LIBERATION OF HUMANITY – NEW AGENDA FOR HUMANIST MOVEMENT.
Prof.Pratibha Ray
Why war at all ? Gender peace should be the new agenda for development of society. This is a human issue. The modern woman protests against discrimination and raised her voice for human rights. This should not be turned into a war. Man should also cooperate with woman to fight the existing discriminations of all sorts in our dogma ridden society. My own vision is that woman is basically peace lover. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars and consequently woman as well as the society suffered. This is man’s record. Woman has motherly instinct and she always wishes for survival of the planet. Gender war will not make man and woman happy. Of course, woman should assert her rights as human being, when she is discriminated…………
– Presented in Utkal University International Conference and Published in 4Dimension Magazine
DREAMS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF A WRITER (SAARC WRITER’S CONFERENCE, DELHI
FROM 07.10.2004 TO 09.10.2004), Dr.Pratibha Ray
Man is a potent dreamer, dreamer of the future, of better tomorrows, as tomorrow opined by a western thinker, is our permanent address. Writers are dreamers, but the dreams are not out of the blue. The dreams are intimately rooted in their culture. The seed of creation is embedded in the dreams, which is nourished by the soil he lives in. But the creative tree rises high extending the branches to the universal sky, having one sun and one moon for all. Therefore, the language may be called regional, but the literature created by great writers, is universal………….
THE SUPREME SILENCE
Dr. Pratibha Ray
“In the beginning there was the Word”. The supreme creator Brahma (Swayambhoo) created himself and then he created the Universe.
The first words of wisdom were uttered by him from his four faces facing four directions, extending his vision beyond
the horizon (infinite). These spoken words consequently took the shape of four Vedas ( Rig, Sam, Yadu and Atharva Veda) which were recorded in form of written scripts millennia later. Hence, in the real sense, in the beginning was the word- the “Savda” in which “the creator identified the Bramha, the creator of creator, the Supreme Creator. Bramha uttered the word orally, but the words are powerful than him. Bramha, the creator was the wordsmith of oral culture. The human society came into being with oral culture. The Vedas or the Iliad were the flowerings of Sruti or Oral culture………….
TALE OF TWO SHADOWS
Pratibha Ray, (Sahitya Academy Award Acceptance Speech, 2000)
Going down the memory lane, I respectfully owe my humble achievement to the forefathers of my mother language Odia, an ancient language with rich literary heritage, Adikavi Sarala Das, Ativadi Jagannath Das, the Great Sudra Saint Poet Bhima Bhoi, Fakirmohan Senapati, the father of modern prose, the Great Novelist of our time Gopinath Mohanty, Kanhu Charan Mohanty, Surendra Mohanty and others who left behind for us a luminous path to go ahead. With love and respect, I also remember my late parents Parasuram Das and
Manorama Devi, my school teachers Late Abhilash Nayak and Late Narrotam Mohanty and others who had constantly encouraged me to be identified as what I am today. Looking back, I nostalgically reminisce my small village on the banks of river Alka, the mystic smell of Punnag flower in gentle summer breeze, the timid blue Lily, completely drenched in rain in the small village pond, the liquid diamond dropping down on the dew bathed petals of winter flowers in our small garden in the rising sun and the glowing vermilion mark on the golden forehead of my Goddess like mother in the evening Arati flame…………..