Manas Ranjan Mahapatra, 20th September 2022
In my class 8th in school, our class teacher Suryamani Sir questioned one day, “Who is the Education Minister of our State?” We all looked at each other. Banamali Pattnayak was our Education Minister till January, 1971 and this was August of the same year.
“Banamali Pattnayak”, we all shouted.
“You are wrong”, Sir said. Then he said with pride, “Sarat Kumar Kar is our new Education Minister.” It was a new information for all of us.
We got more astonished when he came to our school as Chief Guest of our Annual Function. He was a friend of Loknath Saha, our dear teacher. He was the youngest Minister in the country that time and the record still remains in his name.
I met Sarat Kumar Kar in election meetings till 1980. Time moved like a wild river. I had almost forgotten him, as after a brief stint of three years from 1977 to 1980 as a Member of Parliament, he lost two consecutive elections. He bounced back in 1990 and became the Minister for Art and Culture in the State. One day, we met at Odisha Bhawan, New Delhi. He recognised me as I was once a student leader.
“What about holding a National Book Fair at Bhubaneswar?”, he asked. He and his elder brother, Rajat Kumar Kar, were great speakers on medieval Odia poetry and were book lovers. “Yes Sir, but we need a proposal from the State”, I replied. I was an Editor with the National Book Trust (NBT) then.
“No problem”, he said. On his direction, his Private Secretary immediately prepared a proposal/letter. Our Director, Arvind Kumar, was elated. We did a successful event with Sarat Babu’s active cooperation. Biju Pattnayak, the then Chief Minister, inaugurated that first ever National Book Fair at Bhubaneswar.
My next meeting with Sarat Babu happened accidentally again at Odisha Bhawan, New Delhi. I was inaugurating an anthology, ‘Sampratika Odia Kabita’ – the first ever anthology of contemporary Odia poetry by a national body like NBT. Dr. J.P.Das and Dr. Ramdarash Mishra had agreed to jointly release the anthology. I invited Sarat Kumar Kar to the function though I had a fear that he may have a protocol issue, being a former Cabinet Minister.But I was astonished when I saw him entering the hall with his ‘samudhuni’ (mother-in-law of his younger son), Manorama Biswal Mohapatra, herself a noted poet.
Sarat Kumar Kar was the blue-eyed boy of Biju Pattnayak at one point of time. He was introduced to Biju babu, by former Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri. Sarat babu worked very closely with Biju babu for more than three decades. He became a member of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) after the death of Biju Pattnayak. He became the Speaker of the Odisha Legislative Assembly in 2000 when Naveen Pattnayak became the Chief Minister for the first time. BJD deserted him but Sarat Babu was emotionally attached to Biju Babu till he passed away last year. His passing away was a huge personal loss for me.
I had met Sarat Babu a decade ago at his younger son’s official residence at Kaushambi, NCR/Delhi. I had met his wife, Professor Anima Kar (a renowned vocal artist also) also during that visit. That was not the last meeting though. I was invited as a guest to a function of ‘Jhumuka’, an Odia children’s magazine, at Bhubaneswar. Sarat Babu was also a guest there. But he was not in good health and was not recognising people. When I told him about my NBT days, he said, “We had Manas Babu, my friend there at NBT once upon a time.”
“I am that fortunate one”, I replied.
Was I crying? Yes, I was…..
