,
trailing his nets and his nerves, as though his words
sanctified the purpose with which he faced himself.
I saw his white bone thrash his eyes."

The first few lines of the poem tell us about a man and a fisherman. The fisherman is volunteering the man to his place for a deal. The man feels the flesh on his back is too heavy. It seems like he is holding a huge burden of something inexplicable and its better to drop off the load. The fisherman is talking about some girl. He asks the man to 'have' her. He says it very carelessly as if he has no concern for the girl. As if the girl is some toy to play with. But his words very well explain his purpose. He is hungry and he needs money to buy food. He is dragging his nets behind him. He glares his white teeth but his eyes reflect his misery. 

"I followed him across the sprawling sands,
my mind thumping in the flesh's sling.
Hope lay perhaps in burning the house I lived in.
Silence gripped my sleeves; his body clawed at the froth
his old nets had only dragged up from the seas."

The man is continuously faced with a weight upon him, symbolizing the weight of guilt and regret. Though he follows the fisherman across the shore, he feels a thumping tension in his head. He could take this moment to refuse the offer and turn back. Maybe now if he turned back he could escape the trap and guilt he is caught in. But he remained silent. The fisherman's desperation seemed to increase.

"In the flickering dark his lean-to opened like a wound.
The wind was I, and the days and nights before.
Palm fronds scratched my skin. Inside the shack 
an oil lamp splayed the hours bunched to those walls.
Over and over the sticky soot crossed the space of my mind."

When he reaches the fisherman's shack, he sees it is a lean-to(a building sharing one wall with a larger building, and having a roof that leans against that wall) and was dark inside except a lamp with a flickering flame and the walls are covered with soot, collected for a long time, which kept catching the poet's eyes.


"I heard him say: My daughter, she's just turned fifteen...
Feel her. I'll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.
The sky fell on me, and a father's exhausted wile.
Long and lean, her years were cold as rubber.
She opened her wormy legs wide. I felt the hunger there,
the other one, the fish slithering, turning inside "

  The fisherman then reveals that his daughter has just turned fifteen and the readers realize that the girl he was talking about is his daughter. He asks the poet to 'feel' her. Here 'feel' refers to the fulfillment of his sexual desires. The poet is shocked with the truth and sees through the fisherman's wile. He is a father who is using his daughter's body to earn money for food. The poet looks at the young girl, who is 'long and lean', her age can be easily judged by her cold rubber-like skin and she looked malnourished. When she opened her 'wormy' thin legs wide, as if ready to serve as a sexual slave, the poet felt the hunger, the hunger for food which drove this father-daughter into this business.