The poem brings to us two aspects of Puri. Swarga Dwar, as the word itself explains, a holy destination for many to attain heaven after death, presents a religious aspect. The Puri beach, which is regularly crowded with people of all colour, languages, castes and creed, grants a secular aspect to the poem.

Jayanta clearly is no Shelly who sings of the West Wind, or Wordsworth who dances with the golden daffodils. His approach is far from romantic though the sunrises and sunsets over a serene Bay of Bengal is something to consider as is the sunset at Naples. He renders Puri with a much darker colour, grimness, desolation, frustration and disgust which is always overlooked by its sea of tourists.

Endless crow noises
A skull in the holy sands
tilts its empty country towards hunger.

Jayanta is an imagist with great photographic qualities. The scenes do not open to a bustling sea shore but to a desolate stretch of sand with a skull and crows crowing over which definitely strikes a chord, just not the one we were expecting.

He regards his motherland as ’empty’ perhaps referring to its poor financial prosperity. His country and its people are dying with hunger. The crow noises may come as a complain or as an attempt to chastise the society of its wrong doings.

The skull is found lying there as a result of negligence of people working at the holy pyre which acts as a metaphor to all that is wrong in the country due to negligence of the responsible.

White-clad widowed Women
past the centers of their lives
are waiting to enter the Great Temple

It is interesting how Jayanta has used the word ‘women’ though he uses ‘widowed’. One understanding may explain that his deliberate use of the word brings out the male domination in the Indian society. A woman without her man is helpless. She is without her own identity, she is just a woman. She awaits nothing but her death with the belief that getting incinerated here would grant her a place in heaven.

Their austere eyes
stare like those caught in a net
hanging by the dawn’s shining strands of faith.

These women stare still like the fish caught in nets. The word ‘net’ is symbolic of a world of imprisonment for the women. It again hints of their lack of freedom. They have been caught in an illusion and are waiting for their liberation from this world (net).

The fail early light catches
ruined, leprous shells leaning against one another,
a mass of crouched faces without names,

As the scene lights up with the ‘frail’ rays of the sun falls upon leprous shells that have stacked up on one another. They all have the same texture and thus all lookalikes. This imagery makes an informed reader think of the commonly found groups of leprosy stricken people on the Orissa shores with deformed face, assorted together for their daily beg. They all share the same destiny.

and suddenly breaks out of my hide
into the smoky blaze of a sullen solitary pyre
that fills my aging mother:

Suddenly he sees a smoky blaze of a sullen solitary pyre rise. It is a sight that his ageing mother wishes to have for herself. Such a wish is shared among all mother folks in this community.

her last wish to be cremated here
twisting uncertainly like light
on the shifting sands

He continues to gaze at the fire which keeps on ‘twisting’ with no regular rhythm. He is worried because the smoke which is the embodiment of the dead person’s eternal peace is troubled uncertainly by the air. The light that falls on the sand continues to change with the changing fire as well. He begins to doubt whether there is any afterlife at all. His realization is that the chances of an afterlife is just as uncertain as the pattern of the smoke.

Image Courtesy: Alex Kampmann

P.S. This is my understanding of the poem. Can’t really comment on the accuracy of my interpretations. Leave your comments below. 🙂 Thanks!