Grandfather is a famous poem of Indian author, Jayanta Mahapatra. The poem is originally published in 1983. The central theme of poem is distress and effects of hunger.
“Grandfather Poem Summary By Jayanta Mahapatra”
Summary of Grandfather By Jayanta Mahapatra
This is the story from 1866 when there was famine in Odisha and people were dying from hunger. The writer’s grandfather, Chintamani Mahapatra used to live in Odisha. One day, poet find a yellow color diary of his grandfather which he must have written a long time ago.
The diary was written by a person who was dying from hunger 100 years ago. If we compare our lives with our ancestor life, their live was very very tough and challenging as compare to ours.
The poet is trying to listen a voice and pain of his grandfather by reading his diary. The person in diary says, sun at that time was very hot, the barren land was so thirsty that it had deep cracks in it. The people were dying from hunger and there were silence all around. The sky had no clouds so there was no hope for rain.
The climate change affect farmers the most, the farmers might not even remember when they smiled last time. The rivers water were dried up completely and trees were dying around it. The situation was very serious, people just needed food, people were wandering like wild dogs in search of food. The big tamarind trees were alive and they were making rustling sound.
By that sound my grandfather realized that he won’t survive as death was looming. It killed around thousands of children, woman and elders. So now it is grandfather’s turn to die. My grandfather knew that he will die like other people from hunger. Therefore, my grandfather decided to something to save upcoming generation.
First decision of my grandfather was he left his family, and second decision was he left his Hindu religion. It was a tough decision as leaving a family and religion is not easy. It takes great courage to take these types of decision.
My grandfather was going through a such situation where Hunger was important for him. Therefore, he decided to accept Christianity to stay alive. He chooses spiritual death over real death. The will to stay alive convince my grandfather to change his belief.
We can’t even imagine what was going on his mind when he accept new religion. How hard it was for him to change his belief. Maybe he agreed because 100 years ago he doesn’t have an idea that his time would pass and new days will come. He must have just thought that by this agreement, he can carry his dynasty forward. The poet says, today we are alive and living in this world is because of my grandfather decision.