Endless Adornment - Asaranti Anasara (Award Winning Collection of Odia Poems)

Endless Adornment depicts the simple joys of village life, nature and love in its various aspects. The poems celebrate different festivals observed in villages with the drawing of attractive jhoti and chita designs on walls and floors, preparation of different pithas offered to gods and goddesses and the joy of playing different games in orchards, river banks and moonlit nights. The poet depicts the lovely picture of different seasons at villages as well. He is nostalgic about all these joys of village life.

A poignant theme of love runs like a thread in most of the poems. The poet is nostalgic about his lost love whose memory leaps up his heart, and he eternally waits for her. He is never tired of wishing her well-being. The poet is nostalgic about his parents and kinsmen as well. Using a highly metaphoric and philosophic language the poet looks inward and reflects on love, relationship, man's loneliness, hypocrisy, life, its irrevocable and inexorable journey and ultimate goal. In most of the poems, he moves from depiction of particular thing or person to philosophical reflections. Doubtless these poems are an emotional and intellectual feast for readers.

Pramod Kumar Mohanty is a Professor of Psychology; he served at different government colleges from 1969 to 2000. He is an Odia poet, essayist and artist. He has authored eight collections of poems titled, Kramashah (1965), Debipada (1969), Akatakata (1972), Asaranti Anasara (2002), Akshara Seba (2010), Chitra, Chitraka, Chitrapedi (2012), Alaga Kuha (2013) and Banimaya Barnamala (2016). Asaranti Anasara won Sahitya Akademi award in 2008. He has also written a humourous collection of essays titled, Shyahi Chhita (Ink Gloss) and two prose/ essay books, Sigmund Freud and His Theory of Psychoanalysis and Pilanku Kipari Manisha Kariba.

He has received a number of awards and felicitations like Padma Charan Pattnaik Kabita Puraskar (1965), Gangadhar Rath Foundation Award and Bhanuji Rao Poerty Award (2005), Pujyapuja Sansad Biridi Felicitation (2009), Pujyapuja Sansad Jagatsinghpur Felicitation (2010), Kharasrota Felicitation (2009), Ananya Sahitya Kala Parisada Felicitation (2007), Kadambini and Viswamukti Felicitation (2013) and Jhankara Bishuba Samman (2013).

Mary Mohanty is an Associate Professor of English at S.C.S (Autonomous) College, Puri. She translates from Odia and Hindi to English, and English and Hindi to Odia. She has translated Odia classics Kuntala Kumari Sabat's novels into English titled Three Novels of Kuntala Kumari Sabat: The Dark Bride, The Philosopher's Stone, Raghu: the Orphan, published by Sahitya Akademi, Kuntala Kumari Sabat: A Miscellany, A Leaf in the Stream (an autobiography), Two Navels of Kuntala Kumari Sabat, Kuntala Kumari Sabat (a monograph), published by Odisha Sahitya Akademi.